This is the third in a series of articles: Enduring Wisdom in Times of Great Change. In these posts I’ve shared stories of some of the mentors in my life and what I learned from them. Today I write about Michael Lerner, a mentor, yes, but more significantly, a beloved friend. This is also a timely post: this Friday, July 31, 2020, Michael is undergoing a surgery that isn’t small or simple. I humbly welcome your prayers, thoughts, blessings, healing energy—whatever you feel called to give. Because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. We heal by and with each other.

Healthy Planet, Healthy People

Michael and I first met 20 years ago when I attended a symposium at UC San Francisco School of Medicine, co-sponsored by one of Michael’s many projects, The Collaborative on Health and the Environment. The topic was environmental pollutants as a driver of chronic disease. As a young public health doctor working with underserved communities, a new mother, a newly diagnosed patient with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, I was keenly interested. “It’s hard to be a healthy person on a sick planet,” Michael said. “And it’s even harder to be a healthy species on a sick planet.” I learned about hormone-disrupting chemicals and cancer-causing agents lurking in our own homes. Astonishingly, nowhere in my extensive medical education had the connection been made before. Thus began our shared interest and work.

After a couple of years, however, my health crashed entirely, as I’ve written in my memoir, Brave New Medicine. Housebound for years, I took a medical leave. I withdrew from friends. I withdrew from email. There were many dark nights of the soul when I didn’t think I could go on. During one such moment, I happened to get on email and see a newsletter from Michael’s organization, Commonweal. He paraphrased an idea from the Czech thinker Vaclav Havel: There is a difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is the belief that things will turn out right. Hope, on the other hand, is a deep orientation of the soul that can be held in the darkest of times. I felt I could hold onto hope, if not optimism. I made it through the next day. And the next.

No Easy Answers (Except One)

My healing journey continued. My functionality improved. I dove into integrative and functional medicine and began my re-emergence into the outer world. Little did I know that Michael was one of the original pioneers of the integrative health movement, along with Rachel Remen, Dean Ornish, Andrew Weil, among others. Prompted by another e-newsletter from Commonweal in which Michael referenced a past heart condition, I reached out and asked him how to re-emerge. I’m the same, I wrote, and also not the same. I imagined he might recommend a cocktail of vitamins, an imagery practice, or a list of resources. Instead, he wrote one line with humility and honesty:

I don’t have any easy answers, Cynthia, but I know to take it slowly, and listen to your heart.

Since then, I’ve taken his advice to heart. This was a very necessary preparation for my second health crisis—or “health awakening,” as I prefer to call it now—which took me deep into the mysteries of qigong, an embodied consciousness practice, and into the Christ. I’d been raised in an evangelical community in the heartland of Texas, but the dogma of heaven and hell had traumatized me; I left organized religion and any kind of spirituality when I started college, turning to science and critical thinking. My relationship with Michael had, by this second awakening, become a deep soul friendship. We’d explored archetypal psychology, enneagram, Christian and Jewish mysticism, Sufism, Buddhism, energy healing, intuition, alongside environmental health science, and integrative and functional medicine.

Facing his upcoming surgery as a medical advisor and friend, I hear those words again: I don’t have any easy answers, but I know to take it slowly, and listen to your heart.

2 Take-home Lessons I’ve Learned

1. Despite all the brilliant inventions of the mind, no healing technology, novel medicine, or philosophical idea comes close to the healing power of love. It’s that simple, almost aggravatingly so.

2. The mark of a trusted and true mentor is this: in his or her presence, the student feels empowered. Seen. And strangest of all, equal.

If you have any particular practices, prayers, or imageries that have sustained you in the darkest of times, I’d love to hear from you.