An Alchemy of Healing

Dear Friends,

After a summer of fun and busy times, I’m looking forward to a much quieter fall.

I’ve been thinking again lately about healing. What makes an experience, a place, a space healing? We all have places that need to be healed: younger versions of ourselves, painful memories, wounds we carry.

I’m coming down to earth after a weekend of live music, the source of so much healing for me. Well-timed after uncertain scans. As you know, I live with metastatic cancer and ponder often the role of healing in my life, even when there is no cure. Sometimes I find healing by seeking it; other times, it finds me. I think my weekend of music was a little bit of both.

Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver is breathtakingly beautiful, a natural wonder, and a deeply spiritual setting for music if you’re into that. Which I am. It was on my bucket list to hear a concert there, but I don’t think I’m ready to cross it off the list.

Ahead of the concerts, local fans provided all of us newbies with lots of guidance about the venue. Describing the shape of the amphitheater, one woman called it a uterus. What an apt description for a place that felt like a holy womb.

Cradled there in the rocks, in community for two nights and wedged between my son and my wife, I thought it doesn’t get much better than this, except if my daughter was also there with us. I was mesmerized by beauty.

We listened to two nights of exquisite music from Brandi Carlile with the Colorado Symphony. She played songs that are rarely on setlists these days, thrilling the many of us who have followed her for the last nearly 20 years. We sang with abandon with 9000+ other folks, finishing lines when we were invited, and often even when we weren’t. On one special song, we sang in 9,000-person harmony, our voices sounding through those rocks. We danced, we made a well-orchestrated rainbow, we allowed ourselves to hope for change coming soon. I did not hesitate and gave into joy (Mary Oliver would approve).

I had a moment when I closed my eyes and felt surrounded by the energy of the rocks, the night sky, the spirit of the original people of this place, the symphony, the singers, my beloveds and the audience all collectively opening a portal to something much bigger. Healing.

On the plane I started reading the book Faith, Hope and Carnage, an interview between Sean O’Hagan and musician Nick Cave. Among many other things, they speak of grief after the death of Cave’s son, what it means to have faith, and the power of music to heal. I had never listened to Nick Cave’s music – I was just interested in his story. But I listened to Ghosteen, the album in which Cave grieves his son, and also is led by and connected to him. I was transfixed by this potent, intimate, haunting portrait of one who grieves the beloved while being carried and healed in the arms of a great Love. The veil between worlds seems beautifully thin in this music.

In our travels, I visited a dear friend who told me about a gathering space created for another friend of hers who is living with advanced Parkinson’s disease. She said she could feel the healing energy in that circle of friends. I don’t know if her friend will be cured, but I’m sure he will be healed.

I don’t think it’s possible to parse exactly what creates the space for healing. Perhaps it is an alchemy of connection, joy, beauty, music, art, and the earth, set within loving community and enlivened by spirit. Whatever it is, I’m grateful.

I hope that you find your way to healing moments, and that they find their way to you. If you care to share some sources of healing for you, either hit reply or leave a comment on this post.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.

Lots of love,

Maija

Songs of the Week:

These are not about healing per se, but I think they relate. Besides, I just like them.

Hold On (Change is Coming) by Sounds of Blackness

Lesson by Joy Clark

And I already shared Stay Gentle by Brandi Carlile earlier in the year, but it fits this week too.

The complete Healing Happens playlist is available on Spotify and Apple Music. Healing Happens on Spotify and Healing Happens on Apple Music