items of interest

with contributions from Larry Dossey, lrene Monroe, Claudia Combs

Healing hearts

A STUDY CONDUCTED by Dr. William Harris at Kansas City's Mid-America Heart St. Luke's Hospital has shown that patients who were prayed for did 11 percent better than those in the control group. "The patients who were prayed for, just did better. . . . I mean everything that word means," said Dr. Harris.

From a sample of more than 990 patients suffering from serious heart conditions, 524 were randomly assigned to a control group. The 466 patients who remained were prayed for daily by five separate volunteers who were not on hospital property. The prayers began one day after the patients were admitted and continued for twenty-eight days. Neither the patients nor their physicians knew that the study was being conducted or that the intercessory prayers were being made.

Reported by The Kansas City Star
October 25, 1999

NAUGHTY GENES

"THESE DAYS JUST about everyone is entranced by what science writer Margaret Wertheim calls the Genes-R-Us view. This is the idea that our thoughts and behavior are determined by our genes and the DNA that comprise them. Genes are being invoked to explain everything from sexual preference, schizophrenia, alcoholism, and criminal behavior to wife beating. People are astonishingly willing to surrender their volition to these little intracellular dictators. ls it because this takes them off the hook and allows them to plead 'not guilty' because their genes made them do it?"

Dr. Larry Dossey
"Healing and Modern Physics"
Alternative Therapies
July 1999

On failure and success

"FAILURE AFFORDS US the opportunity to be a new being. One who has evolved and is still evolving. It reminds me of this saying my pastor would relate to me from time to time in light of my successes and failures . . . . 'lrene, you ain't what you ought to be, but thank God you ain't what you used to be.' "

Dr. lrene Monroe
"Learning to Embrace Failure"
The Sounding Board
Autumn, 1999

A "Ten-Point" victory

"NINE OUT OF 10 kids who get into trouble with the law are generally pretty good," says Rev. Eugene Rivers, "and one persists in antisocial behavior. I tell the police they can have the one if they give me the other nine."

Rivers, who is one of about forty religious leaders who have joined in the Boston [MA] Ten-Point Coalition, isn't kidding. The members of the Coalition work with the police to ensure that the "one" who gets in trouble receives justice and that the other nine enter programs that will lead them in positive directions. Many people attribute a "miraculous" drop in violent crime to the willingness of the Coalition and the police to work together to save youth.

Reported by Ford Foundation Report
Spring/Summer 1999

LOOK FOR THE LIGHT

"EVERYWHERE, PEOPLE ARE calling this century the most violent in human history, and it's easy to fall into a pessimistic mood," says Rev. Bradford Lyle, pastor of the First United Baptist Church in Lowell, Massachusetts. "But as Christians, we need to look for light and see the good things that are happening as God working in the world."

Quoted by Claudia Combs
"Faith in the future"
The Sun [Lowell, MA]
October 31, 1999

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