CoffeePods
A series exploring Christian healing in a handy coffee-break sized podcast. Plug yourself in, pick up your mug of coffee, and let's go.
CoffeePods
Glance, Glare, or Gaze: How Do You See the World Around You?
What does it truly mean to be healed? Beyond the physical cures we often seek lies something deeper—a return to the wholeness that was our original design.
This episode takes you on a profound journey through the concept of healing hubs as sacred connectors, places where people can restore balance when life feels out of kilter. Whether facing physical ailments, emotional distress, or spiritual disorientation, these spaces offer a chance to reconnect with God without prescribing a specific outcome. As Lisa and Reverend Kris explore, sometimes what we need isn't a definitive cure but a restoration of equilibrium—that sense of coming back to ourselves as we were meant to be.
The conversation dives into the rich Hebrew concept of "shellamute"—complete wholeness—and unpacks the difference between healing and curing. Through the powerful metaphor of a silversmith purifying precious metal until it perfectly reflects their image, we see how God works to remove impurities from our lives so we might better reflect divine goodness. This process isn't always comfortable; life's challenges cause tensions to bubble up, yet these very struggles often create space for deeper healing.
Perhaps most transformative is Richard Rohr's concept of the "three G's": glance, glare, and gaze. How might our lives change if we moved beyond superficial glances or judgmental glares to truly gazing at the world around us with appreciation and wonder? Could such attentiveness help us notice God's presence in unexpected places—a stranger's birthday wishes, a conversation during a dog walk, or the simple scent of spring flowers? Listen and discover how everyday moments of connection might be your pathway back to the wholeness that is your birthright.
It's time for another episode of Coffee Pods with April Christian Healing Foundation and your host Lisa Way and the Reverend Chris Crane.
Speaker 2:Grab a brew and make yourself comfortable.
Speaker 1:As we explore what's happening in the world from the perspective of Christian healing. People's hope is that they go to a healing hub and they go home feeling kind of normal, that they feel more balanced. And because I think sometimes you just want to go to a place which restores equilibrium, the idea that your life feels kind of out of kilter and you go to a healing hub saying I want to be healed. And that may be a literal physical need of healing cancer, a recent diagnosis, blood pressure, whatever and so there's an actual physical ailment that you're wanting prayer for healing. But there's also emotional distress and trauma and things, and so people often go to a healing hub feeling out of balance. They hope that they can restore the balance from that time of prayer.
Speaker 1:And that could be just a restoration of balance. It could be a transformation. It could be spiritual healing, it could be physical, physical healing. It could lead you back home with a new sense of purpose and how to cook the dinner you're going to have that night. Or it could be I want to quit my job and be a missionary in south sudan, and I think that's. The cool thing is that the hub um doesn't set the course but it sort of plugs in the socket. It's a a chance for you to reconnect with God and the people that are in the hub. It's not like they become lifelong friends and supporters of yours. They are there for a moment, for a particular purpose in your journey to offer you to God and God to you, and to connect you and then, hopefully, you leave feeling somewhat more balanced, and I guess that's the hope. I don't know that it always happens. I imagine people walk away feeling even more confused and more, you know, filled with struggle. I don't know, but I think it is.
Speaker 2:A lot of it is circumstantial, dependent where your body, mind and spirit are in that time. Yeah, I just wanted to probe a little bit because it felt like we were kind of getting to wholeness, which is, I know, something we're going to talk about in another episode, but just while we're there, another episode, but just while we're there, um, because I did a little bit of digging around to see what wholeness means, because we believe in healing and wholeness for all, and I think sometimes you could think is there a difference between healing and wholeness?
Speaker 2:like, what is god's intention around those? And I was. I just did a really quick look at the dictionary uh definition of, and that talks about being uh like all of, or entire um, in an unbroken or damaged state, or in one piece um, which kind of like I can, I can hear the character of god in that um, but what it means for our lives, I suppose, is where I'm going but then also the last bit of research I did on it was the hebrew translation, um for wholeness, and I don't know if it's pronounced correctly, but it's.
