L. Robert Keck has spent seven decades "navigating the changing rapids of illness" with polio, a broken back, chronic pain, and crippling. With a master's degree in theology and a doctorate in the philosophy of health, he has served on the medical school faculty of The Ohio State University, founded and managed a corporate wellness consulting firm, and was president of Boulder Graduate School. He currently teaches at the Graduate Theological Union, the University of Creation Spirituality, and Iliff School of Theology. He is the author of four books including Sacred Quest in which he shares his major ideas as an evolutionary theologian. All of this experience makes him uniquely qualified to sit in the catbird seat and ponder what he calls "a profoundly promising and catalytic synergy between medicine and spirituality."
The subtitle of this book, A Story of Personal, Medical and Spiritual Transformation, provides a fitting overview of the proceedings. Keck believes that healing is an "escalation of meaning and purpose, growth and development" as the mind, body, and spirit work together. The inner healer comes alive as "the soul-self" keeps renewing itself on the journey through life.
Keck has some interesting things to say about prayer, the wisdom of the heart, dreams, and miracles. He is encouraged by the attitudes of physicians who have acknowledged the mysteries involved in the healing process. He hopes that more clergy will take up the challenges of applying spirituality to health challenges. And he is confident that members of the baby boom generation will take seriously the out-of-the-box possibilities inherent in mind-body interactions. He envisions a future when more people will read the inherent spiritual teachings in their illnesses and call upon a variety of helpers for help in their recoveries. This book is a very helpful overview of spirituality and healing.
