Mtr Mary Trainor
Dear friend,
Today, we meet an old friend in scripture. Now, maybe you cannot imagine him as friend, but I have grown quite fond of the Gerasene Demoniac.
In Mark’s Gospel today we learn that the demoniac is not containable, a wild man who has loosed the bonds of chains and shackles.
Jesus drives out the demons that possess him, and the two men sit down and talk. And the townspeople are still afraid when they see this and they ask Jesus to leave town.
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I’ve grown fond of the demoniac because he makes me think. His is not just another healing story in which healing prompts re-incorporation with family and community. Here, the erstwhile demoniac is still reviled despite now being “normal.”
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How many times, I wonder, have I failed to recognize, much less celebrate, someone’s healing, sobriety, education, mental health treatment, hard work, effort to change course. I’ve known people who have had to relocate to be seen, really seen, for who they are now.
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I am sure some of you have had the childhood (maybe even later) experience of turning off the bedroom lights, and suddenly the room becomes unfamiliar. Clothes on bedposts are monsters, and only God knows what lurks under the bed.
One night long ago, as young children, my brother and I had our own twin beds, but in the same room. I was farthest from the door, and my brother started talking the variable dark and evil things living under our beds
I couldn’t take any more, so I jumped from my bed to his, and from his bed to the doorway. Those monsters weren’t going to get me!
My mother arrived at the doorway at the same moment I did. She flipped on the room lights. No monsters. She shone a flashlight under each of the beds. No monsters.
“Go to sleep, you kids. There are no monsters here.”
The very minute she turned off the light and walked away, the monsters were back. Our otherwise trustworthy mother failed to convince us we were safe.
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Is it like that for us with God? Even as we proclaim God as healer, are we jumping from our beds to the door?
Mtr Mary