“When I die, if He says my sins are myriad
I will ask why He made me so imperfect
And he will say ‘My chisels were blunt’
I will say ‘Then why did you make so
many of me?’”
*
We tend to see brokenness as a flaw in our design,
and perhaps it is.
And yet if this is truly the case then the question from Spike Milligan’s poem above is an important one: why did you make so many of me?
Many great minds over the years have tried to find answers to the question of human frailty. I have an early memory of being with a friend after we’d been scolded for doing something we shouldn’t have. She turned to me and said “fucking Adam and Eve, right?” I didn’t understand. “Well if it wasn’t for them we would never get in trouble - we wouldn’t do anything wrong!”
At the time our ten-year old selves weren’t aware of the warped shape of this kind of thinking, but it made sense to both of us at the time. In retrospect I now see that creative solutions to complex moral problems rarely begin with the abdication of responsibility.
We are all broken in many ways, this much is fairly obvious.
So many of the great thinkers of history, at least the ones asking these deep questions about the human condition, are trying to answer a more personal question too: what is wrong with me?
With us?
Why are we often so violent,
so envious, so small,
so broken?
And perhaps the most important question of all: how might we become whole again? How might we be healed?
*
The Pool of Bethesda forms the backdrop to one of the early healing stories in John’s gospel.
It’s a pool with healing powers.
A healing pool.
It would be nice if all of our brokenness could be washed away by a magic pool.
The story behind the healing pool is that an angel was thought to visit there on occasion and dip their finger into the water. When the angel troubled the waters, the first person into the pool would be healed. First come, first served, that kind of thing.
The setting is quite bleak: hundreds of people with crippling ailments desperately waiting for their turn to be healed, to be free to live their lives unburdened. In John’s retelling of the story, there is a man who has been there for thirty-eight years.
That’s a long time.
It’s hard to imagine the impact this indefinite suspension had on the man’s life, his family. No wonder Jesus’ initial question seems a little laced: do you want to be well?
Is that an invitation or an insult?
I’m not sure.
The story that John tells is one of healing, and because of this it is a miraculous story, I suppose, but because of this it is also a troubling story, at least to me.
(Although I concede it was probably decisively less troubling to the man who had been waiting for thirty-eight years.)
The reason the story troubles me is that despite its remarkable ending, thirty-eight years of this man's life had been spent sitting there, waiting for what he knew may never come.
He had given up on life. He had decided that nothing else would come of his life until he was free of whatever it was that plagued him. It feels almost like the abandonment of hope on the altar of the miraculous. It sounds a little paradoxical, perhaps it is.
Perhaps this is a little judgmental. I am so removed from both the time, place and experience of disability that it isn’t for me to conclude that sitting in wait for thirty-eight years wasn’t the most reasonable option in front of this man.
But that’s not the point I am trying to draw out.
What I am wondering is how often we lie in wait for some kind of healing, without recognising that - in some cases - it is our brokenness that qualifies us for the work of life, and of Love.
*
There is a short play called The Angel That Troubled The Waters, by Thornton Wilder. It also takes place with the Pool of Bethesda as its backdrop and tells the story of a physician who approaches the pool in need of the angel’s healing. He is distressed, and is described later as being broken on the wheels of living.
There is something about that description that captures my imagination.
Broken on the Wheels of Living.
The phrase steers us away from descriptions of human brokenness that are big and bold, and submits simply that the ordinary rotation of life has a way of pulling us apart from ourselves.
I have often found myself broken on the wheels of living.
In the story it is unclear what is wrong with the physician exactly, but he urges the angel not to be fooled by his apparent wholeness:
“Surely…your eyes can see the nets in which my wings are caught; the sin into which all my endeavours sink half-performed cannot be concealed from you”
Like so many people today, the physician pleads with the angel to free him from this indelible anguish, the pain that swirls unseen within.
Most commentators identify the physician's pain as some kind of depression. Whilst depression is a condition commonly and openly spoken about in our modern world (and for the most part without stigma or shame) this wouldn’t have been the case at the time Wilder wrote this story down. So here by the pool, at the hands of an angel, is the only place a healer can go to be healed.
There is a tragedy here that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Like many of us would do, the physician promises the world in return for a chance to be healed. He speaks of the things he might do “in Love’s service” if he were “freed from this bondage.” The assumption being that until he is free, the service of Love cannot be advanced. Perhaps this is the tragedy I feel? The idea that before Love can be served, we must somehow be whole?
