Becoming UnMired

The Bible and healing can intersect in many and various ways. As a biblical scholar and as a pastor, I know this firsthand.

Certain stories point us in the right direction when we are looking to heal relationships with family, friends, or entire communities. The wisdom of our ancient siblings reminds us of our interconnectedness with all of creation, thus drawing us into healing actions with the world around us. Different times and different passages, speak to different moments and diverse peoples. It’s beautiful and mystifying.

But sometimes stories hit us in a way that we never would have expected. You can read a story a hundred times and never catch all the possibilities. You can teach a particular text dozens of times and never see yourself as a particular character, always assuming it’s someone else.

I was always fascinated and loved teaching about the encounter between Jesus and the Gerasene Demoniac in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5. Until it began to hit too close to home.

Let’s rewind a couple of years.

Tired, deteriorating, and certainly not sober, with no clue of what was to come, or what could even be possible, I was done. My health was in decline, my relationships with my wife, family, and friends were all on the rocks. I was spiraling into alcoholism.

The scene wasn’t pretty. I was bound, held captive. Reminders of all the things that had slowly crippled my freedom and agency were scattered like broken chain links across the landscape of my life. I was living amongst the tombs of dead ideas and ideologies and the versions of myself that were no longer life-giving - All the people I could have been if I had just followed the script. Lived up to my legacy. Got the right job. Married the right person. Played the part as written.

I was the Gerasene Demoniac - scared, broken, not in my right mind. I was the character in one of the stories that I loved to teach. A character that I never imagined could have been me.

The story of the Gerasene Demoniac in Mark 5 is a subtle nod to PTSD from Roman occupation. It is a clever healing story from our ancestors that has been mythologized and is now being reinterpreted with a fresh lens on mental health and healing.

It took me a while to see myself in this story.

My encounter with the Risen one was not a flash of blinding light on the road to anywhere. It was a slow journey inward. I began to move further into myself than I had previously been willing to venture. Self examination is unsettling. You go deep enough and there always be monsters.

Unfolding over the next few years, through multiple therapists, stints in rehab, and exhausted pleading from ones who loved me, I began the way back to myself. But healing brings clarity and can spin a familiar story in a new light. If I was the Gerasene Demoniac, then whom might the townsfolk be?

You know, the ones who bound the man in the first place and send him into the tombs. The ones who came out of the city to Jesus to find their pigs gone and the one they tossed out sitting, clothed, and in his right mind. I want to know who they are because it’s not exactly a happy ending. Their reaction is strange. They were not overjoyed at the healing. They were afraid.

It took a while for it to dawn on me that this truth plays out over and over again in our world.

When you get sober and begin the healing process physically mentally, and spiritually - or at least headed in that direction- everything is different. People, places, and things change. Your community shifts. The man left sitting, fully clothed in his right mind is not the man that was cast into the tombs.

Healthy people, people with clarity and solid self-knowledge are dangerous to a system that wants pliable, controllable subjects. That’s how the economy works. That’s how the rich get richer. That’s why we cannot seem to move the needle on dismantling white supremacy, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, and transphobia.

There are thousands of systems, ideas, and ideologies that keep us stuck in a cycle of fear, shame, and doubt. Countless ways we are told who to be, how to get there, and why it’s so important to follow certain rules. There are so many iterations of the phrase “that’s just the way things are.”

Healing is a challenge to all that would keep us stuck. Healing is where possibilities begin to take shape. If “hurt people hurt people,” then healed people have super powers.

To be sitting here, clothed as myself, and in my right mind, unnerves some people.

That’s the point. Witnessing healing in another holds up a mirror to the self. The realization of the log in your own eye while trying not to stare at the speck in your neighbor’s.

The crowd, upon seeing the Gerasene Demoniac healing and in his right mind, terrified them. And it should have. They were the ones who cast him out into the tombs in the first place. To them, it was normal that he was wailing, in pain, and stalking the very shadows of death. Because deep inside, everyone one of them knew, it could have been them breaking links of chain and snarling in the moon light.

Amongst the tombs, he represented their individual and collective fears, their masks, and all the things they’d done but mostly left undone. He was the embodiment of all the ideals and ideologies that create a false sense of self and uphold broken systems that divide, separate, and destroy. He was the scapegoat. The sum total of all of the things they’d lost along the way of becoming who they were.

But there’s another way to be in this world. Clarity can be built. Healing is possible. And as a person who is healing, I want accompany others in that healing journey. Which has led me to this new endeavor.

Welcome to UnMired - For Folks Who Give A Damn.

Drawing on processes used in community organizing, recovery work, and trauma-informed, somatic healing, UnMired is a practice to accompany folks who want to cast off what’s got them bound and find healing and wholeness.

Through excavating myself, I uncovered forgotten passions and began to come to grips with what held me captive. Chain links began to snap as I named my addiction and was finally able to admit that I was powerless over alcohol. The road of my healing is paved with the stones of processed trauma, forgiveness asked for, and amends made. I’ve come a long way, and God willing, there are miles to go before my story is finished.

UnMired is for folks who are ready and willing to be honest, vulnerable, curious, and patient with themselves, for themselves.

UnMired is for anyone willing to look into themselves and do the hard work of

• Excavating themselves,

• Naming what has a hold over them (powerlessness),

• Admitting when/where they’ve royally screwed up,

• Willing to make amends/reparations,

• And continue to participate in their own healing, while actively engaging in the healing and wholeness of others.

By excavating our past, we bring what holds us captive - our masked-selves, bankrupted ideologies, past traumas - into the light. By naming them we begin to reclaim our own humanity, identity, and authentic power. By being vulnerable with ourselves and other trusted companions, we can drawn on the accountability and strength we get from community.

It’s messy, really messy, but I know it works - and the other side is clearer, freer, and un-mired.

UnMired is a practice for individuals, small groups, any-size organizations, community practitioners, NPOs, and churches. Workshops are a powerful first step for any group to setup the framework and begin the excavation. Individual coaching sessions continue the work and further the healing process.

The casting-out of what holds us captive is never easy. The choice to ask for help and look legion in the eye is only the first step. UnMired is an invitation to look honestly at what binds you and make a conscious decision to reclaim your authentic self.