Walking on Water
Here’s the thing about filters—they color everything.
Nothing is neutral; nothing escapes them. The shame glasses
I wear almost all the time mean that every story looks like
shame to me. Every punchline, every plot twist—they’re all
the same: you’re not good enough. What I’m discovering,
though, is when I take off the glasses, the stories I’ve been
hearing all my life are completely different than I thought—
especially stories from the Bible.
At a gathering of the Practice this summer, Father
Michael, a Jesuit priest and Aaron’s spiritual director, led us
through an Ignatian prayer of imagination. Essentially, he
reads a section of Scripture aloud and invites us to imagine
ourselves in the story: What did it smell like? What did it
sound like? What character in the story are you?
He used the story of Peter walking on water—deeply
familiar for anyone who’s grown up in church. I knew this
story, of course. I knew that Jesus invited Peter out onto the
water. I knew that Peter began to sink, and that Jesus
scolded him for his lack of faith. I knew that story backward
and forward . . . meaning that I knew the actual story, and I
knew in such a visceral, familiar way all the times that I’d
been Peter—step out, sink, receive the scolding. Step out—