Learning to heal – the body

• How lockdown was for Paula
• The three words for healing in the Gospels/ New Testament
• The integration of body, mind and soul in the New Testament
• Mental health, Descarte and dementia
• The need for science and faith to be integrated
• The shifting location of power in society
• How can we have a healthier view of our bodies
• Christian spirituality split off bodies from mind and soul
• Your body is a fundamental part of your spiritual journey 
• Paula’s personal reasons for being so passionate about bodies and the bible
• The quality of our prayer life and the quality of our bodies are intimately connected
• Pampering is part of spirituality
• We don’t live in Eden anymore – expectation for imperfection
• Anticipating new creation and the few moments when healing happens
• Active and passive waiting
• Joining in the work of the Kingdom coming
• The point of the miracles in the Gospels
• Healing does still happen
• You don’t have to believe things you really struggle with
• The importance of the fuzzy edges of science and faith
• The need for the Church to be humble 
• The need to challenge the perception of the Church as being perfect
• Advice for how to wait well in Advent

Links:
Dr. Paula Gooder’s website

Join the conversation:
Waiting well – the GoHealth Advent Journey
Join the GoHealth community
Twitter: @guildofhealth
Facebook: @GuildofHealthInstagram: @GuildofHealthWebsite: gohealth.org.uk

Music: Return by Lane King from Upbeat Music

Podcast produced in-house by the GoHealth team.

I am Gillian Straine and welcome to the GoHealth podcast. 

So welcome back to season two, in this season, we are exploring the theme of learning to heal. Now we all learn in all sorts of different ways, but in the GoHealth podcast, we are learning to heal by listening to the stories and experiences of others. And in doing so, we might be learning to heal, heal ourselves or learning to be a source of healing for others or both. Because in the GoHealth community, we take up that call, the call of Jesus to find healing. We know that we all need healing all the time so the podcast, we hope, is hitting the nail on the head in both ways – how to be a healer for others and how to find healing ourselves. If you haven’t done so already, please rate and subscribe to the podcast because this helps others to find it.

So this episode? Well, this episode, which we released in December 2021, we are exploring the theme of Learning to Heal with Dr. Paula Gooder. Paula is the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and she is a very busy woman. She is a theologian, an educator and an author, as well as her role at the, at the Cathedral, and she’s published a whole heap of books. So I just wanted to mention two that I think are particularly relevant to the listeners of the GoHealth podcast

The first is the Meaning is in the Waiting, which focuses on Advent, and the second is Body – a biblical spirituality for the whole body. And you know we had a fantastic conversation around good biblical theologies of health and healing, a positive theologically sound attitude to our bodies and our wellbeing and self-care and seeing mission – oh, I loved this, and this has stuck with me – seeing mission as looking for where God is active and simply joining in. 

We’re releasing this podcast in Advent its the time of year when we pause and focus on our spiritual lives, perhaps with new routines or just a bit more quiet time. It’s a time of waiting and expectation as we wait for the birth of Christ. So also in our conversation, I took the opportunity to ask Paula about Advent. To give us some advice about how to have a good Advent, how to grow in love and wisdom and hope at this holy time of year.

I really enjoyed chatting with Paula, I felt so humbled to spend some time with her. She is alarmingly clever, but also really down to earth. And she took our conversation into some great theological and biblical scholarship, but also rooted it in her personal experience and the realities of a life lived in faith.

So I hope you enjoy it. Let’s get on with the conversation. 

Gillian: Dr. Paula Gooder, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the GoHealth podcast. How are you? 

Paula: I’m really well, thank you, and it’s lovely to be with you today.

Gillian: So can you tell our listeners what you do and what your mission or vision is for your work? 

Paula: Absolutely. So I am the Canon Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral and that, with that comes being the director of learning within the cathedral. And that really is my vision and mission. So I have – I’m a lifelong, passionate adult educator. one of the things I think is the best thing in the world is getting people to engage with learning and to see where they can go in their thinking and their growing in faith and therefore in this job, this is just perfect for me. So one of the things – an aspect of my work is to think about how we can provide events and conversations and reflections that allow people to do that learning journey as adults.We also do quite a lot with children, but my great passion is adult learning. 

Gillian:  And your Canon chancellor but you’re not ordained – so is this quite unusual? 

Paula: It is indeed, it is exceedingly unusual. So I am a licensed lay minister and with the exception of Oxford that has a couple of lay Canons I am the first lay residentary Canons in the Cathedral, which is interesting in all sorts of different ways. 

Gillian: Yeah, that’s another first in The Church of England. And we’re asking all our guests or since we’ve begun this podcast – because it’s been launched during the COVID 19 pandemic. How’s the pandemic and all the lockdowns been for you? 

Paula: Well, it’s been very challenging at the cathedral because St Paul’s Cathedral gets a lot of tourist income, and therefore we lost 95% of our income between 2020 and middle of 2021. And so therefore, in terms of being a Canon of a Cathedral, it was incredibly challenging because we had to work out how we were going to stay afloat without any of the usual income that we got in through the cathedral. So that was one big challenge. 

Another big challenge is, until the start of lockdown most of the things that we did at the Cathedral were in-person events because that’s what everyone did. And so one of the things that we’ve had to do alongside almost everyone around the country is to work out what we can do that works digitally for people and not just in terms of in-person. So that’s been an interesting challenge. And so the first one, the financial one was just all challenge. The second one, I think it’s been really quite fun trying to work out how we can turn to do digital things. And there’ll be all sorts of things that we started doing in lockdown that will carry on doing because they ended up being a really good thing to do anyway. 

