It’s 7:30 a.m.: time to go to school. I pull on the blue warm-up jacket I wear every day, no matter what the weather. I care only about how I can hide beneath that loose-fitting blue jacket. I feel wrong. I feel fat. I bounce when I walk. I am afraid to go to school, but this is America: I have no choice.

I don’t use the restroom at school. I don’t answer questions in class. I practically don’t exist. At lunch, I sit by myself and hope no one will try to pick a fight with me. Cynthia asks if she can join me. Everybody calls me a fag, and Cynthia a slut. We are outcasts together: Cynthia in her peasant blouse and too-tight jeans, and I in my Carly Simon tour t-shirt and blue warm-up jacket. She eats my tater tots, grabbing them with her long fingernails, but I don’t care. With her, at least, I am not alone.

People say I have a goofy walk. I am so afraid of looking odd at times that I forget how to walk. There I’ll be, in the breezeway of Burnet Junior High, frozen, unable to remember how to swing my arms or breathe. Somehow, I get the impression that each arm is supposed to move with the corresponding leg. I practice walking behind the six-foot-high privacy fence in my backyard, making sure my right arm swings forward with my right foot. I practice so much that I make my walk worse. I get a new name: Robot Boy.

Life is so hard for some people.

There was a festival of the Jews in Roman controlled Jerusalem, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem -- doubtless there was entertainment, toys made of wax and wood, food booths.

And Jesus goes to a place with 5 porticos blind lame

It would be like being invited to a wedding reception at Jakes or McCormick and
Schmicks in Portland and taking all the trouble of going to the city but spending the whole evening under the Burnside Bridge with the cast-outs.

The gospel tells the story of a man who is lame. He planted himself beside a supposed magic pool 38 years before.

The story says that Jesus, knowing that he had been there a long time, asked him a question: “Do you want to be healed?"

“Do I want to be healed.” 38 years???

A silly question or ???

What would it mean for a man who had been in such a state for 38 years to be healed?

Think of his life. If he were healed he’d suddenly have to fetch his own meals. There’d be a whole new set of expectations for him. He'd have to make something of himself.

For Jesus to ask the question, "DO YOU WANT TO BE HEALED?" is an act of compassion in itself. This is the perfect Jesus story for Mother’s Day. It shows off his feminine side.

MOM -

POSITION DESCRIPTION :
Long term, team players needed, for challenging permanent work in an, often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities. Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES :
Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $20. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf. Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as sluggish toilets and stuck zippers. Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks. Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, and an embarrassment the next. Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys. Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product. Also some janitorial.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION:
None.

Back to the man who had been hanging out at the pool for 38 years. I remember hearing of a 70 year old man who had spent more than 30 years in prison; he was granted parol, but he wept and begged the parole board to rescind their order.

The idea of being out on his own was not only NOT a welcome. It filled him with terror.

Do you want to be healed?

There is a hornet’s nest hidden in this question. How much power do we have over our chances for the renewal of our health?

I remember a minister in Portland who went around anointing people with cancer with oil and praying and then telling them they were healed but that they needed to “appropriate” their healings. That is, if they had enough faith they would get well. If not, they would die. This he left them sick and also guilt ridden thinking they didn’t have enough faith.

But still, I believe there are people who choose NOT to get well

I know of a woman, grown now, who when she we all of 6 was hospitalized for many months with hepatitis A. She swears that she spent much longer in the hospital than she needed to and all because she willed herself NOT to get better.

She overheard her parents talking early in her illness about their desire to divorce, and she thought that as long as she was very sick they'd stay together.

Do you want to be well? Not always.

We make all manner of choices in this world; not always the best choices, heaven knows. Sometimes we make choices that are just idiotic. Think again of Robot Boy.

We’ve all heard of abused children who marry people very like their abusive parent.
The choice may not be good, but it may, seem at first, comfortable. We all some times choose familiar demons.

Do you want to be healed?

The man in the story does not answer Jesus' question directly. He is, in fact very defensive –

"I have no one to put me into the pool the water is troubled. I'm lame; its a catch 22"

"I have no one to put me. I have no one, and because I have no one I'm not all that interested in getting any better than I am.”

