The Miracle of Energy

I used to have a little piece of raw muslin cloth about book size with a hand sillouette stamped on it. Church Lady gave it to me. She said it was sent to her in the mail from the celebrated faith healer Oral Roberts (for a small donation). The cloth was to provide a 'target' for the healing that would be sent through a radio or television transmission from Roberts' broadcast studio, into the living room of whomever placed that target on their TV set. Church Lady presented it to me as if it were a splinter from the rib of Jesus himself.
I grew up suspicious of religious charlatans, raised as I was in a liberal Sunday School that was more interested in ethics than metaphysics. The very notion of "miracles" was something of a problem. Liberal people screw up our faces, or adopt a condescending tone at the very notion of "miracles". I learned to believe in empirical science's power to elucidate a cause-and-effect relationship between every set of phenomena. There were, in fact, Sunday School lessons that suggested that Jesus walked on water because he had figured out where the rocks were! It helped swallow the otherwise ridiculous notion of someone REALLY walking on water!
My geocosmystic spirit takes empirical science seriously. So these days, in the wake of quantum mechanical discoveries and superstring theories, it's less easy to dismiss "miracles" because they won't yeild to direct, linear causal explanations. Science has demonstrated that the "fabric of the cosmos" (the title of Brian Green's terrific synopsis of current science) continues to be a rich texture of mysterious questions and wondrous incongruities. Certainly on the scale of our planetary comings and goings, the laws of Sir Isaac still do apply and deserve to be honored. However, as we navigate this life as humans, we can be just as certain that subtle energies and heretofore unmeasured and unexamined realites are operational within and around us. I choose to press joyfully, curiously and lovingly into that Mystery. I have no doubt the Mystery is big enough to handle my pressing.
These days, many forms of distant healing are being practiced and promoted, both within and outside organized religious groups. It appears that there is a growing consensus that the Life Force, whatever it's ultimate source, flows into our living bodies from a dimension beyond our 3-D sensory world. Some might look at that "other" dimension as existing within ourselves, others will point outward. Given the paradoxes inherent in either direction, they're probably both right and wrong. It all hinges on what we mean by "beyond".
In any case, I'm more humble these days in my judgments about "energy healing". I've experienced Reiki, and it made me feel better. Oral Roberts may deserve some ridicule for his strange blend of medicine show hucksterism and used car salesmanship, but he was tapping into something real. The Energy of Life appears to be about its work, moving among us in healing miracles, even today.