Hearing Voices

In a devotion I read today written by Rev. Kate Moorehead taken from her book "Organic God," she briefly tells the story of John Nash, the brilliant mathematician who was the subject of the movie "A Beautiful Mind."  Here is what she wrote:

Nobel prize winner John Nash struggled with schizophrenia. When first diagnosed, he was treated with shock therapy and medication. But he found that this form of treatment destroyed his genius, clouding his mind. In trying to erase the voices in his head, he also destroyed all creative thought. It was only when he learned to live with these voices, not to silence them, that he was able to continue to work and thrive as a great mathematician.

Although I have seen the movie, which I thought was incredible, my initial impression was how different I am from John Nash.  I cannot imagine what he struggles with everyday.  After reading the devotion I realized how similar we all are.  We all struggle with voices every single day, voices saying things like, "you're not good enough," "you're not smart enough," you have failed," "you don't fit in."  These voices attempt to destroy who we are, but sometimes in our attempts to shut them out, we do more damage to ourselves or those around us.  In some mysterious way, this idea of living with the voices was freeing.  Maybe the secret to life is not trying to silence the voices of the world, but living among the voices, discovering the voices that are creative and life sustaining.  I am not denying that some of the voices are incredibly destructive, but I suspect that we can never silence them completely.  They just wait in the dark until an opportune time.  But when we acknowledge the voices and learn to live among them, they seem to lose some of their power and like John Nash, we are then able to hear a greater voice that becomes our true identity in life.

Comments

[Shelly Law]

Beautifully written, well spoken. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

[William E. Salmon]

What you have written about "Living Among The Voices" is an affirmation that our situation is never our problem. It is the relationship we choose to take to our situation that is our problem; our situation is not our enemy, rather it is how we related to our situation that can get us down. We have the choice to either be victims or victors.
Isn't this the choice Jesus demonstrates that while he was vicitimized by the religious and political forces of his day, he choice not to be a victim. In his choice he defeated the barrier preventing him from living the abundant humane and gracious life.
Certainly, learning to embrace the cacaphony of living is not easy, yet learning to embrace the noise of life is important. It is when we make a friend out of our situation that it is robbed of its power.