Speaker 2:It says it's share la moot um, and that is being in a state, complete, that's. It says it's shellamute um, and that is being in a state complete shellamute that's it, yeah being complete and perfect so so that's your balance that's what we just said, that's the that's it.
Speaker 1:So you come and you receive that wholeness, that balance I think that word needs to factor somewhere in what we're. That word is a very powerful word. That's really because it's a word that's layered, it has multiple meanings, like so many biblical words, and you can really get richness out of understanding what real wholeness, restoration, transformation, what that looks like from the perspective of God. I mean, you said about wholeness and healing. Yeah, I like to think that wholeness and healing go together and cures are the thing that are a struggle that you say. Well, what's the difference between wholeness and curing, or healing and curing? And so the cure may come now, it may come later. Yeah, is may come now, it may come later. Yeah, physical ailment and you're praying for a cure that's different than a physical ailment that you're praying for healing yeah, everything is assured.
Speaker 1:The cure is not. You pray for restoration and a cure from cancer or whatever is bothering you, but you know that you will be cured when you die, that you'll be restored to God after death, that we all will be made perfect, but there's no guarantee that the cure happens while you're still living. So in some ways, to focus on cure in your prayer is perhaps to be distracted from the ultimate wholeness that God wants for us, and I think when I think about that, I think wholeness in that context is seeking to be as you were when God created you. One of my teachers talked about what's called Imago Dei in Latin, which is the image of God, and so in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. So we know the kind of prologue to John and we know Genesis, and so the idea is that all of humanity was created by the breath of God, the Ruach.
Speaker 1:We talked about the spirit, that feminine word in Hebrew. So God creates all of us from perfection. So we are in the image of God, which is perfect, and then we become human and then our entire lives are trying to go back to that state of perfection, the way we were when we were created. So if you think about life as a cycle, that we're seeking the wholeness, that biblical wholeness of being grounded, perfected, balanced, which we were when we were created, it's sort of this funny life cycle that you go from being in the image of God means that God's reflection is in your very existence, and then somehow you fall away from that and life has all this stuff that gets thrown at you. And so when someone comes and prays for healing and wholeness, what they're saying is Lord, restore me to the image that you created me with. It's like I preached a sermon about silversmithing. I don't know if you know much about making silver.
Speaker 1:I preached one time and I was trying to explain this image of God thing and I said a silversmith takes silver and then they heat it up in like a cauldron and they melt it and they bubble. You know, the crucible has this silver in it and they bubble it up and then they scrape off the impurities on the top and then they cool the silver down. And how do you know that silver is a real high-grade silver in the crucible? Well, it's because when the silversmith cools off the silver after wiping the impurities away, the silver in the crucible will reflect the image of the silversmith. The silver in the crucible will reflect the image of the silversmith. And so the idea is that if God is constantly boiling us, wiping our impurities away, then cooling us, and then God looks down at us. And how do we know when we are pure? It's when we reflect his image in our lives. And there's a great song that we used to sing in church uh, purify my heart yeah, yeah I want to be as gold and silver purify my heart.
Speaker 1:And in that idea of of purification, I would say, life bubbles up. The, you know, tensions, the pressure, the stress causes stuff to bubble up. And then going to a healing hub in a funny sort of way is kind of like a place where some of those impurities can be helped out or pushed to the side. Going to church for a lot of people and saying prayers in church and receiving the absolution in a more formal church service where the priest will say a blessing, the idea of that is wipe away, wipe away. And we want to reflect Jesus' face in our lives, in our existence, in our joy And're.
Speaker 2:If the reflection you give is not of the goodness and love of god, then there lies the the issue, I think yeah, absolutely, and I think also that's why when there are things like scandals or hurts that come out, particularly in the christian church I mean it happened, sadly, there there is scandal, there's crime, there's all that everywhere in the world, including the church. But I think that might be why people find it so difficult to put their trust in, maybe organizations like us, or in the church, or in people. You think, well, why has that happened there? But, like you said, all these different things bubbling away and causing like a dirt or a scum on that top bit, they're very evil, aren't they?
