A Hazelnut
Stories
Object:
Contents
A Story to Live By: "A Hazelnut"
Sharing Visions: "Shared Power" by Robert Maeglin
Good Stories: "Drastic Measures" by John Sumwalt
John's Scrap Pile: "The Healing Power of Stories"
How to describe the love of God? Julian of Norwich pondered this question as she held a hazelnut in the palm of her hand. "All things have being through the love of God," she writes in a memorable quote found in this week's Story to Live By. In Sharing Visions Robert Maeglin gives a glimpse of God's unfailing love in a dramatic rescue story involving an angel and three terrified men who were certain they were going to die. John explores the transforming love of God in a Good Story that might make you willing to take "Drastic Measures" instead of writing someone off for inappropriate behavior. See the Scrap Pile for the real healing power that can be released in a story, if, as Martin Buber says, it is "... told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself."
A Story to Live By
A Hazelnut
Julian of Norwich tells about the love of God she experienced in a vision in the 14th century:
A little thing the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind's eye and thought, "What can this be?" And the answer came, "It is all that is made." I marveled that it could last, for I thought it might have crumbled to nothing, it was so small. And the answer came to my mind, "It lasts and ever shall because God loves it." And all things have being through the love of God. In this little thing I see three truths. The first is that God made it. The second is that God loves it. The third is that God looks after it. What is God indeed that is maker and lover and keeper? I cannot find words to tell.
(The text of Julian of Norwich, modernized from A Revelation of Love, ed. Marian Blasscoe [Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988], chapter 5.)
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7
Sharing Visions
Shared Power
by Robert Maeglin
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza."
Acts 8:26
It had been a long day of meetings, and a group of scientists were returning from Manila to Los Banos in the Philippines. I, an American, sat with four Filipino men on the 40-mile trip. The driver, a young man called Cata, began to tell a story. It was an amazing story of survival in the mountains of northern Luzon during a typhoon. I listened with rapt attention.
"We were coming down the mountain road when suddenly the mountainside slid across the road, blocking us," Cata said. "It was dark from the rain and strong wind. We stopped just short of the mass of sliding mud and rock. The driver began to back up when we discovered a slide behind us. We were trapped!"
Cata went on to tell how they sat for three days on that mountainside without food, drinking water from the rain that beat against them. The typhoon pounded the vehicle and they wondered when the mountain would slide down on them. Finally, after three days and nights in the vehicle, Cata and a 60-year-old man decided to go for help.
"We climbed the mountain, above the slides, and planned to cross the mountain beyond the slides and then go down to the highway below," Cata told.
"As we were traversing the side of the mountain, through the broken stones and mud, my foot became trapped and I fell down. I heard a rumbling and looked up at a huge boulder rolling directly at me. I was in complete panic. I struggled to get free, but without success. I screamed at the top of my voice, 'Jesus, help me!' Just above me sat a grapefruit-sized rock. The boulder rolled to a stop at that rock, and the old man jerked me loose as the boulder rolled right over the spot where I was trapped."
Being a Christian, I was spellbound by this story of calling on Jesus. Chills ran up my back and arms as he continued to talk.
He said that he and the old man continued to grope their way across the mountain, stumbling and shivering in the cold 50-degree temperatures of the storm. The winds, he said, were brutal, the rain pounding them unmercifully. After miles of walking, and at times almost crawling, the old man called to Cata, "I can't go any further. Leave me here. I'll just have to die on the mountain. I'm too weak to go on."
Cata said he once again cried out as loud as possible, "Jesus, help us!" He then said that he turned his head to see a small "Japanese-looking" woman coming out of the pounding storm. She walked to the old man and took him by the arm. She asked for his pack and said, "Trust in Jesus and follow me." The old man stood and had walked with her for a short distance when she said to him, "Take off your shoes, it will be easier."
"My feet are sore now. They'll be cut to shreds on the rocks if I take off my shoes," the old man said.
Gently the woman affirmed him, "Trust God and take off your shoes."
I was chilled at the story, listening with excitement.
