There is no reason to regret that I cannot finish the church. I will grow old but others will come after me. What must always be conserved is the spirit of the work, but its life has to depend on the generations it is handed down to and with whom it lives and is incarnated.~Antonio Gaudi

“Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” This child’s hand game is one many people know. It may have been created to teach and remind us that all those waving fingers really represent what church is meant to be…people gathering in a variety of ways, worshiping, praying, singing, caring for one another. The message was meant to convey that the church is more than the building. Those ten wiggling fingers made up the most of what church is.

During these last months as the pandemic swirls around us putting everyone at risk, especially those most vulnerable by virtue of age, ethnicity or health condition, this message that church is people has never been stronger. Each Sunday I am in awe of those in church leadership who do amazing, creative work allowing people to worship virtually…something none were trained to do… and yet they are about the work of calling people together and reminding them what it means to be true church…people. It has been inspiring to receive. As the time has lengthened from a few months edging into nearly a year, as Easter came and went, and now as we move into Advent and the Christmas season, it is clear that this way of coming together as the church is not going to change anytime soon. And the truth is, many of us have learned new ways of being church.

I am a self-described church nerd. I have always loved being the church. And I also love the buildings in which people gather to act on being a faith community. While I totally agree that the pandemic has been a powerful reminder of what it means to be church, I also miss being able to go into a space created for acting on what it means to experience the Sacred. I miss the strength of the stone, the dark wood, the smell of candles and the light that shines through stained glass. To be able to sit in a less than comfortable pew and have the wash of color illuminate images from stories that have shaped my life brings a deep comfort. Not being able to be in the buildings that illicit this weighs heavy on my heart.

I live within a five minute drive of the Cathedral of St. Paul and while it is not my congregation, over the years I have found solace within those walls. Especially at this time of year, I will miss going to kneel at the alcove that holds the statue of Mary and to make my way to the Celtic corner where St. Francis, St. Brigid and St. Columba look down at my upturned face. I will, of course miss the church buildings where I have worshiped. The one where I served on staff for many Christmas seasons has a bank of stained glass images of women of faith…having those women reign down on me gave me such strength. And the church building I have now come to call home has an image of Jesus whose face has a green tinge to it. I have loved it since the first time I noticed it. Whether it is the aging of the glass over time or the intention of the artist I do not know. AlI I do know is that it reminds me of the call to be present in Creation, to care for the land under our feet and to grow, grow, grow.

Over the years I have visited sanctuaries large and small and I have found each and every one sacred space. Sitting in the chapel at  St. Hywyn’s Chapel in Aberdaron, Wales I was astonished that one of my favorite poets, R.S. Thomas had been a part of the community. I could feel his words emanating from the stone walls as the powerful winds off the Atlantic whipped at the outside walls. Standing in awe and climbing the precarious stairs of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I was folded into Gaudi’s dream of creating a sanctuary that would express Heaven and Earth. Stone, wood, glass, the play of light and darkness, each building holds not only the stories of those who worship there but of the architects and artists who tried to give form to what words cannot express. 

More than once I have been asked what I’ll do when we can leave our houses and move about freely again in the world. Yes, I do want to eat in a restaurant and go to a movie and attend a concert. And I really want to go and sit in a sanctuary, in a pew, feel its hard surface digging into my back and legs, stare up at the windows and breathe in the scent of candle and story, listen to the play of music bouncing off stone and space, and savor the silence of sanctuary. 

Signs. Over the last months I have found myself driving through several states and have been aware of the various billboards that dot the highways. I’ve noticed that some states seem to gravitate toward more signage than others. In some sates they are nearly constant and in others you can drive for countless miles and see no messages calling from the fields. During an early drive, I saw the message “Billboards work.” Clearly this was placed by a business that sells billboard space. I wondered. Is this true? Is anyone really pushed toward a product or idea by a message blazoned on a billboard, one difficult to read at breakneck speeds as one drives? 

Given the weeks in which I was driving, clearly, some of those messages placed by folks running for political offices were counting on the impact. I saw lots of those. Some of the other messages that actually stuck with me, causing me to write them down when it was safe to do so were: Live more. Worry Less. I liked that one. Iseemed to be a series because that billboard was followed up with: Start fresh. and a little further down the road, Use Your Outside Voice. It was unclear who was putting these messages into the world but they did give me something to think about as I drove. Another: Forgive Like Jesus caused me to think about the depth of those three words. Pretty big stuff to think about while moving at sixty plus miles per hour. Do I forgive with the open hearted, unconditional nature of Jesus? Mostly, not so much.

