When I told my doctor recently that I sometimes felt more strength in the middle of weight-lifting than I did at the beginning he said, "That's because your body is recruiting more muscle."

   I had never thought of bodies in terms of "recruiting" muscle. Maybe this explains how small women can lift huge cars – if the car is crushing their child. 

   Maybe this is how old men can run marathons and how some cancer patients condemned to die in six months end up living six years. Perhaps this is how human beings recruit enough muscle to climb Mount Everest.

   And maybe this is how ordinary painters change the movement of their hands to become great artists. They recruit spiritual energy the rest of us leave idle.

   "We're all so much stronger than we think we are," I heard author Norman Cousins say twenty years ago. At the time, he was about ten years beyond a terminal diagnosis.

   How did Cousins "recruit" sacred strength?

   He laughed. 

   In Cousins' book, Anatomy of an Illness, he describes watching Groucho Marx and other comedians. He claims laughter released healing strengths in his body. His evidence was his survival.

   Can we "recruit" spiritual strength in this way? Is this what Cousins was doing?

   Dr. Victor Frankl hypothesized that focusing on something meaningful opens the door to spiritual (and survival) strength. Meaning is the medicine that fuels hope. 

   Hope is the key to recruiting spiritual strength. Without it, we are lost. With it, we can survive against all logic. 

   The analogy between recruiting physical strength and awakening spiritual power seems clear. We need to work at nurturing our spirits just as we need to exercise to build muscle.

   We need to know that we carry within us a well of sacred energy far deeper than we imagine in our ordinary hours. This power, however, will only arise if we find the courage and the faith to call on it. 

   If we fail to exercise our spirits, our earthly soul withers. We need laughter, the encouraging presence of friends, Beauty, and the waters of Love to thrive in this world.

   This is a key gift healing caregivers offer. They help recruit hope for their patients, for their fellow caregivers and, thus, for themselves.

   When we provide these rays of hope we receive a great gift: God's gratitude.

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph: Painter's Hand – copyright Erie Chapman 2011