The Mississippi River begins in Montana in small streams that flow into the Milk River that merges with the Missouri. The Great River starts near Denver; it flows through Pittsburgh. It contains sediment from New Mexico and Texas.

I recently watched a Ken Burns documentary on the Mayo Clinic, a world-renowned medical center located in the small city of Rochester, Minnesota, about seventy miles from the Mississippi. The clinic exists because Mother Mary Alfred Moes of the Sisters of St. Francis received a vision from God to start a hospital.

The Mississippi River was formed by the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and subsequent glacial melt at the end of the last Ice Age.

As prescribed by the vision, Mother Mary chose William Worrall Mayo to run the sisters’ hospital. Mayo and his two sons, also doctors, practiced patient-centered care. The hospital provided a venue in which they could learn and develop the most successful surgical techniques.

As their skill and success grew, not only patients but also other doctors flowed into Rochester the way tributaries flow into the Mississippi, through a gravitational pull, in this case the pull of healing, knowledge, and expertise.

I find this map of Ol’ Man River so compelling and beautiful because it’s a map of relationship, a map of the continent’s arterial connections. Without the trickles of water high up in the Rocky Mountains or in the Texas panhandle, the mighty Mississippi would not exist. As far as water is concerned, there’s no separation between Wyoming and Louisiana. The entire river system is one whole.

The Mayos, assisted by the sisters, treated the whole person, body and soul. All expertise poured into the central artery of the patient’s health, with multiple medical specialists cooperating to treat one patient in one location. According to the film, this philosophy continues today and has made the Mayo Clinic the exceptional center of groundbreaking medicine that it is.

And so with our communities, our nations, our world. We are all flowing into one another, more liquid than solid, rivers of interconnected experiences. The patient is our shared life on this planet, and if we would bring healing, we must recognize the whole.