How Godric met a boar and a leper and how people sought him in his cell

There is so much to hear from this chapter. Word is out that this hermit, Godric, has healing in his hands. He says, "To touch me and to feel my touch they come. To take at my hands whatever of Christ or comfort such hands have. Of my own, my hands have nothing more than any man's and less now at this tottering, lamewit age of mine when most of what I ever had is more than mostly spent. But it's as if my hands are gloves, and in them other hands than mine, and those the ones that folk appear with roods of straw to seek. It's holiness they hunger for, and if by some mad grace it's mine to give, if I've a holy hand inside my hand to touch them with, I'll touch them day and night."

What amazing grace it is, really, when we get right down to it. These earth worn hands, humbled by our own folly, given the chance to touch the hurting world. Who could have thought it up? Who could have dreamed it in their wildest imagination?

Godric wonders after his first encounter whether misery has "a savor too." He wonders if, though sick with sin, we cannot help but reach out to those in need.

A great professor of mine, and if it wasn't she who said it, it was she who first told it too me, calls it the "sheer lunacy of God." This business of wretched humanity reaching out from all of our own murkiness to touch the heart of someone who momentarily needs it much more than we.