Back Cover Text

Anna York has had multiple sclerosis since 1965.  The disease crippled her, caused her excruciating pain, put her in a wheelchair and an electric scooter, and wreaked havoc on all aspects of her life. In 1996, she began an extraordinary journey of healing that reversed time and disability, restoring her to vibrant, healthy life.

Anna’s story is a passionate one of loss, despair, faith and hope. It speaks of the treasures of healing and wholeness that can be discovered when we learn to trust and share across the boundaries of race, culture and religion.  It also discloses the pain and rejection that can occur when transformation takes place outside one’s accustomed social and cultural milieu.

Most of all, Anna’s story describes the triumph of the human spirit over impossible odds—a story that invites all of us to Rise UP! and meet the challenges we face in life with faith, hope and joy.

Back Cover Testimonials

Anna’s book is astounding. I share her remarkable story with the MS community daily.  Lives are transformed, hope abounds, spirits are uplifted.

—Scott McDonald, Regional Director,

Multiple Sclerosis Association of America

Anna’s unwavering persistence in neurological training and her lifestyle and diet changes turned her multiple sclerosis completely around. As her Tai Chi Master and mentor for fourteen years I saw Anna bridge East and West to break barriers of doubt, fear and despair. Rising UP! is a story of faith and hope for everyone, especially those who have family members with  debilitating trauma, chronic illness and life threatening diseases.

—Sifu and Master Teacher, Bruce Moran

Inside: Praise for Rising UP!

Read Rising UP!. You will be both inspired and edified . . . It tells how Anna York brought together Eastern (Tai Chi) and Christian spiritual practices to heal herself and create New Creation Body Prayer, the program that is used in churches and hospitals to help others. This book will get under your skin and into your heart. I highly recommend it.

       —Don Browning, Alexander Campbell Professor,
University of Chicago Divinity School, Emeritus, and author of Reviving Christian Humanism: The New Conversation on Theology, Spirituality, and Psychology

When we pick up this book, we are in store for more than a good read—we are on the brink of an adventure. Our guide is Anna York, who is herself a multi-dimensional person, and the terrain is the several worlds in which she has taken up citizenship. She leads us into the deep and challenging places of these worlds—her amazing personal engagement with multiple sclerosis, her profound personal and spiritual journey, her “easternizing” her journey through tai chi and Chinese medicine, and her struggle to synthesize these elements with her western and Christian identity, all the while moving steadily toward her professional goals and ministry. But there is more to her story than any summary can convey—surprising turns, puzzling conundrums, and thrilling discovery. This is the kind of book that goes beyond information and inspiration—it transforms us.

—Philip Hefner, Lutheran Pastor and Professor Emeritus of
Systematic Theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

Rising UP! is a valuable addition to narratives about life with disability, and in particular how one woman, after unsuccessfully navigating the traditional medical and religious structures, ultimately finds unexpected and creative solutions back to health and well-being.

—Kristi L. Kirschner M.D., Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

As Anna’s pastor for fourteen years I shared her struggle for healing in an intellectual, spiritual, multi-cultural melting pot. She discovers that Christ does not always answer prayers in the way we expect. He is as iconoclastic now as he was in his own day, breaking down religious and cultural barriers and compelling us to see God at work in the world around us. Anna inspires all of us to persevere in seeking healing for ourselves and peace for our world.

—Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana, Executive for Interreligious
Dialogue and Cooperation at the World Council of Churches

Rising UP! Table of Contents

Introduction: I AM One

The Rising Heritage

My Name is Anna

Growing Up Fundamentalist

Falling Down

Dorothy in Kansas

Signs in the Heavens, Signs in the Earth

Moving Out in Spirit

I Feared a Fear

The Price of Liberty

Doing, Doing, Doing Too Much

Our Little Girl Dies

The Fear Came Upon Me

Do-Be-Do-Be-Do

Will Power Is Not Enough

Future Shock

Demolition of the Past

Denial of the Present

Alone and Lonely

Does Anybody Know This Person?

