Coming Closer

Jesus's Work, Our Work

Dear Friends,

I am tired.

I’ve said this before, but it has felt particularly true over the last few weeks. There’s probably some explanation for it, but I’m not sure what, but this level of exhaustion is weighing heavily right now. And while I am pushing through this feeling, I’m also trying to be aware of the particular challenges of living in a disabled body and the stories we tell about that.

Lent has long been, for many people, a time of disciplining the body. And even if you’ve made the “add rather than subtract” approach your strategy for Lent, this season takes embodiment seriously. This is the time to remember God made human and our shared human mortality. But not all of our bodies show up in the same way.

In the last few seasons, Illustrated Ministry has been taking these questions of incarnation seriously; their materials highlight how Jesus’s humanity helps God be present to us in our own. But this exhausted, painful body doesn’t feel like something to show up and celebrate. And stories like the healing of the blind man, which appears in this week’s lectionary, don’t help with that feeling. It’s a persistent question for many of us: what do we do with these healing stories?

Coming Close

In the Faces of Easter story from Godly Play, Jesus begins his unique work in the world by healing a blind man. It’s one of many healings in the Bible and, as told in Mark, one of the better known iterations for its questions about sin. “Who has sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” It’s a story about change, not just for the man who is healed, but for the disciples who have been taught a different way of thinking about disability; this is not a generational curse, rather it is just something that IS.

Even today, centuries after this ‘sins of the father’ model, a lot of us are carrying around this understanding. We are enraged and devastated when the “innocent” are struck down by illness or misfortune. We pray and make promises to God over our own well-being. Not long past Jesus’s healing, during the days of Saul, we’re even presented with sudden disability as punishment for his wrongdoings – overwhelmed by such a great light, he is temporarily blinded and unable to navigate the road on his own. In his healing, we also see his reformation and conversion.

Talking about blindness in this way, or about the various other healing stories in the Gospels, I feel that much more tired. I am tired of what it means to inhabit a body-mind that is different from the expected. I bet many of you are, too. Maybe you are tired on behalf of some of your loved-ones. But healing isn’t uncomplicated. So, how else might we think about it?

In Godly Play, when we reach the healing of the blind man in the Faces of Easter, we say that Jesus’s work was to come close to people that others were afraid of or avoided. To come close. Let’s think about that. There is something very different about this. Coming close to those on the edges, those who are literally marginalized, is often part of Jesus’s healing acts, and maybe it’s even the most important part, above and beyond the healing. Coming close, after all, is what we see happen time and again in the Bible, both in stories about Jesus and in other pieces of beloved scripture, like this Sunday’s appointed Psalm – Psalm 23 (catch The Corner Room’s take on that piece of scripture here). But how do we come closer to those in need of accompaniment?

Everyday Accompaniment

There is a lot of scholarly work about the theological meaning and implications of accompaniment. But this newsletter isn’t the place for that (though if you’re curious about it and looking for some examples of how spiritual accompaniment can work, I recommend this framework from Augsburg University). Instead, I want to think about how accompaniment works in Christian formation and particularly when it comes to working with children and youth.

If you know me and have worked with me, one thing you’ll quickly discover is that I adore the smallest humans in our communities. I have boundless patience for toddlers’ questions and evasions and strategies meant to help them navigate this big, overwhelming world. I think I often feel most at home with young children because my own emotional discernment is not great. I experience emotions with my body without having a name. I struggle to center myself. And when I feel that spiral, I turn to the sort of regulation strategies that are also helpful when working with children.

Over the weekend, I said a few words over on Instagram about the practice of co-regulation. If you’ve ever landed on “gentle parenting” TikTok (don’t ask me how I got there), you’ve heard about co-regulation, and practice that enacts what we all know to be true: that no one has ever calmed down just because they were told to, particularly not if that message was delivered with frustration or anger. Instead, such an approach escalates the situation. Co-regulation, on the other hand, meets elevated feelings with a grounded and supportive presence, affirming those feelings and offering a way through them. In the day to day of programming and childcare, this way of being can be transformative for everyone.

Emotional accompaniment can look like co-regulation, but in reality, the majority of the tools we use to manage “big feelings” are also the tools of spiritual accompaniment. We can teach and demonstrate all we want, until we’re tired and worn thin, but if we don’t come alongside others in their journey, then we have done both our companions and ourselves a disservice.

Here, in the midst of my exhaustion, I am not looking for healing. I am looking for someone to travel alongside, to take my arm when I stumble or offer me water. As we journey toward the cross and into the season of resurrection, may we walk together. Resurrection is the only miracle, the only sign that I seek. Beyond that, I just want good company.

Peace,
Bird