Cata continued, "The old man walked with a new vigor as the woman led the way down the mountainside, right to a waiting rescue crew. When we arrived at the highway, the old man told me to give the woman some money. I reached in my wallet and turned to give it to the woman, but she was nowhere to be found. "It had to be an angel," Cata said.
We drove on into Los Banos and parted, my head full of this "fanciful tale." A day or so later, I sat at the desk of another scientist at the Forest Products Research and Development Institute in Los Banos, talking to him about a scheduled trip that I had, to go to the Mountain Province in northern Luzon.
Felly said to me, "I had quite an experience up there a couple of months ago in a terrific typhoon."
He began describing exactly what Cata had told a few days before, down to the smallest detail. He told of hearing Cata scream out of the howling wind when he was trapped in the rocks, and how the boulder stopped for an instant after Cata called on Jesus for help. Then Felly grew very quiet and began relating how he knew that he was going to die on the mountain. He said his feet were aching, his legs had lost all strength, and his will was gone. When Cata hollered the second time for Jesus' help, Felly said he had given up hope. Then, to see this woman coming out of the misty storm, he thought he had already died. He told how the woman touched his arm and strength returned to him immediately.
"This little woman, who was smaller than me [Felly stands about 5 feet tall] lifted me up, taking my pack. She seemed immensely strong. We walked a little way when she said to me, 'Take off your shoes, it will be easier.'"
"My feet are sore now. They'll be cut to shreds on the rocks if I take off my shoes," I replied.
She told me, "Trust God and take off your shoes."
"I did, and I walked without any problem. Over rocks that had even cut into my shoes, I walked without cutting my feet. It was almost like walking on air," Felly said. "When Cata, the woman, and I got to the road, there was a rescue party. I turned to Cata and told him to give the woman some money, because I didn't have any with me. When Cata turned to give the woman the money, she couldn't be found."
Felly looked at me, I suppose wondering if I believed him. Then he said, "I believe that the woman was either Mary or an angel."
Coming to Los Banos a couple of days earlier, I wasn't sure I believed Cata, but now there was no doubt in my mind. The details were exact, the whole story was exact.
Later, as I was on that trip to the Mountain Province, the driver stopped on the rugged, steep mountainside and told me how he, Cata, Felly and another man were trapped for three days before Cata and Felly left for help. He said that he and the other man stayed in the vehicle for another day and a half before the rescuers arrived. He also told, with detailed exactness, how it all started and what Cata and Felly had told him. "They were saved by an angel. We were all saved by an angel!" he said.
I walked to the edge of the road and looked down, perhaps a thousand feet into the valley below. Then I turned and looked up at the rugged, slide-ridden mountainside above, where, in a blinding typhoon-driven storm, two men experienced God's shared power and mercy.
Dr. Robert Maeglin, pastor of the Lime Ridge and Sandusky United Methodist Churches in Sauk County, Wisconsin, shares this story which was related to him in 1994 by Catalino Pabuyan and Felino Siriban when he was a consultant to the Philippine government, working at the Forest Products Research and Development Institute in Los Banos, Laguna Province. Dr. Maeglin worked for 30 years as a scientist at the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory. He retired in 1989 to become a licensed local pastor. Dr. Maeglin is the author of over 60 scientific and technical articles, as well as numerous conservation articles.
His story appears in Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles [link to 0-7880-1896-5], edited by John E. Sumwalt (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 2002). Vision Stories is available from CSS through their website (www.csspub.com) or by calling 1-800-241-4056. Vision Stories is also available at Cokesbury, Family Christian Stores, and many local Christian bookstores.
Good Stories
Drastic Measures
by John Sumwalt
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:12
Jeremy Wagner was angry. Kathy had bumped into him while he was standing next to the water fountain and he immediately hauled off and slugged her on the ear. Kathy cried and cried, and when she stopped crying she went down the hall to find the teacher.