Peppered among these road side signs were the trucks carrying various large pieces of farm equipment and parts of wind turbines destined for farm fields along the way. I am always in awe of those who can maneuver one of those enormous rigs. Luckily their message, strapped across the back of their vehicle, “Oversize load”, makes clear that I am wise to not only be in awe but to stay back and stay safe. I thought of all the people who are carrying an oversize load in these very challenging times, how most don’t have a visible sign to nudge us into being careful and caring in their presence.

One of the most telling signs came to me not on the road but at Yellowstone National Park. Walking along the plank path created through the many geysers, I witnessed this sign: Unstable Ground. Boiling Water. Stay on designated paths. Slippery when wet or icy.. I thought about how this seemed an apt message for our times. We are certainly on some big old unstable ground right now which feels like something is boiling under our feet. The urging to stay on our designated paths lest the slippery ground causes us to falter seems very wise.

In the uncertainty of 2020, many of us are looking for signs. Guideposts that answer such questions as: When will this pandemic be over? Should I go or stay home? Can I be with those people but perhaps not others? Is this safe? Is this wise? We would love some clear, certain messages that tell us what to do. Others believe they have clear answers and seem to move with an assurance that baffles many. It is probably within the human DNA to search for signs, to hope for signs, to rely on messages we believe must lurk just outside our vision. 

While signs that come through words are almost always present, it has been my experience that the wordless signs are often the most powerful. The messages that come without verbal nuance are often more difficult to notice. And noticing is our real work, isn’t it? The being awake and aware to those signs that can be right before our eyes and yet so easily ignored.

On my kitchen table I have just such a sign. Resting in various vases and glasses,  narcissus bulbs are sitting on stones and water. Very early in the time when I placed them there, the bulbs began to put forth roots and the green shoots began reaching upward. I watch them several times a day and notice their growth, sometimes it seems I might be able to sit and see the growth happening. It seems miraculous to me. This message of hope and beauty and the infinite goodness of nature is a wordless affirmation. It says to me: Even in what perhaps promises to be a cold, difficult and uncertain winter, beauty is still emerging. It is a message. It is a sign.

And I am deeply grateful.

Dear friends: I woke up in the middle of the night realizing I misnamed the flower I wrote about in yesterday’s post. It is a marigold not a chrysanthemum! Sorry about that.

Resilience. I have been pondering resilience often these days, wondering if I will be able to conjure this state of being as we head into a pandemic winter. Resilience…the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties…toughness…the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape…elasticity. Instead of objects or substances, I have been thinking about human resilience. Predominantly, mine. And the resilience of those I love and whose lives brush up against mine. Also, the resilience of our nation and the resilience of our world. It seems to me that we are living in days that are calling us to pull from some deep well, perhaps yet unseen or known, to fill our lungs with the sweet, strong breath of resilience.

Looking around I have been trying to observe those with seemingly more resilience than I feel I can muster. Those that seem to be able to be more optimistic than my mind can fathom. In the density of harsh words and inescapable untruths that fly toward us daily, I have a desire to slather on the power of resilience like the sunscreen that keeps my skin from burning in the now waning days of summer. I long for the ‘capacity to recover quickly from difficulties’ for it to fill my veins and pump its way into my heart. A heart that feels so weighed down with uncertainty that ‘elasticity’ seems to evade me. My sense is that I am not alone in this feeling, this desire.

In her popular memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama writes: “Grief and resilience live together.” She describes how she has learned this over and over in her life, as a human being and in her role in public life. Each day we see the faces of those who are caring for people whose lives have been affected by COVID-19. Those who work in hospitals, nursing homes and in various health care settings are confronted daily with grief on so many levels. And also resilience. Families whose lives have been upended by this virus, whose jobs and home life has been changed forever are swimming in a sea of sorrow. And also resilience. This week children, teachers and parents are grieving the ways their fall once looked as school resumed and dreams of what the year would be like are put on a shelf until some yet to be known time. Daily doses of a longing for what was and what might be forms into a communal grief that holds us, holds the whole of the world. 

