|
Lauri Ann Lumby
CHRISTOUCH: A CHRIST-CENTERED APPROACH TO ENERGY MEDICINE THROUGH HANDS-ON-HEALING Paperback: 70 pages. 2011. reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 01/13/2012 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * * review: A March 25, 2009 negative evaluation in GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING REIKI AS AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY seems to have provoked as one of several responses the short 2011 book by Lauri Ann Lumby - CHRISTOUCH:A CHRIST-CENTERED APPROACH TO ENERGY MEDICINE THROUGH HANDS-ON-HEALING. GUIDELINES was issued by the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. That document found Reiki "not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence." Over time, I suspect, GUIDELINES will be defeated by CHRISTOUCH much as Charles Kingsley's critiques of John Henry Newman were annihilated by Newman's APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. In rebuttal of GUIDELINES, relying primarily on passages from Scripture (mainly New Testament -- principally the four Gospels but also I Corinthians) author Lumby makes a very creditable and useful first effort to Christianize Reiki. That Oriental approach to hand healing originated in early 20th Century Japan with marked Buddhist thought components and related Eastern origin hand healing methods. Reiki stressed that the healer is merely a channel for "divinely guided energy" ("Rei Ki") to heal the sick. Having learned Reiki herself from a Roman Catholic Reiki Master Practitioner, Lauri Ann Lumby makes an outstandingly good preliminary, cutting through the underbrush effort of showing that Reiki and related hand healing can be understood using completely Christian, Bible-based thought processes by which to frame and baptize originally Buddhist/Hindu expressed aspects of Reiki and related non-traditional healing methods. Obliquely, Ms Lumby raises such questions as why the Roman Catholic Church does not place more emphasis on Jesus the healer. For the great Galilean beyond doubt healed the sick who flocked to him precisely in order to be healed. He empowered his followers to heal as they simultaneously preached the Good News. Perhaps not every Christian is individually gifted to heal. But some surely are within the context of 1 Corinthians 12: 4 - 11; 22-27, "Now to
each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common
good...to one ... to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit"
(the healing gift is explicitly distinguished from the next listed gift
of miracles).
The creative author gives advice on how to discern spirits and to determine whether God is calling an individual reader to healing ministry. She limns no less than Jesus himself as the model for Christian healing. Ms Lumby also, citing Rocco Errico, argues that prayer -- which she commends as a staple of daily living --is itself a form of Reiki's "attunement." As with a radio tuning dial, one who prays adjusts the dial until it resonates with "a clear connection with God." In Chapter Four Lauri Ann Lumby intertwines Christian doctrine and Eastern Energy medicine by way of "baptizing" the Oriental chakra system of energy flows. In Eastern medicine the seven major chakras of the human body are seen as channels (1) to observe the human body,
(2) to diagnose its ills (energy blockages) and (3) to cure them. Ms Lumby interprets the sacred symbolism of Judaeo-Christian use of the number 7 (e.g., deadly sins, sacraments and on and on) as expressing wholeness, completeness as an ideal human basis for relating to the Divine, as when Jesus cast seven demons out of Mary of Magdala. Chapter Five, "The Protocol" speaks of how to deal with a client who has asked for healing. It displays 12 black and white photographs of hand positions in relation to the seven chakras to facilitate God's healing through the praying practitioner of Christouch. Chapter Six relates hand healing to the great Christian experience of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire. Three Appendixes (A) relate the Chakra system, within a
Christian framework, to a general theory of human wholeness;
