of Potomac, Maryland, was a plenary session speaker at the December 15–17, 2001, conference on Spirituality & Healing in Medicine, sponsored by the Harvard Medical School and the Mind/Body Medical Institute of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She's a professor of pediatrics at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C., where she has taught for several years a course on how to interview and examine patients. Using this model as a metaphor for how to assess one's own spiritual life, Dr. Battle shared how she searches for a meaningful relationship with God. The following are excerpts from her talk, which focused on "Taking your spiritual 'vital signs' and formulating a personal, current 'care plan' for your spiritual life's journey."
A spiritual life is a life in which all that we do comes from the center, where we are anchored in God: a life soaked through and through by a sense of His reality and claim, and self-given to the great movement of His will....
"One of the prerequisites to live an authentic spiritual life is to align ourselves with God. We align ourselves with God and His aims when we: (1) Choose God wholeheartedly for who He is; (2) Make a covenant, a solemn and deep-seated promise to pursue the relationship with God with constancy and commitment; (3) Ask ourself, in everything we do, however large or small, In doing this, am I becoming the kind of person I want to be, no exceptions?... We can develop a plan for a spiritual life orientation by aligning ourselves with God and by cultivating the presence of God.
