Mtr Mary Trainor

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.*

Dear friend,

By the time we got into high school, my friend Bruce had
changed for the worse. I met him when my family moved to El Monte, and I was enrolled in the same second grade class as Bruce. He stood out in two ways, each making him a target for bullying: He lived with his mother, after his parents divorced; and he was grossly overweight.

Divorce was far less common in the early 1950s, and Bruce was the only fatherless child in this small elementary school. Further, fat-shaming was prevalent on the playground.

While we were classmates through the eighth grade, in high school we never shared a classroom. And yet his story was notorious. In response to years of shame and having been shamed, Bruce had become openly violent. Everyone knew this about Bruce. The day he threw a one-person desk-chair combo at a teacher, he was expelled. I would not pick up on his story until years later, but for now let’s look at today’s Gospel account.

***

In the first verses of Mark, Chapter 5, we encounter what I consider one of the most colorful stories in scripture: The Gerasene Demoniac. What a picture. A wild, possessed man wandering the tombs, yelling, screaming, unable to be contained, neither by chains nor human power. Yet when he sees Jesus, the demon-powered man runs up to him, the demons asking to be sent into swine--probably thinking they would escape consequence. But we know the swine run off the cliff and drown in the lake below.

More curious to me, however, is that as the news spreads, people come to see it for themselves, and they are afraid. So afraid, they ask Jesus to leave their neighborhood. Whereas they once feared the wild man, they now fear Jesus, the one who healed him. Instead of rejoicing, they are terrified.

***

When I ran into Bruce for the first time in high school he had changed dramatically. He was still overweight, but no longer the timid boy from second grade cowering in the corners. This new Bruce was angry and physical, did not crack a smile when I spoke to him, just moved on down the sidewalk as if someone had said, “Nothing more to see here.”

This Bruce scared people. No one bullied him. Now he was the bully. But then he was expelled and off our radar.

It was more than twenty years before I would hear of him again. By then I was working in schools and treatment centers for at-risk young people. We were touring a well known residential center for boys with hopes to run their school. In the lobby, killing time, I was looking at photo displays locked behind glass, when I noticed one that said, “Our Valedictorians.” Scanning the array, my eyes landed on a good-looking student named Bruce, Class of 1963.

Clearly, getting expelled was the best thing that ever happened to him. Several years in treatment had helped dispel his demons. He was no longer fearful, no longer feared.

Mtr Mary
*From How Great Thou Art, words by Carl Boberg