And then personally for me during lockdown, I regularly used to say that in a way that we are very lucky. We’ve got a lovely house. Being locked into the lovely house was not something that was a particularly great trial. I’m an academic, so actually sitting at my desk reading is a thing that I really like to do. So being made to stay in and read what no great hardship. But, but interestingly, it was in a weird way. And as a lot of people will say as well, is that on one level, just staying in reading books was great. But on another level, there kind of be underlying anxiety and the issues that we were all facing meant that actually the one thing that I’m really good at, which is staying in and reading books was the one thing I couldn’t really do during lockdown. So it became kind of…so emotionally it was quite a difficult thing to try and work out why I was struggling to read and why I was struggling to read my books and things..

Gillian: I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the Guilt of Health and St. Raphael has been around for over 100 years, and what we… what our mission is and it hasn’t changed, is to promote the Christian Healing Ministry, to do it in conversation with science and psychology, and to work with individuals and with churches.

But it’s that word healing that I want to ask you about, because sometimes when I tell people I run a Christian healing organisation, I can see them almost taking a step back and thinking, Oh no, crazy lady, she’s going to try to sell us to sell us a miracle or something like that. Or I get ambivalence you. What is the point of you? I can go to the doctors, or I can go to Holland and Barrett or wherever to get something around healing. Sometimes I experience anger if they had perhaps a poor experience.

So it’s that word healing that I’m curious about. And I wonder as a person of faith, as a ,as a theologian and as a teacher and with your role at the great, you know, the center of Christianity for the country itself – if you can say that about St. Paul’s I wonder – what does healing mean to you, personally and in your work? 

Paula: Oh, that’s such a massive, massive question. Let me let me start with my expertise so the bit that I haven’t said already is I’m a New Testament scholar, so let me start in the New Testament, which is where I’m most comfortable. Because I think there’s some really interesting things that go on in the New Testament that help you into an understanding of healing and which are that there are three different words that are used for healing in Jesus’s…in the gospel narratives.

So you’ve got the word therapeuothat we get on what therapy from, and that is most often referring to physical healing, ordinary physical healing. So that’s the kind of word that we used to…when we think of the word healing, that’s the word we’re kind of normally thinking of.

Then you’ve got the word iaomai  and the word iaomai  is quite close to therapuo, but often is kind of a bigger word to mean more than just physical. So often when Jesus is talking about people who have had a bigger healing experience in terms of their faith changing – than he would use iaomai.

And really interestingly, the third word that is often translated heal but actually means something else entirely is the word sozo which means to save. So when Jesus says to the woman who has, with the hemorrhage, he says, your faith has saved you. And I think there’s something actually really quite interesting about the saving bit when you put it next to all the others. So there’s certain strands you can pull out, which I think are really interesting. One of them is that actually healing is almost never in the Gospels, just about the body. It’s normally about the whole person. About there…so often when Jesus says things like your faith has saved you or you have been healed and using the word sozo to mean that. And what he’s talking about is people coming back into full relationship in society – because in Jesus’s day, people with illness, the woman with the haemorrhage, If you are deaf, if you are lame it meant that you were not able to worship in the temple, you weren’t able to mix properly in society because you would make other people impure – because of the fact that you were ill and therefore often when Jesus is talking about healing, he’s talking about wholeness, about coming back into full relationship. Full relationship with God, you can go back in the temple, full relationship with your neighbours, you can properly talk to the people around you. And so for me, there’s something really important about recognising that healing isn’t just about your body. It’s about a much bigger thing about your relationships, with God, with other people and who you are as a person. I should just add on as a note – we need to be really careful as well when when I even am saying it’s not just about healing your body in the Bible and understanding of the body is about your whole person. It’s not just about your physical self. And so what we often do in our world is we kind of split physical well-being and our soul and our spirit or our mental wellbeing and kind of put them in two different separate camps. The Bible would never do that, it pulls them together. So for me, there’s something really important about relationships, about wholeness. The phrase that I love from John’s gospel is life in all its fullness. And I think that what Jesus is doing in the healing narratives is he’s calling people to life in all its fullness. So actually, whatever healing means and however you engage with healing, the goal of it all is life in all its fullness. 

Gillian: And this is really, I think, counter cultural at the moment, isn’t it? So let’s go…Let’s just talk pre-pandemic.

It would be nice to talk about this with respect to the pandemic as well. But our society, in many ways, some people describe it as quite ill with regard to what health is. 

So we have an idea that to be healthy is to be beautiful and to be perfect and even that…

Paula: And young.

Gillian:  Yes, yes. 

Paula: It’s crucial. You have to look like you’re really young, otherwise, you’re failing somehow. 

Gillian: Yes. And all the kind of cosmetic surgery industry and even young people getting cosmetic surgery as well, it’s really ill in a way. And I and I wonder if we can explore, you know, that gift that Christian healing ministry can, can give around ratifying all sorts of experiences on that background that it’s about a whole person approach. I was having coffee with John Swinton recently, and he said something so simple that it took my breath away and I hadn’t really thought about it, even as somebody who works full time in Christian healing. He said, you got to remember Gillian that every single person that Jesus healed would have got ill and died. And it’s so obvious, but it’s just – in one phrase, elevates what we try to do in the faith around health over and above the health industry in this country. And he says quite clearly about Jesus, it’s not about making people better, it’s about that whole person health that you that you were describing there. 

