Sacred Heart Songs

Copyright © 2013 Marie S. David.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-7884-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7886-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7885-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913762

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/27/2013

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Part One   A Reiki Journey Through Insomnia And Fibromyalgia

One   Wisdom Of The Trees

Two   A Beauty Within

Three   Let’s Give Her Time

Four   Reiki To The Rescue

Five   Evensong Is

Six   Yes!

Seven   I Am Listening

Eight   Release To Receive

Nine   Birth Through Life And Beyond

Part Two   The Five Spiritual Precepts Of Reiki

Ten   Just For Today, Do Not Worry

Eleven   Just For Today, Do Not Anger

Twelve   Just For Today, Show Appreciation And Gratitude

Thirteen   Just For Today, Do Your Work Honestly

Fourteen   Just For Today, Be Kind To Others

Epilogue

Endnotes

To my grandchildren and their children.

I rejoice in the songs of their hearts.

Acknowledgements

I am most thankful to the following people who walked this creative journey with me: Diane Freeman who joined in my enthusiasm to explore the possibilities of Heartmath®, Julienne Remie of Cape Jules Photography for her patience in photographing the cover and website artwork which evolved while listening to the wisdom of my soul; artists Vivian Oswell for introducing me to painting with watercolors and Bernadette Waystack for expanding my artistic abilities with pastels; my readers Caryl Johnson, RCWP, and Mary Kay Cordill who supported and challenged me into more clarity, affirming depth and trust in this manuscript; and Kathleen Schatzberg and Elizabeth Lathrop whose patience and attention to details in the final line edits greatly supported the sharing of this story. May each of you know of my heartfelt gratitude.

I am deeply indebted to the women and men who have generously shared their songs of truth within this work in their experience of Reiki and wellness. I am humbled for the opportunity to share in the gift of their wisdom and strength while listening to the sacred music of their hearts.

I rejoice in the love of my grandmother, Agatha Legere Tetreau, whose love continues to envelop me this day and opened the portal to God’s abiding love shared so freely in Jesus. To my mother I rejoice in sharing the ritual of going to morning Mass as a child during Lent. I give thanks to my daughters Elizabeth and Martha for teaching me life lessons my soul sought to learn and for their courage and wisdom to sing their own songs of truth. Deep gratitude is given to my husband Jim for his constant support and faith in this venture and our lives. Thank you for sharing the painting entitled, Dance of Joy for the cover of Sacred Heart Songs. It brought me great joy to paint it for you in honor of your Episcopal ordination. Finally I give thanks for the unconditional love of God which guides my soul to wellness each day.

To be true to the language of the scriptural citation used by one of the women who shares her story all scriptural citations are taken from The New American Bible, California: Benziger Publishers, 1970.

Foreword

M arie David has done us a great service. Through the narrative of her own life story and spiritual journey, she witnesses to the spiritual and scientific underpinnings of healing energy work, specifically Reiki. In Sacred Heart Songs, Marie David exquisitely manifests the healing power of energy work. She then highlights the physiological changes that witness to the effect of this alternative healing modality. She testifies to how the spiritual and the scientific complement each other.

Marie shares her own spiritual journey and spells out how her own contemplative use of healing energy supports inner healing. She then shares with her readers how they can also employ these same healing energies to their own inner spirits. She generatively passes on the fruits of twenty-five years of using these contemplative healing practices so that readers can transform their own wounded spirits through these easy to use restorative activities. Her goal is that the reader can develop sacred, safe spaces within [their own] hearts that [they] can go to at any time for grounding and truth, love and acceptance. Marie’s journey found her dealing with insomnia and fibromyalgia. You may be contending with other stressors or illnesses or inner wounds. These contemplative healing practices can advance your progress towards inner healing.

I work as a chaplain in a major medical center in Boston. When I first began my work as a spiritual care provider back in the 1970s, there was great suspicion, even repulsion among the medical community about alternative forms of healing. The medical community wanted scientific data in order to prove the effectiveness of medical and surgical interventions. They had little use for qualitative measures of healing. In this book, Marie cites important quantitative research that traces the physiological effects of Reiki and thus verifies in a scientific way the impact of this healing modality.

