DAILY BYTE
There’s a part in this story that I find saddest of all. It’s when the man says to Jesus: “I have no one to help me get into the pool on time.”
We don’t know why he was so alone. Family networks were incredibly close in those days and very protective – so why was he so alone?
Perhaps it was because his real pain was not physical but within. If you take the time to read his reaction to his healing, and also his interaction with the Pharisees in the verses following his healing, you might begin to think so too.
Could it be, that his unattended inner pain ostracised him from significant others? Gradually, but maybe over the process of 38 years he unwittingly managed to drive away anyone who had ever cared for him.
Pain that is unattended does that to us. It distorts love. We begin to view every relationship through the lens of our pain, we can so easily become totally self-absorbed to the point that we even stop feeling!
Listen to these words from that remarkable nun and author Joan CHittister: “Hurt drives out joy, stampedes trust, consumes our hearts and saps our every thought. Then, because we have not attended to the wounds in ourselves, we have no capacity for the pain of others. Because we ourselves have too often refused to heal, we cannot heal others. Our hurt begins to jade and block and make us paranoid. It cools us and distances us and leaves us hard of heart. Those who swallow a stone become a stone, we learn.
Robbie Williams sings a song called ‘Feel’ which is about precisely this. Someone who has swallowed a stone and become so hard of heart that they are struggling to feel real feelings anymore, because of unattended pain they are unable to enter into meaningful relationships, they struggle to understand God, and cannot live to the full. Read the following lyrics carefully:
Come on hold my hand,
I wanna contact the living.
Not sure I understand,
This role I’ve been given.
I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans,
My head speaks a language, I don’t understand.
I just wanna feel real love,
Feel the home that I live in.
’cause I got too much life,
Running through my veins, going to waste.
I don’t wanna die,
But I ain’t keen on living either.
Before I fall in love,
I’m preparing to leave her.
I scare myself to death,
That’s why I keep on running.
Before I’ve arrived, I can see myself coming.
I just wanna feel real love,
Feel the home that I live in.
’cause I got too much life,
Running through my veins, going to waste.
And I need to feel, real love
And a life ever after.
I cannot get enough.
I just wanna feel real love,
Feel the home that I live in,
I got too much love,
Running through my veins, going to waste.
I just wanna feel real love,
In a life ever after
There’s a hole in my soul,
You can see it in my face, it’s a real big place.
Come and hold my hand,
I wanna contact the living,
Not sure I understand,
This role I’ve been given
Not sure I understand.
Not sure I understand.
Not sure I understand.
Not sure I understand.
Talk about lying paralysed next to a pool of tears! Similarl, if we do not attend to our inner pain we may well find that our abilities to emote and relate become stifled.
If we swallow a stone we become a stone it seems. Is this true for you in anyway?
PRAY AS YOU GO
O’ God, as you heal our inner pain, may you open us up once again to real love and live and feeling and meaning. Amen.
