His name was Charles-he was the only person in our school who stuttered, except me. For three years, third through sixth grade, Charles and I would meet with the speech therapist, and seemingly spit words at a mirror. The therapy did not help either of us with our stammering - it did forever bond Charles in my memory as one who really knew how hard it was to be the brunt of childhood teasing; it was Charles who kept me in the midst of my own embarrassment from being totally alone.

Father West, who was my growing up priest - the rector of my childhood - was, however, even more special during this period of my childhood than Charles. For in Father West's company, or when I sang, I did not stutter. I still remember the smell of history in his robes and closeness of love in his company. I remember that when I was with him I was fully myself.

These two very different people are forever embedded in my memory, connected by pain and love - one offering the solace of shared misery, the other offering a glimpse of the wholeness that lay beyond the injuries of childhood. Each of us here today evokes such memories in someone else with whom we have shared pain or love. The Gospels are full of stories of the effect Jesus had on others in this way - bearing with them the burdens of life, while at the same time leaving people more whole than they were when he found them.

This morning at the end of the 7th chapter of Mark we hear one such story set near the Sea of Galilee, "in the region of the Decapolis." To get there Jesus had left the crowds and noise of the city for the quiet and green of the Galilean seashore. Mark repeatedly describes Jesus journeying from the city to the shore for healings and miracles. And as Jesus feeds, exorcizes demons and heals, the crowds applaud while both the religious authorities and his own disciples, become increasingly hardened and bitter in their opposition.

Once again the Gospel of Mark paints a picture of the crowds who gather wherever Jesus goes. And this anonymous "they," Mark says, "brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech." This story in particular immediately catches my attention because I still remember as if it were yesterday ignoring a teacher's request to read - pretending to be unable to hear her calling on me - because I did not want to endure the humiliation of stammering through a paragraph or poem.