Healing In Community

Healing in Community is a podcast episode with Barry Ebert and special guests, Kay Johnson and Linda Rengel talking about the power of community to support health and well-being. This year, our programming at Mile Hi Church emphasizes health and well-being.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Mile High Church podcast.

Join us and some very special guests as we dive in together,

Open our hearts and get real to discuss what we've been thinking about.

So hey it's Barry,

It's great to be back with my friends here Linda and Kay.

Welcome.

Hi Barry.

Hey Barry.

Good to see you guys and we're talking today about health and wellness and one of the things that we want to talk about today is the power of community.

Community is immunity and I know that you guys both do a lot of work to get people together in circles and in different kind of situations where they get to know each other,

Get to share information and just kind of ideas and feel that power of being together.

So what's your take on that Linda just in terms of why it's a gift for people who are dealing with symptoms to come together?

I'm gonna look at it from a little different perspective first and then I'm gonna come right back and answer your question.

Okay.

But what we know about the reverse of community which is loneliness is that loneliness does not do our bodies any good at all.

The isolation goes against the way we're naturally put together as herd animals.

You know we came together millennia ago because being in collective groups helped with child rearing and food gathering.

So we developed a real affinity for being together and when that's missing our health suffers.

So the converse of that is that when we're together our health improves.

So I know Kay and I see this so pointedly in the healing intention circles and in our support group on Wednesday nights and this support group on Wednesday nights just consistently has 20 people up to 28 people and they come together and I believe it's because it breaks the isolation that some people are feeling due to COVID and we have a shared history.

And so we can come together and get the benefits of community which are feeling seen and feeling heard and when people do that it really innervates and energizes their entire divine body temple and their immunity goes up.

And this has been studied.

People with three or more important connections and it doesn't have to be human connection it can be your furry friend connection but people with three or more have higher numbers of circulating white blood cells which are the important cells for immunity.

So those are some of the ways that coming together being in community really helps us physically.

So how does somebody who's new muster up the courage to walk into a room like that on Wednesday night?

How does that how do you start?

I think anyone who's ever been in a relationship or is in a relationship knows that they're like a garden and gardens need tending and I will have been married 40 years this month and so that's taken quite a bit of tending and I look at my friendships you know the same way and so yes it does take some effort.

So to your question how does somebody muster it up?

I think you just have to be your own best friend to make friends and to know this is gonna be good for me this is gonna benefit me and then just be the first one to say hello be the first one to reach out come to some of the classes offered here attend a support group volunteer you know be an usher tons of ways to meet people here at Mile High Church taking the first step is key.

Yeah I think so I think the thing is just walking in the door the first time when you don't know people and it just brings up all kinds of stuff and you feel like you're back in middle school I think that it's I think it's good for people to to be able to break that and and just get back into community again and COVID has obviously made it a lot tougher.

So yes it has as a former middle school counselor I think we're all eighth graders.

We're just we get creakier joints but we're all eighth graders and all continually like self-conscious but just do it it'll benefit you.

Yeah I agree with that and I know that you have a lot of invested emotionally in the intention circles and so can you talk a little bit about that about what the idea is of that and how they're set up?

Yeah the intention circles are really an opportunity for people who really really want to dive into something that that's distressing them a lot and and have and just join with a with other people that are willing to actually hold the best for them at the time.

I think that it's interesting how people seemed more willing to come when we were in person which is interesting because when we're in person we sat very close knees touching we held each other's hands even if it was a stranger next to us remember those days way back anyway and that's what the circles were made of.

