“Healing means first of all allowing strangers to become sensitive and obedient to their own stories. Healers, therefore, become students who want to learn, and patients become teachers who want to teach. Just as teacher learn their course material best during the preparation and ordering of their ideas for presentation to students, so patients learn their own story by telling it to a healer who wants to heart it. Healers are hosts who patiently and carefully listen to the story of the suffering strangers. Patients are guests who rediscover their selves by telling their story to the one who offers them a place to stay. In the telling of their stories, strangers befriend not only their host but also their own past.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.
Isn’t it great, sharing our story with others who listen? Having the freedom to weave our narrative through current consciousness that interprets the events in new and sometimes predetermined ways. How great it is to have a listener who asks us questions that places another reader in our story. A question or comment that shows the listener listened and found it interesting that we defined it so. Sometimes I am the teacher and other times the student, the secret is never to find myself as only one or the other.
1 comment:
....and how sad when "preachers" presume to speak to people as if they have no experience of faith. Thank you for this reminder.
Pete
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