The Speed of Dark (39 page)

It always seemed a silly question to me. Why would the man be by the healing pool if he did not want to be healed? Why would he complain about not having someone to lower him into the water if he did not want to be healed?

God does not ask silly questions. It must not be a silly question, but if it is not silly, what does it mean? It would be silly if I said it or if a doctor said it when I went to get medicine for an illness, but what does it mean here?

Our priest begins the sermon. I am still trying to puzzle out how a seemingly silly question could be meaningful when his voice echoes my thought.

“Why does Jesus ask the man if he wants to be healed? Isn’t that kind of silly? He’s lying there waiting for his chance at healing… Surely he wants to be healed.”

Exactly, I think.

“If God isn’t playing games with us, being silly, what then does this questionmean,
Do you want to be
healed
? Look at where we find this man: by the pool known for its healing powers, where ‘an angel comes and stirs the water at intervals…’ and the sick have to get into the water while it’s seething.

Where, in other words, the sick are patient patients, waiting for the cure to appear. They know—they’ve been told—that the way to be cured is to get in the water while it seethes. They aren’t looking for anything else… They are in that place, at that time, looking for not just healing, but healing by that particular method.

“In today’s world, we might say they are like the person who believes that one particular doctor—one world-famous specialist—can cure him of his cancer. He goes to the hospital where that doctoris, he wants to see that doctor and no one else, because he is sure that only that method will restore him to health.

“So the paralyzed man focuses on the healing pool, sure that the help he needs is someone to carry him into the water at the right time.

“ Jesus’squestion, then, challenges him to consider whether he wants to be well or he wants that particular experience, of being in the pool. If he can be healed without it, will he accept that healing?

“Some preachers have discussed this story as an example of self-inflicted paralysis, hysterical paralysis—if the man wants to stay paralyzed, he will. It’s about mental illness, not physical illness. But I
Page 182

think the question Jesus asks has to do with a cognitive problem, not an emotional problem. Can the man see outside the box? Can he accept healing that is not what he’s used to? That will go beyond fixing his legs and back and start working on him from the inside out, from the spirit to the mind to the body?”

I wonder what the man would say if he were not paralyzed but autistic. Would he even go to the pool for healing? Cameron would. I close my eyes and see Cameron lowering himself into bubbling water, in a shimmer of light. Then he disappears. Linda insists we do not need healing, that there is nothing wrong with us the way we are, just something wrong with others for not accepting us. I can imagine Linda pushing her way through the crowd, headed away from the pool.

I do not 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 Ihear, 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
Page 183

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 them. God does not spurn the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed,the crazy. That is what I have been taught and what I believe. What if I was wrong? What if God wants me to be something other than I am?

I sit through the rest of the service. I do not go up for Communion. One of the ushers asks if I am all right, and I nod. He looks worried but lets me alone. After the recessional, I wait where I am until the others have left, and then I go out the door. The priest is still standing there, chatting with one of the ushers. He smiles at me.

“Hello, Lou. How are you?” He gives my hand one firm, quickshake, because he knows that I do not like long handshakes.

“I do not know if I want to be healed,” I say.

His face contracts into a worried look. “Lou, I wasn’t talking about you—about people like you. I’m sorry if you think that—I was talking about spiritual healing. You know we accept you as you are—”

“You do,” I say, “but God?”

“God loves you as you are and as you will become,” the priest says. “I’m sorry if something I said hurt you—”

“I am not hurt,” I say. “I just do not know—”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

“Not now,” I say. I do not know what I think yet, so I will not ask until I am sure.

“You did not come up for Communion,” he says. I am surprised; I did not expect him to notice. “Please, Lou—don’tlet anything I said get between you and God.”

“It won’t,” I say. “It is just—I need to think.” I turn away and he lets me go. This is another good thing about my church. It is there, but it is not always grabbing.For a while when I was in school I went to a church where everyone wanted to be in everyone’s life all the time. If I had a cold and missed a service,
Page 184

someone would call to find out why. They said they were concerned and caring, but I felt smothered.

They said I was cold and needed to develop a fiery spirituality; they did not understand about me, and they would not listen.

I turn back to the priest; his eyebrows go up, but he waits for me to speak.

“I do not know why you talked about that Scripture this week,” I say. “It is not on the schedule.”

