Essential. Nonessential. I am not sure what it would feel like to have someone say to me that my work was ‘nonessential’. I am sure that there are many people, and it seems more every day, who would see the work I and my colleagues do as ‘nonessential’. The church and what it stands for is seen by many to be the work of the dreamers and delusional. After all, how can anyone in the 21st century believe all that stuff anyway? But I see what they might not: people fed, spirits nurtured, hope held out, dignity restored. Essential.

The last days have had me wanting to tell people how essential they are and how the work they do, no matter what it is, is important in the turning of the world. Of course, there are people who would tell you that there are nonessential jobs. Someone might say those who administer manicures and pedicures are not really essential in the grand scheme of things. Those would be people who had never sat in a chair, their tired, aching and crusty feet in a bowl of warm, spinning water, only to have their soles lifted out, rubbed, exfoliated and soothed. Every time I have this done I am certain I could negotiate world peace if all the players were seated in the massaging chairs that flanked mine. Who could not agree to a more peaceful union with others after this experience?

That is just one job that some might deem nonessential. You probably have your own ideas that you could lift up. But, really, who am I, who are you, who is anybody to say another’s work is not necessary? I would venture to say that, if we take the time and hear the stories, others could tell us about how any particular job that someone does has touched their life. To think otherwise is to play into the great lie that we are not all, all, connected to one another by invisible lines of connection designed by the Great Weaver of cosmic tapestry.

So, what can we take from this time when adults with whom we entrusted, by our vote, to care for our government, our way of living, and now they have so tragically failed us? It is a powerless feeling. But in the midst of it all, I am thankful for the reminder of how, nearly everything and certainly everyone is essential to someone. It is so pompous of me to think otherwise.

And so today, in an act of solidarity and quiet protest for their shenanigans, I am reflecting on all the ways I can remind myself and thank others for how essential they are in my life. Of course, I will start with my family and those I love more than life, my friends, my soul friends, my companions on this path. I will try as best I can to let them know that I could not travel without them.

After that I will make an effort to pay attention to all whose work brushes against my life this day. This work they do is how they spend their days which, of course, is how they spend their lives. It is the currency we each use for paying our way along life’s path. It is the least I can do to treat them with respect and thank them for what they do. The cashiers, the road workers, the teachers, the cleaners, the cooks, the grocery baggers,whomever it is, today I will remember how essential they are and will try to find some way to tell them so.

Why stop there? What about the Big Black Dog,the one who has come to know me so well that even when tears come at the end of a sappy TV show, comes to stand by me with compassion clinging to his fur? And the sumac bushes whose redness brings me hope? And the goldfinches who are losing their yellow and turning a winter brown? And also the geese who remind me everyday of their brilliance and ability to know when to let go, when to fly south?

It is all essential, isn’t it? Without it, we could not live.