A Few Solid Things

A Few Solid Things

                   July 19, 2020

                  

 In these days of constant change and reimagining, I am thinking about what gifts we bring to one another. I am talking about spiritual gifts here though I wanted to also include a photo with a tangible gift.  This photo is an image of me on a happy day with a beautiful anthurium that my daughter gave me for Mother's Day.  I couldn't make myself smile like that unless it came from some deeper place inside. I imagine we are all reaching for that deeper place inside now. I know that my life is pretty good--I can work from home. I can see folks online. I can play virtual games. I have good health.  Plenty of good food and an ability to get exercise and self care. A caring spouse.  Yet as a wise person said to me recently, I go up and down everyday--on feelings like hope, fear, despair, joy, connection, love, commitment. Lots of people can't afford to have this "corona coaster" of feelings (an expression that one of my covenant group members coined). They have to "keep on keeping on" as the saying goes. They have to put one foot in front of another and "act as if" everything is ok for the sake of their children, their jobs, their families even when they are crying inside, even when the self talk on the inside fails and the image on the outside shows a different persona.

I have talked to enough of you now to know that people's responses are ranging somewhere in between total acceptance--"This is the world right now. I accept what is here now" and "I don't think I can stand another day. I am so lonely, so isolated, so fearful and concerned and everything is just backing up on me now".

It is when I am careening towards the isolated, fearful, despairing side that I remember a few solid things--that I am alive--for now, for this time, this place. I do believe, not naively, that I was born for a time like this. That there is something about this time in our lives that calls for our skills, our gifts, our energy, our righteous indignation, the spirit of justice, the breath of God, the Divine in and around us--to offer those "few solid things" to serve something greater than ourselves, to make real the dreams of Civil Rights giants like the Rev. C.T. Vivian and the Honorable John Lewis to build the beloved community with all that we have, with all that we are, with those we may never know and those we meet in the sacred places of our hearts and souls.

This is the place we come to with care, with compassion, with peace, sometimes with joy, always with at least an ounce of love that we can build on and make it real in this oasis, this small estuary amidst the fear, the pain, the solitude.

May you find a corner of this peace today and spread it outward in ever widening circles of your life.

Faithfully yours,

Rev. Susan