Nay_ho_tze's Medicine Musings

  ALIKE BUT DIFFERENT

i'd happened into the definitive biography of the Catholic saint, Padre Pio …
it was one of those books that is missed when it's finished like a good friend who goes away.
and my interest was surprisingly not for the Catholic aspect, but for the unexpected …
um, shamanic … aspect.

Reading his story, i recognized a lot of my own medicine experiences and, through my own Catholic experience being similar to his (most notably that they were pre-Vatican II), i was able to strip away the Catholic imagery to get to the ‘universal’ intent expressing itself through Padre Pio  …

For instance, take the idea of ‘victim of divine love’ - i know exactly what that is --
not because i’ve read about it before,
but because i’ve lived it before…
i’ve seen it manifest in my own life, my own body … it's when a healer takes on another’s physical/mental suffering so as to lighten a patient's load that his/her body might repair itself ... 

Now, i’m certainly not suggesting i am in league with Padre Pio, for surely i am not.
But i am saying that the experiences
of this NDN Catholic tend to shadow, by definition, the experiences
of a devout Italian mystic…
that the experience, like God, is One –
and that the illusion of separation is held
in the paradigm of language 

-NHT
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