Last night I watched one of my favorite movies that debuted in 1980. Resurrection starred Ellen Burstyn, Sam Shepard, Eva Le Galliene, Richard Farnsworth and Roberts Blossom. It is the story of Edna Mae McCauley, who in the first 10 minutes or so of the film, has a Near Death Experience (NDE) in an accident. When she returns, after having a glimpse of the Other Side, she is told by a doctor that because of the severe injuries she suffered, she won’t walk again. Traveling cross country with her sullen, angry and distant father, she returns home from California to Kansas. En route, they stop at a gas station where they are greeted by Esco Brown (Richard Farnsworth) who is of a spiritual bent and has on his bucket list to visit Machu Pichu. He has a sign painted on an old tire rim hanging on a wall that reads “God is love and versa visa,’ a phrase that remains with Edna Mae. As she leaves his presence, he places his hand on her head, offering a blessing.

While at a family picnic, she discovers that she has an ability to stop a nose bleed in a young niece which sets her on a path of being a conduit for healing energy for herself and others. Miraculous encounters have her stanching blood from a knife wound, restoring hearing to a deaf man, helping a woman walk again after severe spinal injury; oh and she defies the prediction from her doctor and walks again.  She attracts the interest of scientists who validate her abilities and beckons the heart of the man she stopped from bleeding to death. Cal (Sam Shepard) becomes her lover and then an obsessed religious fanatic; having been raised by a ‘holy roller’ father. Since Edna Mae does not proclaim that The Holy Spirit heals through her- what she knows is the love is the essential element; he and his father assume that the work is of a less than benign source and are determined to take her down.

Good prevails in this tale and reminds me that healers come in all configurations and love is the Source, regardless of what name you give to it.