Hummingbirds and Healing
I have a hummingbird feeder hanging off my kitchen window and another dangling from a shepherd’s crook in my back garden. For the past four or five years, at least two of these very small magical creatures have found a place of solace and a home in an old log nestled in the scrubs and bushes in the back. The hummingbirds dazzle me with their ruby-red throats and emerald-collared necks. Their wings move faster than my eye can follow. They fly backwards and forward putting on an enchanting show as they dive and rise again acrobatically through the backyard. There is a musical symphony that the wings make as they beat faster and faster. These little creatures take flight with such ease, joy, and freedom. There is a symbiosis between me and my hummingbirds. I provide homemade nectar for the energy they need, and they provide healing for my soul. My hummingbird neighbors delight me with their very presence and open my heart to be healed.
I am thinking a lot about healing these days. What is it actually? What is possible and what is not? The misery of sickness and death is ever present in this world and has been since the beginning. When I think of healing, I imagine a sense of alleviating, repairing, mending, tending, and restoring. At the root, healing means becoming whole. A bringing back together that has been torn, separated, or diseased. A binding of wounds. A caring for and repairing of what no longer works.
Some of my earliest memories were of caring for others, whether it was dolls, dogs, or my brothers. There was an unconscious awareness that tending and caring for others was part of what cultivated goodness in the world God created and what made the world whole. I even became a nurse in my first career to foster the healing and goodness our world needed.
I now sit with people almost every day in spiritual direction listening to the longings of their hearts and the places that have been torn, wounded, and are tender within their souls. The desire to be healed and made whole—relationally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually—is often palpable. The greatest gift of healing that I can give to my directees, or anyone for that matter, is the gift of presence. Few will argue with this. Whatever else is said about the work of the Holy Spirit and the validity, or otherwise, of the gift of healing, nothing can be substituted for our presence with a person who is unwell, hurting, or broken.
The presence of a committed, caring, and kind person alongside the one who is sick can bring a degree of inner healing, especially when that person is feeling isolated, abandoned, or rejected. Mother Teresa insightfully said that “the greatest disease in the West is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.”
When I look at the healing ministry of Jesus, I see Christ healing within a relationship and the meeting of an immediate need. He doesn’t talk about spiritual things or give a sermon or a morality lesson when engaged in healing. He meets people’s immediate needs—be they physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual—often through personal presence and a power-filled touch. I notice within these stories that the person experiences a level of freedom flowing from the healing. Freedom for life, freedom for flourishing.
Even in my spiritual direction work, I find that it isn’t just presence or ministrations that foster healing and freedom. My words are important, too. The book of Proverbs reminds us that words can heal, but they can also act like a tourniquet or even a poison, stopping, infecting, or blocking the flow of healing. Words of despair, scarcity, restriction, or defeat deprive and bankrupt the necessary movement of healing and wholeness.
Telling ourselves stories that are untrue or hearing damaging narratives told to us or about us, sometimes for years, can act like walls barring the healing nature of truth and reality and distorting our sense of identity and who we think we are. Discovering and uncovering a truer story can import greater and greater movements toward healing, wholeness, and freedom. When the old story begins to repeat in our brains, reminding ourselves of the truer story releases the healing balm needed.
Life is messy and healing is messy. Sometimes it is sudden and dramatic, often it is slow and ongoing. Sometimes it comes from a loving presence, other times from words of life. Humanity has been given a vision to explore and experience genuine healing, freedom, and joy. I believe that no matter where someone finds themselves on the continuum of wholeness God is always present, loving, active, and providing opportunities for healing.
So, I wonder if you are asking, what the heck is the connection between hummingbirds and healing? I’m not sure exactly. But I have noticed this: hummingbirds bring me delight and joy and somehow delight and joy are a balm for my weary soul, opening the portal of healing within and connecting me to the good, good world of the Creator.
What areas in your life need healing?
Who or what has been a healing presence in your life?
What acts like a tourniquet, cutting off the flow of healing in your life?
What brings delight and opens your heart?
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In Other News:
The Season of Advent is right around the corner. I will be facilitating a weekly online Advent Group. We will be using the book Making Room in Advent by Bette Dickerson. We will explore the wonder of the season as each page is filled with an original painting that will fill you with hope and wonder during the Advent season. The twenty-five devotionals offer the stories of Advent, spiritual practices, breath prayers, and reflection questions that allow you to truly make room for God's work in your life, your community, and the world.
One of the unique aspects of Making Room for Advent is how it can take us back to that childhood place of wonder, even as it also focuses our adult mind on larger crucial issues facing humanity such as making room for the marginalized and the evil and violence we have in our world.
Details:
Tuesdays—November 28th, December 5th, 12th, and 19th from 2 – 3 pm EST
The group will be small, capped at 12.
The cost is $40 and does not include the book.
I would love it if you would join me and try this unique Advent experience for yourself. It is my prayer that you will feel it transform you inside while putting you back in touch with a seasonal joy and wonder you may have forgotten.
Please email me at bgrisell@gmail.com to register or if you have questions.
I am here to serve your soul in whatever ways you might need or long for … spiritual direction, spiritual companionship, leadership coaching, enneagram coaching, Ignatian Spiritual Exercises guide, and guided retreats. What does your soul need? What does your soul want?
With love and joy,