Seeing Voices

The good news of visible words

“The loneliest place in the world is around the ash tray in the common room at the psych ward,” a colleague told me, “I thought I was going to hell and I ended up in the loony bin.”

It was not the first time his body— his mind— had betrayed him.

He could remember only the two techs in the back of an ambulance, college students, debating about whether it was Hemingway or Fitzgerald who had killed himself. He thought it an odd argument to press given that he was in their care for the very same reason. Even if he took his life something to be forsaken, those who loved him would not let him go. He had been 5150’d to a psychiatric hospital where he awoke strapped down a bed. His hands were bound to his sides so that his hands would not, could not obey his treacherous mind.

In due course he was freed from the bed and its bindings but still not allowed laces for his shoes or anything for his hands but crayons.

“How is the gospel that we proclaim,” he asked himself, “good news in a place like this? For people like me?”

At first it was only a question for himself and the theology PhD on his CV.

Then it became a question for others like myself.

“How is the gospel good news for people like me and in places like the loony bin?”

I had a parishioner who developed a split personality to cope with the mental trauma she suffered after she accidentally killed a pedestrian with her car.

It wasn’t even her fault.

But to convince her she shouldn’t be so hard on herself would’ve required converting the complete alternate personality the injury conjured in her.

How is the gospel for her?

I have a friend whose son somehow— the word miracle goes down like a tough pill— survived a horrific hit-and-run. She celebrated his unexpected recovery as sheer grace; the same recovery process festered his Tourette’s into schizophrenia. Healthy, he ran away, utterly convinced by delusions that the parents who loved him had once horridly abused him.

How is the gospel for any of them?

Or the boy with autism whose mind will not allow him to escape the trauma his birth family visited upon him— how is the gospel good news for him or those who love him (or simply give a shit about him)?