Now Kathy was no tattletale. She could take her licks with the best of them. But this was just too much. Jeremy was always hitting someone or kicking someone and sometimes even worse. One day he hit George Larson right on the end of the nose so hard that George was sure he'd lost his nose forever. And if he wasn't physically assaulting someone, he was teasing them. Jeremy never had anything good to say about anyone. It seemed that he was always angry. Kathy decided something had to be done.
When she walked into Mr. Sanders' room he took one look at her face and said, "Jeremy again?"
She nodded her head. "You've got to do something about him, Mr. Sanders. It's not safe to walk the halls when he's around."
Mr. Sanders said, "Thank you, Kathy. I'll see what I can do." His voice sounded confident and reassuring, but inside Mr. Sanders wasn't so sure. He had talked to Jeremy almost every day since the beginning of the school year. He had sent him to the principal's office so many times he thought there must be a beaten path by now. The principal had done everything he could think of to make him change his ways. He made him stay after school. He talked to his parents. He even suspended him once for three days. Jeremy was the only kid in the whole history of the grade school who had ever been suspended. Nothing seemed to work. Jeremy just got meaner and meaner.
Finally Mr. Sanders decided the situation called for drastic measures. He called Jeremy into his room and told him to stand perfectly still in front of his desk.
"Now, Jeremy," he said, "I've told you before, you've got to stop hurting people. The principal has told you and your Mom and Dad have told you. We have punished you in every way the law allows and you still insist on hurting people. Jeremy Wagner, I want you to listen to me now and listen good. I am going to have to deal with you in a way that you have never been dealt with before. I want you to come to my room every day after school for the next two weeks. Be here at exactly three o'clock."
"But I'll miss the bus," Jeremy said.
"The bus doesn't leave until 3:15," said Mr. Sanders. "You be here at three o'clock. I'll make sure you catch the bus on time."
The next day at three o'clock Jeremy was there right on time, and he was scared. He didn't know what Mr. Sanders was going to do, but he knew it was going to be something terrible.
When Mr. Sanders came in he walked right up to Jeremy, and without saying a word, gave him a big ... hug! And before Jeremy could say or do anything he said, "That will be all for today, Jeremy. See you tomorrow, same time."
The next day at three o'clock Mr. Sanders did exactly the same thing. On Wednesday Mr. Sanders did the same thing again, and after the hug he looked Jeremy right in the eye and said, "You know, Jeremy, even though you get into trouble all of the time, I think that underneath you are really a pretty good guy." Jeremy didn't say anything, but he knew something inside himself was beginning to change.
On Friday, when Mr. Sanders hugged Jeremy, Jeremy hugged him back. He hadn't meant to; he just couldn't help himself. It seemed the natural thing to do.
The next week was the same thing all over again. Jeremy went to Mr. Sanders' room every day at three o'clock. Mr. Sanders gave him a big hug, and every day now Jeremy hugged him back.
On Friday Jeremy was reluctant to go see Mr. Sanders. He knew it was the last day of his punishment and, strange as it seemed, he didn't want it to end. Tears filled his eyes as Mr. Sanders hugged him for the last time. Jeremy decided he wouldn't let go. He clung to Mr. Sanders with all his might.
Mr. Sanders held Jeremy close for a long time. After a while Jeremy said, "No one ever hugs me at home. They just yell at me and tell me what a bad boy I am. But I know I'm not a bad boy. Not really."
"No, you're not a bad boy," said Mr. Sanders. "You just act like one sometimes. Maybe you can learn to act differently so that people will know what you're really like."
Jeremy stepped back from Mr. Sanders and wiped the last tears from his eyes. "I'll try to be good, Mr. Sanders. Honest, I will."
"One more thing, Jeremy," said Mr. Sanders. "You don't have to come here every day at three o'clock anymore, but I'll be here any time you need me."
Kathy and the other kids could hardly believe their eyes when they saw Jeremy walking down the hall that day. He wasn't hitting anyone; he wasn't kicking; he wasn't biting; he wasn't teasing. He was doing something they had never seen him do before. He was smiling. Jeremy Wagner wasn't angry anymore.
