The Medicine Inside

Backstory

You will note from the date at the end of this December Newsletter, that I am very late to write for this month. I have tried many topics, thinking while lying in bed at night or early morning – only to have each of them collapse after a paragraph or two. Our current times are so dissonant and wretched for so many, that I couldn’t discern any potent theme that could ground the discord. (And isn’t that what any decent Christmas or year-end holiday wisdom piece should be able to accomplish?)

So once again, I sit down to write, and see what can emerge.

And I notice, strange that not a single telemarketer has interrupted me – surely the gods are urging me onward this time.

Medicine

I heard someone, whom I respect, say the other day, “All the medicine we need is inside us.” And that has intrigued me. But I need to revisit the word “medicine” toward a more ancient and richer understanding. Today it primarily just means “pills” or something from a particular aisle in a drug or grocery store. It’s meant to make us feel better, to get rid of something that hinders our comfort.

Historically: The term “medicine” originates from the Latin word for physician, reflecting its long-standing connection to healing practices throughout history (Wikipedia).

I like the positive sense or frame of reference of medicine being that which brings or enhances our well-being.

In Native American Creation narrative, the Creator dips his hands into (his) a “Medicine Bag” to “Create” something new, and “new” seems to be something additional “for the sake of the people.” Hence the sense of medicine as an act of creation, making something better.

Connection with the Earth

Before our time of boxing knowledge into logical systems, the knowledge of Nature was the primary source of life education and wisdom. (And often it was the story-teller who was the primary purveyor of such knowledge.) Most traditional medicine people, had a deep connection with the earth. They knew the medicinal secrets of plants, herbs, ‘elements of the earth’ that already ‘knew by nature.’ Where often humans would get out of balance it made sense that what the earth knew by its own native balance, would be a source of such rebalancing for humans. One of the mantras of the Natives I’ve been able to spend time with was:

“Balance and Blessings, Blessings and Balance, for from Balance comes all Blessings “

[Today, often their email signature is “B&B” – a representation of their cosmology and their pharmacopaea.]

Reconnection

Back when I was old enough (becoming an elder) and the recipient of an embarrassing array of prescriptions, and yet maintaining an awareness that most original medicine had its origin in the earth, I would look at my collection of pills – and realize each of these medicines came from buildings with hordes of stainless steel machines, and surrounded by investors who insist on it making a profit from it – whatever was I to do? So I came up with this little blessing:

Bless this medicine to the nurture of my body and my soul. May it remember its source in the Earth around us¹, and from that source bring me health, strength, balance, and protection.

My hope was to create a bypass around those stainless steel behemoths and investors, and get my pills back in touch with Nature, the original medicine source.

I am not anti modern pharmacopeia – except for its worship of the profit god and human greed. It has been able to bless many with extended life and comfort. But it can also be like getting your best sex from a prostitute.

Connection with Spirit

Some years ago, I was able to attend a day-long workshop with the late Eliot Cowan, author of Plant Spirit Medicine. (pub 1995 & 2014) He had widely studied the healing plants of our Southwest and northern Mexico. We asked him if we needed to travel down there to get that healing – but his response was “No, it’s the spirit of the plant that heal, and up here (the Northern Woodlands), the same spirits attach to our own local plants, so we can have local access to the same healings.”

I’ve been privileged for over a third of a century to hang around a number of Native Americans who have an active knowledge of plant medicine. I don’t use the word ‘spiritual’ of their knowledge, because for them everything is connected with Spirit.² And since healing is a gift – a free gift of ‘Mother Nature,’ my tribe would never take money for healings.

The Medicine Inside (back to my title)

My mentor, Michael Meade, in his current writing and podcasts, is quick to remind us that when we are surrounded by such chaos, as is evident in our world today, that wisdom’s antidote is to Go Down Inside. As if sometimes, that’s all we have left for resources and understanding (standing under). That’s not necessarily an escape, it’s a human and cultural necessity The recurring cycles of history can remind us that times of chaos and darkness can take us down. Almost as a cleansing. And the task of a government or culture, is in the meantime (double meaning) to protect the people who are most vulnerable.³

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Initiations

Indigenous peoples understand the necessity of initiation. For example, a young man is trained in the arts of survival and the wisdom of nature. Then he is sent out, on his own, to be tested by ordeal. If he survives, he’s welcomed back among his people as an adult. Women can have their own initiation, usually or often from their own bodies. Often ‘going down’ is a depression – as in many of the old teaching stories. In our culture, depression is considered a medical disease to be avoided, and our “medicine” is meant to forestall or fix it. It’s often noted that we are being governed these days by “uninitiated olders’”(not elders) who are ever prone to their own childish power plays. ‘Nuff said.

Much of my own livelihood involves trusting and guiding individuals and couples through the (often midlife) difficulties, by which a maturity emerges that can honor the deep soul which is the hidden birthright of each of us. Sometimes I’ll refer to myself as a “midwife” of these matters. I help mediate what Nature knows the need to accomplish.

And life gives us ordeals: illness, death, disaster, loss, betrayal, (an almost endless list). The ‘suffering’ of an initiatory ordeal is often meant to “allow”⁴ or even birth a more mature character or identity to emerge – and for the benefit of the larger population/‘people.’ (That’s why I can enjoy being good at marriage counseling, though it can be a lot of work.)

And so the Holidays

At least some of our Winter holidays – involve our ‘going down’ – even when the (northern hemisphere) Sun, the source of Life, is at its weakest, involves a going within, going down. And in that ritual going down, a new life (year) emerges.

At Christmas we consider an infant child born in poverty and obscurity, a long way from home, initially greeted only by the animals and shepherds (Earth folks) – who as an adult preached repentance (going down inside), giving up even self, to gain a greater Self (the Kingdom of God), and he himself had to die so that the rest of us could Live anew. And so we go down – with him and arise (cf as in a Baptism) with healing gifts for the world.

And so, as a Christian, with our Advent preparation coming to a close, I wish you a

Merry Christmas – and the blessing of whatever your own mid-Winter Festivaling offers, to grow and heal you

The world needs us to

Pay Attention

Footnotes

¹ I personally use “Our Mother the Earth” since I’m personally comfortable with that spiritual language.

² A close tribe-friend, Osahmin, (Judith Meister), now passed over), wrote The Spirit of Healing – A Journal of Plants & Trees ©2004 (200 pages), just so all the wisdom she attained in years of apprenticeship to our late tribal elder, Grandmother Keewaydinoquay, would remain available for “the people of tomorrow.” (I have one of the wire-bound originals, complete with coffee stains from somewhere.) It’s still available in paperback on Amazon for $16.

³ An archetypal model is the Old Testament story of Joseph (Genesis chapters 37-50). He ‘went down’ three times, 1^stwhen his brothers tried to kill him by throwing him into a desert pit, 2^nd , when he went down into Egypt as a slave, and 3^rdwhen he was thrown into prison. Then he became a famous interpreter of dreams. Pharaoh paid attention to him, and the whole of the territory (even Joseph’s own people) was saved from a disastrous seven-year famine.

^4, One of the old root meanings of “to suffer, means “to allow” (suffer=sub-ferro, ‘support from below’) such as in St. Matthew 19:14 (KJV), Jesus tells his disciples to “Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

Bill McDonald

December 20, 2025