Paula: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it’s it’s really, really fascinating that we we kind of in our society, we fine slice things down don’t we and separate them all out. So you’ve got – am I perfect physically and even if you are well, which we might say was making you perfect physically, you’re not perfect physically because you’ve got squishy bits and you kind of, you know, your nose isn’t right? So there’s kind of that kind of weird idea of perfection, which is, I think, a really terrible thing. The bit that we’ve mentioned already about this very, very strange concept that our society has that young is good. Despite the fact that nobody wants to die young. So actually, growing old is surely better. But you don’t want to look like you’re old. You have to look like you’re young while still growing older. So there’s kind of something about people’s terror of old age and what that means and why that is complex. And then we also do this bit where we separate off our bodies from our souls, our spirits, our minds and talk about, you know, and that’s where you get into things around stigma, around mental health. So it’s even if your body might be perfect. You couldn’t possibly ever admit that you might be going through a really difficult time and be on anti-depressants because mental health is something that we shy away from as well. So we have this kind of really odd kind of fragmentation.

And for me, one of the really beautiful things that the Bible talks about is the whole person. One of the Old Testament scholars and I really like called John Robinson says very famously ‘In the Hebrew bible I do not have a body, I am a body’

And it’s just really great. So who are you? You are your person who is embodied that you can’t kind of split yourself off and go well my body isn’t really who I am, my body is exactly who I am and and my soul and my spirit and my mind is all together in one kind of glorious whole, which is your body. 

Gillian: And where do you think this taboo around mental health? Can we can we trace the theological, do you think to this taboo around mental health? Or is it more simply, while something’s wrong with your body, you can see it and point to it.And you know, there’s there’s easier fixes. Where, where do we have this taboo and how can we help as a church to move forward and help people find a more integrated view of themselves? 

Paula: It’s a long and complex journey, isn’t it? And part of it is exactly what you just said. You know, if you can’t see it, therefore it frightens a little bit. There is an element, though I think about, and this kind of goes back into philosophical understandings of the soul, is that Descartes kind of developed this understanding of the soul, which was integrally linked with the mind. So who…so if you think about Descartes, say, ‘I think therefore I am’ what makes you who you are is your ability to think, so of course, in that understanding of philosophy your very, very worst concept is dementia. Because if you become somebody with dementia, then you’re not thinking. Therefore, you know that his whole adage, I think therefore I am –  is actually your personality is entirely bound up by your ability to think in that kind of way then, then you are less of a person if you can’t. Which is not connected with other forms of mental health issues. But I think there is something actually quite interesting in looking at that. So for for me and again, going back to the Bible, the lovely bit about Hebrew thinking is your relationship with God is not through your mind, but through your spirit. And therefore it doesn’t matter what your mental faculties are you can relate to God at all times. And I don’t want to tie up mental health solely with dementia, but I think there is something around that question of a purity of mental alertness or mental health, which comes from Descartes. Not solely from there, but I think there’s something around that that is worth probing a little bit to think about. 

Gillian: And what I find very fascinating, and I hadn’t heard that quote from your Old Testament scholar, ‘I don’t have a body, I am a body’ is that modern science is beginning to show this up or show this in terms of evidence. And, and for me, the, I’m very interested in the dialog between religion or theology and science, and the dialog between theology and religion and medical science or neuroscience is one of the really interesting and new areas to chat about all this. And I wonder what you think about the extent to which we should be using some of the science to promote our theology. So, for example, science, this field of science called psycho neurobiology, which shows which shows, you know, graphs and charts that show that our body and mind are linked. So if you if you if you have a good conversation with somebody, perhaps as part of a group activity, you can see your immune system is given a bit of a boost there. You know, that’s your cup of tea after church can boost your immune system, and here’s a science. I wonder how we hold those two together in terms of the church? Because sometimes I find I talk about the theology. I talk, I talk about the Old Testament, not as eloquently as you. And then I’ll talk about the, look here’s the science. And some people say, well, what do you believe? And they sort of…how do we bring these two together in a constructive way?

Paula: I entirely agree with you. Whenever you’re kind of doing those kind of things…I, I wrote a book about the body. I did a lot of reading and the kind of those kind of scientific areas, and I could just hear the Apostle Paul in my ear going, ‘I told you. I always knew it was the case’. And it’s as though what’s happened? And I think it happened kind of with the period of the Enlightenment and onwards that Christianity had developed a certain way of thinking about the world, about people, about God. And it was science became too difficult to be able to incorporate within. So they kind of pulled away, it kind of started with Galileo and went onwards from Galileo, really? And I think one of the biggest challenges for us today is to say we need to pull them back together again, because if actually our view of the world is..if God is integrally, we believe God to be integrally in creation. If God, if we believe God to be involved in who we are as human beings. We’ve got nothing to fear from science because actually science tells us who we are. And from there, we can do our theological reflection on actually what that means about us. So I think we need to be better about integrating the two together and not being frightened of it and seeing all of those fascinating things that we can read across from theology into science and from science into theology. 

Gillian: Yeh I know, I completely agree. I think it is often about fear. So it’s about, you know, just buying new scientists. It is about, you know, engaging with it. But I wonder also and I like to talk more about more about the church with you. Is it about power and authority as well? Because part of the separation of science and religion during the scientific revolution was the scientists were professionalising, and they didn’t want all these irritating clergymen going around with their notebooks collecting fossils, and at a time when this new profession of being scientists was developing, they wanted to make sure they had the power and authority. And I wondered if there’s an echo of that around today who, who’s got authority and power in our society to proclaim the truth? And if you know, if we’re hanging on too strongly to this and not having those sort of conversations that you’re talking about, cross-disciplinary conversations, then we all suffer as a result