John's Scrap Pile
The Healing Power of Stories
Martin Buber says this about the healing power of stories:
"A story must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself. My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how his teacher used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness. That's how to tell a story." (Martin Buber quoted in "Sunbeams," The Sun, July 1989, p. 40.)
Storytelling is one of the healing arts. Hearing the stories of others and telling our own stories are age-old ways of healing. Thomas Moore writes in Care of the Soul (Harper Collins, 1992):
"Storytelling is an excellent way of caring for the soul. It helps us see the themes that circle our lives, the deep themes that tell the myths we live."
Moore tells of "an uncle who told stories endlessly ... his method of working the raw material of his life, his way of turning his experience round and round in the rotation that stories provide." This "rotation that stories provide" may be the key to the healing that can come in both the hearing and the telling of stories, especially as they relate to traumatic experiences.
Tim O'Brien, author of The Things We Carried, a Vietnam War-era novel, says:
"The moment of trauma, whether combat-related, a product of childhood abuse, or a wrenching divorce that severs a relationship, can only be understood in successive viewings; ... the human mind tends to circle and recircle tragedy. Each pass provides a new perspective for explaining the inexplicable or resolving elements of a mystery, like changing the lenses on a camera." (Kenosha News, February 7, 1994)
I experienced something of this a number of years ago at a workshop for church leaders. There were four of us in a discussion group. Our assignment was to discuss three stories we had just heard our leader, Jim Guckenberg, tell the group.
The last story was about a woman who got lost one snowy night on an unfamiliar road. The temperature is below zero. She comes to a dead end, the car stalls, and she is unable to get it started again. She curses the car and prays to God. Jesus comes and sits beside her in the car and prepares to die with her. The end of the story was followed by a long silence.
Jim asked us to talk about who the characters in the stories were and what we thought they were expressing.
The groups around us began to buzz almost immediately after the instructions were given.
Our group sat in silence for several moments. We introduced ourselves, but there was an awkward silence again. No one seemed to want to discuss the story.
Feeling a need to help the group get started, I told a story of a time when my life had been in danger and I had desperately prayed for deliverance and had been delivered.
A nurse in the group told a similar story. Then a man in his mid-70s spoke up slowly and deliberately. He said he had served with an Air Force bomber squadron in the South Pacific during World War II. Near the end of one mission, as his B-24 was returning to the base, he looked out the window and saw the plane that was carrying his best friend catch on fire and plummet toward the ground. After his plane landed, he ran toward the crashed plane to see if he could help. The plane was burning fiercely and the whole crew had been killed, except for one man who was trapped in the tail section. It was his friend. He was screaming for someone to get a gun and shoot him. The storyteller said he grabbed an ax and ran up to the plane to see if he could get his friend out. His friend yelled for him and everyone else to get back. He said the plane was full of gasoline and could explode at any moment. Everyone heeded the trapped man's warning and got back out of the way just before the plane exploded.
The storyteller sighed and said he knew that his friend was a man of faith and that Jesus had been with him when he died. His wife of 50 years, who was sitting next to him and was visibly moved by what she had just heard, said, "I have been hearing more and more of these stories. I have never heard him tell that one before."
The telling of such stories is therapeutic for all involved. Hearers can be healed as much as tellers. Tim O'Brien admits that writing novels about Vietnam is a way of dealing with the mysteries of that war that are still unresolved for him. But he says he also writes for people who weren't there: 'It makes my heart glad when I get a letter from a reader who tells me, "Now I understand why my husband cries at night or wakes up screaming.'"
Judith Lewis Herman tells in her book Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992):
"My first paper on incest, written with Lisa Hirschman in 1976, circulated 'underground' in manuscript for a year before it was published. We began to receive letters from all over the country from women who had never before told their stories. Through them we realized the power of speaking the unspeakable and witnessed firsthand the creative energy that is released when the barriers of denial and repression are lifted."
Do you have a story of healing to tell? Send your story of healing to StoryShare. Sharing it may be helpful in your healing journey, and reading or hearing your story may help someone else to heal.