(B) present a suggested Christouch "Commissioning Ceremony; and (C) give a checklist of "The Practical Stuff" to bear in mind in hand healing (e.g. liability insurance, ad hoc tables and chairs, music and atmospherics. The book concludes with a one-page Suggested Reading list, most of it thoroughly unfamiliar to this reviewer. As a pioneering effort to Christianize Eastern Reiki and related hand healing alternative healing techniques, Lauri Ann Lumby's CHRISTOUCH treads a path gone along before her by Saint Augustine when he integrated the Gospel with the thinking of pagans Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus or when Saint Thomas Aquinas unearthed and baptized the core of Aristotle in the writings of Muslim Avicenna and Averroes. Whatever its flaws (if any) in terms of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, CHRISTOUCH is a bold original attempt at cross-cultural, religions-spanning framing of Reiki and her energy healing sisters -- which boast plenty of anecdotal evidence that they work. If it is any consolation to the author, even Saint Thomas Aquinas, if memory serves, was once excommunicated by an Archbishop of Paris. -OOO- http://community.cafelibri.com/reviews/d/UserReview-Lauri_Ann_Lumby _CHRISTOUCH_A_CHRIST_CENTERED _APPROACH_TO_ENERGY_MEDICINE_THROUGH _HANDS_ON_HEALING-74-1793818-219407-Jesus_the_Healer_ As_Lord_of_Buddhist_Derived.html http://www.biblio.com/books/476782013.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 01/14/2012 Review title: Jesus the Healer As Lord of Buddhist- Derived Reiki Reviewer's Rating of CHRISTOUCH * * * * * Review: Everybody knows that hands can heal. Consider the hands of orthopedic surgeons. And consider those who give massages. Rudyard Kipling knew the Indian "massage" form of hand healing. And he described it in KIM, his 1901 novel set in North India and the Himalayas. The young 16-year old Irish/Indian hero of the novel, Kimball O'Hara, toward novel's end lay, very ill in the villa of a hill country rani (noblewoman) who had befriended Kim and the Tibetan buddhist Red Lama whom Kim served. Kim was utterly exhausted from his back-breaking adventures against Russian spies busily subverting the loyalty to Britain of hill country Indian rulers. The rani and her ancient female cousin now had before them a boy sore in body and depressed in mind. "And the two of them, laying him east and
west, that the mysterious
earth-currents which thrill the clay of our bodies might help and not
hinder, took him to pieces all one long afternoon -- bone by by
bone, muscle by muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by
nerve. Kneaded to irresponsible pulp, half hypnotized by the perpetual
flick and readjustment of the uneasy chudders
(face coverings) that veiled their eyes, Kim slid ten thousand miles
into slumber -- thirty-six hours of it -- sleep that soaked like rain
after drought." This was what
"Europeans, who know nothing about it, call massage" (Ch. 15).
Note the element of what we now call "energy healing" in Kipling's passage about "the mysterious earth currents." That reference to "earth currents" lets us segue into that specific non-massage form of hand healing called in Japanese Rei Ki (Rei = Divinely Guided; Ki = Chinese chi or qi = energy). During a long Buddhist retreat in the early 1900s Japanese hand healer Dr Mikao Usui sought and received profound enlightenment about his art. His previous experience had taught him that hand healing could be exhausting to him. For when Usui healed others with his careful placement of hands in accordance with Chinese/Japanese views on anatomy and healing, he literally used up and transferred his own personal energy to the other person. This perceptibly drained and weakened his own powers. In prayer, however, Usui received from the Lord Buddha a new healing power and developed an original interpretion of how the new form of energy healing worked. That power he called Reiki. It was energy orginating outside Dr Usui's body. That Reiki-energy simply passed through the healer as through or along a channel, leaving the healer's own personal strength unchanged and even reinvigorated. In the USA of 2012 Reiki is a flourishing practice of alternative medicine acknowledged as one of nearly 250 distinct forms of "energy medicine" and studied scientifically by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), more particularly the NIH's NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Admittedly, Reiki has generated very little scientific support as of early 2012 -- but it does boast plenty of anecdotal evidence that it works. A leading American system teaching and certifying Reiki practitioners, especially nurses, is that of William Lee Rand, described at length in his book of the year 2000, REIKI: THE HEALING TOUCH--FIRST AND SECOND DEGREE MANUAL (See my 12/28/2011 review for lunch.com.) I personally know a fair number of hand healers. Each of them is convinced that non-massaging hand healing brings relief to the ailing and great comfort to the dying, in hospitals, hospices and at home. Some hand healers say that they have no idea why or how hand healing works and profess not to care why. Hand healing works, it really heals, it brings relief: what more do I need to know? Those trained in that form of hand healing called Reiki have perforce been exposed to their master's or their Reiki school's provocative hypotheses as to why Reiki works. -- Some practitioners labor to accept Dr
Usui's buddhist views and
resist adding or subtracting one jot or one tittle to its Buddhism.
