The healing power of love, creativity, and faith

Peter Breggin MD & Ginger Breggin

Mon Jul 6

The Breggin Hour

Cultural Wars, Faith, Family Life, Health

It was one of those recording sessions that lingers in the heart long after the microphones are turned off. On a recent afternoon, Peter and I had the profound privilege of speaking with Dr. Francis Christian—a gifted surgeon, poet, professor, and thinker whose life embodies the integration of science, art, and deep faith. His latest book of poems, To a Nurse Friend Weeping, published by a small Canadian house, and his Substack (francischristian.substack.com) reflect a man who sees the full spectrum of human experience: suffering, joy, and the creative spark that connects us all to something greater.

Dr. Christian joined us as we explored themes close to our own lives—especially in this season of recovery and reflection following Peter’s stroke. The conversation flowed naturally from the personal to the cultural, touching on what it means to be fully human in a world that often fragments us.

Reconnecting Medicine to the Human Story

As a professor of surgery at the University of Saskatchewan, with expertise in trauma and oncology, and a former director of patient safety and quality improvement for the province, Dr. Christian could easily have focused solely on technical excellence. Instead, he founded the Surgical Humanities program and served as founding editor of the Journal of Surgical Humanities.

He explained it beautifully: “Unless you’re acquainted intimately and engaged with the human story, how can you actually treat the human being?” The humanities—literature, poetry, music, and visual arts—remind physicians, residents, and students of the narratives behind the patients they serve. He shared how he witnessed talented young people set aside their creativity under the pressures of training, only to become cynical. The program sought to reconnect them: through an annual musical evening with an orchestra of physicians, nurses, and students, and a journal that welcomed high-literary-quality pieces from medical voices or non-medical perspectives on medical themes.

Creativity isn’t a luxury; it is essential to wholeness. As Dr. Christian noted, we are created in the image of God, the Master Creator. To be fully alive is to create—to engage with joy, sorrow, suffering, and relief in ways that science alone cannot teach. For those of us who have faced illness or cared for the sick or wounded, a physician who is truly present—who hears you, respects your humanity—becomes part of the healing itself.

Sexuality, Sublimation, and the Gifts of Commitment

A recent essay on Dr. Christian’s Substack moved me profoundly. In it, he explores the sublimation of sexual energy into creativity and the devastating cultural costs of the sexual revolution. He spoke with poetic respect about human desire—not as mere biology or casual encounter, but as a profound drive that, when channeled with reverence, fuels art, poetry, family, and civilization itself.

He drew on John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” where the lover’s unfulfilled yearning becomes eternal beauty: “Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss… yet do not grieve… for ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.” For centuries, Christian civilization elevated this longing toward the prize of marriage—a sacred house of fulfillment, commitment, and creative partnership in raising the next generation.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s, he observed, lowered the “price” of sex, especially for men, through the pill, abortion, and cultural shifts influenced by feminist and Marxist ideas. What was promised as liberation has delivered falling birth rates, crashing below replacement levels, declining testosterone, less satisfying relationships, sky-high divorce rates, and energies diverted from family into ideologies. Birds, he noted wryly, often show more fidelity than this new mammalian norm.

We spoke of the sadness for young people today—burdened by debt, indoctrinated to view children as encumbrances, and offered casual encounters via apps instead of the depth of lifelong trust. Yet there is hope. Some younger generations seem to be turning toward virtue, early commitment, and building families with community support. Peter and I shared from our own journey: the joy of treasuring one another, the self-sacrificial love that grows stronger through trials, and how God’s grace sustains it.

Peter reflected movingly on how, since his stroke, he has seen God’s love through my care for him—and how it has drawn us both closer to the Divine. “Treasure other human beings,” he urged, especially the young. “Dare to love. You’ll get hurt, but the more you love, the more you help others become loving.”

Dr. Christian echoed this in referencing agape love—the selfless, giving love modeled on the cross. He reminded us of St. Paul and Jesus’ mission: to heal the brokenhearted, set the bruised at liberty, and proclaim good news. His hope, like ours, is that people find new life at the foot of the cross and in the resurrection’s promise of eternal meaning.

A Call to Treasure What Matters

This conversation left us refreshed and reminded of what civilization truly rests upon: deep respect, creative fullness, committed love, and faith. In a time when so many forces seek to cheapen human connection, we are called to nurture love like a garden, to greet “that of God” in one another (as the Quakers say), and to resist the fragmentation of modernity.

Dr. Francis Christian’s life and work stand as a witness: a surgeon who operates with skill and soul, a poet who finds beauty in the weeping and the joy. I encourage you to visit his Substack and explore his poetry. In a world hungry for authenticity, voices like his point us back to what is true, good, and life-giving.

Peter and I continue to learn, day by day, about the miracles of recovery, partnership, and grace. We pray this hour of reflection blesses you as it blessed us—to love more boldly, create more freely, and trust in the God who made us for relationship.

Thank you, Dr. Christian, for sharing your wisdom and your faith. Our audience—our wonderful community—is richer for it.

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Learn more about Dr. Peter Breggin's work: https://breggin.com/

See more from Dr. Breggin's long history of being a reformer in psychiatry: https://breggin.com/Psychiatry-as-an-Instrument-of-Social-and-Political-Control

Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal, the how-to manual @ https://breggin.com/a-guide-for-prescribers-therapists-patients-and-their-families/

Get a copy of Dr. Breggin's latest book:

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HOW CAN WE DEFEND AGAINST THEM?

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President Trump’s Director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the largest health agency in the world.