StoryShare, May 18, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
A Story to Live By: "A Hazelnut"
Sharing Visions: "Shared Power" by Robert Maeglin
Good Stories: "Drastic Measures" by John Sumwalt
John's Scrap Pile: "The Healing Power of Stories"
How to describe the love of God? Julian of Norwich pondered this question as she held a hazelnut in the palm of her hand. "All things have being through the love of God," she writes in a memorable quote found in this week's Story to Live By. In Sharing Visions Robert Maeglin gives a glimpse of God's unfailing love in a dramatic rescue story involving an angel and three terrified men who were certain they were going to die. John explores the transforming love of God in a Good Story that might make you willing to take "Drastic Measures" instead of writing someone off for inappropriate behavior. See the Scrap Pile for the real healing power that can be released in a story, if, as Martin Buber says, it is "... told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself."
A Story to Live By
A Hazelnut
Julian of Norwich tells about the love of God she experienced in a vision in the 14th century:
A little thing the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind's eye and thought, "What can this be?" And the answer came, "It is all that is made." I marveled that it could last, for I thought it might have crumbled to nothing, it was so small. And the answer came to my mind, "It lasts and ever shall because God loves it." And all things have being through the love of God. In this little thing I see three truths. The first is that God made it. The second is that God loves it. The third is that God looks after it. What is God indeed that is maker and lover and keeper? I cannot find words to tell.
(The text of Julian of Norwich, modernized from A Revelation of Love, ed. Marian Blasscoe [Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1988], chapter 5.)
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7
Sharing Visions
Shared Power
by Robert Maeglin
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza."
Acts 8:26
It had been a long day of meetings, and a group of scientists were returning from Manila to Los Banos in the Philippines. I, an American, sat with four Filipino men on the 40-mile trip. The driver, a young man called Cata, began to tell a story. It was an amazing story of survival in the mountains of northern Luzon during a typhoon. I listened with rapt attention.
"We were coming down the mountain road when suddenly the mountainside slid across the road, blocking us," Cata said. "It was dark from the rain and strong wind. We stopped just short of the mass of sliding mud and rock. The driver began to back up when we discovered a slide behind us. We were trapped!"
Cata went on to tell how they sat for three days on that mountainside without food, drinking water from the rain that beat against them. The typhoon pounded the vehicle and they wondered when the mountain would slide down on them. Finally, after three days and nights in the vehicle, Cata and a 60-year-old man decided to go for help.
"We climbed the mountain, above the slides, and planned to cross the mountain beyond the slides and then go down to the highway below," Cata told.
"As we were traversing the side of the mountain, through the broken stones and mud, my foot became trapped and I fell down. I heard a rumbling and looked up at a huge boulder rolling directly at me. I was in complete panic. I struggled to get free, but without success. I screamed at the top of my voice, 'Jesus, help me!' Just above me sat a grapefruit-sized rock. The boulder rolled to a stop at that rock, and the old man jerked me loose as the boulder rolled right over the spot where I was trapped."
Being a Christian, I was spellbound by this story of calling on Jesus. Chills ran up my back and arms as he continued to talk.
He said that he and the old man continued to grope their way across the mountain, stumbling and shivering in the cold 50-degree temperatures of the storm. The winds, he said, were brutal, the rain pounding them unmercifully. After miles of walking, and at times almost crawling, the old man called to Cata, "I can't go any further. Leave me here. I'll just have to die on the mountain. I'm too weak to go on."
Cata said he once again cried out as loud as possible, "Jesus, help us!" He then said that he turned his head to see a small "Japanese-looking" woman coming out of the pounding storm. She walked to the old man and took him by the arm. She asked for his pack and said, "Trust in Jesus and follow me." The old man stood and had walked with her for a short distance when she said to him, "Take off your shoes, it will be easier."
"My feet are sore now. They'll be cut to shreds on the rocks if I take off my shoes," the old man said.
Gently the woman affirmed him, "Trust God and take off your shoes."
I was chilled at the story, listening with excitement.
