During a recent interview, Tucson radio show host, Rabbi Cohon asked me what it is about water that is so healing (listen to PART 1, PART 2). Water seemed to him to be a common feature of many of the more than one hundred and forty sacred healing sites around the world, which he had visited the previous year. There is no question that water – seeing it, smelling it, hearing it, being in it, can calm and help heal. Perhaps ancient peoples recognized the hygienic effects of water. Swimming…

A few days after I returned to Burlington, Vermont from the Susan Sebastian event at the Southern Vermont Art Center (Part 1, Part 2), I sat down for coffee with Gil Myers, a retired attorney who had set up and now manages the Foundation. He had been a longtime friend of Susan Sebastian’s mother, Elise Braun. He had suggested we meet at a coffee house across from the Court House in downtown Burlington. A small man with white hair and twinkly eyes, he carried a gnarled wooden country walking…

Shortly before Susan Sebastian died of a life-long illness, she had told her mother, Elise Braun, that she wanted original art placed in every room in every hospital in Vermont, so tired was she of looking at the bare walls. At the suggestion of Elise’s cousin, Alex Ryley, a New York City elder law attorney who had read Healing Spaces, she and Foundation Manager Gil Myers, used the book as an inspiration and guide for selecting art throughout the seven years of the project. Elise Braun was…

I felt surreal, floating, like watching myself in a play at the Susan Sebastian Foundation capstone event, celebrating placement of original artwork in virtually every patient room in every hospital in Vermont. It was hard to wrap my mind around the idea that my book, Healing Spaces had helped to inspire this accomplishment. I had been invited to speak at the art show and reception at the Southern Vermont Art Center, celebrating the purchase of the last paintings for the last hospital –…