In contrast to my earlier experience of the medical community dismissing the effects of healing energy work, the hospital I work in today has hundreds of Reiki practitioners who offer treatment to patients and families. Perhaps most significantly, they also offer Reiki treatments to hospital staff as a means of self-care to prevent burnout or compassion fatigue. This healing energy work heals the healers so they can be refreshed and continue to provide compassionate care to patients and families.

This book has a multi-faith appeal. Marie writes from her own Christian perspective and at the same time notes that the Divine within our being goes by many names. She invites the reader to connect with that which holds true for them, whatever their perspective is. I am confident that no matter what the reader’s religious/spiritual tradition, they will feel at home reading the book and applying its contemplative practices. Marie aims for readers who want to become active partners in their own wellness. For some people, God seems far away. Marie counsels that God is just waiting to be asked and invited in… When we wonder where God is, we are most likely to find God in the part of our lives where there is unresolved pain or loss, waiting for us with compassion and unconditional love.

Marie stresses the importance of quiet time, prayer time. The Spirit brings to our awareness, as we are ready, unfinished business of the past that needs to be released. Sometimes these are regrets, broken relationships, ungrieved losses—they all absorb our energy and weigh down our spirits. Marie teaches that Reiki is a spiritual healing practice that connects with our body’s inner wisdom to restore balance at the spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical levels of our beings. Marie points out that Reiki is God’s healing energy coming to us; the practitioner is only the conduit of the energy.

As she intertwines Spirit and Science, Marie points out, One observable benefit of Reiki is that it slows and deepens breathing, initiating the relaxation response… When the body is relaxed, the parasympathetic nervous system is triggered, enhancing the immune system and helping the body heal itself. Marie cites studies that talk about the chronically low cortisol levels found in patients with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, rheumatoid arthritis and PTSD. Reiki helps one to relax into caring, sacred touch which supports a safe and gentle grounding experience. Marie describes the effect of Reiki: Reiki was leading me deeper into a new relationship with myself, one of love, compassion, understanding and forgiveness, paving the way to my inner goodness. God’s love and acceptance loved me into loving myself."

Marie cites research studies which demonstrate that music positively affects moods and emotions and can also have positive physiological effects upon the autonomic nervous system. This system, which regulates cardiac, neuroendocrine and immune system and autonomic nervous system activity, can support tension release, mental clarity and energy.

Another part of the healing ministry that Marie feels called to is healing the loss of the Sacred Feminine: There is also a great need to heal the loss of the Sacred Feminine, Mother God, and Sophia. She dwells in a special way in women’s bodies: you can’t find her out there. You will only find her in connecting with your inner life, the heart center. This recovery of the Sacred Feminine is important for the spiritual well-being of both women and men alike.

Marie makes still another important contribution in her approach to healing the experience of being hurt by the Church. In the wake of the clergy sexual abuse crisis and especially its cover-up by bishops and other church administrators moving predators from one parish to another, many faithful church-goers found their trust devastated. They felt they had lost their church. Many stopped going to church. Sometimes they also lost their spirituality. These losses of one’s spirituality and one’s community are deeper losses crying to be healed. Marie, in her role as Roman Catholic Womanpriest, is a particularly apt instrument of God’s healing love. However, the significance of this book is that it is written for those who want to be partners in their own healing. The contemplative healing practices at the end of each chapter are instruments of calling forth this healing energy in one’s own life. Like Marie, we may each experience my soul needed to guide me through the spiritual healing of losses in my life. It is a tragedy that Christians have learned the doctrinal and moral teaching of the church, but have not tapped into the spiritual riches of Christianity. In Sacred Heart Songs, Marie reconnects the reader to these spiritual riches, specifically the healing effect of energy work, particularly Reiki. In the words of Rachel Naomi Remen, whom Marie quotes at the beginning of Chapter Two, Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all of the expectations, all of the beliefs—and becoming who you are. This is an incarnation of God’s dream for us as reported by Irenaeus, a second century Christian mystic: The glory of God is human beings fully alive.

