This morning a parishioner, Dick Just, shared a remarkable healing miracle with me.  He and his wife had taken a vacation to Turkey and visited the "house of the Virgin Mary" near Ephesus, where the apostle John allegedly took Mary after Jesus' crucifixion.  A Catholic nun/ mystic, Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824 AD), had received visions which gave many details about this house and its location.  When archaeologists discovered the house, these details were strikingly confirmed.  A Catholic lady advised Mary Ann, Dick's wife, to bottle some of the spring water there because it had miraculous healing power.  Mary Ann did not believe this but bottled the water just be polite.  

A couple of days later, Dick and Mary Ann were back in their Turkish hotel.  Dick was scheduled to have surgery on both torn miniscus in his knee.  His knee was very sore; so Mary Ann wanted to pour the holy water from "Mary's  spring" on his knee.  Dick agreed to this and then forgot about it.  When he returned to America, he entered the hospital for his knee surgery.  His surgeon cut his knee open and was astounded to discover that both miniscus had completely healed!  So he stitched Dick's knee up and sent him home to ponder his healing miracle.  

What strikes me is this: on historical grounds, I am absolutely certain that Mary's house at Ephesus is bogus.  I can't explain the nun's detailed vision of the site.  But Mary never drank from or bathed in the spring by that house.  Somehow decades of reverent regard for the imagined healing powers of that spring became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I label this type of phenomenon as "valves to release your faith."  Jesus exploited this  principle in several of His healings.  He would anoint the sick with olive oil, spittle, clay, mixtures of clay and spittle, not because He believed in their healing power, but because many of the sick peasants He encountered believed in such healing agents.  Similarly, Jesus would heal by laying on hands and his apostles would pray over the pillow slips of absentee sick people and then return them to the sick, so that they could receive their healing.  Such techniques make an end run around the mind games we play in TRYING to believe.  Trying to believe causes one to look within to see how much faith we have.  But this very act automatically creates doubt!  Valves to release faith avoid such cerebral conteminants and create a flash point for healing faith to be imparted.

Don

Here we go again - this links to 'spirits in antiques', and the way meaningful objects can act as a lens to focus or of themselves somehow store intention......

Springs are pretty common on hills - I remember drinking from a spring nearly at the top of a mountain in the Rockies once.  Artesian wells will not only pop up near(but not at - they need the pressure of water above them) the top of hills sometimes, but actually shoot out water under pressure.

The X-rays had been taken prior to Dick's vacation.  The 2 torn misiscus were obvious from the X-rays; so there was no reason to take more.  The spring water near "Mary's house" is available to all and other members of my church have viewed it.

Both Dick and Mary Ann are down-to-earth Protestants and neither believed in the healing power of Marian springs.  The real question is this: what is the nature of the kind of faith that makes the miraculous difference?  At the moment the holy water was applied, Mary Ann was caught up in her imagination and was thus willing to play the "what if" game.  She wouldn't have poured the water on Dick's knee if she wasn't excited by the irrational possibility that this ritual might work.  Somehow she and Dick "drifted" into the ideal state of consciousness for the healing to occur.  I suspect that they were able to achieve this state because they tuned in to the excited expectation associated with the Catholic "superstition" about this spring.  I also wonder if the spring might have attracted some sort of mystical energy because of all the lofty thoughts about God's power that have been associated with it.  In this respect, I would associate that spring water with the "holy water" that priests use
so effectively in exorcisms.  I would not be too quick to categorize this miracle with alleged shamanic healings, as these generally seem to be psychosomatic.  In Dick's case, supernatural repairs of the knee clearly occurred through a special intervention that can't be explained solely on the basis of mental focus and power. No, this miracle deserves to be elevated to Ron Sandrock's miracle.  Ron is one of our church trustees.  His severe painful spinal damage was recently healed in response to prayer.  God's healing touch has never lost its ancient power.

Don

Must say I was about to come in with the same thought Don.

Shamanistic traditions i imagine probably vary a bit, but by and large (as you'd expect in traditions developed by less intellectual but no less spiritual people) they seem to mostly just use different language and metaphors...

Don-

My wife was diagnosed with torn meniscus also.  Thing is, the initial diagnosis was based on her symptoms and x-ray.

However, before the operation, they had to confirm it with MRI. 

According to her dr, the x-ray doesn't always accurately diagnosis this particular condition.

For what it's worth.

R

I will ask Dick for more details on Sunday.  What I know is that the diagnosis was confidently made with the assistance of X-rays.  And it was painfully difficult for Dick to walk.  After the healing from the holy water, the pain vanished and the doctor was dumbfounded by what he found when he cut Dick open.  Ron's spinal damage was confirmed by X-rays and his healing and liberation from pain was the instantaneous result of prayer.

Don

Don

that does seem impressive, though I wouldn't rule out the healing being natural.  I don't know what mechanism was at work if it was a "miracle" (not due to "natural" processes) - whether a certain amount of "faith" by the couple at the time of the water-pouring, or the spring being "charged"by devotees beliefs etc