MAC: Spiritual Health Care, in the Orisha tradition

[Mary Ann Clark]

What degree of health care should society be expected to provide individuals?

“May you have health, wealth and all the good things of life” is a traditional blessing among Orisha devotees. Without a reasonable level of health and a certain level of wealth all the good things of life are hard to acquire and to enjoy. In the Orisha cosmological view the world of the living, our world, is like a marketplace, a bustling hub of activity where one can meet friends, buy and sell commodities, claim the fame and fortune to which one is entitled. However, not everyone’s experience of life is pleasant. When physical, mental or emotional pain and sorrow mar one’s enjoyment of this life the Orisha and the ancestors represented by their priests, priestesses and family elders stand ready to try to amend an unfortunate destiny or shield one from the machinations of those who wish one harm. Almost all religious rituals within this tradition have an element of healing regardless of whatever else is involved.

Developed at a time when scientific health care as we understand it today was off in the unforeseeable future, Orisha devotees provided what healing it could with the tools at hand. Even today, when medicine is vastly improved, many people need healing beyond that provided by scientific medicine. For many people, healing has an emotional, psychological or spiritual dimension mainstream medicine is unable or unwilling to provide. These people continue to come to the priests and priestess of the Orisha and the ancestors. These priests and priestesses believe that everyone deserves the best life their destiny allows and they are willing to work with the individual, their family and friends as well as the Orisha and the ancestors to manifest that life.

Our national health care debate has brought to the fore issues about the responsibility we as a society have toward our members that need access to health care. When I was born, just after World War II, American health care was just coming into its own. Before that time there was little physicians could do to prevent or cure most illnesses. Around that time immunizations and penicillin lead the way toward more and better health care. Today we have a plethora of both preventive and curative treatments. However, it seemed as though we as a society had decided that only certain privileged members could have access to the full range of these treatments. Those who were poor, or sick, or un- or underemployed were being denied full access to all the wonders that modern medicine had made available to those of us who could afford it.

Recent legislation has begun to move our society toward a more equitable system of health care, one that won’t favor the rich over the poor, or the well over the sick. When one of us or a member of our family is in need we will each contribute all of our wealth to bring them as back to the highest level of health possible. Now we have decided that what we each will do for our own families, we as a society will do for all our members. We have agreed to contribute a portion of our wealth to bring more people to health and all the good things of life.

“May you, your family, your friends, your neighbors and everyone in this great country of ours have health, wealth, and all the good things of life.”