Guest post: A Living Word, another Glen O’Brien radio broadcast

Transcript from A Living Word, RTÉ Radio 1, broadcast 22 April 2010: podcast

Healing Simon’s mother-in-law [Mark 1: 30,31]

 

Healing of Simon's mother-in-law

 

Lord, I often imagine when I read the account of the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law that in order to get dinner, first you had to cure her!  🙂  I am not questioning your motivation in healing her but the idea does leave me with a smile on my face!  Mind you, I have no doubt you needed dinner with your long day’s work into night.

I want to focus on the healing that you extended to Simon’s mother-in-law in bed.  In Mark, your apostles spoke to you about her.   We, gay men, Lord, also need healing in our minds, our bodies, our souls.  Many of us are unseen.  Some of us are blessed with parents and friends who speak on our behalf for our healing, our acceptance, our being healed into service and ministry for your kingdom, as indeed was Simon’s mother-in-law! In so many ways our service remains nameless as does the woman in this story.

Lord, allow me look at the fact that this woman was in bed when you healed her.  Not much is written about the healing that takes place in bed.  For many people, Jesus, the topic of gay men in bed is taboo.  Yet in my own experience and that of my friends, being with a lover in bed can bring about powerful healing.  This can happen, among other ways, with the extraordinary life-giving power of touch.

My story of healing in bed is by no means isolated, Lord, as you know, either to the gay or the straight community.  Perhaps you, Jesus, are most present to lovers when they are most present to each other, in bed; when their masks of the day are removed and they hold each other, naked at every level of their being, standing on the shores of their purest selves?

Be with us, Lord, in those moments, on those shores.

Glen O’Brien is author of “Praying from the Margins: Gospel Reflections of a Gay man” [Columba Press, 2001]
He edited “Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences” [Currach Press, 2003]
– both books are readily available online