Cata continued, "The old man walked with a new vigor as the woman led the way down the mountainside, right to a waiting rescue crew. When we arrived at the highway, the old man told me to give the woman some money. I reached in my wallet and turned to give it to the woman, but she was nowhere to be found. "It had to be an angel," Cata said.
We drove on into Los Banos and parted, my head full of this "fanciful tale." A day or so later, I sat at the desk of another scientist at the Forest Products Research and Development Institute in Los Banos, talking to him about a scheduled trip that I had, to go to the Mountain Province in northern Luzon.
Felly said to me, "I had quite an experience up there a couple of months ago in a terrific typhoon."
He began describing exactly what Cata had told a few days before, down to the smallest detail. He told of hearing Cata scream out of the howling wind when he was trapped in the rocks, and how the boulder stopped for an instant after Cata called on Jesus for help. Then Felly grew very quiet and began relating how he knew that he was going to die on the mountain. He said his feet were aching, his legs had lost all strength, and his will was gone. When Cata hollered the second time for Jesus' help, Felly said he had given up hope. Then, to see this woman coming out of the misty storm, he thought he had already died. He told how the woman touched his arm and strength returned to him immediately.
"This little woman, who was smaller than me [Felly stands about 5 feet tall] lifted me up, taking my pack. She seemed immensely strong. We walked a little way when she said to me, 'Take off your shoes, it will be easier.'"
"My feet are sore now. They'll be cut to shreds on the rocks if I take off my shoes," I replied.
She told me, "Trust God and take off your shoes."
"I did, and I walked without any problem. Over rocks that had even cut into my shoes, I walked without cutting my feet. It was almost like walking on air," Felly said. "When Cata, the woman, and I got to the road, there was a rescue party. I turned to Cata and told him to give the woman some money, because I didn't have any with me. When Cata turned to give the woman the money, she couldn't be found."
Felly looked at me, I suppose wondering if I believed him. Then he said, "I believe that the woman was either Mary or an angel."
Coming to Los Banos a couple of days earlier, I wasn't sure I believed Cata, but now there was no doubt in my mind. The details were exact, the whole story was exact.
Later, as I was on that trip to the Mountain Province, the driver stopped on the rugged, steep mountainside and told me how he, Cata, Felly and another man were trapped for three days before Cata and Felly left for help. He said that he and the other man stayed in the vehicle for another day and a half before the rescuers arrived. He also told, with detailed exactness, how it all started and what Cata and Felly had told him. "They were saved by an angel. We were all saved by an angel!" he said.
I walked to the edge of the road and looked down, perhaps a thousand feet into the valley below. Then I turned and looked up at the rugged, slide-ridden mountainside above, where, in a blinding typhoon-driven storm, two men experienced God's shared power and mercy.
Dr. Robert Maeglin, pastor of the Lime Ridge and Sandusky United Methodist Churches in Sauk County, Wisconsin, shares this story which was related to him in 1994 by Catalino Pabuyan and Felino Siriban when he was a consultant to the Philippine government, working at the Forest Products Research and Development Institute in Los Banos, Laguna Province. Dr. Maeglin worked for 30 years as a scientist at the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory. He retired in 1989 to become a licensed local pastor. Dr. Maeglin is the author of over 60 scientific and technical articles, as well as numerous conservation articles.
His story appears in Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles [link to 0-7880-1896-5], edited by John E. Sumwalt (Lima, Ohio: CSS Publishing Company, 2002). Vision Stories is available from CSS through their website (www.csspub.com) or by calling 1-800-241-4056. Vision Stories is also available at Cokesbury, Family Christian Stores, and many local Christian bookstores.
Good Stories
Drastic Measures
by John Sumwalt
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:12
Jeremy Wagner was angry. Kathy had bumped into him while he was standing next to the water fountain and he immediately hauled off and slugged her on the ear. Kathy cried and cried, and when she stopped crying she went down the hall to find the teacher.
