Fr Jim Cogley
While reflecting recently on the story of Jesus curing the man born deaf who had a speech impediment, I was struck by both of those two realities, his inability to hear and his difficulty with speaking. As always going beneath the obvious I found myself considering the relationship between the two and how they fit into the wider context of telling one’s story. We are born deaf to much of our own story, where we come from in terms of ancestry, and so much of our early life and influences. What we can recall visually is small in relation to what has passed into our unconscious. Our ability to speak our truth and to express fully who we are is directly related to our past, and particularly those parts that act as impediments. These are like blockages in the well of our truth and wisdom that need to be unblocked in order to give us free access to the water of life.
Without awareness wherever we have come from is where we are going. This is a powerful but challenging truth. However, we need to think of awareness at two levels. First there is the superficial awareness of knowing details of when and where certain things happened. The deeper awareness is being aware of the emotional contents associated with painful realities. For example, we may know that we were adopted but have no awareness of how
this may have impacted on our emotional life. We may know a father walked away when we were an infant and never consider how that may continue to affect us. What life will teach us is that nothing can be dismissed or left behind. It will continue to show us in no uncertain terms that wherever we have come from and whatever we have left behind is never back there but always manifesting itself in the present.
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