There is this image of crowds, this image of sheep. Everywhere he goes, Christ gazes out over the people who show up and sees the same thing: people who have been lost or forgotten, who do not fit where they are and do not belong somewhere else. Each person seems to be looking for some kind of sign, some gesture, some person who can draw them out of their wanderings and towards something durable, real, and good.
These are people for whom there is some gap between what the world has offered them and what they need. They are not empty-headed creatures who need someone else to tell them how to live their life, but they are stuck where they are and cannot see the path ahead. They probably do not even need an entire shepherd to rule and to direct the rest of their lives, but perhaps just some other soul who can help them for a moment to see the options and the possibilities that await them.
So it is that Christ sends the disciples out, equipped with nothing but his example and encouragement, to attend to people for a short while, so that they may be healed, saved.
***
The demon functions as a sort of discretized, personal evil. While there is something fallen to be found in everything, and the world is filled with sin and temptation, there is a particular way in which a demon comes to rest upon a family, a place, or especially some person.
To be companioned by a demon, rather than a shepherd, is to be a victim of circumstance, or perhaps we might imagine it as a punishment for a sin. Perhaps we imagine that a person has let their guard down against evil and so a little bit of it has gotten stuck in them. In whatever kind of moment and situation it occurs, the demon makes a home, and now it is hard to see a way out. When you look for light, you find only darkness. When you try to ask loved ones for help, something evil instead seeps out. You become seen as cursed and pathetic, and even see yourself as a curse to others. You become a burden. You are impossibly overwhelmed. There does not seem to be a way forward.
So you wander through the ruts of your own particular life convinced that there is no way out, and desperately wishing that it were otherwise. You grasp after charms and amulets, perhaps you try to starve it out. You go and listen to anyone who seems to have something powerful to say, and if you’re very, very lucky, they gaze at you not with pity or disdain, but with compassion. For a moment, you just might not be lost. This is where healing might actually be possible.
***
Some time in my mid-twenties, I found that I was sick and tired of living in the grip of a demon that had lived with my family for a long time. I personally knew four generations of us who carried this curse of panic which had stolen life from us entirely. Nowhere felt safe, and so in turn each of us had chosen ways to negotiate this terror. Some offered the demon all it could drink of alcohol, being sure to go everywhere just drunk enough that the fear couldn’t quite register. Others settled into a life of despair and disappointment, simply reckoning themselves helpless and lost, and waiting in some distant field to die. I could not find my way out, but I could tell that there had to be a path.
It only took a few times of meeting with the psychologist I saw then for the demon to show itself. I stood up from my seat and was unbearably certain that I would die. I could feel in my body all the functions that were slipping away, and I could tell from the changes to my vision and experience that I was already beyond saving. It was terrifying. That was all as the demon would have it.
My good shepherd sat there calmly, undisturbed by the terror that was descending. He could see what was happening, and he knew what was happening, and he knew that it would actually soon resolve. He assured me that he was with me, and that if something really bad did happen, the hospital was only a short distance away.
We soon found the limit of the demon’s power, and I was able to retake my seat and to speak with him about what had just happened. I was no longer alone.
***
Very few of us would talk about being afflicted by demons; it’s an uncomfortable and embarrassing sort of thought even to have. It seems backwards, somehow, and yet it is also something with which we all, in one way or another, live.
There are parts of each of our lives which we are convinced are of a particular and personal evil which nobody else could possibly understand, and which we hope will some day simply be driven out by some higher power, if only we find the right way to ask.
Until then, we content ourselves to negotiate with our demons using the tools we have available to us: drink and drugs are always popular, as is succumbing to despair and despondency. We find a lot of ways to hide from life when really we are trying to escape from pain, but the shepherd can see that we do not need to escape from life, but to it. We cut ourselves off more and more in hopes of avoiding the thing which threatens us, but more often than not our salvation is not to be found by ambling in the dark ruts of loneliness and isolation, but in human connection.
I have the privilege, now, in my work both as a priest and as a psychotherapist, to get to revisit those moments of liberation where we find the worst that a demon can do, and then can watch as the cowardly devil begins to disappear. Those moments are the stuff of the most profound transformation you can imagine, but they do not require much.
I would never publicly share something a patient has said, but I will share something that I have heard dozens of people say: “I can’t believe you actually understand.”
“I can’t believe you actually understand” is the sound of the moment at which a demon’s days are truly numbered. When we no longer live in fear that this thing which possesses us is some unique and incomprehensible evil sent by some kind of all-powerful devil, but is instead a perfectly natural part of the human experience that can be seen and understood, we can begin to see a way out of the darkness, a faint path other than our ruts. We have ceased to be alone, and while there is still a journey ahead that only we can make, we can at least tell there just might be a destination beyond the hill that has long blocked our view, and the horizon that we have mistaken for the limits of life itself.
***
We are all sent out by Christ to be present with one another, to love one another, and to listen to one another, that we might not be alone. It is less about all-knowing and all-powerful shepherds who will save us from the mess of our own making, and much more about all of us as sheep who can imagine something of what it is like to be lost, and who can help others to find their way back to life.
We are sent out simply, and, as far as the world is concerned, ill-equipped. We have just our persons, our lives, our minds, our souls, and this capacity for the same compassion with which Christ gazed out upon the crowds. We can be loving companions for those who are certain beyond all knowing that they are lost forever.
May you listen deeply, wherever God is calling you, for what it is really like to be alive. May you be so bold as to admit the darkness from which you have returned, that others may be inspired to make their own journeys towards life. May you see the limits of the demons that now possess you, that limit you, that disturb you. May you always be finding your way to the life which is yours. May you know that you will never be lost to God, and that you can always return to that place for which you most long.