Healers’ hands blessed by many faiths

St Mark’s Hospital in Salt Lake holds an annual Blessing of the Hands of healers. It’s the hospital where Mom was during her last illness, and our family got a lot of support from the Episcopal priest who runs their pastoral care program, Fr. Lincoln Ure. This event sounds just like Fr. Linc; I experienced the regular Wednesday Eucharist with him and some of the staff when Mom was upstairs, and the following week, I had to go back after she passed. Those people are some powerful healers, and I got a sense of how deeply they care for one another’s spiritual needs.

Healers’ hands blessed by many faiths – Salt Lake Tribune

Few of the St. Mark’s Hospital employees who reached out their hands for a blessing from Imam Shuaib-Ud Din understood the words he spoke in Arabic.

But that didn’t much matter.

It was a gift to be received, one of many Wednesday during the eighth annual Blessing of the Hands at St. Mark’s.

An estimated 100 of the hospital’s 1,600 employees spent time on the lawn at the rear of the hospital, washing their hands in blessed water and having their hands, palms upturned, blessed by Din of the Utah Islamic Center, representatives of the Buddhist, Episcopal and LDS faiths, a nondenominational chaplain and an Arapaho healer.