This has been a very interesting discussion, with many excellent points made. I find myself most in agreement with Jake Lindstrom; the issue that bothers me most about "Healing Circle" threads is not religious, but privacy related.

Folks, everything we post here is visible to anyone in the whole world with access to the Internet. I think that the well-wishers of the Healing Circle need to remember that discussion of a third party's medical or emotional condition WITHOUT their express consent on the World Wide Web is a grievous breach of privacy.

I think Kat's idea of establishing a Private e-mail circle of multi-faith individuals who would like to dedicate their thoughts, prayers and good wishes for those in need is a good one. People who want to contact the Healing Circle could just post a thread saying "Healing Circle help wanted", giving their E-mail or personal Mudcat addresses in the thread body to contact for details. That way, Kat and other folks who want to help will still get the request, but we won't have public discussions of other peoples' private traumas.

I'm a molecular biologist in the medical field. I don't know whether prayer and healing energy are effective, but I don't think anyone in this group is advocating that any of the people they wish well can get better or solve their crises solely by relying on the Healing Circle. As the old joke about chicken soup goes "It couldn't hurt!" Giving someone a stack of warm messages of support and love to help them through a hard time is a compassionate and charitable thing to do - exposing their hard time to the whole world, however, is not. Let's try to move the Healing Circle communications to the private world of E-mail and personal messages.