I have come to believe that the possibility of wellness in sickness often has to do with who you have around you. Family or friends to help you hear what the doctors are saying --

And sometimes life provides little angels:

When I was very ill, I had to receive weekly intravenous treatments. This went on for almost two years. Somewhere in the middle I lost my courage. It is hard to say which collapsed first, my soul or my veins, but collapse they both did. One day the search for a healthy vein became too painful. I pushed the needle away and cried. The nurse asked to let her introduce me to a young girl of about ten who had lived with cancer all her life and who was also there receiving treatment that day. This child smiled at me and said, “You should have got one of these.” Lifting her T-shirt she showed me the hole that had been cut into her stomach so that she could receive her treatments through a permanent plastic port. Then she put her hand, small and soft in mine and said “You can take it.” And I did. (Nancy Burke, Meditations For Health: Thoughts & Quotations On Healing & Wellness)

Do you want to be healed??

Healed. What does that mean?

I remember seeing Magic Johnson on "60 Minutes" about ten years ago. He was talking about his HIV. He said something interesting. He said, "I'm healed but I'm not cured." ???

He said, "I know I'm going to be alright."

Fear of AIDS was not dominating his life; it was not the central issue determining who he is.

I remember Shirley Graham and Ellen Stevens from this congregation -- two very beautiful women who died of cancer.

They were both so much more than their diseases. They died, but, never in denial about it, they also overcame.

Magic Johnson is a more interesting person than he was before he found out he had HIV. Magic now has more soul, more depth.

He knows what is really important. That is the Gift of getting in touch with his own mortality

The Sufi poet, Rumi wrote:

Don't turn your head; keep looking at the bandaged place
That's where the light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment that you are healing yourself.

Do you want to be healed?

Illness can be so insidious. It can so take over one's outlook that everything else about oneself can be lost

This morning's reading from the gospel of John says that the lame man had "for 38 years been IN his sickness" (That’s the literal Greek).

We become tempted to believe that we are sick, and that's all – but we need not let that happen -- and often it takes an angel. Someone to call us, like Jesus beyond it. I’ll close one more story of such an angel. An unlikely one at that.

When I was in the hospital, the one person whose presence I welcomed was a woman who came to sweep the floors with a large push broom. She was the only one who didn't stick things in, take things out, or ask stupid questions. For a few minutes each night, this immense Jamaican woman rested her broom against the wall and sank her body into the turquoise plastic chair in my room. All I heard was the sound of her breath in and out, in and out. It was comforting in a strange and simple way. My own breathing calmed. Of the fifty or so people that made contact with me in any given day, she was the only one who wasn't trying to change me.

One night she reached out and put her hand on the top of my shoulder. I'm not usually comfortable with casual touch, but her hand felt so natural being there. It happened to be one of the few places in my body that didn't hurt. I could have sworn she was saying two words with each breath, one on the inhale, one on the exhale: "As. . . Is. . .As. . . Is. . ."

On her next visit, she looked at me. No evaluation, no trying to figure me out. She just looked and saw me. Then she said simply, "You're more than the sickness in that body." I was pretty doped up, so I wasn't sure I understood her; but my mind was just too thick to ask questions.

I kept mumbling those words to myself throughout the following day, "I'm more than the sickness in this body. I'm more than the suffering in this body." I remember her voice clearly. It was rich, deep, full, like maple syrup in the spring. I reached out for her hand. It was cool and dry. I knew she wouldn't let go. She continued, "You're not the fear in that body. You're more than that fear. Float on it. Float above it. You're more than that pain." I began to breathe a little deeper, as I did when I wanted to float in a lake. I remembered floating in Lake George when I was five, floating in the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island when I was seven, floating in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa when I was twenty-eight. Without any instruction from me, this Jamaican guide had led me to a source of comfort that was wider and deeper than pain or fear.

It's been fifteen years since I've seen the woman with the broom. I've never been able to find her. No one could remember her name; but she touched my soul with her compassionate presence and her fingerprints are there still.

From No Enemies Within by Dawna Markova

Amen