“How can you Cure when
You’re Sick?”—“How else?”²
How much must this poor heart Endure—
Which hopes from thee, and thee alone: a Cure!³
Illness makes a festival of Tenderness.⁴
To be Sick of Sickness is the only Cure.⁵
Against strange maladies a Sovereign Cure:⁶
Our healing influence is primarily based
Not on doing, but on Being.⁷
Sickness is driven away
From our Immortal Day!⁸
When we heal patients we’re an
Open pipeline for God’s Love.⁹
Great Multitudes follow him,
And he Heals them all.¹⁰
¹ Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
² Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea
³ William Lisle Bowles, Time and Grief
⁴ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁵ Lao Tsu tr. Ursula K. Le Guin, Tao Te Ching 71
⁶ William Shakespeare, Sonnet CLIII
⁷ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
⁸ William Blake, Night
⁹ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
¹⁰ Matthew 12:15 (King James)