-- Others are at pains to ground their hand healing in modern secular science: in electro-magnetism, perhaps, or in quantum mechanics. (Read, for instance, my 11/17/2001 review for lunch.com of Dorothea Hover-Kramer's HEALING TOUCH: ESSENTIAL ENERGY MEDICINE FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS -- which is, be advised, about a system different from but not totally alien to Reiki). -- Let us assume for the sake of argument that hands can heal through "energy," without massage, without surgery, without chemicals. How, then are we to talk about that hand healing art in general or about the specific form called Reiki? -- Can Reiki be baptized, Christianized? In March 2009 a group of American Catholic bishops left open the question of possibility. But in their opinion Reiki had not yet been Christianized enough or had earned enough scientific credibility to be officially endorsed for use in Catholic hospitals in America. -- The problem with that view is that certified Reiki Masters already existed and healed who called themselves Protestants, Christians or Catholics. Catholic nuns were long since practicing, teaching Reiki masters and plying their craft in Catholic institutions. -- At this point enter Ms Lauri Ann Lumby, Roman Catholic lay activist, long-time teacher to children and adults of Catholic doctrine, of preparation for marriage and the like within Catholic institutions. With the express approval of her pastor, she also exercised her Buddhism-flavored Reiki skills as an explicitly Christian ministry. Aware of the bishops' doubts about Reiki, Ms Lumby wrote, partially in reply to them, CHRISTOUCH: A CHRIST-CENTERED APPROACH TO ENERGY MEDICINE THROUGH HANDS-ON-HEALING (2011). In so doing, she trod in the footsteps of giants. For thus Saint Augustine had drawn lessons from the pagan philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus for his evolving views on early Christianity. Later the Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas cut through clumsy translations into Latin from the Arabic of Muslim thinkers Avicenna and Averroes to find and use metaphysics and epistemology of Greek Aristotle -- long forgotten in the West. I cannot overstress: Lauri Ann Lumby walks in the way pioneered by Christian giants as she wrestles with alien-orginated Reiki to make it a tool of authentically Christian healing. Before they can feel completely at home in Christianized Reiki, Christian healers must be taught to wrap their tongues around an originally Japanese hand healing discipline. They must find the right English words to re-describe and re-express the Oriental chakra system of energy analysis of human health. Lauri Lumby's principal contribution to this revolution is to relate Reiki to the person of Jesus of Nazareth and to remind readers that in his lifetime as a far from trivial part of his ministry Jesus healed the sick, commissioned his disciples to do the same and often expressed his healing of the lame, the halt and the blind, among others, by touching with his fingers and hands. Ms Lumby shows through quotation after quotation from Scripture that healing and comforting the ill and the mentally oppressed is close to the core of an orthodox Judaeo-Christian view of reality and of Jesus's mission that he invited all to follow. The quotations are many and quite relevant, thus I Corinthians Ch. 12's inclusion of healing as one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And also Luke 4:40: "At sunset, all who had
people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his
hands on each of them and cured them."
