Physician, Benedictine Sister Working To Heal Mind, Body, Soul
God must have been smiling when Sister Maria Tasto and Dr. William Storer ended up sitting by one another at a theology course in 2009 at St. Vincent’s Spirituality Center in Indianapolis.
Because if there’s anything to the phrase “a match made in Heaven,” this sure looked like one, judging by what’s happened since.
Dr. Storer is a rarity: a physician who is courageous enough to share Jesus with his patients, to ask if they want to pray with him, and comfortable enough to talk publicly about injecting spirituality into his cardiology work.
Sister Maria, as a Sister of St. Benedict of Ferdinand for over 56 years, is noted for her spiritual direction, her DVD set A Transformed Life, and her experiencing God one night in 2000 when her doctors were certain she was dying of cancer.
So it’s a bit ironic that shortly after the two met at the two-year theology course, Sister Maria learned she needed open heart surgery. She opted to have the procedure at the St. Vincent Heart Center in Indianapolis, where Dr. Storer is the medical director.
The surgery was successful, but Sister Maria went into cardiac arrest while in recovery. “The code went off, and Dr. Storer came running, along with everybody else,” she says. “They shocked me back.”
A bit later, Dr. Storer visited her. Sister Kathryn Huber, another Ferdinand Benedictine, was in the room, too. “I went in to minister to my patient,” said Dr. Storer. “But she ministered to me instead.” Sister Kathryn quickly excused herself because she “knew something sacred was going on.”
Dr. Storer had expected a three-to-four-minute “how are you” visit. But it lasted 45 minutes. He held Sister Maria’s hand the entire time. Their conversation began about the life-threatening experience she had just been through. They talked about how to put that trauma into the context of what they had been learning in the theology class about coping with life’s dark “cave experiences.” They talked openly of very personal, confidential situations.
Sister Maria says, “It was one of those experiences where you know that God is working through you and you’ve got nothing to do with it other than being an open vessel.”
The conversation was very healing for Dr. Storer. “It was spiritual and supernatural, to experience some of the things we had just learned in the class about the giving and receiving of formation, by and through the Holy Spirit,” he said.
“Sister Maria was a vessel that was flowing. It had a huge impact on me. I wanted to stay there for the rest of the day and night. It was a deeply satisfying experience for me.”
Sister Maria and Dr. Storer are now trying to transform their connection onto a much larger stage, one that could spiritually benefit hundreds of doctors and patients in the Indianapolis-to-Evansville area.
Both are part of an area group’s effort to expand an integrative medicine program. Known as the Tri-State Integrative Medicine Collaborative, the group has met a few times in the past year-and-a-half to discuss how to spread the benefits of integrative medicine.
Integrative medicine provides a variety of therapeutic tools for the patient, as well as their family, that complement conventional treatment and focuses on the mind, body and soul.
The Spirituality Ministry team of the Sisters of St. Benedict of Ferdinand developed the spirituality component of Memorial Hospital’s program and has delivered a variety of presentations for hospital executives, department directors and staff personnel.
Dr. Storer spoke at a Jasper meeting of the integrative medicine group last fall, talking about how he incorporates spirituality into his cardiology practice.
“I shared Jesus with one patient and he got caught up with it,” he told the group. “He repented and is now a very active Christian. But the other patient in the room told me that ‘was absolutely wrong’ to do that. But the next day I shared Jesus with the patient again. The other patient apologized.
“I had another heart attack patient who I initiated a conversation with about Jesus. He wanted to hear more. I couldn’t get back to him for a few days, so we made an appointment. He died before I got there. Years later, I still cannot wash that off. It’s why I feel so strongly about integrative medicine. I think of that situation every day.”
Another telling realization for Dr. Storer has been his experiences with “absolute truths” he’s learned over his years as a physician.
“I’m a scientist and according to a scientist the absolute truth is found only if you exercise the scientific method to discover it,” he says. “For years I got filled up with absolute truths. But almost all of those truths are no longer true. We have new ones. All those things we relied on as being the truth have just slowly slipped away. So much so that we learned that Jesus meant what he said when he said, ‘I am the truth.’”
Still, Dr. Storer hasn’t seen the replacing of absolute truths translating into a rush of doctors opening up to the power of spirituality. But another irony is nearly all his patients over the years have warmly welcomed his invitation to pray. Those feeling the most pain are usually the most ready.
“There’s such an ego that gets automatically built into the life of most doctors, through all those years of training, that you just almost naturally begin to feel more highly about yourself than you should. There’s this huge ego that’s hard to overcome. That’s an obstacle to any development of spiritual truth.”
But Dr. Storer’s passionate belief in spirituality keeps him battling against the odds. He has been in discussion with Sister Maria and his hospital’s administrators to try to bring the Sisters of St. Benedict’s spirituality program to the St. Vincent Health System.
“There’s a spiritual aspect of healing that we need to pay more attention to and utilize more,” says Dr. Storer. “That’s what integrative medicine is for me. There’s a spiritual component that we miss a lot. I’d like to have (the spiritual component) happen here (at St. Vincent). That’s happened to a significant extent at Memorial Hospital (in Jasper). “
His passion for spirituality began long ago, as he recalls feeling the urgency for Gospel messages for patients when they’re sick and then seeing how helpful that was. He has experienced people praying to receive Christ, people repenting, and people not only being healed of their illness, but starting and sustaining a transformed life.
It’s easy for Dr. Storer to see how spirituality and medicine can work together.
“If you have pneumonia and take aspirin for the pain, but don’t take an antibiotic for the pneumonia, it doesn’t seem to get better. For me, the practice of medicine that a doctor has learned to do is only part of it. It’s just incomplete if you don’t put both of the aspects of healing together.
“It’s just huge for people to realize there’s a spiritual aspect to their own lives and to their own healing. I can’t even imagine how that could affect a population of patients.
“I’m just following the Lord the best I can and hoping that (integrative medicine) can happen before I’m done.”
For more information on the Tri-State Integrative Medicine Collaborative, contact Kelly Clauss at Memorial Hospital in Jasper at kclauss@mhhcc.org, Helen Shymanski at St. Mary’s Women’s Wellness Center in Evansville at Helen.Shymanski@stmarys.org, or Sister Kathryn Huber at Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand at khosb@thedome.org.
