Leanne Payne’s healing presence

Healing Pioneers

One of Agnes Sanford’s most significant spiritual daughters was Leanne Payne, a CS Lewis scholar at Wheaton College. Mentored by Wheaton Professor Clyde Kilby, Payne introduced the world to the healing insights of CS Lewis in her groundbreaking book Real Presence. Kilby is best known for founding the Marion E. Wade Centre at Wheaton College, which studies the Inklings, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Payne commented: “I’m more amazed than ever at how Dr. Kilby invested in me – a senior undergraduate who was an older student and by then a grandmother of two.” Madeleine L’Engle called Payne’s book “probably the best introduction I know to the works of C.S. Lewis.”  Agnes Sanford called it “a wonderful book. It brings out meaning behind meaning and clear light out of shadows.”

Born during the Great Depression in 1932, Leanne Payne experienced the tragic death of her father when she was just three years old. This left her with a deep father wound, looking for love in the wrong places. As a single mother, she became the dorm mother in 1963 at Wheaton Academy: “I was a young single mother, in the South, no education, terrified after a divorce, all alone, wondering if I could make a living – all these kinds of things. There were so many desires in my heart and not much hope of any of them being realized – and then the Lord gave me every desire of my heart, everything I’ve asked Him.”

In 1964, she joined the prayer circle of Rev. Richard Winkler, one of the ‘grandfathers’ of Anglican renewal. This led in 1965 to her obtaining her Bachelor’s degree, followed by two Master’s degrees at Wheaton College and the University of Arkansas. She taught at Wheaton College; in the graduate program in Christian Spirituality at Creighton University; and for the YWAM University of the Nations: “When I am teaching in the university, undergraduate school or seminary, I think that it would be the area of spiritual formation.” To be healed for Payne was to be more fully formed in Christ’s image.

After Richard Winkler introduced her to Agnes Sanford in 1973, Payne quickly began serving with Sanford in her Schools of Pastoral Care. in 1981, she served as a research fellow under Henri Nouwen at Yale Divinity School. 

Like her mentors CS Lewis, Clyde Kilby and Agnes Sanford, she was the ‘eternal child’ always rejoicing in God’s creation whether in observing a squirrel, a beautiful flower, or a person made in God’s image. As Jesus taught in Matthew 18:3 and Mark 10:14, only the child-like enter God’s Kingdom. Healing comes through embracing our childlikeness.

In 1982, she incorporated Pastoral Care Ministries through which she provided pastoral care, prayer and counselling mainly at the week-long PCM schools held throughout North America, Europe, Hawaii, and Australia.

Called a “great soldier for Christ” by the philosopher Dallas Willard, she wrote seven books that continue in print in English and in 12 other language translations.

Payne was fascinated by how we become persons, discovering our true selves in Christ. She said that experiencing Jesus’ real presence brings about incarnational reality in our lives: “In Him we become fully human…In Him, the will, intellect, imagination, feeling and sensory being are hallowed and enlivened.” As the Word becomes flesh in our lives, healing takes place in body, mind, and spirit: “All stories of healing in the Scriptures, when imaged by the mind, are incarnational…The Healing Presence descends into us and does it.” Healing for Payne came through practicing God’s presence.

She saw our modern dilemma as the schism between head and heart, spirit and matter, the intellect and the imagination. She commented that we live in a time when the family is so broken that we find people everywhere without this initial sense of being: “It’s this intense fear of non-being – this chasm – this sense of ‘do I even exist!’ People are walking around with that big hole.” Through Christ, our fragmented, modern souls become integrated and freed. This enables us to enter the Great Dance of healthy relationships with the self, others, God and His creation. Jesus heals our deepest wounds, making us whole persons.

Part of her inner healing was to learn how to celebrate her inadequacy and smallness while leaning fully on Jesus’ greatness and love. One of her favourite healing prayers was ‘Come Holy Spirit’. She saw the work of the Holy Spirit as calling us up out of the hell of our false selves and into the glorious presence of our Lord. As Payne invoked God’s presence, she helped people to deeply listen to God and to truly repent of sin, selfishness, and idolatry. Quoting C.S. Lewis, she spoke of healing bent ones, enabling people to ‘straighten up’ into Christ. Healing comes through welcoming the Holy Spirit into all our broken places.

Payne saw three blocks to becoming fully human and whole: 1) failure to forgive others 2) failure to receive God’s forgiveness and 3) failure to forgive and accept ourselves in Christ. Forgiveness is deeply healing. Unforgiveness is closely tied into our hiding behind false selves rather than walking in the light: “Only the real ‘I’, shedding its illusory selves, can draw near to God.  In His presence, my masks fall off, my false selves are revealed…To continually abide in His presence is to have one face only – the true one.”

Payne believed that “the attempt to combine good and evil is, I believe, one of the greatest threats facing not only Christendom but all mankind today.” As such, she challenged Carl Jung’s false teaching that evil is merely the dark side of good that needs to be accepted rather than renounced. The renunciation of evil and idolatry was key in her approach to bringing deep emotional and physical healing. Payne’s healing ministry was rooted in the spiritual gifts of prophecy and discernment: “It helped a great deal when I came to realize my main ministry is that of prophet…I could then understand my life – why the Lord led me away from paying jobs and to full dependence upon Him. A bishop once told me that if a prophet fit comfortably into the Church, he wasn’t needed.”

Payne was passionate about helping people walk out their baptism. [Article authors] Ed and Janice went in 1987 to her Pastoral Care School on the UBC Campus and were both impacted by how her team shared about deep healings in their own lives. The Holy Spirit flowed in healing waves across the participants, particularly during worship.

Like CS Lewis and Agnes Sanford, Payne saw the eucharist as ‘big medicine’. Her focus on the healing power of Holy Communion helped ground healing prayer in incarnational reality. Receiving the Lord’s Supper can either make us more sick or healthier, depending upon how we discern the body. (1^st Corinthians 11:29) Taking Communion while living in unforgiveness and bitterness does not end well. 

Payne, who died of Parkinson’s complications at age 82, often prayed: “Lord, love Your world through me!”  Our prayer is that the deep healing insights of Leanne Payne will become more fully integrated in the lives of local churches as we more fully love God’s broken world.