This is a sentiment I have come across many times in my journey through life. I hear its whispers in my own mind, but it is also echoed “out there” in the world: first help yourself, then you can help others. Take care of yourself first, only then can you help the other person. First you must be whole, only then can you help others put the pieces of themselves back together.
There is wisdom in taking care of ourselves, that’s for sure. For long periods of life I have been unkind with my own self, my own body, and nothing good ever comes of this in the end. However, the idea that Love can only be served when we are whole is, perhaps, to misunderstand the rhythm and power of Love itself.
And to misunderstand Love is to misunderstand God.
In Wilder’s story the angel refuses healing to the man.
Something about his words catch in my throat:
“Draw back, physician, this moment is not for you.”
And after further pleading, further clarity:
“Healing is not for you.”
It’s a jarring thing to read words like this in a time when there are precious few things beyond our mortal reach. And yet this - wholeness - has always been the domain of God, of Love. A writer I love once told a story about a woman who stepped forward in church to give testimony about her child who had been miraculously healed of a chronic illness. She wanted to thank the people for their prayers, believing that they were the reason her child was still living, but as she stepped up she caught the eye of another woman who had lost her son to the same illness.
I am not smart or faithful enough to understand how healing works but I know how empathy works. If you give a testimony that claims the knowledge of how a miracle took place, what then do you say to the one for whom it didn’t?
Healing is not for you?
I’m not trying to diminish the many stories that exist of people being cured. But these stories are the exception.
The story in the book of John makes this quite clear.
We focus on the miracle, and this is certainly a prominent feature of the story.
But it is the thirty-eight years that capture my attention.
More than a generation of time lost, waiting for Love to do what he thought it must before he could give himself over to it. What else must have been lost in that time?
And the physician, who believed that he must be healed in order to begin Love’s service.
I, like many, am often caught by the notion that I am unqualified for the work of Love, the work of God, because I am not yet whole. I am broken. This invalidating voice comes from somewhere within me, but also plenty of times from people around me too.
And yet in my most prayerful moments I see a glimpse of the true nature of things:
We are all broken.
Not only this, but it is our brokenness that, in many ways, binds us together as people.
It is also, strangely, the brokenness in me that may bring about a small sense of wholeness in you.
The most captivating lines of Wilder’s play come in the form of the angel’s response. After explaining to the physician that he would not be healed, the angel begins his explanatory song:
“Without your wound, where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love's service only the wounded soldiers can serve. Draw back.”
Draw back.
Draw back from the pool.
Draw back from the healing.
Draw back from what you think you need.
Draw back from what is stopping you from stepping into Love’s service.
I have found myself broken on the wheels of living more times than I ought. Sometimes through misfortune, sometimes self-sabotage, and still other times through sheer dumb luck. I still find myself, from time to time, waiting at the edge of the pool, hoping against hope that in the troubled waters I will find the Love I need to feel whole again.
And yet both Wilder’s story and I think John’s story too, tell us something different. They tell us that the wounds we long to be healed from are the threads that connect us to the people around us. It is our woundedness, not our wholeness, that qualifies us.
James Alison once said that in order to speak or think about God with anything close to truth, we must first have a heart that is close to cracking. His invitation was to embrace heartbreak, as a means to understand both ourselves, and God, more fully.
There is something about this idea that I have never been able to shake.
And to be sure, the most beautiful writings, poems, or songs I have ever come across were written by people whose hearts had been torn in some way.
Blessed are the broken-hearted.
*
I will finish with a part of Wilder’s story that I have thus far neglected. There was another at the pool that day. This man enters the scene by waking suddenly from a nightmare and flinging himself into the water, splashing his companions, pleading for healing from what appears to be a disease of the hand. He is derisive toward the physician:
Go back to your work and leave these miracles to us who need them.
This man has been here many times, and each time has missed out on the angel’s healing. It is unclear how long exactly he has been waiting. Maybe thirty-eight years?
That would be a little on the nose, probably.
He is desperate, separated from his children and family, alone, and distressed. In the end it is he who is healed, not the physician. His glee from having a whole hand is quite clear, but the play ends with this healed man extending an invitation to the physician to come back to his home:
"Come with me first…to my home. My son is lost in dark thoughts. I do not understand him, and only you have ever lifted his mood…"
We are left to wonder whether, had the physician received from the angel what he thought he needed, he would be able to bring to this man’s world what he most truly needed.
"Only you have ever lifted his mood."
These threads of brokenness,
bring life,
in Love’s service.