The life of Mama Lola represents the life of an extraordinary woman living an ordinary life. She is courageous and she uses a metaphysical system of healing the community members in her country Haiti. Mama Lola travels from Haiti to New York and she becomes useful to the people she meets. She reworks the knowledge about metaphysical world she had acquired from her family and practices the ritual approach t pealing. Mama Lola is a Vodou traditional priestess and her close relatives support her in making the restoration of the real meaning of religion a success.
Religion here is used to refer the way Haitians understand it- the traditional way. She performs traditional rituals and magic which are used to heal community members and her. Her heart is also healed when she succeeds in making her version of religion and healing recognized in the modernized city of New York. At many times, the health of a community is in accord with that of the individuals that make the community. This is because a community is essentially comprised of individuals and families. When individuals are sick, they are a representation of the community.
A morally sick person is likely to influence other people in the community and eventually the whole community. When a person is unhealthy, it should be of communal concern. Mama Lola’s health is at one moment sacrificed for the sake of recognition of what her community believes. Mama Lola jeopardizes her moral health when she makes an insightful venture to the centre of a religious system that has been misunderstood and where women have claimed greater influence in the moral authority of the community in Haiti. Mama Lola heads a small Haitian community where she serves as a priestess. Voodoo is all about healing.
Mama Lola sacrifices her Voodoo world and lets it revolve around healing, curbing illness and preventing spiritual mischief. Much tension is generated among the New Yorkers who do not belief in Mama Lola’s spiritual magic and this disrupts their spiritual health. When she chooses to marry a spirit, she strongly shows how she is determined to sacrifice her life for the sake of the community’s spiritual health. By this sacrifice, it is like she is appeasing her ghost husband so that she may have more magic and spiritual power to heal her people both in Haiti and in New York (McCarthy, 2001, p.
39). Rupert Henry Rupert was born in 1885 in Genoa, Nevada. He was raised in a typical cultural background and depended on nature to get income. Whether the nature is destructive of our creative he was to love it with all its forces. Rupert was given instructions on healing through dream by spirit assistants. Western doctor is required to see. If too much compassion was allowed in doctors then they would soon ‘burn out’ from the weight of it all. There will be some circumstances when western doctor connects with empathy. He/she would not be human if it did not happen.
The healing system that Henry Rupert uses is that which does not embrace the latest development of both technology and science. Specifically, Rupert uses marginal systems of healing which are religion based so the healing done is at a physical and a spiritual level. The is directly linked to the effectiveness of the curing in a holistic sense. His system is based on marginal system and the way it works is based on level of empathy logic and intelligence. These methods are old and are currently in use, for the people concerned they work and work well, rebalancing and recreating their realities.
By use of Rupert’s technique, the empathy allows him to channel healing energy rather than taking the sickness into themselves. The compassion felt intensifies the connection and allows the energy to flow more easily talk to the nervous system and ask it what the cause of pain in muscles is. It is possible to ask the nervous system to rest itself to the most comfortable condition. Shaman is the normal theme of sickness and human suffering is integral to the process of initiation. This background of experience lifts the level of compassion held between practitioner and patient.
The only curative system which is different is that of Western medicine. Western medicine involves the integration of medical knowledge with computer technology. These arrangements are old and are still in use, for the people concerned they work and work well, rebalancing and recreating their realities. By using the journeys the mushrooms took One thing which is to note is that Rupert’s medication is that He lived by law of nature and helped it do his work. BY being integrated into two cultures he was able to combine the two, taking what he needed from each, to boost his healing abilities.
He is simple out to assist those who are in deep pain but not himself! May be he could if he was able. The connection he had with another culture gave him more understanding and a deeper relation to the patient could be created from this. Kindness, compassion and understanding were all important qualities instilled in him at an early age. All are important character for a societies’ healer. Mr. Rupert sacrificed his own health for the sake of the majority community member’s health (Silva & Stone, 1989, p. 121). Marta
In relation to healing systems, Marta de Jesus used herbal cure integrated with strong faith in what she believed would cure people. She served as a godmother In her community. To cure people she secluded an area which she would call holy place and run a small botanica where she could sell herbal remedies that she believed would cure her community members. Her version is a combination of both traditional spirituality and modern church ideologies and they worked for her. In her healing area, she stocked and sold paraphernalia that could heal and protect clients from ailments.
These included herbs, cleansing baths, candles for lighting to send away darkness which is associated with evil spirits, incense which could sanctify souls and heal believers, statutes for catholic saints which people would buy and belief they would pray for them to God for good health when they get ill and some stock of Yoruba gods which were mainly in form of sculpture. For propagation of the healing system, two dozens of people have been trained to become spiritist mediums and as a result, she has attracted a large number of people from her Puerto Rican community who strongly belief in her healing powers.
Since she is the lead believer in the system she uses, she is able to heal herself through spiritual intervention of her deities. When it comes to others being healed, Marta has played a key role although it is not practical how her healing powers work out. It is purely based on belief that the remedies given will cure. What can be realistic are the herbs prescribed and administered. The other associations with statues are only through placebo effect to the clients. In this case, her mental health in terms of what she believes is in accord with what the community believes in hence their mental health.
Her life is totally committed to her spiritualism so that she may serve her community with spiritual healing solutions (Hans, 2001, p. 234). Jesus According to Christians, Jesus had power over nature and he would work miracles such as healing the sick by just a world of mouth or touch of his garments. His healing system was miracles and even today, nobody has been in a position to explain how this system worked and still works through ordained people. Jesus’ service was committed to serve the community but not Himself because when He later started suffering, he deliberately declined from attacking his enemies.
Jesus was termed as the son of God but had a natural body. HE suffered illnesses just like any other person in the community. Jesus accepted to suffer physical torture for the sake of his community which is comprised of Christians.
References Hans A. B. (2001). Alternative Healing Systems. N. Y Univ of Wisconsin Press. McCarthy, K. (2001). Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. California: University of California. Silva, J & Stone, R. (1989). Healer: How To Heal Yourself And Others. Gregory: Kramer HJ.