Paula: Absolutely and I think that question of power is a really fascinating one because it’s also worth adding that the church did itself no favours either, and continues not to do itself any favours by claiming it’s got all the power. And so therefore you kind of end up with a standoff between scientists saying ‘we’ve got it’ and the church going ‘no we’ve got it’  and you want to go, well, actually, neither of you have it because it’s located somewhere else. And that’s, I think, is the really important point about your question there is that we, one of the things that the pandemic has revealed to us, although we it was very clear before, is that the people who are claiming to have power are not perceived in popular culture to have any. The church is not perceived as having any, scientists even are not perceived as having any You can read it on social media ‘well, you know, the scientists may say this, but I know because I read an article somewhere else that said something else entirely.’ And so I think power is shifting in our world and and those who have historically had it no longer have it. And that becomes a really interesting question about where power is truly located these days. It’s located in influencers, it’s located in often in drama in the narrative that you see on television. It’s weirdly located in conspiracy theories, which is not a great place for it to be. But, but I think one of the things we’re noticing politically is that populism is pushing power into unusual places, and we’re just not quite sure what to do with it because we have grown up, I’ve certainly grown up with the assumption that if an expert tells me something then I believe the expert. Whereas actually society will now go, ‘yeah but what would you know you, you with your three PhDs? How would you know?’ And that, I think, shapes us in our kind of ability to have that conversation. So, yeah, I absolutely agree we need to have the conversation, but it is a slightly more complex than we might think it is because power is shifting.

Gillian: It is fascinating. Yeah.  I want to talk about bodies, these naughty things that sometimes go wrong – because it can be a really tricky subject in church and in lives of faith. And we, you know, we hide them and don’t talk about them. And I  would love to get some insights and wisdom from you about how we can get a healthier view of our bodies based on the Christian faith, but also put it into action. So some moving from theory into, into actual practice and actually picking up something, you know, you were talking about influencers and so on, and the wellbeing market is huge and to what extent actually should Christians be engaging with that? So positive psychology and you know, and and looking after ourselves? Because for me it’s, iin the healing ministry talking about bodies gets us into the key theological territories. 

So as you know, I’m a cancer survivor and you know, my whole journey through cancer and recovery and healing, and all the rest of it – after lots of thinking because I tend to be much better in retrospect than I am at the time. What I think I was doing over a ten year healing period was trying to wrestle with the question, ‘How can I believe I was wrought in my mother’s womb and loved by God, when the body that God made turned against itself’, which is what cancer is, it’s multiplication of cells going a bit crazy. So how do you reconcile our faith that we’re loved with bodies or sometimes go wrong? And how can we use that to build up a healthier view of bodies of all shapes and sizes and colours?

Paula:  Oh, it’s such a big question, isn’t it? 

Gillian: You should just say ‘buy my book’ – I’ve just asked you to summarise your book.

Paula: So it’s a brilliant question and really important. So where do I want to start, I want to start with…don’t let me forget the stuff about cancer. If I forget it, remind me, I want to talk about that. But I want to start with spirituality. because I think one of the things that we have done in the Christian faith is even the word spirituality implies that what we’re about as Christians has nothing to do with our bodies. And so we talk about Christian spirituality and we talk about prayer and devotion. And if you use any of the words that are about how we engage with God, how we worship, how we pray – our spiritual journey, the language we use and what pops into your head time and time again is that you’re about the inner journey – it has got nothing to do with your body. Christian spirituality is about your soul. It’s about how it engages with God. It might involve your mind, but very, very rarely has anything to do with your body. And that’s what I was going to be referring to when I was talking about the Hebrew understanding of the body – is you cannot take your soul out of your body in Hebrew thinking, it does not work. So therefore, your body is a fundamental part of your spiritual journey. And I think what’s gone wrong in Christian spirituality is that splitting of the spirit and the mind off from the body. 

So, it is, it is not uncommon in Christian circles for people to talk extensively about their prayer life, and they clearly very holy people. I know this from the inside because my father was one of these, a very deeply Christian man, very powerfully holy, prayed a lot and absolutely ruined his body by overworking. And he never could see the connection between the two things because he thought that what he was doing was sacrificing himself for the sake of the gospel. And that was his spiritual calling and something I’m really passionate about because I saw him wearing himself out over years and years and years because he thought that’s what he was called to do as a Christian. And, you know, if you want the personal reason why I became very passionate about bodies and the Bible,  it’s because, well, he was ill, I mean, I’m chronically asthmatic, so I had a body that kind of – it’s not anything like your experience – but I will regularly be really quite poorly. And this just kind of one of those things that happens. And I spent years thinking, wouldn’t it be great if I could just crack this asthma and then everything will be fine. And I realised that actually asthma is who I am as a person, and I’ve had to learn my spiritual lessons through breath and breathing and understanding what breath and breathing mean to me as a person and who I am. And therefore I can’t take the two apart. So one of my great passions is as Christians, we need to talk as passionately about looking after our bodies, as we do about the quality of our prayer life. Because the quality of our prayer life and the quality of our bodies is the same, is intimately connected. So the stuff about pampering, you know, this is a kind of heretical thing I’m about to say. I think that pampering is part of Christian spirituality, going to a spa and looking after your body properly. Probably not, you know, but there’s a real issue with spas and commercialisation and the kind of consumerism about spas, but actually genuinely making sure your body is OK, not being overtired, going to get a massage that is as important for spirituality I think, as having a really good prayer life.

Gillian:  I couldn’t agree more. I got to spa once a year, and I feel that now you’ve endorsed it, Canon Chancellor at St. Paul’s Cathedral says, you need to go to spas!

Paula: You’ll hear me clapping you on the way.