Victimized

Unknowing

Seeking Who I AM

Seeking the Way

Finding “The Way”

Being Who I Am

Who I Am as Myself

Being Empty and Full

Meeting the “I AM”

A Rising Manifesto

A Mountaintop Experience

Snowstorm

I AM Faith

Window Watcher

I AM Joy

Never Christmas

I AM Hope

Broken Neck

I AM Love

Rising and Falling

Up and Down the Mountain

Coming Together

Everybody’s Mom

Parking Violations

The Man in My Life 

Flashes in My Soul

Rising UP!

Jubilee

I Am Who I AM: Preparing for Ordination

Riding the Wind, Serving Tea: Ordination

Waving Palms: Healed by a Tai Chi Master

Born Again

Tai Chi:  Exercise I Could Do

Easternizing My Healing

A Grace Place Healing

Food for Life

Walking Free!

A Traditional Chinese Medicine Diagnosis

Drug Free!

Body Prayer   

Detoxing the Emotions

Roaring and Forgiving

Chi and Other Dilemmas

Clearing Out, Moving On  

Cutting the Strings

The Falling Icon

Adventures and Vistas

Rising Costs

Photo Album

Epilogue

New Year, 2010

Rising UP! Introduction:

I Am One

My husband Don says I’m non-statistical. Since he is a chaired Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Chicago and has hundreds of scientific papers to his credit, I figure he should know. One of his favorite pastimes is calculating in his head, on the spur of the moment, such complex questions as the budget of a corporation, the resources needed for putting computers in every room of the Chicago Public Schools, the population of the world 50 years from now and the number of atoms in the universe. He calculates my personal non-statistical status by citing the following criteria: I have MS (one in a thousand); I am a vegan (he only knows three others in the world); I am a female Baptist minister (a species on the endangered list); I am a female Baptist minister who does Tai Chi (a set of one, as far as he knows); and I am a female Baptist minister with multiple sclerosis who has recovered with the help of a Tai Chi master (the only one in the universe). All of these peculiarities together make it impossible for me to share a category with anyone else; therefore, I am “non-statistical.”

Even though Don loves me unconditionally—and has proven it by sticking it out with me for all these years!—my non-statistical status is still puzzling to him. He depends on statistics and data to make measurements, interpretations and predictions about what is happening and can happen in the physical universe. In Don’s view, if there is just one event of a particular kind, there is no way to determine whether it is a random anomaly, an experimental error, or an indicator that there is a whole dimension of reality that is as yet unknown and unexplored and that waits on the horizon to be discovered. Scientifically, these kinds of questions fascinate him, and he’s built a career trying to make sense of them. Maybe that’s why he finds me fascinating and has stayed with me—I am one more mystery of the universe yet to be solved! Here are some of the facts he’s assembled in his attempt to understand my experience:

•I have had multiple sclerosis since 1965 (about 45 years as of this writing!) and was severely crippled for over a decade. Up to six MS attacks a year resulted in my using an electric scooter and being unable to stand or sit up straight for more than a few minutes.

•I was largely paralyzed in my lower left body and the muscles all over my body were atrophied.

•At times my hands were so weak I was unable to lift a cup or plate.

•While there are now drugs that help reverse the symptoms of MS, there is still no known cure, and many fight a losing battle to control their symptoms. I have not only controlled but also reversed mine, finding healing in body, mind and spirit.

•I am no longer using a scooter or even a cane, and my physical exams reveal excellent overall health. After being uninsurable for more than two decades, I have now been approved for life insurance! I stand straight and tall and fit into my wedding dress (45 years and 5 babies ago).

•I live a normal life, work 40 hours a week and love to travel and work out.

Don has seen me go through a lot of changes. No wonder he’s puzzled.