In the same little volume, CHRISTOUCH, Lumby introduces novices to the energy language of oriental medicine, the chakra system and ancient Eastern attitudes toward energy flows, including Kipling's "mysterious earth currents." She also illustrates through black and white photographs standard Reiki hand positions. Insisting that Christians must "pray always," Ms Lumby sees the Reiki "attunement" process as a form of prayer, of a conscious and deliberate asking to grow closer to God. In Christianized Reiki, God, never the practitioner, is the healer. Reiki practitioners are merely vessels of all-powerful God. If other Reiki healers invoke Buddha or Vishnu, let Christians, as they actually do, freely and on the basis of Scripture, invoke God the Father and his Son Jesus and give the glory and the effectiveness of energy healing entirely to them. This very short book (six concise chapters) concludes with three helpful, practical appendixes (e.g. on where to buy Reiki tables and equipment and also liability insurance) and one page of suggested further readings. CHRISTTOUCH is a first, tentative, preliminary word on Christian Reiki and hand healing. A first word, not the last word. The book cries out for ever more and better science and for more and deeper Biblical understanding. But CHRISTOUCH and Christianized Reiki are now in motion and more and even better insights will surely follow through public and Christian dialog-- initiated not only by Lauri Ann Lumby but by other Christian Reiki practitioners and teaching masters such as Judith White. -OOO- http://community.cafelibri.com/reviews/d/UserReview-Lauri_Ann_Lumby _CHRISTOUCH_A_CHRIST_CENTERED _APPROACH_TO_ENERGY_MEDICINE_THROUGH_HANDS _ON_HEALING-74-1793818-219407-Jesus_the_Healer_ As_Lord_of_Buddhist_Derived.html http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Lauri_Ann_Lumby _CHRISTOUCH_A_CHRIST_CENTERED_APPROACH _TO_ENERGY_MEDICINE_THROUGH_HANDS_ON_ HEALING-1793818.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 01/15/2012 title of review: Is Reiki a superstition? rating: * * * * * review: On March 25, 2009 some American Catholic bishops issued GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING REIKI AS AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY. Catholics, epecially nurses, were becoming Reiki teaching masters and obtaining their local pastor's permission to make Reiki an integral part of their personal Christian ministry. Reiki was increasingly used in well-known hospitals as alternative healing. The question was: should we authorize Reiki in American Catholic hospitals? The bishops said no. Their argument was complex. (1) Jesus was a healer through divine
grace; he empowered his disciples to be such healers; the church has an
ancient sacrament for healing; Christians are encouraged to pray for
healing through the direct intervention of God.
(2) The church is not opposed to natural healing either by traditional or new effective methods. (3) God sometimes gives to select individuals a select charism of healing. (4) Reiki is a Japanese healing technique discovered by Dr Isao Usui during a Buddhist retreat. The placing of hands on a patient facilitates the flow of "Reiki" or Divinely Guided Energy. A Reiki practitioner must first be initiated or "attuned." The religion implicit in Reiki is distinctly un-Christian. As a natural healing method, Reiki is subject to scientific evaluation. Science does not support Reiki. (5) "Without justification either from Christian faith or natural science, however, a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man's-land that is neither faith nor science." The bishops did not exclude the
possibility that Reiki might someday be supported by good science.
In her brief 2011 book CHRISTOUCH: A CHRIST-CENTERED APPROACH TO ENERGY MEDICINE THROUGH HANDS-ON-HEALING, Catholic laywoman and Reiki practitioner Lauri Ann Lumby issued a response to the bishops's concerns that Reiki was not Christian and, in effect, was incapable of being re-interpreted to become acceptably Christian. Ms Lumby did not address Reiki's lack of scientific support. Like so many Reiki practitioners she accepted massive prima facie anecdotal evidence that Reiki works. Her goal was to "baptize" Reiki not to explain it scientifically. Ms Lumby related Reiki to many apt quotations from both Testaments. Ms Lumby showcased Jesus the Healer. To Paul in I Corinthians healing was a gift of the Spirit. See also Luke 4:40 "At
sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to
him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them."