And yet. And yet. Arriving at the cabin this week, I witnessed a sight that somehow spoke to me of a resilience that rises out of discarded hopes.Staring up at me from a woodland path, a sunshine shape held space. My sister-in-law had pulled out a marigold stalk and thrown in out onto the path of the woods, discarding it from its pot near the cabin. But this blossom was not yet done with its living. It found a place to burrow into the soft soil and grew anyway under the branches of a birch tree. Its brilliant yellow face lighted up the greens and browns of a dying, autumnal landscape saying, “I am not done yet. I have more life in me.” Seeing this gave me such joy and hope. Resilience was alive and well and offering itself to all who would see.

In her poem, Optimism, Jane Hirschfield writes:
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Resilience. It may be difficult to live into all the time over the next months. But perhaps if in our socially distanced circles one or two of us can muster it on one day and two others on another and so one and so on, we can birth enough elasticity and capacity for tenacity to see us through. When ‘finding the light newly blocked on one side’, may we all find the strength to ‘turn in another’ until resilience lives in us and through us. 

It is my hope and prayer.

During this COVID time, like many people, I adopted several new activities to break up the monotony of the days and to find some way of seeing a future that is different from the present, chaotic void in which we find ourselves. Most of us have heard the stories of the bread bakers, those who stripped the store shelves of any sign of yeast and caused a run on flour usually only seen at holiday baking time. There were those who put together puzzle after puzzle, staring and fitting small pieces together well into the nighttime hours until…voila!…the completed picture was visible. Others had weights and yoga mats delivered to their homes and began the exercise regime they had only dreamed of before they had such time on their hands. Many also tackled the stack of unread books that had gathered on the bed side table or on the shelf. What a perfect time to finally read War and Peace, right?

I was one of the people who planted seeds in small containers to be ready to deliver tender plants to the warming, hopeful soil of a spring that would spell the relief of being able to be outdoors, no longer wearing the parka of quarantine. I watered and tended seeds for zinnias, bachelor buttons and sunflowers. Rotating them in the ever-evolving light of the season, I watched them grow and then repotted them when they outgrew their early nests. Just seeing the change in them helped to engender a change in me. When the time was right, I planted them outside and continued to douse them with water and care in anticipation of what was to come. I can report that the zinnias have been plentiful and I have created many beautiful bouquets to grace the table. The bachelor buttons were not as successful serving up only about a half dozen lavender-blue blossoms. Next year, maybe?

But of all the sunflower seeds I planted, only one…ONE…grew into fullness. And yet, it is this one single flower that has given me such joy and provided many lessons. For weeks now I have watched as this plant has grown tall, then taller still, until finally a brilliant, golden flower stands at attention overlooking the garden and the house next-door. I have marveled that this flower, known for always bending its face toward the Sun, had to grow so tall to do so. Knowing nothing about plant science, I find it very interesting that so much green stalk needs to be present to give birth to this yellow, orange beauty. So much reaching upward in search of the light.

Perhaps it is the sign of too much pandemic reflection but this sunflower has become a kind of spiritual teacher to me. All the work it took to continue to stretch and grow and push upward all in search of the gift of sunshine, of the hope of opening to something more beautiful, something that offers food to something smaller, more fragile. I have watched as both Monarch butterfly and several kinds of bees have feasted on the sweet nectar at its center. All the while it continues to stand tall and hold its precious face toward the light that drew it and nourishes it. 

Sometimes, almost always really, reaching for the light is hard work. It takes being able to stand strong in the winds of storms and the pelting of rain and the hail that batters. I have observed the sunflower doing this. Reaching for the light also takes patience, patience in being still and turning ever so minutely toward the rays that promise something more than we can even imagine.  There is a Maori proverb that says: “Turn your face toward the sun and the shadows fall behind you.” In a time when shadows dance all around us bringing confusion and fear and uncertainty, the opportunity to face the light is a gift.

This week I will continue to bask in the beauty of my solitary sunflower. I will check the progress the feasters have made on its center. And I will turn my own face toward the light of the Sun hoping the shadows that can hover over our days will fall behind me. At least for a little while. 

At least for a little while.

Loss. As humans we are acquainted with loss from a very early age. It is a constant of our growing years…for some more than others. But each of us had the experience of losing our first tooth, an event that was both exciting and traumatic. We have all heard…or maybe experienced…the stories of children who did not want to let go of that smile gem that had traveled with them for five or six years. There was the fear that it might hurt. There was the confusion about what would take its place. There was the sheer terror of the tales of strings and door handles and slamming. In those moments, even the promise of the Tooth Fairy and the cold, hard cash under a pillow could not ease the discomfort felt. 

