There is a disconnection within me between who I am and who I feel called to be but it doesn’t feel like a change I can effect in any way on my own although I recognise all the ways I seek to control such things and be the change I want to see. Does it count if you go through the motions of being something in the hopes that you become it?
Come down from the tree Zacchaeus. It does no good to ask the experts anymore. Get your feet dusty and your hands dirty, keep asking the same questions… The disciples were always asking questions. Being a disciple isn’t “knowing”. It’s being committed to going and picking up what you can along the Way from whomsoever you meet – your family, your friends, your neighbours, your teachers, your priests, your politicians, your encounters with random strangers… all hold a line of the story. What story do you want to hear? You must seek those people out.
Jesus meets all these different people, perhaps only once. What story can you tell? What can you communicate in one conversation with a person that might change the course of their life? Jesus was something of an epiphany-dealer: what is right? what is clean? what is sin? You can’t yield the principle of the argument. It’s not enough to heal your body if I do not address the system that harms you. It’s not enough to mend your madness if I do not address the systems that drive you insane. It’s not enough to touch you if I don’t address the systems that label you untouchable. It’s not enough to include you if I do not also address the systems that have no place for you.
He touches them and they are healed, he hears their whole truth and they are healed again. It’s not only Jesus who hears, not only the healed, but disciples and crowds gathered round… what power is there in a story to effect change? Whose stories are we telling? Whose stories are we listening to?
I am telling my own story. That is the story that I know.
Who am I to try and tell anyone elses story?
Let me tell the story of the time You healed my body, let me tell the story of the time You healed my mind, let me tell the story of the time You took me in and I found belonging.
itellyouarise 