All healing, according to Lauri Ann Lumby, is from God. Christian Reiki masters, teachers and practitioners must therefore pray that God heal the sick person being treated and leave the results to God. Meanwhile, yes, Reiki came to America streaming clouds of Buddhist glory. Lumby explains Oriental anatomy and medicine with their belief in chakras and energy flow. Without invoking science, she reinterprets various Oriental theories of energy healing and hand healing by talking about them in plain English and by relating East to West in a series of charts chakra by chakra. Thus under Heart Chakra (p. 52) we learn that healing of the heart chakra reaches out to people who feel unloved and envious. CHRISTOUCH is not a completely satisfactory answer to the 2009 Bishops' GUIDELINES. But it makes a good start. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Dorothea Hover-Kramer: HEALING TOUCH - ESSENTIAL ENERGY MEDICINE FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS (2011) http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christouch-lauri-lumby/ 1032774224 ?ean=9781461138266&tabname=custreview& http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christouch-lauri-lumby /1032774224?ean=9781461138266&itm=1&usri=lauri+ann +lumby+-+christouch =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 01/16/2012 title of review: Can Buddhist-Inspired Reiki be Baptized, Christianized? Has it already been done? rating: * * * * * review: As 2008 turned into 2009, Catholic Bishops in the USA were under some pressure to allow Reiki, a form of healing through energy transmitted by hands, to be officially authorized for use in Catholic hospitals and retreat houses. On March 29, 2009 in Washington, DC a panel of bishops decided: not yet! They found that there was not yet enough scientific evidence to justify Reiki as a "natural" healing method. They also wrestled with claims by nuns, nurses, Catholic Reiki masters and others that the way that they did Reiki healing was thoroughly, orthodoxly Christian. No, said the bishops, Reiki had been "revealed" in the early 20th Century to Dr Isao Usui, a practicing Japanese Buddhist as the result of prayer during a Buddhist retreat. Reiki is Buddhist through and through and is not compatible with the healing teachings of Jesus or the Church. In a tightly reasoned five-page document, GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING REIKI AS AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY, the bishops' final word was: "Without justification either from
Christian faith or natural science, however, a Catholic who puts his or
her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of
superstition, the no-man's-land that is neither faith nor
science. Superstition corrupts one's worship of God by turning one's
religious feeling and practice in a false direction.
Since Reiki therapy is not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence, it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health care facilities and retreat centers, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy." Thus the Catholic Bishops set the terms for further dialog. Before they will judge Reiki ready for prudent use within American Catholic hospitals and retreat houses -- (1) Scientists must first demonstrate
that Reiki works and, if possible, why it works;
and/or --(2) Religious thinkers must figure out a way to Christianize or "baptize" Reiki. At this point a spunky little book entered the discussion. It was written by long-time Catholic lay activist Lauri Ann Lumby. It's title: CHRISTOUCH: A CHRIST-CENTERED APPROACH TO ENERGY MEDICINE THROUGH HANDS-ON-TEACHING. Ms Lumby is a hand healer in the tradition of Eastern health and medicine. She once received explicit permission from her pastor to make Reiki an arrow in her quiver of personal witness to Christ and to the Church. CHRISTOUCH does not extend scientific knowledge of Reiki or hand healing. Be it, however, noted that the U.S. Government/NIH has long enumerated various forms of "energy healing" among practices worth taking seriously enough to keep an eye on and research. For the current state of scientific research into energy healing (including Reiki, Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, etc.) see Chapter Six "Research about Healing Touch and Related Energy-Medicine Practices" in Dorothea Hover-Kramer Healing Touch: Essential Energy Medicine for Yourself and Others (2011). Ms Lumby instead takes up the Catholic bishops' challenge to Christianize Reiki and/or other related forms of hand healing such as Therapeutic Touch or Healing Touch. In much more detail than the Bishops' GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING REIKI AS AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY, Lumby showcases Jesus of Galilee as an intensely active, much appreciated healer of the sick and troubled during his three year active ministry. She piles on quotations from Scripture, for example, Luke 4:40 "At
sunset, all who had people sick with various diseases brought them to
him. He laid his hands on each of them and cured them."