We are swimming in a sea of loss these days. Since the pandemic hit we find ourselves in an endless cycle of stories of loss. Loss of life. Loss of jobs. Loss of businesses. Loss of the freedom to go to many of the places we normally would if there wasn’t this invisible threat that could make any of us ill while we also become carriers to others. There is also the loss of the rhythm of our days and weeks and the activities that make up what we would be doing this summer. There is the loss of school schedules and work schedules and the predictability of ‘how we live our lives.’And of course, there is the loss of human contact we all lament as we stay closer to home to keep friends and strangers safe. Where the loss exists, other beings ooze in and takes up residence…uncertainty and its byproduct, fear. And I think most of us have realized over the last months that we really, really, really do not like uncertainty.

I have been reflecting a great deal about loss over these last months and observing how I live with this unwelcome companion. What I have been noticing is how intricately woven loss is in our every day lives and in the flow of Creation. We don’t like to recognize this or honor its presence but, since our first, lost tooth made its way into our tiny hand or even before, loss has always walked beside us. We see it reflected in the change of the seasons and in the ebb and flow of the Moon’s round fullness that grows from a tiny sliver and then back again in its glowing orb in the night sky.  And the now there is the ever-increasing loss of light as summer begins to turn toward autumn . Soon the trees will let loose their leaves and the loss of color will give way to the starkness of winter stillness.

Earlier in the summer, as I was walking I came upon this tree whose brilliant pink blossoms struck me with awe for several days in a row. But the tree…through wind and rain and the inevitability of time…had let go its blossoms that now formed this enchanted path of color. Loss, I thought. This was all a part of the life of this tree which I had so enjoyed but through loss was now creating a magical carpet I beheld but could not bring myself to walk on. I just stood and noticed the beauty of this loss. 

Another walking route takes me by the Mississippi River allowing me to stand and watch as pieces of trees, large and small, float slowly downriver. Someplace along the flow of this mighty body of water, an unseen tree has lost a part of itself through storm or erosion and is making its way to another place. Those that veer too close to the tiny Raspberry Island get hung up on a large ever-evolving sculpture of driftwood while others keep flowing to another unseen place. I like to think some make it all the way to New Orleans. This river-made sculpture is made entirely of loss. Something to think about.

The 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi says: ”Anything you lose comes back to you in another form.” I want to believe that and do think that the losses we have experienced and will continue to experience have the potential to teach us something we had not yet imagined we needed to learn. Of course, I say this from the comfort of my home knowing I have all I need. I cannot know nor understand the devastating suffering so many are experiencing through these many losses. My privilege is not lost on me. And neither is the desire to hold this time of loss in open hands, with an open heart in the deep hope of coming to the other side of this somehow honed for living in the world with a more compassionate heart and with a stronger sense of how loss can be more a friend than an enemy. 

There is great joy when that new, permanent tooth breaks through the skin and begins to grow, altering our faces into the more mature ones to come. Unless there is some accident of storm or nature, the beautiful pink blossoms will emerge from the tree in the spring and my awe will once again be stoked. As snow begins to fall and temperatures plummet, ice will form on the sculpture that sits on the cusp of Raspberry Island changing it into a thing of shimmering, frozen magic. Loss will become another form.

May the same be true for each of us as we hold the losses we are experiencing in these strange, life-altering days.

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

~David Wagoner

Stand still. In these days when not only standing still but sometimes also staying put is the food that nourishes us, we are all finding ways to make sense of where we are, who we are. While the impetus is to jump ahead to ‘who we might become’, the reality is that we are Here. Here. This place that holds our lives, perhaps not the lives we planned or imagined, but nonetheless our lives. While we are in this place called pandemic, each of us has been finding ways to cope with our individual life situation while we recognize the need to stand still, stay put for the greater good of our beloved community…family, friends, co-workers, strangers, those with whom we share much and those with whom we share very little. This place called ‘Here’ has taken on a larger picture than any of us would have admitted a mere two months ago.