Marie gives important insight into the healing process: It is normal to respond to stressful situations by closing off our hearts out of self-protection. One of the many gifts of Reiki is that it is able to reprogram our mental thoughts and images into healthy ways of being. We are invited to become co-creators with God of our new healthy reality. To this end, Marie uses a technique that she calls release to receive: What would you like to release and what would you like to receive in its place? We all have unfinished business in our live. Marie states, Reiki is so valuable in connecting us with the inner wisdom of our bodies, minds and souls. In response to trust broken by life experiences, Marie offers a process of healing this sense of trust. This leads to a healing of hope—hope being re-engendered.

It is time to turn to the book itself. With Marie, I invite you to place your hand on your heart, the music begins.

Rev. Ronald Hindelang, Ph. D., B. C. C.

Framingham, Massachusetts

Introduction

W e are very busy people. Our busy-ness can extend into our self-importance. The more important we are, the more scheduled our calendars may become. In an optimal world, a balance of work, play, rest, prayer and exercise would support our life’s accomplishments. In reality, one out of five Americans is challenged by insomnia. Stress levels are through the roof, connected to all physical disease either in its origin or through the symptoms of the illness. The songs of our hearts often become muted. Our bodies, minds and hearts ache to be heard. If we are graced with the ability to incorporate silence into our daily routine, our souls will use this invitation to bring forth innate wisdom for wellness through a thought or a memory. If not, the invitation may awaken us in the middle of the night.

At times some of these memories may be uncomfortable, filled with unresolved feelings that we would rather avoid. We may think that we already did all that in counseling. After the mind and body have healed, the soul calls forth to lead us into the deepest level of healing, spiritual healing, so the pain or dis-ease may finally be fully released. If we are unable to attend to our spiritual wellness through the dis-ease within, our souls may call out to us through emotional and/or physical dis-ease to get our attention.

When I began collecting data for this book in 2007 I prayed about the type of reflections that would most be most supportive to the reader. I was given to reflect upon and choose the word contemplations rather than meditations. I sought to have the readers engage in the essence of goodness within them, Jesus and God. In 2010 I purchased the book Jesus, by Deepak Chopra, MD, which affirmed my choice of words. To my delight, I found his description of contemplation as quieting the mind and moving beyond the everyday boundaries through the focus on the traits of God including love, compassion, forgiveness and healing that support us in experiencing the unconditional acceptance of God. Chopra describes the process of transcendence as including a shift in perception, a desire to reach a goal, focused attention, immunity from distraction, spontaneous energy and bursts of fulfillment.¹ The first element, a shift in perception, was critical for me throughout my writing to recognize the value of my voice. It allowed me to focus my energies to bring forth the completion of Sacred Heart Songs. The energy also flowed into hearing and valuing the voices of others.

The contemplative reflections at the end of each chapter engage the process of dialoging with our hearts and souls as they call out to us with the truths and dreams of our lives. These are the contemplations which I have engaged for over twenty-five years to develop sacred, safe spaces within my heart that I can go to at any time for grounding and truth, love and acceptance.

The first contemplation will invite you to reconnect with a time when the songs of the heart came forth freely. Through subsequent reflections you will be supported in creating safe space(s) within your heart to support the verbalization of your sacred truth and reconnection with the deep goodness within. Why is this important? When we are able to develop and nurture a safe space within our hearts, we are given the ability to remain grounded in the midst of life’s challenges. We are supported in speaking our truth with authority. Regardless of how chaotic our lives may become, the ability to go to the sacredness within ourselves allows us to think more clearly in times of stress.

In order to make perceptual shifts in our lives we need to be safe and we need energy. The spiritual practice of Reiki brings Universal energy, sacred energy, God’s energy, for a person’s spiritual, psychological, emotional and physical well being. During a Reiki treatment, the energy that surrounds us enters the practitioner through the crown of the head. It then passes through the practitioner and out of her/his hands to the recipient. The recipient’s body has its own wisdom for where the energy is needed to bring spiritual, emotional and physical well-being.

The practice of Reiki creates a safe, sacred space of unconditional acceptance. Reiki is always given for the person’s highest good. It initiates the relaxation response in the body, slowing breathing and reducing stress. It also supports the release of negative energy and experiences in a person, making room for the goodness of life to be entered into and received.

When people come to me to receive a full Reiki treatment, I support my clients in developing an intention for their treatment. It is important to note that the Reiki energy will flow