This Journey

 No one / Swims / Alone:
An old rule / In the home / Where I
Grew up / Along the lake / Safety first.
No one / Swims alone / No matter
What their / Strength.
So here,/ As well, / In azure seas
For those of us / Swimming / Through losses
In our lives,/ No one /
Should / Swim / Alone.
    — “No One Swims Alone” by Judy Brown

For better or worse—and regardless of how alone you may feel at times—we are all in this together. This journey of life. This journey of faith. This journey through the time of pandemic. This journey through loss. This journey through hope and celebration. This journey through the mundane, everyday stuff we all go through. And we each come to this journey with different levels of strength, different levels of skill, different levels of ability and knowledge and training and insight. No matter whether we feel confident and competent enough to make it on our own, the poet’s advice is sound: “no one swims alone.” I have been astounded over the past few months as people who have been vaccinated for COVID-19 start to act like they are suddenly islands with no moral or social responsibility for others. They stop wearing masks altogether and stop physical distancing and stop taking other precautions. The reality is that the pandemic continues. And our moral and social responsibilities include being vaccinated AND continuing to care for the well-being of the whole—using whatever gifts and abilities we’ve been given.  This includes recognizing our interconnectedness with those who are immunocompromised and unable to get the vaccine yet (primarily children). No one swims alone. We are all in this together! And the well-being of our entire communities depends on our recognizing it and living into it.

See you in church,
Christy

God is There

 There is a brokenness / out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness / out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow / beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility / out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space / too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness / we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound / whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside / which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.
    — “The Unbroken” by Rashani Réa

Have you felt the feelings of brokenness? Shatteredness? Have you found yourself in the hollowed space too vast for words? If you have, you are not alone. Many of us have spent time in these spaces with these feelings. But even so, these depths never offer the final word. And it is often from these places that we glimpse our true strength, our deepest desires, our greatest power. And it is often here that we also learn to articulate a vision for ourselves and our world that we might not have ever thought was possible before.
    
As the Church continues to move through the ramifications of global pandemic, we have the opportunity to mine the depths of individual and community despair for the incredible possibilities of generosity, hospitality, grace, and hope. None of us emerges from this time unscathed, but we may find that together we are stronger, more powerful, and clearer about what we want and expect for the world around us to be. The Psalmist reminds us that even if we descend to Sheol, God is there. God is with us, loving us forward, calling us into greater wholeness and deeper belonging, no matter what pain and loss we experience. And when we reach out to others and hear others’ stories, we remember that we are all on this journey of life together. There is strength in that. And power. And an unbreakable sense of wholeness.  

See you in church,
Christy