The Bright Line

I am picturing someone in Mark's community, telling the story of the Gerasene demon-possessed man. The Jesus stories were told in worship, and so I picture people gathered on the Sabbath, reciting the sh'ema, Hear Israel, The Lord your God, the Lord is one... And then it would be time for stories of their rebbe. Someone might tell this one like a ghost story, terrifying the little group with images of a moonless night, tombs, and a ferocious, filthy man. He would talk about how everyone else wanted to run away, but Jesus, Jesus was not afraid. Found love within himself for even this man. He would talk about the 2,000 pigs "running violently" to the edge of the cliff and drowning themselves, so there could be no question of a healing. He would tell of how, after the healing, the man sat on a rock, fully clothed, and ate a piece of bread and fish, drank a cup of wine. This scared the people in his town more than the way he was before, the storyteller would say, which always brought a laugh. Perhaps he would end his tale, And I begged Jesus to let me come with him, but he wouldn't. He told me instead to tell you about it.

You could say this is one person's way of sharing the healing and compassion he experienced with the rabbi. But I don't want to zap the life out of the story with plausible explanations. Jesus probably believed in demons like everyone else of his time. We do too, or we act as if we do.

In a church in Minneapolis where I was a secretary, they held a monthly activities club for people who lived in group homes, people who suffered from mental illness. It was called simply "The Third Thursday Club." It was held in the church basement, a grubby room as church basements tend to offer, led by a man named John. John was a shy young man with matted, blonde hair and a degree in social work. The staff tended to give the Third Thursday people (and sometimes John by association) a fairly wide berth. As I came to know John, I noticed that he didn't think he was being especially brave or generous for working with them. I asked him one time why people (including me) were so afraid of the mentally ill. "They're unpredictable," he said. "They don't say or do what you expect them to."

We medicate this. People with severe manic-depression tell me that they feel flattened on their medications. They can function - do what is expected in terms of job, family, caring for themselves - but feel very little joy or pain. No ability to make art or write poems, say. And, hungry for even a moment of emotional, creative life, they stop taking their medications. Horrible things happen. One man I know went missing for days, and was found sitting sunburnt in a field, unaware of who he was, or where he was, let alone the reek of piss and sweat on his clothes. I visited him in the hospital, and had whole conversations with him that he cannot remember now. He knows what danger he was in. He cannot forget the steep climb back to sanity and the community of the world. And the pain of the flatness, the hunger for vividness and truth still call to him. I will not be surprised if he tries it again.

I like a bright line separating me from folks like the "Third Thursday Club" or the man sitting in alone in that field. But there really isn't. Many people are fine until their illness strikes, much to their families' broken-hearted surprise. Alzheimer's Disease certainly works that way. It's easy to tell the story of the demon-possessed man as if he were something wholly other than myself. He is certainly an extreme case. But perhaps the extremity is once again the point. You can't help noticing how Jesus goes out and claims the worst people - all the people who are on the other side of the bright line - unclean women, adulterers, lepers, the lame, the violent and mentally ill - and loves them as his own. The man once possessed by demons can testify that love healed him, and he is one of us.