There are also others who are challenged by my non-statistical status. When I last saw my neurologist, in 2002, I had to register as a new patient because I had not seen him for so long. I wanted him to see my progress. He listened with raised eyebrows and then pronounced my current healthy status as being “lucky”—another way of saying “non-statistical.” My experience does not fit the normal categories of healing in the Western medical framework because I have broken out of it and departed into the unscientific and “anecdotal” world of natural, alternative, and complementary healing. Because my doctor does not have any data to support a regimen such as mine, he cannot bring himself to say that my “good luck” will continue or that it might be a possibility for anyone else.

Some people say I am a miracle, which is yet another way of saying I am non-statistical. This often happens with people who are not religious. They just go by their seat-of-the-pants observations that something has occurred that seems completely out of the range of normal experience. For these people, wide eyes and a sense of awe often accompany their perception of my miraculous status.

Those who are Christians, especially those who are from conservative backgrounds like mine, hesitate to call me a miracle, because my experience does not fit what they recognize as a canonical, Biblical healing. It did not fall on me instantaneously from on high but has taken place over a period of years and is still taking place today. Furthermore, even though the prayers of hundreds of people were instrumental in bringing about my healing, and even though one important healing occurred in a church sanctuary, much of my healing was accomplished in my home and in Tai Chi classes and workout gyms. Nor was it performed by a traditional “minister” or church “healer” but primarily through the expertise of a Tai Chi master who is highly skilled in Eastern healing arts. For some Christians, including some who are very close to me, these circumstances are disturbing and confusing. Part of my story is about my struggle to share my unusual experience with my Christian friends and loved ones.

From my own perspective, I do think of myself as a miracle. The Bible says that some miracles need to be “worked”— which means that a great deal of energy or dunamis (the Greek word from which we get our word “dynamite”) goes into creating something extraordinary. My experience has been a “dynamite” miracle of faith, hope, will, discipline, insight, adaptation and transformation. While it has been God working in me to accomplish the miracle, I have also been a co-creative partner, along with other people from outside my own religious faith and milieu who I never expected could participate in such a work of God. The miracle is not finished. I will be working it every day, day in and day out, for the rest of my life. Living means working miracles, never stopping, never giving up, rebuking the impossible, grasping God’s new possibilities, snatching life from death, rising up to live again.

While the story of how I received physical healing is important, I believe it has broader implications. It is a sign of hope, cooperation and understanding in our fractured, war-torn world. My experience is Western, but it breaks out of Western definitions and structures and speaks that we are not whole until we learn that the heritage of other cultures can be God’s gift of love to us. I am a Christian, and my experience is deeply Christian, but God surprised me by breaking through frontiers of time and space, through walls between nations and people groups, through barriers of the heart and spirit. My experience bursts out of traditional Christian patterns and dogmas and recaptures some of the iconoclastic nature of Christ’s original healing ministry. People of any faith, or no faith at all, can find hope in my story because it speaks once again, as it did in that ancient time, of a God who is great beyond all comprehension and whose love crosses all boundaries.

My journey has brought me from rural, fundamentalist roots in America’s heartland to the pluralistic, urban setting where I have experienced healing through the Eastern arts. For me, this journey is as unlikely as traveling to the moon. It has transported me from the familiar, comfortable doctrines of my childhood faith into the heart center and offense of Christ’s gospel—the gospel that there is a new humanity and that the walls of hostility are broken down among all people so that we may seek and discover the meaning of God’s love among all the diverse expressions of those who are created in God’s own image. It has taken me away from a passive, yielded faith to an active, co-creative participation in community with people of diverse nations and faiths. Within that community I commit myself to struggle and wrestle with the meaning of our similarities and differences and to assist each other in finding healing and mutual transformation so that we can have peace in our world.

My non-statistical status proclaims that I AM ONE. My story is unique. Even so, the fact that I have a unique story suggests to me that there is a whole world full of unique stories out there, if only we could tune in to hear them all. By sharing our stories we affirm to each other that even though there is anguish, loss and pain, there is also the possibility of hope, power and transformation. We say to each other, “No matter how bad things may seem, there is always hope. If I can get through it, you can too.” I AM ONE with all such stories that can and will be. Let us rise up together and share the journey.