Gillian: I’ll tweet on my way. But it’s so much…so true. And we know that from experience and in the Guild, we like to emphasise, you know, we tell our stories and what we’ve been through. I know from my experience when I’m really stressed and tired, I can’t think, and I you know, I lose it with the kids. And, you know, if I’m not doing the wellbeing thing, and looking at my body. Making sure I get enough sleep and eating properly. I know I’ve gone too far was when I, you know, if I have a massage and I’m in tears.

Paula: Yes!

Gillian: You know?The body keeps the score and even the Bessel Van Der Kolk thing around embodied trauma. And, you know, our emotional and our spiritual issues and our problems are somehow held in our bodies. And if we don’t look after our bodies, our mind gets ill because we’re all interconnected.

And it’s, you know, it’s fascinating…It’s really, really important. We do some work sometimes around clergy wellbeing and clergy wellbeing so often, you know, another to-do list. Yeah, we have a lot of clergy who listen to our podcast so it’s OK to talk about clergy.

You know, it’s about, you know, it’s about your resting, going on retreats and breaking your day to three and only working two thirds. And I see, oh my gosh, even like self-care is really stressful to organize.

But actually, we have to, I think, live in a countercultural way and and not just be on the same rat race as other people, because in doing so we’re demonstrating something really powerful with our lives and how we live it.

Paula: Absolutely. I entirely agree. But I want to come on to the second thing that I wanted to talk about, which was about you mentioning the cancer and what does that mean in terms? And for me, there’s a really helpful piece of theology that comes from Paul that helps you get your head around it. Well at least it helps me get my head around it. So let me have a go and see if it helps as well, because we often think about living as we ought to be living perfectly. You know, our goal is to be perfect.

Our bodies are perfect, our spirits are perfect, our prayer life is perfect, everything is perfect. And we forget the really important strand that runs through the Bible, which is that, governed by the first few chapters of Genesis – we don’t live in Eden anymore.

Eden was the place that, that was perfect. People would live forever. The implication…they didn’t need clothes cause they didn’t get cold. There were perfect relationships with God. God would come and have a natter with them in the evening. I mean, it was all kind of everything was was all set up to be perfect. And then we left Eden. And for me, the really important thing is reminding myself, time and time again, I no longer live in Eden, and therefore I can no longer expect perfection. Actually, my expectation must be of imperfection. So we live in a creation which is fundamentally flawed, and that for me, is what the Eden stories are about, about reminding us that we live in a world that has cracks and flaws in it, and we need to adjust our expectations away from ‘if only I was in Eden’ to ‘I live in a world in which there are cracks and flaws’, and in a world where there are cracks and flaws, things will go wrong. There will be natural disasters, there will be physical disasters. 

The cancer is as a manifestation I think of a crack and flaw of creation. And there will be relationship disasters. That is the reality of the life in which we live. And what Paul then comes in and says is that with the death and resurrection of Jesus, a new reality comes and lays on top of the old reality. So the new reality is of new creation, where we are…so his vision is that come the end of all time we will return to a moment in which everything is perfect again. There will be harmony between Heaven and Earth.

You won’t need a sun because the sun from God will be shining on us and there will be harmony, there will be wholeness, there will be peace. And what Paul is talking about is with Jesus’s death and resurrection, the new creation lies with the old creation. So from time to time you will see moments of perfection, you will see the moments of resurrection, and those are the moments that keep us going in the difficult time. But the really important thing for Paul is we still live in old creation. So although you’ve got new creation lying on top, you’ve still got old creation lying underneath. So if you want to ask the question of why is the world as awful as it is, it’s because we’re living in old creation.

Why can I see glimpses of hope in the future? It’s because we’ve got new creation laying on top, but the two functioning side by side until we get to the end of all time. And it’s a bit of complex theology, but I find it’s the most helpful theology of all to go, ‘well, why do things go wrong?’ You know, and it’s across the board why do things go wrong? 

You know, I tried in that particular situation to be the best person that I could and be in a really great relationship with so and so when it went wrong, why did it go wrong? Well, because we’re living in the cracked and flawed world. 

Why did your body suddenly decide to turn on itself? Because we live in a cracked and flawed world and not Eden. And it’s, I just find it a really, really helpful explanation to say… it gives you an explanation of why things are as they are. It also gives you an explanation of the hope that you can look for. There are there are moments, there are moments when resurrection happens, there are moments…and that’s the healing stuff to return full circle to the healing.

There are a few moments when healing does happen. It doesn’t mean it always will. It doesn’t mean that you won’t ever need it because everything will be perfect. But there will be a few moments when resurrection kind of breaks through.

Gillian: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s a beautiful illustration I kind of want…I’m not an arty person at all, but you kind of need it in a picture, don’t you? 

Paula: You do need somebody to draw it, and I’m not arty either. I do it with my hands, but I can’t do it…But yeah, you need some kind of kind of visual depiction of it for it to make proper sense. 

Gillian: Yeah, yeah. But I wonder, you know, and you basically told, you know, you beautifully painted it with words that were living in the sort of the sandwich almost between now, now and not yet, old create a new creation. But it’s just we’re stuck in the middle and that sometimes can feel really ambivalent place for people who are ill or going through difficulty. And I wonder, you know, out of this, I’m living in this ambivalence, you’ve got the threads of the different denominations and how they work out, how to live in here…because…And I grew up in the Scottish Presbyterian and so I’m still Scottish, but I’m no longer Presbyterian. But it is there somewhere in me – I’m an Anglican now – that somehow we need to work our way out of this, in this life. And I have a bit of Paul in my head, and I’m very anxious saying this to Pauline scholar. You know, we have that bit from Romans, she says nervously…the creation is groaning and waiting for the glory of the revelation of the children of God.

