In this very room. We are together.
Perhaps all come reluctantly. At someone else’s bidding or insistence. Maybe it only seems so. Truth be told, we need to be here. With each other.
The air here is warm, pleasing. The spirit free, compassionate. The voices diverse, authentic.
No one is enabled, yet all are supported. No one is pitied, yet all are heard. No one is compelled, yet all are forthcoming.
We eat the common bread and share the cup. We are honest. “Now” exists, and that is all. That is enough.
Across this backdrop spreads a story. We listen. Not just to hear, but to know. To be known. We listen for our throaty voices. To catch something familiar. Something new.
Hearing the rawness of it makes us cry. Because we are denuded. And losing skin always hurts. We feel the shedding of another.
We go to the dark places together. We need to know the whole story. Nothing is withheld. Because we have to help each other heal. And because each one of us carries a light. And the light is metered out so that all of us must share it.
What we see here changes perspectives. This is real. This is more beautiful and terrible than “I’m fine” and “Let’s get together for coffee” and “So good to see you” and “I’ll call you when I’m in town.” No, this is not a promise or a regret or a wish. This is the bloody aftermath of being human.
And I enter. I go there because Something in me rises up and reaches down and stretches out and takes it all, embracing, to Itself. It is not mine to claim in pride. It is mine to share in gratitude.
I go, not out of valiance or bravery or breeding or martyrdom. I go because Something out there is looking back at me with the greatest sorrow ever shown by any eyes, and all at once the deepest well of kindness. I go because a Father is running out to meet the child who fell as good as dead, yet lay there looking for the eyes in that great starless sky-black nothing of a face. Mercy’s gaze that had always seen him and everyone and everything in the soft still light of Love. Because that’s how it has to be when all you have is the bloody dirt or the cesspool or the grave. The Eyes have to be up there seeing you, seeing the light in you, and loving that feeble little flame burning alone in the dark.
No water. No first aid. No money. I am empty. Yet I go. And what I bring is more than food and balm and riches.
Offering this empty cup of my life, somehow I know, here in this very room, there is a Presence that will come and fill it. To overflowing. So that we all may drink of it and live. Here for the first time I know that all I need to bring is emptiness – acknowledged, wept over, accepted, offered. And then this truth: it will always be filled if others stand in need.
And it does come. Through the tears and sweat of the story. Through the candle-warmed air we all take in. Through the reaching out of hands and affirmation of words. Through holding and through being held.
We are swept up together in this soul stirring wind. We move to the center, lifting our faces to the Light of the great all-seeing Eyes of Love. We pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” And it is. And it has been. And it always will be.
Just because it Is. And because we are, too.