I do not know the circumstances under which poet David Wagoner wrote this poem titled “Lost”. But I do know his words have come into my mind over and over again as I engage in what has been the calming, saving grace for me of walking. Walking along streets lined with trees emerging from their winter slumber. Walking on paths paved for easy going as bikes zoom by declaring freedom. Walking in the woods and allowing the wisdom of trees to bathe me in the oxygen they so beneficently offer us all. 

Trees have always held a special place in my life. I am drawn to them and sense their strength and their energy. I believe that some people are drawn to water or mountains or cornfields in similar ways knowing that, when the human allows the mind to stop its fluttering and invites the gift of pure Presence to arrive, we can drink from the well of deep wisdom. Trees do that for me. 

A few weeks ago, I walked through a grove of trees in Carpenter Nature Center. As I moved my feet along paths recently covered with a springtime snow, littered with last year’s leaves and pine needles, all created a crunching noise under my hiking boots. The songs of birds, unseen to me, provided the soundtrack for my life story that day. The air had that mix of winter and spring all rolled into one, wore a freshness that can only be described as hope. At one point I looked up and simply stood still…in the place called Here…and for that moment the sense of being ‘lost’ in this pandemic whirlwind fell away and the towering trees washed over me and I was at peace. 

On another day, I sat at the Dodge Nature Center in the early morning. The geese were flying overhead, honking their arrival, some headed for a nest just over my shoulder while the red-winged blackbirds sang the morning into its new light. From the barn the roosters crowed and the clouds formed a moving picture of white cotton in the brilliant blue backdrop. But what had my eye was the giant Weeping Willow whose shade of green is a fleeting color mixed with yellows and greens and, I swear, we do not see this color any place else in nature. It is the signature of this dancing tree, a favorite, as it wakes up from its winter of barrenness. 

Weeping Willow. I wondered at its name. The scripture I have read tells me that “Creation is groaning”…was the Willow groaning with our loss, with our confusion, with our uncertainty? My experience that morning was that it was holding the space for the collective groaning of the humans who pass by with looks of loss, despair, fear, hope, love shining in our eyes. As the wind picked up, I watched its limber branches dance to greet the day and to bless me, reminding me to savor the gift of Here. 

“Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you.” Many of us feel lost these days. Many of us experience the behaviors of others that emphasize a sense of being lost. Perhaps we would be wise in our standing still to remember that the forest, the trees, know where we are and to let it find us. It has worked for me and I pray it might work for you also.

We are a people hungry for color. After spending nearly six months in Minnesota winter, white and gray are our daily companions. And while the snow was still in its dirty piles all around, the pandemic descended and we moved inside, looking out the windows hoping, praying for a spring that would bring multiple signs of hope. Green grass. Purple crocuses. The early yellow of daffodils. The red-flecked petal of bloodroot emerging. Color. If we could just have some color, we might be able to see another page of this sheltered existence in a new, more courageous light. 

Every year the Minneapolis Institute of Art hosts the perfect prescription to our deep desire for color when Art In Bloom takes up its fragrant presence alongside some of the museums most treasured art pieces. This weekend would have been that weekend when those known as ‘pedestal artists’ create an interpretation of paintings, sculptures, tapestries using flowers. I am mourning this yearly dose of beauty and creativity. Last year my friend Carol and I had the privilege of interpreting a piece called Hannukah Lamp and it was a treasured experience for me. But this year…the museum is closed…and Art In Bloom was cancelled. The color faded into the distance. There has been a smaller, virtual show online which is lovely. I am assuming those who have created these pieces worked alone or with someone else with whom they share a home. Because my friend and I had dreamed of our piece together, this virtual creation seemed impossible from our respective homes as we sheltered-in-place.

I am sure that there are as many ways of going about this creative process as there are pedestal artists. Carol and I had met and we had plans! We had ordered flowers, purchased vases,  measured and sketched and had an outline for what we were trying to portray. Just as last year, our way of interpretation was through metaphor. It is how we both think, I believe. Our art this year was a painting by Édouard Vuillard called The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door. In our conversation, we explored what doors really mean in our lives and the question: Aren’t all our mothers the original door-openers for us? With her very being a mother opens the door of herself so we might enter the world. And then there are all the other doors that mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, ancestors open for us so that we might move from one place to another. Doors are both literal and metaphor.