Now Kathy was no tattletale. She could take her licks with the best of them. But this was just too much. Jeremy was always hitting someone or kicking someone and sometimes even worse. One day he hit George Larson right on the end of the nose so hard that George was sure he'd lost his nose forever. And if he wasn't physically assaulting someone, he was teasing them. Jeremy never had anything good to say about anyone. It seemed that he was always angry. Kathy decided something had to be done.
When she walked into Mr. Sanders' room he took one look at her face and said, "Jeremy again?"
She nodded her head. "You've got to do something about him, Mr. Sanders. It's not safe to walk the halls when he's around."
Mr. Sanders said, "Thank you, Kathy. I'll see what I can do." His voice sounded confident and reassuring, but inside Mr. Sanders wasn't so sure. He had talked to Jeremy almost every day since the beginning of the school year. He had sent him to the principal's office so many times he thought there must be a beaten path by now. The principal had done everything he could think of to make him change his ways. He made him stay after school. He talked to his parents. He even suspended him once for three days. Jeremy was the only kid in the whole history of the grade school who had ever been suspended. Nothing seemed to work. Jeremy just got meaner and meaner.
Finally Mr. Sanders decided the situation called for drastic measures. He called Jeremy into his room and told him to stand perfectly still in front of his desk.
"Now, Jeremy," he said, "I've told you before, you've got to stop hurting people. The principal has told you and your Mom and Dad have told you. We have punished you in every way the law allows and you still insist on hurting people. Jeremy Wagner, I want you to listen to me now and listen good. I am going to have to deal with you in a way that you have never been dealt with before. I want you to come to my room every day after school for the next two weeks. Be here at exactly three o'clock."
"But I'll miss the bus," Jeremy said.
"The bus doesn't leave until 3:15," said Mr. Sanders. "You be here at three o'clock. I'll make sure you catch the bus on time."
The next day at three o'clock Jeremy was there right on time, and he was scared. He didn't know what Mr. Sanders was going to do, but he knew it was going to be something terrible.
When Mr. Sanders came in he walked right up to Jeremy, and without saying a word, gave him a big ... hug! And before Jeremy could say or do anything he said, "That will be all for today, Jeremy. See you tomorrow, same time."
The next day at three o'clock Mr. Sanders did exactly the same thing. On Wednesday Mr. Sanders did the same thing again, and after the hug he looked Jeremy right in the eye and said, "You know, Jeremy, even though you get into trouble all of the time, I think that underneath you are really a pretty good guy." Jeremy didn't say anything, but he knew something inside himself was beginning to change.
On Friday, when Mr. Sanders hugged Jeremy, Jeremy hugged him back. He hadn't meant to; he just couldn't help himself. It seemed the natural thing to do.
The next week was the same thing all over again. Jeremy went to Mr. Sanders' room every day at three o'clock. Mr. Sanders gave him a big hug, and every day now Jeremy hugged him back.
On Friday Jeremy was reluctant to go see Mr. Sanders. He knew it was the last day of his punishment and, strange as it seemed, he didn't want it to end. Tears filled his eyes as Mr. Sanders hugged him for the last time. Jeremy decided he wouldn't let go. He clung to Mr. Sanders with all his might.
Mr. Sanders held Jeremy close for a long time. After a while Jeremy said, "No one ever hugs me at home. They just yell at me and tell me what a bad boy I am. But I know I'm not a bad boy. Not really."
"No, you're not a bad boy," said Mr. Sanders. "You just act like one sometimes. Maybe you can learn to act differently so that people will know what you're really like."
Jeremy stepped back from Mr. Sanders and wiped the last tears from his eyes. "I'll try to be good, Mr. Sanders. Honest, I will."
"One more thing, Jeremy," said Mr. Sanders. "You don't have to come here every day at three o'clock anymore, but I'll be here any time you need me."
Kathy and the other kids could hardly believe their eyes when they saw Jeremy walking down the hall that day. He wasn't hitting anyone; he wasn't kicking; he wasn't biting; he wasn't teasing. He was doing something they had never seen him do before. He was smiling. Jeremy Wagner wasn't angry anymore.
