think I need to be healed, not of autism. Other people want me to be healed, not me myself. I wonder if the man had a family, a family tired of carrying him around on his litter. I wonder if he had parents who said, “The least you could do is try to be healed,” or a wife who said, “Go on, try it; it can’t hurt,” or children teased by other children because their father couldn’t work. I wonder if some of the people who came did not come because they wanted to be healed, themselves, but because other people wanted them to do it, to be less of a burden.
Since my parents died, I am not anyone’s burden. Mr. Crenshaw thinks I am a burden to the company, but I do not believe this is true. I am not lying beside a pool begging people to carry me into it. I am trying to keep them from throwing me into it. I do not believe it is a healing pool anyway.
“… so the question for us today is, Do we want the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, or are we just pretending?” The priest has said a lot I have not heard. This I hear, and I shiver.
“Are we sitting here beside the pool, waiting for an angel to come trouble the water, waiting patiently but passively, while beside us the living God stands ready to give us life everlasting, abundant life, if only we will open our hands and hearts and take that gift?
“I believe many of us are. I believe all of us are like that at one time or another, but right now, still, many of us sit and wait and lament that there is no one to lower us into the water when the angel comes.” He pauses and looks around the church; I see people flinch and others relax when his gaze touches them.
“Look around you, every day, in every place, into the eyes of everyone you meet. Important as this church may be in your life, God should be greater—and He is everywhere, every-when, in everyone and everything. Ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be healed?’ and—if you can’t answer yes—start asking why not.
For I am sure that He stands beside each of you, asking that question in the depths of your soul, ready to heal you of all things as soon as you are ready to be healed.”
I stare at him and almost forget to stand up and say the words of the Nicene Creed, which is what comes next.
I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth and of all things seen and unseen. I believe God is important and does not make mistakes. My mother used to joke about God making mistakes, but I do not think if He is God He makes mistakes. So it is not a silly question.
Do I want to be healed?And of what?
The only self I know is this self, the person I am now, the autistic bioinformatics specialist fencer lover of Marjory.
And I believe in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who actually in the flesh asked that question of the man by the pool. The man who perhaps—the story does not say—had gone there because people were tired of him being sick and disabled, who perhaps had been content to lie down all day, but he got in the way.
What would Jesus have done if the man had said, “No, I don’t want to be healed; I am quite content as I am”? If he had said, “There is nothing wrong with me, but my relatives and neighbors insisted I come”?
I say the words automatically, smoothly, while my mind wrestles with the reading, the sermon,the words.
I remember another student, back in my hometown, who found out I went to church and asked, “Do you really believe that stuff or is it just a habit?”
If it is just habit, like going to the healing pool when you are sick, does that mean there is no belief? If the man had told Jesus that he didn’t really want to be healed, but his relatives insisted, Jesus might still think the man needed to be able to get up and walk.
Maybe God thinks I would be better if I weren’t autistic. Maybe God wants me to take the treatment.
I am cold suddenly. Here I have felt accepted—accepted by God, accepted by the priest and the people, or most of