This led us to a poem by Marge Piercy, an American poet and novelist:

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But
while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies.
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters
most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place to another
one state to the other, boundaries
and promises and threats. Inside to
outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind 
into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see
ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

While Carol and I did not, as yet, get to create our interpretation of this painting, I was struck by the metaphor of doors and how these days of being inside our homes has offered the liminal wisdom of doors. We are indeed held in “a matter of going through into something else”, “passing from one place into another one state to the other, boundaries and promises and threats”. On a daily basis we do not know what the ‘something else’ is and the “boundaries”, and “threats” are held in “promises” we try to feel assurance in. “Light into dark”, “dark into light”, “known into strange”, “safe into terror”. All this sometimes within a mere hour. All the while “we slice our life into segments”, “see ourselves progressing from room to room”. Our hope is that at some point we will open the door, pass into a place where we can look back at the “was” of this pandemic and recognize there the mercy, wisdom and power of this time for how we will move into the present with understanding that is still mystery. 

Color. May we know it. May we see it. May it nourish us in these emerging days of spring. And may we continue to watch for the doors that invite us and walk away from those that do not bring life to us or those we love. Some time in the future my friend Carol and I have promised one another that we will once again meet and at that time we will create our floral art based on Édouard Vuillard’s painting. Until then, we live in liminal space between one door and another. 

***Special thanks to Carol Michalicek for the photo of The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door

Last summer I visited my family in Ohio. While I was there my nephew, who is a senior in high school came home with a t-shirt meant to set into motion this momentous life passage we have all anticipated. On the shirt was the message, “ 2020 – A Class with Vision.” At the time it was really just a very clever take on the diagnosis we all hope to receive at our most recent eye exam. We chuckled at the cleverness of it all. But I have been thinking much about that shirt over the last weeks. We have seen the mounting evidence that these young people, who started the school year with the simple hopes of completing not only classes but celebrating all the traditions that catapult them into their ‘what next?’, watch as those events fade into an uncertain future. Will prom happen? Will they be able to walk across the stage to receive their diploma? Parents, teachers, and students wonder how they will mark this passage without the well-practiced rituals they have watched others take for years. This is happening all across our country.

I have no answer to those questions and the outcome likely depends on where the young people live and the creativity of the schools and adults that have accompanied them on their journey so far. 2020 – a class with vision. Certainly, this year is not turning out as they and their families imagined. And yet, what ‘vision’ have they been given for how their life will emerge from this passage to the next? What do they see around them that is teaching them about the world they are walking into, are inheriting? How are they envisioning a future for themselves and those with whom they travel the planet?

This week people have started sharing their senior pictures from days gone by on Facebook as a way to celebrate and be in solidarity with the Class of 2020. I have been struck by the faces of people from many decades smiling at the camera with the hope and possibility that is mirrored in most senior photos throughout time. Oh, the hairstyles can bring quite the chuckle but nearly every face carries the hope of youth and the longing for a future yet to be realized. I venture a guess that most had a vision for what their lives might become. For some it worked out just as they planned. For others, not so much.

As we walk these days of pandemic, aren’t we all in some way a part of the class of 2020? Regardless of age, we are making our way through a year filled with experiences most have never traversed before. Each day carries questions, uncertainty, fear, confusion. The days also contain hopes, possibilities, discoveries, creativity, lessons we had not considered. It is a year that asks each of us to be a ‘class with vision’. Vision for how to live more  simply, more justly. We are called to reach out to help those who need it, given the opportunity to listen  more deeply. And we are being offered the chance to be ‘a class with vision’, considering what the future is we hope to create after this is all over. 

Other signs, literal signs, are popping up to bring us into a greater awareness with high school seniors and what they may be missing. I saw this one on a walk yesterday: #allinthistogether. Yes, indeed. We are all in this together, regardless of age or economic status, gender, education, all the many ways we can think of to divide ourselves into categories. And the truth of the matter is that it has always been so. We are all, after all, spinning on the same big, beautiful planet. Most often, we just don’t remember that, just don’t behave as if this is the case. 

Poet Theodore Roethke wrote:”In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” We may look back on these days as a dark time. We may also look at this time as the time when we began to see. 2020 will not be over for several months. But this learning how to be ‘the class with vision’ will go on for some time. May our eyes…and our hearts…be open to what is best for the whole global village… and our Earth Home.  We are all in this together.

Friends: While it appears on the website version and Facebook post, apparently the link to Peter Mayer’s song did not appear on some of your Pause postings.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaGnQc5Vmhs

Hope this works!