“Ah,” he says. His face relaxes. “Did you know that the Gospel of John is not ever on the schedule? It’s like a kind of secret weapon we priests can pull out when we think a congregation needs it.”

I had noticed that, but I had never asked why.

“I chose that Scripture for this particular day because—Lou, how involved are you in parish business?”

When someone starts an answer and then turns it into something else it is hard to understand, but I try. “I go to church,” I say. “Almost every Sunday—”

“Do you have other friends in the congregation?” he asks. “I mean, people you spend time with outside of church and maybe talk with about how the church is getting along?”

“No,” I say. Ever since that one church, I have not wanted to get too close to the people in church.

“Well, then, you may not be aware that there’s been a lot of argument about some things. We’ve had a lot of new people join—most of them have come from another church where there was a big fight, and they left.”

“A fight in church?”I can feel my stomach tighten; it would be very wrong to fight in church.

“These people were angry and upset when they came,” the priest says. “I knew it would take time for them to settle down and heal from that injury. I gave them time. But they are still angry and still arguing—with the people at their old church, and here they’ve started arguments with people who have always gotten along.” He is looking at me over the top of his glasses. Most people have surgery when their eyes start to go bad, but he wears old-fashioned glasses.

I puzzle through what he has said. “So… you talked about wanting to be healed because they are still angry?”

“Yes. They needed the challenge, I thought. I want them to realize that sticking in the same rut, having the same old arguments, staying angry with the people they left behind, is not the way to let God work in their lives for healing.” He shakes his head, looks down for a moment and then back at me. “Lou, you look a little upset still. Are you sure that you can’t tell me what it is?”

I do not want to talk to him about the treatment right now, but it is worse not to tell the truth here in church than anywhere else.

“Yes,” I say. “You said God loved us, accepted us, as we are. But then you said people should change, should accept healing. Only, if we are accepted as we are, then maybe that is what we should be. And if we should change, then it would be wrong to be accepted as we are.”

He nods. I do not know if that means he agrees that I said it correctly or that we should change. “I truly
Page 185

did not aim that arrow at you, Lou, and I’m sorry it hit you. I always thought of you as someone who had adapted very well—who was content within the limits God had put on his life.”

“I don’t think it was God,” I say. “My parents said it was anaccident, that some people are just born that way. But if it was God, it would be wrong to change, wouldn’t it?”

He looks surprised.

“But everyone has always wanted me to change as much as I could, be as normal as I could, and if that is a correct demand, then they cannot believe that the limits—the autism—come from God. That is what I cannot figure out. I need to know which it is.”

“Hmmm…” He rocks back and forth, heel to toe, looking past me for a long moment. “I never thought of it that way, Lou. Indeed, if people think of disabilities as literally God-given, then waiting by the pool is the only reasonable response. You don’t throw away something God gives you. But actually—I agree with you. I can’t really see God wanting people born with disabilities.”

“So I should want to be cured of it, even if there is no cure?”

“I think what we are supposed to want is what God wants, and the tricky thing is that much of the time we don’t know what that is,” he says.

“You know,” I say.

“I know part of it. God wants us to be honest, kind, helpful to one another. But whether God wants us to pursue every hint of a cure of conditions we have or acquire… I don’t know that. Only if it doesn’t interfere with who we are as God’s children, I suppose. And some things are beyond human power to cure, so we must do the best we can to cope with them. Good heavens, Lou, you come up with difficult ideas!” He is smiling at me, and it looks like a real smile, eyes and mouth and whole face. “You’d have made a very interesting seminary student.”

“I could not go to seminary,” I say. “I could not ever learn the languages.”

“I’m not so sure,” he says. “I’ll be thinking more about what you said, Lou. If you ever want to talk…”

It is a signal that he does not want to talk more now. I do not know why normal people cannot just say,

“I do not want to talk more now,” and go. I say, “Good-bye,” quickly and turn away. I know some of the signals, but I wish they were more reasonable.

The after-church bus is late, so I have not missed it. I stand on the corner waiting, thinking about the sermon. Few people ride the bus on Sunday, so I find a seat by myself, and look out at the trees, all bronze and coppery in the autumn light. When I was little, the trees still turned red and gold, but those trees all died from the heat, and now the trees that turn color at all are duller.