Paula: Yes, Romans eight.

Gillian: I knew you’d know it! We have to be busy! You know, we have been doing stuff that we have to be active in order to usher in the new kingdom. And gosh, that can be a pressure sometimes, as well can’t it. So it’s handling that. I wonder what you’d say about that. 

Paula: It’s…well…Yes. Oh, so much, so much. I mean, it’s really interesting. We, we, we struggle don’t we, between…am…so you got on the one hand, I’ve got to work really, really hard and if I work really, really hard, then I would bring the kingdom in and some kind of way…through to, there’s absolutely nothing we can do. We just have to wait and there’s no point even helping, you know, social justice – no point to it, because actually, the world is so cracked and flawed there’s nothing we can do to change it. And you want to go both attitudes are wrong – that there, that we are called to be in the middle.

I mean, the example you use from Romans eight is a fascinating one because Paul uses the image of labour in there, which I think is really helpful, for being in labour and when you’re about to have a baby, which is the most active thing. So your body is incredibly active in labour, but actually you’re not doing anything. I spent labour lying on the bed going ‘get away from me, don’t touch me,’ against my birth plan – because I wasn’t doing anything but my body was labouring. And I think there is something about that recognition of it being in the middle is a little bit like labour, labouring, is that we are doing a whole load of things. It’s both active and passive waiting, all at the same time, all kind of wrapped into one and and I kind of want to go. Yes, we do, we are called to act in the world in order to show God’s love. But God’s love exists whether we show it or not and it’s getting that balance right. I often think, particularly in Christian circles that the weight can lie on people to, to feel as though if I do not bring about the kingdom, the kingdom will not exist. And I regularly want to go no, the kingdom exists whether you bring about the kingdom or not. But actually, why would you not want to join in with God’s great act of kingdom, kingdom values, the kingdom in the world.

And so it’s ah – no it’s not down to you, but wouldn’t it be great to join in is where I want to kind of get us into the middle place. And if, if you find yourself unable to do anything to bring about the kingdom – kingdom is still there. But at the same time, wouldn’t it be great for you to be able to show God’s love because God’s love exists, that people can’t see it if you can’t, if you don’t show it. So it’s, it’s at both ends – totally the now and the not yet and the both /and. You can tell what I like, is something altogether, I’m a classic Anglican. 

Gillian: I love that. Why not join in? I think, listen, you should be the new tagline for the Church of England: ‘Come on. Just join in..’ 

So we in the Guild we run courses in the healing ministry, and it’s all online at the moment, and that’s fine. And we usually do a good session, do quite a lot on the miracles. And at the end of one of the sessions, I said any questions and somebody asked a really good question. And I said I wanted to ask it to you. And she said, ‘don’t you think the healing miracles cause just cause more problems than they solve for today’s church?’

I thought it was a really insightful question, because so often we talk about mission and then add on the healing ministry, we can get into some quite tricky pastoral ground as well. 

Paula: Yes. 

Gillian: So I wonder so, healing the gospel healings more, more more problems than they solve? What do you think? 

Paula: I, I assume that what the person meant was that…and therefore there is the expectation that we will go out and do/ be healing like Jesus did. I’m just wondering what the, what the problems are. 

Gillian: So I think, yeah that, but also that when you try to talk to people about, you know, the church could be a place of healing and human flourishing for you, the reply might be ‘but you believe all that mumbo jumbo. And the world is so rubbish, I see no evidence of miracles today, so you must be crackers. 

Paula: Yes. 

Gillian: So it’s sort of from a missional kind of marketing point of view, rather than a wanting people to go and perform miracles point of view. 

Paula: So yes, I think it’s a it’s been a problem for the church ever since David Hume hasn’t it really? Who also was anti Jesus’s miracles. And I think the challenge we’ve got is that I think they’re vital in the Gospels, becomes what the miracles tell us in the Gospels is who Jesus is. And often we get our focus wrong on them. So what what we try and do is try and work out how on earth the stilling of the storm happened, when you missed the point of it? So the stilling of the storm, the point of it is that God at the dawn of time brought order out of the chaos of the sea. So therefore, Jesus in the middle of the chaos of the sea also brings order. So what, what the Gospels are telling you is who do you think this person is? Look, here is someone who can calm the chaos of the seas. Who does that remind you of? And then there is God who creates the whole of the human world, and Jesus comes and recreate the whole of the human world. Now, who does that remind you of? So what they’re trying to tell you is who Jesus is. So that’s that’s where we’re…one of the lines I often have when I’m trying to talk to people about the Gospels generally is the difficulty that we have in the 21st century is that the Gospels were designed to tell you – into a first century audience to give you proof of who Jesus was. And there were various things that they do; they do things about showing the history, they do things about the miracles which would have been cast iron proof to a first century audience who Jesus was and what Jesus came to do. The problem is, in the 21st century, we have different criteria by what counts as cast iron proof. And so therefore the proof for the audience kind of falls rather flat for the 21st century audience because we go ‘you can’t expect us to believe that can you?’

And I think that’s where your person is right, they do cause more problems than they solve is that they’re trying to persuade people who aren’t us of the veracity of who Jesus was. So that’s kind of where we find ourselves. And then you have to do, well, what therefore do we do about the fact that they’re trying to prove to a different audience the essence of who Jesus was? And I would rather go with explaining to people what it was all about. But of course I’m an academic and I’m not talking to the people outside of the church who are going well ‘miracles clearly prove that you’re all into mumbo jumbo’, and I’m not quite sure how you bridge that gap.