And she notes Paul in I Corinthians listing healing as a gift of the Holy Spirit not to be confused with the gift of miracles. In six brief but lucid chapters Lauri Ann Lumby asks readers to listen to decide if the voice of God is calling them to be healers. If so, Jesus is the model for Christian healers. Any specifically Christian, Jesus-imitating healing method must have or be compatible with seven elements: "* Intention and desire on the part of the
person seeking healing
* An active request on the part of the person requesting healing or on the part of their designated advocate * Faith on the part of person seeking healing * Prayer * Remembering that God is doing the work * Surrender to God's will * The option of touch" (NOTE: that is, Jesus-imitating healing is not radically dependent on touching with human hands.) In Chapter Three Lumby argues that a healthy church qua body of Christ requires active love for one another by every member. In Chapter Four the author shows how to use standard English to express the traditions of Eastern Energy medicine, specifically Japanese Reiki with its view of energy circulation, obstacles within the body to free flow of energy, chakras, meridians and such like. Chapter Five "The Protocol" lays out step by step a defensible check list for Christian hand healing. Chapter Six assumes that the reader has been initiated into or in a Christian way "attuned" into Reiki or a related Oriental healing method and is now striking out on one's own as a healer. She describes Reiki "attunement" as a form of prayer, of asking to draw closer to God. Lumby also relates Kundalini (yoga) to the experience of the Holy Spirit and removal of fears received by the followers of Jesus at Pentecost. Three Appendixes and a one page list of suggested readings conclude CHRISTOUCH. There are weaknesses needing fixing in the Bishops March 2009 GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING REIKI AS AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY, starting with its notable lack of evidence of interviewing Catholic practitioners of Reiki already in the field. Ms Lumby's bold little book is something that the bishops have to take seriously. It leaves the bishops, admittedly, in a strong position regarding the need for more scientific study of Reiki. But mainly CHRISTOUCH emphasizes the healing mission of Jesus in an electrifying, far less ho hum way than does the bishops' text. Lauri Ann Lumbi vividly makes healing of the sick and crippled seem close to the core of what Jesus's ministry was all about. Her book also supplies the words and fresh ways for talking in English about Reiki. And, finally, she makes the case not only that Reiki can be Christianized but that it has already been baptized by hundreds of Catholic and Prostestant Reiki masters, teachers and practitioners. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Christouch-Christ-centered -approach-hands---healing/dp/1461138264/ref= sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326405449&sr=1-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 01/17/2012 Review Title: Make Way, Galileo. Now is Lauri Ann Lumby's hour: to Christianize Reiki! Product Rating: * * * * * PROS: A brave, clearly written effort to empower Christians to heal conscientiously through Buddhist-derived Reiki. CONS: A first step, not the definitive word. Reiki for Christians remains legitimately controversial. BOTTOM LINE: In 2009 American Catholic Bishops ruled that Reiki might not be practiced in American Catholic hospitals. Yet Catholic nuns are among Reiki masters, teachers and pracitioners. The author respectfully disagrees. aohcapablanca's Full Review: Written: Jan 17 '12 It is not as if Jesus the Galilean lived in some anti-intellectual vacuum. Greek was the upper class language of his part of the Roman Empire. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the great dramatists, Pericles and others had lived hundreds of years before his brief public life and mission. Their works were probably in private Greek libraries in Galilee. But Jesus was Jewish. His chosen followers were Jewish. The early writings about him (by Paul, Mark, etc.) were by Jews (except perhaps by Luke). It was hard to detach earliest Christianity from its mother Judaism, if indeed that was what Jesus had intended. But when in the 60s Paul reached out to Pagan Romans, Greeks and others with the message of Christ, he had to present Jesus and Christianity in a language (Greek) and within the framework of earlier, ever evolving worldviews very different from most of the Hebrew Scriptures. And yet, down the centuries Christians like Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Xavier (in Japan), Mateo Ricci (in China), Roberto de Nobili (in India) wrestled with non-Christian cultures and worldviews and "baptized" them (with varying