Speaker 1:It's so incredible. I mean, you think about any mirror in your house. If you took cat litter or dirt and threw it at that mirror and then the next morning you walked by the mirror and you wanted to look at yourself, what would you see? You would see dirt and you would see a diminished quality of that reflection because it sullied. And I would say that the stories that go around of the humanity within organizations representing Christianity so many times people have let God down and by doing that they've diminished the reflection of God in the organizations that they work for.
Speaker 1:So you have bishops and priests and pastors and leaders of charities and various things where you see scandals and and sex scandals and abuse, and and it's it's heartbreaking because ultimately it breaks God's heart. And, as you say, our purpose is to find wholeness, restoration, and if your, if your goal to find wholeness is to have a comfortable life, that's not really wholeness. That's you finding your place in the life raft after the ship goes down. I'm whole. No, you're still floating in the ocean in a life raft. You haven't found the shore. And so God says come to the shore and find real wholeness where you actually have your feet planted on the earth and where your face is turned toward the sun.
Speaker 2:That's so good. I like that. I love the mountains. It's great they're inspiring you, chris.
Speaker 1:This is good, it's so good. I miss home and I miss my wife and, uh, I miss my dogs.
Speaker 2:I told you to hug your dog for me today they'll be pleased to see you when you come home, for sure and the uh.
Speaker 1:I I think that, um, it's going to be exciting when I get back to England. I've been reading this book by Richard Rohr.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I came upon this interesting quote about kind of goes with what we were saying about silver and wholeness and how to live one's life, and he talked about the three G's progressing in our understanding of life and and uh, he said we, we glance, we glare or we gaze, and and I thought to myself, um, when you glance at what's going on in the world around you, when you just sort of look at it quickly, you really don't pay much attention to the detail. It's just like a painting in the National Gallery. If I just sort of walk down a hall and I go, oh yeah, I saw that painting, you can glare at something which is to kind of look in a more judgmental, wanting to change what you see way. So, in an almost disapproving way, look at what they're doing. How dare they?
Speaker 1:I can't believe somebody would wear a hat in church like that or sit in my spot those children were making noise yeah sort of glaring, or you can gaze and and the thing I loved about this part was I find myself sometimes especially here in nature you just sit in the car and look out the window at the mountains, with a glass of water in your hand I mean, the water up here is just so good and you gaze at everything that's in front of you, and again back in the National Gallery looking at one of these masterpieces, and suddenly you notice detail and you see images of a little dog in the corner, a bird or some color on the side of a dress, of one person on the far right corner of a painting, of one person on the far right corner of a painting.
Speaker 1:And I think to myself living your life with a posture of gazing. How much healthier is that than being the person who either doesn't pay attention to the world because they're so consumed with self, or the person who judges the world around them because it's so different than what they want? Wouldn't it be better if we were the kind of Christians who followed God and gazed with anticipation? For what are we going to see next? Where will we find God today in the world around us? That to me is exciting, to think that.
Speaker 1:I could get out of here in an hour and I could go a mile that direction and I will find God somewhere down that road.
Speaker 2:You won't have to look hard, will you?
Speaker 1:No, and I think it's true and I find it exciting. I don't know where it'll be. Yesterday we were celebrating my mother's birthday and a stranger, literally from two tables over, comes over to our table, makes this lovely comment, wishes my mother a happy birthday and next thing you know we're talking about her love of the church and her faithfulness of Jesus and she lost her parents and it was just amazing.
Speaker 2:it was amazing, you know, I had a Facebook friend by the end of dinner and, uh, it's yeah, yeah, I've really found, actually since we've got Boise, our little dog, that I'm having those moments more and more because because just going out and then someone tells you you've just met on a walk with a dog, that their partner has died, and you just think you know what. Wow, like what you know, god used me in this moment. But also things like I like the gazing aspect, because I've noticed by walking around, I'm seeing more and I'm experiencing more of god's goodness, like being able to smell the flowers at this time of year um little. You know little things like that, so I love that. I'm gonna probably write that down on my whiteboard and think which one I'm doing more of.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Coffee Pots today.
Speaker 2:Don't forget to like, follow and subscribe. This podcast is made possible, thanks in part to the generosity of people like you.
