4. Your Disease

He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. –Matthew 8: 3

You have a disease. Dis-ease: it is in you like poison. Most of your internal organs are made to get rid of the impurities in your body. The liver, the kidneys, the stomach’s acid and bacteria, and your intestines: They clean out the things that make you sick.

You still have a disease.

You have a way of being in this world that is preventing you from feeling at home in your own skin.

A monk had a brother. The brother was born with Down syndrome. His disease meant that he never lived alone. His whole life, the brother was part of a community for those whose minds were slower.

When the brother died, the monk delivered his eulogy. All the brother’s friends filled the pews of the church. When he left the pulpit, one of them got up and gave him a hug. When the long hug was finished, there was another friend. Before he sat down, the monk received a hug from over thirty friends of his brother. None of them were quick of mind; all of them were quick to love.

Would you stand up in the middle of a funeral to hug a grieving man?

Your disease is the thing that is preventing you from experiencing every moment as a gift. You have the capacity to love in this and every moment of your life. What, like poison freezing your body, is stopping you?

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.
–George Bernard Shaw


What disease of mind or spirit or body is preventing you from loving in every moment?