Sacred Connections: Beyond Limitations
"Are you okay?"
"How's your health?"
"Do you have everything you need?"
These are opening words in a letter from my stepdaughter, Grace. I found the highly stamped and postmarked envelope in my mail yesterday morning. It had been sent directly from Grace, her beautiful free-flowing handwriting and illustrations covering even the envelope. Grace has been in my prayers and on my mind daily, especially during this time with the coronavirus and her being in prison in Hong Kong. I have been so deeply concerned for her, and yet the letter came from her to me. Are you okay? How’s your health? Do you have everything you need? Reading her words of love and concern was a living expression of God’s love reaching out from half-way around the world.
This past week particularly has seemed to have been a time of feeling confronted with limitations, and also experiencing those limitations as a need for greater exercise of imagination. We were privileged to hold two very small graveside services this week to honor the lives of people deeply loved and held very dear. Others in the congregation have attended similar small services out of state. The options of large gatherings, with sharing of hugs, stories and tears – that visceral feeling of love and support that fills such a gathering simply isn’t available right now. I’m a hugger – and that ability to sit close with and offer hugs or a hand to those who mourn is simply not available to me right now, or to those who grieve.
But I’ve been struck by the heartfelt attention to those things we can still do. From Monday’s service I still carry the image of bright red and white carnations floating on water under the overcast sky. From yesterday’s service I still hear the recorded music of Amazing Grace and Lord of the Dance washing over the green hills and markers, and I see the glorious spread of yellow roses laid across the fresh grave. And while all attendees are practicing physical distancing, there is still that sacred connection of showing up for the loved one, and each other. Love still prevails.
This week I also learned of the death of a high school classmate. She was to be our “Mystery Guest” at a Zoom gathering another classmate has been hosting to pull us together despite distances and the present situation that would otherwise keep us apart. The rest of us feel so much gratitude to our meeting host for using this time to reconnect with this classmate before she died and to reconnect us with each other. Time can feel both very spacious and fearfully finite right now. Using the time we have to reach out and reconnect, is such an immediate expression of God’s love.
Grace’s letter goes on with another question about where to find strength during these difficult times. To this she also provides the answers, she herself has experienced, the wisdom and faith hard-earned over many years. She writes of “God’s Place of Healing” and then draws a picture of that for me. She describes it as “a place where you can allow yourself to feel safe in your secure haven also known as God’s love."
Grace’s letter to me is a profound reminder of how we can still show up for each other, carry God’s light in such immediate and visceral ways. Grace is a messenger of God’s love from a prison in China where her days are fully scheduled with work and her access to everything is limited beyond most of our imaginings. What might each of us do if we open to the movement of the Holy Spirit and seek inspiration, imagination and guidance? How might we reach out each day with God’s love?
