From Reverend Pat Kriss: Crazy Socks and Healing
(Posted June 30, 2018)
Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed.
It means the damage no longer controls our lives. ---Ashkay Dubey
This Sunday is all about healing. The healing that a woman bleeding for years experiences just from touching the hem of Jesus’ cloak. The healing that brings back from the brink of death a little pre-teen girl whose prominent father, Jairus, is willing to humble himself to plead for his daughter’s life.
But these are not just neat little defined stories… ones with “once upon a time” in the beginning, and “they lived happily ever” after at the end. If you’ve lived long enough to have taken more than two dozen laps around the sun, you know that healing isn’t simple. It’s complicated. Healing changes both the recipient of the healing and the one who heals. So often healing heals the one who is doing the healing just as profoundly as the one who asked for help. And the truth is, healing isn’t the same thing as curing. There are many things that can’t be cured, but CAN be healed.
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Services begin at 9:30 a.m. All are welcome.
I came across a wonderful real-life example of that truth this week. John Lee Cronin is a young man who just graduated from high school in 2016, having studied retailing and customer service. I should also mention that John has Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome is one of those things for which there is no cure. When graduation neared and people were asking what he wanted to do next with this life, John told his Dad exactly what he wanted: he wanted to go into business partnership with his Dad Mark X. Cronin. But the question was, WHAT business? It didn’t exist as yet. After rejecting the idea of a food truck, (because neither of them can cook), John suggested one of his passions: really crazy looking socks.
John had loved them for years, and used to drive around with his father looking for really wild patterns. Then he mentioned to his father that he had a couple of designs that he had created with his artistic talent. From there they found a supplier to give them start-up stock and they also decided to give 5 percent of their profits to Special Olympics. John started producing John’s Crazy Socks, and within days of going online, the orders were pouring in. (You can check out John’s Crazy socks at www.johnscrazysocks.com.)
Before long their Long Island business was booming so much that they added dozens of mentally challenged people to process all those orders. And in the true spirit of the way healing not only serves the healer but the one who is healed, John’s Crazy Socks were the ones that George Bush chose to wear to the funeral for his wife Barbara… they glowed from underneath his slacks, adorned with the books that were a favorite literacy project of hers. Love heals grief. Love is the basis for healing. John Lee Cronin isn’t cured, but he surely is healed – and a healer. His goal: to spread happiness through socks. And if Jesus hadn’t preferred sandals, I’m sure he’d be sporting a pair of John’s Crazy Socks.
A Special note: This Sunday is fixing to be hot. But this Sunday we also begin services at 9:30 a.m. I also promise to keep our message short and “cool.” Please feel free to dress casually and comfortably. Our fans will be pumping and everyone knows that, at First Church, “We’re cool with God.” – Pastor Pat Kriss