John's Scrap Pile
The Healing Power of Stories
Martin Buber says this about the healing power of stories:
"A story must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself. My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how his teacher used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness. That's how to tell a story." (Martin Buber quoted in "Sunbeams," The Sun, July 1989, p. 40.)
Storytelling is one of the healing arts. Hearing the stories of others and telling our own stories are age-old ways of healing. Thomas Moore writes in Care of the Soul (Harper Collins, 1992):
"Storytelling is an excellent way of caring for the soul. It helps us see the themes that circle our lives, the deep themes that tell the myths we live."
Moore tells of "an uncle who told stories endlessly ... his method of working the raw material of his life, his way of turning his experience round and round in the rotation that stories provide." This "rotation that stories provide" may be the key to the healing that can come in both the hearing and the telling of stories, especially as they relate to traumatic experiences.
Tim O'Brien, author of The Things We Carried, a Vietnam War-era novel, says:
"The moment of trauma, whether combat-related, a product of childhood abuse, or a wrenching divorce that severs a relationship, can only be understood in successive viewings; ... the human mind tends to circle and recircle tragedy. Each pass provides a new perspective for explaining the inexplicable or resolving elements of a mystery, like changing the lenses on a camera." (Kenosha News, February 7, 1994)
I experienced something of this a number of years ago at a workshop for church leaders. There were four of us in a discussion group. Our assignment was to discuss three stories we had just heard our leader, Jim Guckenberg, tell the group.
The last story was about a woman who got lost one snowy night on an unfamiliar road. The temperature is below zero. She comes to a dead end, the car stalls, and she is unable to get it started again. She curses the car and prays to God. Jesus comes and sits beside her in the car and prepares to die with her. The end of the story was followed by a long silence.
Jim asked us to talk about who the characters in the stories were and what we thought they were expressing.
The groups around us began to buzz almost immediately after the instructions were given.
Our group sat in silence for several moments. We introduced ourselves, but there was an awkward silence again. No one seemed to want to discuss the story.
Feeling a need to help the group get started, I told a story of a time when my life had been in danger and I had desperately prayed for deliverance and had been delivered.
A nurse in the group told a similar story. Then a man in his mid-70s spoke up slowly and deliberately. He said he had served with an Air Force bomber squadron in the South Pacific during World War II. Near the end of one mission, as his B-24 was returning to the base, he looked out the window and saw the plane that was carrying his best friend catch on fire and plummet toward the ground. After his plane landed, he ran toward the crashed plane to see if he could help. The plane was burning fiercely and the whole crew had been killed, except for one man who was trapped in the tail section. It was his friend. He was screaming for someone to get a gun and shoot him. The storyteller said he grabbed an ax and ran up to the plane to see if he could get his friend out. His friend yelled for him and everyone else to get back. He said the plane was full of gasoline and could explode at any moment. Everyone heeded the trapped man's warning and got back out of the way just before the plane exploded.
The storyteller sighed and said he knew that his friend was a man of faith and that Jesus had been with him when he died. His wife of 50 years, who was sitting next to him and was visibly moved by what she had just heard, said, "I have been hearing more and more of these stories. I have never heard him tell that one before."
The telling of such stories is therapeutic for all involved. Hearers can be healed as much as tellers. Tim O'Brien admits that writing novels about Vietnam is a way of dealing with the mysteries of that war that are still unresolved for him. But he says he also writes for people who weren't there: 'It makes my heart glad when I get a letter from a reader who tells me, "Now I understand why my husband cries at night or wakes up screaming.'"
Judith Lewis Herman tells in her book Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992):
"My first paper on incest, written with Lisa Hirschman in 1976, circulated 'underground' in manuscript for a year before it was published. We began to receive letters from all over the country from women who had never before told their stories. Through them we realized the power of speaking the unspeakable and witnessed firsthand the creative energy that is released when the barriers of denial and repression are lifted."
Do you have a story of healing to tell? Send your story of healing to StoryShare. Sharing it may be helpful in your healing journey, and reading or hearing your story may help someone else to heal.
StoryShare, May 18, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