Now we're online which is actually wonderful for people who are hither and yon because they can be on they can be on zoom with us no matter where they are so for me it feels like it's more accessible but you do have to be willing to you know get the zoom link and come into it and the interesting thing that happens and I see it month after month we do this once a month is that people actually I always ask them to they're sitting in their own little office I always ask them I say put your hands out as if you were holding the hand of the person next to you we've all introduced ourselves everybody knows a little bit about everybody and I say just imagine that you're holding hands no matter where anybody is feel that and and then we go through the whole process of the intention and so forth for one of the people in the group but at the end people always report I felt the energy I felt the energy of the people even though I don't know you really except for the little square on the on the screen and I'm very far away and that is that's one of the things about that particular activity that we do that I love the most that people get the feeling of the of allness that we're all in we're all together we can actually even feel the energy of each other when we're far apart this is you know the allness of spirit this is the the the the understanding of the oneness because we really have can have an experience of that so that's certainly one of the one of the things that that works works well I hope we can be in person again someday but you know we may always be offering it on zoom because it it really it opens it to having a community that is much broader than it used to be it used to only be people who knew where Mile High Church was maybe they knew people here and those are the ones who came now we get people from all over yeah and I think I think as people are on zoom more the opportunity is there to bring your focus to a group like that and to really bring yourself there and not be doing other things and multitasking all the time because if you're gonna get the benefit of community you have to I think you have to bring yourself to it emotionally and you know it's easy on zoom to not do that but I think in the kind of work that you're doing you're trying to get people to actually show up emotionally and to be honest with what's going on with them and yeah hopefully they're doing it does it feel like that's what's going on and zoom most of the time I think it does and it really goes back to that idea of community as a way to be seen and heard for who who you authentically are and so last week for example we did prayer requests first in our support group and so people are asking for prayer support for tumors they hope will disappear and relationships they hope will heal and finances they hope will improve so we go right to the heart of the matter and I think the other thing about community is that it binds us together in spiritual community in particular such that it seems like we share the same road the road of spiritual journey and there are potholes on that road I have fallen in a few there are potholes on the road but there's a bottom even to the pothole and when you're in community you feel it other people can lift you up support you empathize with you and it breaks that feeling alone or uncared for it gives meaning and mattering which are so important especially in times of a pandemic yeah yeah and do you find that like in your Wednesday group that you have people who are who are there who are regulars who are there every week very much so so sometimes we can almost to guess what the prayer request will be for yeah because some of our situations are chronic like autoimmune diseases or arthritis Crohn's disease diabetes things that are longer term well they don't get solved but again you're on the path you have your potholes people lift you out of those potholes even if the road appears quite long it just helps so much to have community to do it with and we have this saying in the healing ministry no one can do the healing for you but we can certainly do it with you yeah yeah yeah I like that like that and and do you find that you get people from all different kinds of religious backgrounds that are open to the spiritual aspect of healing I would say we have mostly New Agers we have metaphysical folks but now and then we have someone from a more traditional background but everyone we don't get too technical but I think everyone tends to feel there's a higher power yeah we can employ it for our good enough said well I think that's one of the things that's interesting about the time that we're in there's a lot of science we've got a lot of science we got a lot of medical stuff but I think people are questioning everything questioning the authority of everything and where the power really is and so you know I like this work of people just opening to something new and opening to the healing power that is alive in us and I think that's what your your work really focuses on and I think more people are being open to it mm-hmm so I think that that's good mm-hmm and so so you think when you go back when we get rid of the mask mandates or we move forward in some way that you'll probably do both that you'll have online and in person both it could happen either way I I think that we would unfortunately be cutting some people off if we don't maintain online yeah and as long as we you know have the manpower to pull it together we have a pretty good team of people and you know I think we could we could do both you know one of the things about our particular ministry is that we don't worry we don't even have to talk about the spiritual aspect if for some reason somebody doesn't seem to be feeling open to that because there's so much science now and it's in all the healing books that are coming out lately and and they've been coming out for years but there wasn't so much attention paid for a long time that is there's so much that an individual can do to put their body into the right the right frame so that the body itself can do the healing yeah one of the things that we talk about is that the healing happens in the body it doesn't happen because you're taking this medicine now the medicine may stimulate some things that help the body move but the body does it just like it heals the cut when you cut your finger I mean yes the body is the one that heals so there's so much research that that supports that and one of the biggest things that all of the books that have come out most recently about spontaneous healing about people who heal things that never there is no cure for the doctors to throw up their hands say there's nothing more I can do for you and yet these people heal a big element of that always ends up being this community part this support part this gathering the you know being being in community with and it doesn't mean it has to be a huge community like Linda said there's several people that are that are close they feel they they communicate and they support and that that is a huge part of what can stimulate that healing within our own very own body yeah and keep and keep us going I think the the thing that you talk about some of these journeys are pretty long and so I think a support group helps you stay with it when you're not feeling like staying with it and you're feeling like giving up and I think you know just the consistent message that the healing is going down within us regardless of what your you know spiritual or religious background is hopefully it's leading us in that direction that there's a power in ourselves that ourselves are alive intelligent and are responding to to our thoughts and our emotions and I think the emotion of being together is a big thing that ourselves are looking for which is kind of where you started right we're kind of wired to be together and I think that that's the work that you're doing mm-hmm and you can wire up a person and look at what's flowing in their blood when they're in a supportive setting and you will you will see there are more of the good hormones the resting repair and rejuvenating hormones there's more dopamine there's more relaxin there's more of the hugging or bonding hormone oxytocin there are more good endorphins that fight pain and give pleasure so yes it it's it's true scientific fact meaning meeting spiritual truth that being together is good for us in the short term and in the longer term great uh-huh it is good news so I might just say one other thing about one of the good things that's come out of this kovat situation that we've all been living in and that is that people have been forced to figure out ways to connect with family without being together so people have learned how to use Facebook up FaceTime or they've learned how to get on to zoom so that they can so that and then they can see each other as they talk and even though you know it's of course it doesn't feel the same as us all be sitting in the same room but it's it's it creates a connection that in many instances was never there my husband has relatives in Sweden who we haven't seen for 30 years and suddenly every couple of months we're seeing those people again and they're talking about their life and they're talking about what's going on and where they live and that also can be can be a part of this community that feeling that you can get that actually affects affects your body I had a experience just a couple days ago years ago like in the 80s I was in an organization where I sat on an executive committee and we were very close all women very close friends and of course we've stayed sort of in touch all the time but sort of kind of all drifted away well the ones of us are still in Denver I decide I called him I said let's go to lunch so we've made this plan and then there's one who moved to Texas forever ago and I thought I'm gonna email her I emailed her she sent back a whole lovely email about what's gone on her life the fact that her husband had passed how she was doing with that and then I sent that to the four women I'm gonna have lunch with and every one of them responded in the same it's so good to hear from her I mean you can see all of us you know just I loved writing to her then when I got the response back I had this great good feeling then when I sent it on to the other friends they each responded with this great good feeling of oh so good to hear from her we just haven't heard from her for years so I thought to myself you know there are parts of this quote-unquote isolation stuff that has created opportunities for us to still be connected yeah we're finding the gifts we're finding the gifts and I think that's what your your work is about today you know we're finding that we really want community and we need it and so I think that you know if there's a if there's a gift in COVID and obviously there always is I think that's what it is it's going to bring us closer together and this thing that we always talk about about oneness maybe we'll move us closer to that too all right so good well thank you both for being here and we will see you all again soon this is Barry signing off thank you Linda thank you Kay and let's stick together you got it