I mean, the other thing that is worth saying, as you will know from your ministry, is that healing does still happen. It doesn’t happen necessarily in the places you’re looking for it. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s, you know, I’m not one of those people who, you know, every now and then you find groups of people out on the pavement getting…praying for people for healing. And I go, oh, no, don’t do that, oh, that’s awful. I’m not that kind of person. But actually, I do know stories of people who have been healed and healed in all sorts of different ways, normally in ways they weren’t expecting. But healing does happen. And so I think we have to try and weave a narrative about the fact that actually we do believe healing has happened from time to time. We do believe that the stories in the Gospels tell us something fundamental, like who Jesus is. We wouldn’t tell them like that these days, but nevertheless they do. It’s of course not a soundbite culture, it’s a lot more complex than that, and it gets you into nuance and people don’t like nuance because they prefer soundbites these days. So that’s what, I would agree with your person wholeheartedly, while at the same time going, yeah but we’re stuck with it and we need to do something with it. 

Gillian: Yeah, yeah. It’s beautiful, I think. Yeah. And you’re right, I think talking about it theoretically is great. And as a scientist, I find it really hard to talk about miracles because like, like you, I’ve had personal experience not related to cancer, just kind of mundane experience of of getting better very quickly and something. But then later finding out somebody was praying for me and actually that freaking me out a little bit, like, I don’t know what that’s about, but hearing lots of stories about unexplained healings. And as a scientist, I said that that remains unexplained because science may yet come up with some understanding of, of human consciousness and how we interrelate to one another or what’s going on in the body. There may yet be an explanation. And part of me doesn’t say, well, we don’t want to gamble our faith on definitely deciding that’s a miracle because science might later come along…so I’m sort of cautious but when that hits pastoral ministry and people facing the ill and the dying and wanting to offer hope, then it’s…it’s…it’s…it’s about, I think turning around, a sort of not forgetting the science, not forgetting the theology, but meeting the person face to face and being the presence of Jesus at that moment. And sometimes even I say, you know, just being the person in the room that carries on believing in God, despite what you’re witnessing.

Paula: Yes. 

Gillian: And am there’s a way of doing it. And I sometimes think, Paula, I wish I did sell miracles in the Guild because I would make heaps of money – people would love it. But that’s not what we can do. And we’ve got to be OK with ambivalence and a lot of our training is helping people handle those tricky questions in their situations, and finding support for themselves as they’re doing it because it can be costly. 

Paula: And also just to say you don’t have to believe things like, you don’t have to believe stuff that you’re really struggling with. You know, I think for me, one of the things I want to say is, you know, there are things that just feel beyond our ability to comprehend. And you, as you said about science, there are things we don’t understand yet. I kind of want to go to things about faith we don’t understand either and that’s OK. You can. I got a little kind of in my head, a little box of stuff I just don’t get. And I take it out from time to time.

And sometimes I go, oh I understand that a bit better now. And another times I go, no still not got that. And that’s okay. There is a kind of a myth around Christianity that it’s a kind of a big, solid thing and you’ve got to have absolutely everything in it. And if you don’t have absolutely everything in it, you’re not a proper Christian. And I go, no, that’s just fundamental ‘do you believe in God, a God who loves the world?’ Personally, I would add into that ‘and do you believe in Jesus who rose from the dead, who died for us and rose from the dead? There’d be some people who go died for us, yes, rose from the dead – not so much, but even still they’re very kind of powerful Christians. And I wanted to say, that’s okay. You know, you don’t have to believe it all.

Gillian: And I think we still have this – we also have the same mythological view of science that is of, you know, it is an entity which has all the answers. Actually, it’s not. We’ve got these fuzzy edges and faith and theology has got these fuzzy edges, these fuzzy lands we can have theses conversations…

Paula: Absolutely. I remember when I was pregnant, I had a long conversation with my doctor going, ‘precisely how does the placenta work? I always wanted to know how the placenta works.’ And he went, ‘d’you know, I’m not entirely sure. We know that it does, and that’s great.’ But it was really, it was interesting that for him, he could just go. ‘It just does.’ And I thought for me, there was something in that about how you inhabit stuff is that the things that you understand and are very clear about and there are other bits where you don’t understand them, but that’s okay. 

Gillian: Yeah, OK. And actually this leads us nice. I wanted to chat a little bit about the church because we have robes and we have pulpits and people who stand in them and they don’t often, you know, and not talking personally about anyone, but the kind of, the  caricature is people in robes in pulpits telling you what to think. 

Paula: Yep. 

Gillian: And and the church we can see has been a source of health and healing over the centuries ever since Jesus healed and we had the parable of the Good Samaritan. And some scholars have argued that the growth of the early church is directly linked to the kind of social action it did, the work it did and so on. So it’s always been there, but there’s another side of the church that has inhabited authority and power in a negative way. And sometimes I get the question, mostly on social media I have to say, no one really says it to my face: ‘but how can you run a healing organisation, a Christian healing organisation when the church has caused so much harm in the past?

So this, this season of our podcast is called Learning to Heal, so it’d be great to explore with you, what can the church teach us about learning to heal? Maybe we covered that theologically, but what has the church still got to learn about about healing if it’s going to continue to be a force for ushering in God’s kingdom today? 

Paula: Humility. That’s it, really. I think where the church has gone wrong and continues to go wrong is where we forget to say ‘and we get everything wrong, too’. And I think it’s is there’s a double, double bind around it is that the church so easily forgets to say it and you particularly it doesn’t look like it’s saying it when you’ve got people swanning around in robes in a very grand building, it doesn’t look like the church is being very humble and we need to be much better at saying, firstly, we are desperately sorry for all the ways in which we have got things wrong, and let us tell you about what they are and why we’re so sorry. And we are also aware that we are probably getting other things wrong that we’re not aware of at the moment. So becoming just much better at inhabiting that humble place of saying we know we get things wrong. 

