FALL 2004Marjorie Candau
Woodbury MM[Salem Quarter’s Worship & Ministry Committee provided a clearness committee to help Marjorie Candau and others explore the formation of a PYM concerns group on healing. See the Worship & Ministry report to June Quarterly Meeting on p. 11 of this issue of Salem Quarter News—Ed.]
sit on my bed in the bedroom that has odd paintings on the wall and wondered how they came to me. I am very creative, but a battery of tests done on me in my 20s clearly identified that I did not have enough talent to be an “artist.” Why then do those mountains look like mountains? As the paint continues to be dabbed on the wall, will the mountains truly have the character that speaks to those viewing them? “Where do you feel you are? On a field, in a valley, below mountains?” My answer to the questions stimulated by the amazing vision I see is always the same: It comes from the spirit, that elusive but valued connection to God.
There is a feel to every step I take with him. If there is any uncomfortable feeling about any step, I know it’s the wrong step. Daily I go through this process over and over to make sure each step is on the path that God embraces. I frequently don’t have any idea where I am going and why things happen around me. Though the meaning of each step is not clear, the lesson is presented. I rely on the knowledge that the teacher will be there when the student is ready.
Frequently I ask, “Why did that happen?” or “What am I supposed to learn from this?” My closest friend said, “Maybe the lesson is not for you but for someone else in the experience.” The answer comes to me as if I were reading it from a book: “I have faith in God’s ability to provide everyone a lesson in every situation.”
After a phone call from someone on my clearness committee, I sit and think. Remember that time I mangled my hand, or thought I had? Pain! Pain! PAIN!!! I wrapped my other hand around the injured one and couldn’t let go. I would not be surprised if I held it for 15 minutes. It was a long time. When the pain began to fade, I ventured a look. When I opened the hand—nothing. I know I saw blood when I first injured the hand, but now it was fine. As the hand opened, even the pain faded, and there was an uninjured hand, normal in every way. Why did this happen? Did I even injure the hand in the first place? If I injured the hand, what happened? Was I actually experiencing a healing without understanding that it was possible? (I was much younger, and the wonder of the healing experience had not crossed my mind yet.) Why did this possible healing happen? Why now? Why? Why? Why?
When questions start, they seldom come one at a time. A new memory comes of my younger daughter. She was ten months old. We were out playing tennis. I sprained my ankle. Having walked to the tennis court, we had to walk home. My husband suggested he would run home and get the car. I was to make my slow way with my daughter until he arrived.
A neighbor, seeing me, offered me a ride. I climbed into the car with my daughter, and we arrived home before my husband. Pete arrived home as I was climbing out of the car, and my daughter wanted to go to him. I let her. But Pete had not seen us and ran into the house for the keys. My daughter crawled under my neighbor’s car as she pulled away. So you don’t worry or wonder, nothing happened to my daughter. As the doctor said, “God takes care of babies and drunks.”
This situation had so many why’s in it that they are hard to count. Why did my husband come to play tennis? He didn’t like tennis, and was not good at it. Why was it that day when I stepped on the tennis ball and sprained my ankle? Why did my neighbor happen to pass by? Why did she not pass by before Pete ran home to get the car? Why didn’t Pete see my daughter coming to him as we climbed out of the car? Why did the car move the very minute my daughter was under the wheel? Why is she not dead? Why did we become even closer friends with my neighbor after she ran over my daughter? Why? Why? Why?
Several months ago, I was standing out in front of the home of a man I was about to treat as an occupational therapist. This was not the first time I had come to this house. The first time his wife decided I had been to their house before, and I had been very mean. When I tried to explain I had not been there before, she threw me out of the house. Now we were standing out in front as if we were long-lost friends, sharing very personal experiences. I explained how I had been very confused when I broke up with my husband, for I believed marriage was for life.
But as I explained things, every experience in my life’s memory suddenly pointed to the gift of healing I had discovered. When I work with some people, I take their pain away. Why did all the lessons in my lifetime happen? I thought of each memory that left me wondering, and it was another piece of the puzzle. They were the building blocks to healing. So started my next venture, the one I have been preparing for all my life: starting a healing group. I became very calm and again read the words from my mind: “If I do nothing other than to start a healing and/or seers group in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, I will have fulfilled my life’s purpose.”
Nothing in this world has been easy. Going about getting the correct approvals takes far too much time and effort. Still, it’s worth it. Along my way I have found a multitude of interested and supportive friends.
I now have the support of PYM’s Worship & Care Standing Committee to start a group on healing. I would like to invite anyone interested to join the journey, seeking the knowledge of how to obtain and use all the healing or seeing gifts, discovered or undiscovered.
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Saturday, August 28, 2004 at 09:52 PM
