Thursday 15 March 2012

Medicine with a Heart

There is an entire website and related discussion-groups based on "Remembering the Heart of Medicine" (check it yourself at http://theheartofmedicine.org/finding-meaning-in-medicine-discussions/fmm-email/) that is a call to meaning and re-discovering the depth in the everyday. 

This pausing to ask "what matters?" and "where is the heart in this?" is not just for doctors to need to do (although as a group perhaps we need to be reminded even  more than most, due to both internal & external forces that lead us away  from the heart). 

Stumbling across the poem below was just such a moment's pause for me today, and now perhaps for you too?

DESIRE  
Alice Walker 

My desire
is always the same; wherever Life
deposits me:
I want to stick my toe
& soon my whole body
into the water.
I want to shake out a fat broom
& sweep dried leaves
bruised blossoms
dead insects
& dust.
I want to grow
something.
It seems impossible that desire
can sometimes transform into devotion;
but this has happened.
And that is how I've survived:
how the hole
I carefully tended
in the garden of my heart
grew a heart
to fill it.


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