I think there’s another issue, though, of a perception and I get it a lot from people, a perception of church that if, if anything is to be of any value, it is back to the stuff and I’ve been talking about all the way through, really, it has to be perfect. If I can show you that your institution is not perfect. And actually, I’ve undermined the entirety of everything that you do, and I know it happens, it’s not just in church, it happens to everyone. It particularly happens to celebrities on social media, you know, they are either the perfect celebrity who has never done anything wrong at all, or they are absolutely awful and deserve to be vilified from morning till night. And there’s no middle position. So it’s also just worth noting that people love to find imperfections and then to say, and therefore, I don’t have to believe you for all the other things. And it’s about getting back to that recognition that we are not perfect, and we need to be very clear about the fact that we’re not perfect. But actually, we, we know, you know, back to Romans – ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, especially us.’ And being confident about saying that and being comfortable about saying that and saying back to the people who are going, ‘but I can show you all your imperfections.’ We are fully aware of all our imperfections…maybe not all of them, tell us a few more, but we’re fully aware of that but we do not think that that undermines the Gospel of love that we have to proclaim.

Gillian: And we’re in Advent season now. And of course, the beginning of the church was,  you could say, a non-perfect start. You know, they’ve got this. 

Paula: It doesn’t get less perfect than that. 

Gillian: So maybe good in humility to remember all that. This might be a good season to be thinking through that. So we’re in Advent, and it’s often the time where people cause themselves huge amounts of stress, make themselves ill with getting ready for Christmas. And in this interesting season, we remember our childhoods – it can bring back good stuff, it can bring back bad stuff. We are in the second Christmas of Covid, although I really hope that doesn’t catch on like a kind of label. But you know, it’s been difficult, it continues to be difficult.

And then there’s a weight of materialism at a time when people have perhaps been stretched. What can you give us Paula? I’m sorry. At the end of the podcast, I’m looking for a few final pearls. Here we are, we’re in the season of holy waiting. How can, how do you suggest that people wait well for the birth of Jesus Christ in 2021? 

Paula: Oh, what do I suggest? I think – be gentle. That would be my biggest thing. Waiting is about gentleness, is about giving yourself the space to be and to breathe and to, to become clearer about what it is that you’re waiting for. I mean, I think, one of things I like, the reason I love Advent is that it becomes clear to me each Advent that I am waiting for something slightly different each year. And you have to wait, you have to concentrate on these and you have to kind of wait when it comes into focus and some years it does and some years it doesn’t. But what is it that the birth of God made flesh, the Word made flesh this year, what is it, what is it that you are really waiting for? Give yourself the time to stop and think and breathe and be gentle. And remember our theme of the podcast – you don’t need to be perfect. Nothing needs to be perfect. Screeching in at the last moment is perfectly acceptable. Even missing the last moment is also acceptable. But that actually what we’re really waiting for, is to understand the fresh, what it means for light to shine in the darkness and what that means to you this year. Wait for it. And what I find is a lovely thing to do in Advent is, is kind of, if you can at the start of Advent begin to formulate your question for the Advent of this year and then ask yourself every day, light a candle. Ask yourself every day the question and see whether it gets any clearer or not. It can be a really helpful thing to do, I think.

Gillian: Paula, thank you so much, Dr. Paula Gooder, thank you so much for joining us on the GoHealth podcast, for inspiring us to continue to learn to heal, to join in with what God is up to in our lives, and to help us understand more deeply the Christian mission to promote a whole person approach to health and healing in, in these extraordinary times. Thank you so much. 

Paula: Thank you. Pleasure to be with you.

Gillian:  So that was my conversation with Dr. Paula Gooder, Canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral. What did you think? Thank you so much for listening. What an inspiring thinker. I think we need more Paula’s in the church, right?

We’d love to know what you thought about Paula and the podcast, so why not head over to our page on Facebook, The Guild of Health and St. Raphael and let us know. I’ll be posting a link to the podcast there, so maybe just add a comment below, it would be great to hear from you! And it would be great if you wanted to join in the conversation. 

If Paula has inspired you to do something this different, different this Advent rather. And you’re listening to this before Christmas 2021 it’s not too late to sign up to the app and journey ‘Waiting Well.’ So if you’re interested in that, that’s a journey where we send you an email every day to inspire you with readings and prayers and other great spiritual writers, as well as practices for Advent.

If you want to get that into your inbox every day this Advent, you just need to sign up over on our website and there’s links on the website. If you go to our website, GoHealth.org.uk  and in the menu you’ll see Advent Journey 2021 and there you will find all the details, but only if you listen to this before Christmas 2021. Otherwise, it won’t be there and you have to wait for Advent 2022 for another Advent journey. If you are on our website, you will also find there information about courses, other events and blogs and our membership community, the GoHealth community. And this is where it all happens. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, you will love the GoHealth community. There we’ve got a group of people together and every month they get a bundle of resources to explore health and faith and Christian living. You also get discounts on like everything or it’s free for members and there’s an online community associated, all of this for just £4 a month. So do head over there. If you enjoyed this podcast, you will love the GoHealth community.

Thank you, Wendy, for producing this brilliant podcast. Please rate and subscribe to it. It will make Wendy’s day it will make my day because we are dedicated to this project and we want as many people as possible to experience Paula’s conversation and all of the others too. That would be amazing if you could rate and subscribe. So in the meantime, God bless. Let’s connect and chat. Let’s keep learning to heal because together we flourish.