As our nation debates health care, we might do well to use the do-it-yourself approach my health care provider uses.
In this approach, my provider is more like a medical co-op. I'm not a patient, I'm a co-worker. Of course, the method isn't perfect.
Take, for example, when I call for an appointment to renew blood pressure medications. I'm told to press 1 if I speak English; 2 if I speak Spanish and 911 if I'm having a medical or psychiatric emergency.
Unable to detect any response other than my disgusted exhaling, the computer suggests I make my own appointment at the provider's do-it-yourself Web site.
Displeased with that suggestion as well, I opt to wait and speak to a carbon-based unit.
I wait. And I wait. My blood pressure rises a tick. In the interim, the computer offers a menu of other helpful services: prescription refills, shots, healthy eating advice, etc. The long list drives me crazy. What was that number for psychiatric emergencies again?
I wonder what it would be like if I applied this medical co-op model to chaplaincy. I suppose I could simply open a Web site.
Hurting people could post all their secret confessions on the site. You could only read the confessions if you pinky-swore not to tell anyone.
The sick would place one hand on the computer screen and the other hand on the place that ails them. A digital voice would proclaim in the accent of a televangelist, "Come out ye demons of sickness."
While I'm being facetious to suggest such a do-it-yourself chaplaincy, I do think we might more seriously consider do-it-yourself prayers. Truthfully, some studies demonstrate a clear health benefit of prayer. In an article titled, "Can You Pray Your Way to Health?" Gregg Easterbrook, author and contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, quotes several studies that encourage self-help prayer.
The studies show people who pray regularly enjoy the benefits of lower blood pressure. If you can keep your blood pressure low, you eliminate some of the biggest killers in medicine.
One of the most interesting studies quoted by Easterbrook concerned depression, both everyday depressions as well as clinical depression.
"Christian patients found that prayer accelerated recovery from depression caused by illness. ... Muslims found that prayer accelerated recovery from 'anxiety disorder,' a mild form of clinical depression suffered by many people."
He closes the article with the surprising claim from the American Cancer Society, which declared, "Sometimes, answers come from prayer when medical science has none."
This all goes to show you, if you want prayer done right, sometimes you just have to do it yourself.
Norris Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain.