Healing of Memories

Day 28

Buechner describes another “divine moment” in his life.

“During this time [in the 60s when he was preaching and teaching in Exeter], another of those divine moments happened to me - a divine moment you never want to be too sure it's God who's talking to you or what it is he said, you never want to try to formalize it, because it's always a mystery, isn't it? but anyway, I found myself going to a conference led by a woman named Agnes Sanford, who had been billed to me by an Episcopal priest as a remarkable woman. He said, "If there is such a thing as a real faith healer, she's the real thing. You ought to go listen to her." So I went. And she was the real thing, there was no question about it. You just had to look at her to see that whatever she was saying, she was saying because she had known it to be true, at least in her own experience….

“She had enormous success not only as a physical healer, but also, increasingly as she grew old, as what she called a healer of memories. She was wonderfully un-Madame Blavatskian-there was nothing spooky about her. She didn't wear a beaded shawl or have a crystal ball. She was just a little woman, with a puffy little face. I could see her sort of running a bridge club. She said anybody who wanted to come to her could be healed: she would receive. So I went to her for a healing of my memories and I told her about my father and so on. What she'd do is pray in the most conversational, unfancy, unprayerful kind of way, and she'd speak this image into her prayers. The image was of the person she was praying for, a house with rooms and corridors; some of the rooms hadn't been opened for years and were full of dark places. She would invite Jesus into the house, saying, "Now open the doors and let in the fresh air, blessing it, cleansing it, and making it livable again." She prayed this prayer for me, and it was a very powerful moment for me, not only in terms of specifically what she'd asked for, my healing, but the notion that prayer was real. It wasn't just giving God something you didn't need or want, but it was opening yourself to the mystery of this extraordinary power to work through you into the lives of others, a big moment. I found myself for the first time really daring to pray for people who came to me for help, as she always did and as Jesus did before her, with her hands on the head of the person and praying for healing.”

Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, pp90-92.

To help you reflect…

Imagine your inner life is a house, full of rooms. What do you notice about these rooms? What kind of spring cleaning is needed? Trust that Love wants to help you. See what wants to happen.

Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash