Y’all.
It has been a minute.
I’ve taken a long (unintentional) hiatus from the blog. It’s probably owing to the fact that I am reading and writing all the time for this PhD, maybe in part that I have 3 kids, as well as the uptick in co-teaching with Bill. Thoughts swirl all the time...I just haven’t put them in blog form lately.
But, here we find ourselves social distancing, and I am thinking of all of you wondering how you are holding up. What is bringing you joy? What about despair? Are you missing connection in ways you were finding it a week ago? I wanted to hug a friend today, but instead we air kissed. I tell you it was so bizarre to teach Ordinary Life to a near empty room. I think Bill and I both felt grateful to have the other, and extremely grateful to Tim, William, John, and Olivia who keep us going. When it is socially permissible to do so, give those 4 a hug—like a really huge hug. And then when it’s socially permissible to do so, also give them a fat kiss on the cheek.
I imagine hope comes in unique ways for each of us, as does worry. I am a person who loves being home. I love working in my garden, sitting by the pool, hanging with my husband, lounging on my screen porch, and yes, even going nuts with my 3 loud, crazy, funny kids. These things ease my worry. I feel blessed. My heart aches for the kids and families who either rely on hourly/low wages or free and reduced lunch and don’t have access to them right now. All we ever have is what is right here, right in front of us, and that’s exceedingly hard to hold onto when you’re gripped by worry. So what keeps me grounded? Along with the things I listed above, poetry. Sometimes single lines of text that sticks with me. Like the one from William Jame’s Varieties of Religious Experience about us being part of eternity. Today I want to share one of my favorite passages from Martin Buber’s I and Thou. It is about presence, about the sacred, which is also only ever right here. Whatever this moment brings us we have access to being in relationship to it. We are already a singularity, just the space between us must be at least 3 feet at present...which in the context of doing a lot of nothing may just give us more spaciousness to know only everything.
“—What, then, does one experience of the You?
—Nothing at all. For one does not experience it.
—What, then, does one know of the You?
—Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars.”
See you next week on Livestream! I am grateful for the ways we can connect. That truly is miraculous.