degrees of success), Christianized them, thereby making Christianity attractive to alien races and nations. Galileo Galilei ran into a buzz saw when he ventured to apply pure reason and astronomical theories to re-interpret Scriptural texts. Absorbing alien cultures and thought processes has always been risky for the creative Christians who attempt it. The guardians of Faith and orthodoxy, notably conservative bishops and, less often, one or two Renaissance popes, could make life miserable for the innovators. Did not an archbishop of Paris briefly excommunicate Saint Thomas Aquinas who had baptized the Aristotle he found in clumsy Latin translations from Arabic of Muslim philosophers Averroes and Avicenna? So it should come as no surprise in this Age of Aquarius or in places like my own county seat whose unofficial motto is "Keep Asheville Weird," that Oshkosh, Wisconsin's Lauri Ann Lumby should bump heads with American bishops over whether the Buddhist-based Japanese hand healing technique known as Reiki should be approved for use in American Catholic hospitals or drawn on in Catholic retreat houses. In the centuries long parade of assimilating non-Christian thought and practice, what strikes me as most helpful for understanding the problem of Christianizing Reiki is what happened to Roman Catholicism in China during the so-called "Chinese Rites Controversy." The controversy was lively from the early 1600s until the Emperor Kanxi banned all foreign missionaries in 1721. Basically, Jesuits very quickly assimilated to Chinese higher culture, presented themselves as Confucian (not Buddhist) scholars and won Rome's approval to celebrate the Mass in Chinese not Latin. By contrast Dominican and Franciscan missionaries in China (coming mainly from the Philippines) baptized Chinese converts into Spanish Catholicism. The Jesuits (supported by official interpretations of Chinese emperors) saw offical honors paid to Confucius and "ancestor worship" as secular in nature and not to be denied to Chinese Catholic converts. In the 1700s at the Vatican curia, the Dominicans won, the Jesuits lost. Later historian Arthur Toynebee would say that the Jesuits' loss set back China-West relations hundreds of years. Not till 1939 did Pope Pius XII set aside earlier papal decisions and do in China as the Jesuits has done. So where does today's Reiki come in? "Rei" is wide interpreted in English to mean "divinely guided." "Ki" is the Japanese version of Chinese "chi" or "qi," meaning "energy, or life force." Hand healing was an ancient medical practice in Japan, not invasive like acupuncture, not applying physical pressure like massage. During a three-week long Buddhist retreat in the early 1900s Japanese hand healer Mikao Usui received profound enlightenment about how to improve his therapeutic art. Experience had taught him that hand healing could exhaust him. For when Usui healed others through his careful placement of hands in accordance with Chinese/Japanese views on anatomy and healing, he used up and transferred his limited personal energy to his patient. Hand healing as the then knew it clearly drained and weakened his own powers. During prayer, however, Usui received from the Lord Buddha a new unlimited healing power and developed an original interpretation of how that new form of energy healing worked. That power Dr Usui named Reiki. It was energy orginating outside Usui's body. Reiki-energy simply passed through the healer as through or along a channel, leaving the healer's own personal strength unchanged and even reinvigorated. Reiki was practiced in Hawaii in the 1930s and has spread rapidly across Mainland USA since the 70s. Like Reiki, other forms of "energy healing," such as yoga, "Therapeutic Touch," "Healing Touch" and others still betray their lingering traces of the "clouds of glory" of Eastern wisdom, healing and religion whence they were born. Healing Touch, to take one example, is rapidly secularizing its practices and explanations as well as funding scientific research as to why its methods work -- with an eye, inter alia, to persuading insurance companies to accept its legitimacy. Healing Touch invokes electro-magnetic fields and quantum physics. In 2012 American Reiki, by contrast, does not appear to have gone so far in a secular, scientific direction. Some of its leading American practitioners remain thoroughly at home in a world view which includes reincarnation. This fact is not unnoticed by Catholic bishops. Nonetheless there are ardent Protestants and Catholics who are also Reiki teaching masters or practitioners, notably Lauri Ann Lumby and Judith White. Conceptually and linguistically Christian practitioners of Reiki are about where the earliest Jesuits were in China in the 1600s. Jesuits found Confucianism attractive as a moral-political philosophy. It worked for China in a good way. Confucian practice need not be snatched from Christians. Similary for "ancestor worship." As for Reiki in the USA in the 21st Century, the traditionalists are a committee of Catholic bishops who in March 2009 said no to growing pressure to allow either the practice of Reiki in Catholic hospitals or favorable mention of it in Retreat Houses. Reiki had no scientific backing and was too Buddhist to be Christianized. It was simply superstition, "the no-man's-land that is neither faith nor science," the bishops said. The bishops' 2009 GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING REIKI AS AN ALTERNATIVE THERAPY prompted lay Catholic activist and Reiki practitioner Lauri Ann Lumby to write CHRISTOUCH: A CHRIST-CENTERED APPROACH TO ENERGY MEDICINE THROUGH HANDS-ON-TEACHING (2011). Ms Lumby did not tackle the real paucity of scientific fact-gathering and hypothesizing behind Reiki. What she did do was first ask if Christian readers felt a call to be healers: healers in an art not relying on surgery, chemicals, special gadgets or penetration of the skin. If Christians feel such a call to heal, then they are in good company. For that is the way Jesus healed. No gadgets. No drugs. No knives. Usually but not always using his hands. Jesus helped people who asked to be helped. And Saint Paul in I Corinthians 12 listed healing a a distinct gift bestowed as the Spirit chose on some individuals for the good of the whole church which is the body of the Lord. Lauri Ann Lumby then described Reiki, how it heals, in black and white photos she displayed standard positions of hands taught in Reiki healing, related elements of Oriental healing (seven major chakras) to Judaeo-Christian fascination with the number seven (seven days of creation, seven sacraments, seven deadly sins, etc.). Using simple straight from the shoulder, clear English, the author performed the useful preliminary task of talking about an unfamiliar, indeed alien, healing form in the native language of her readers. She took novice readers from the Reiki initiation rite of "attuning" (which she likens to drawing closer to God in Christian prayer) into their early careers as respectful, reverent, praying Christian Reiki healers. CHRISTTOUCH is brief. I will not describe it in more detail. I hope that I have given you enough information to let you decide for yourself whether to open its pages and see for yourself. I do think it important to show that author Lumby comes at the end of a long line of giants who tackled similar cross-cultural or cross-religion challenges in order to make alien impulses work for the greater glory of God and the spiritual well-being and moral health of Christians everywhere. Did she lay so much as a glove on the American bishops? She didn't even try in regard to science. It is hard, moreover, to imagine the bishops disagreeing with her portrayal of Christ as a healer. "At sunset, all who had
people sick with various diseases brought them to him. He laid his
hands on each of them and cured them," (Luke 4:40).
And this healing Jesus did over and over again and told his followers to imitate him. In much shorter scope within their five page GUIDELINE the bishops also showcase Christ the healer, but somewhat tepidly compared with Ms Lumby who is overflowing in her personal mission to imitate the Lord through healing. Whether she adequately Christianizes Reiki I leave to your judgment. This book CHRISTOUCH is brief, well written and arguably does not attempt more than it can deliver. May the bishops and other Christians see it as move number two in a great game of chess aimed at weighing more completely and honestly the pros and cons of whether Reiki should be performed in Catholic hospitals! -OOO- p.s. Thank you DramaStef for making CHRISTOUCH reviewable by epinionators. Recommended: Yes. * * * * * http://www.epinions.com/review/Lauri_Ann_Lumby_Christouch _A_Christ_centered_approach_to_energy_medicine_through_ hands_on_healing_epi/content_576727846532 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (6) openlibrary 01/13/2012 CHRISTOUCH 1 edition By Lauri Ann Lumby About the Book: An effort to baptize Reiki by showing its Japanese/Buddhist approach to healing through touch expresses the mission of physical and psychological healing used by Jesus and passed on to his followers. SUBJECTS: Reiki, Jewish and Christian Scriptures. PEOPLE: Jesus of Galilee TIMES: 27-33 CE. 2011. Complete Title: CHRISTOUCH: A CHRIST-CENTERED APPROACH TO ENERGY MEDICINE THROUGH HANDS-ON-HEALING Published 2011 by Authentic Freedom Press. The Physical Object Pagination: iv. 63.
Number of pages: 70 Dimensions: 10 x 08 x 0.2 inches Weight: 7.4 ounces ID Numbers Open Library: OL25167596M
ISBN 10: 1461138264 http://openlibrary.org/works/OL16457243W/CHRISTOUCH =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/lumby_christouch.html |