October’s Theme is “healing.” Not necessarily miracles but ordinary moments and acts that relieve pain or suffering. Perhaps it is a momentary lifting of an internal weight that one has been carrying. Or the resolution of an interaction or interactions that caused all involved isolation and alienation from one another. Or it is the simple assurance such as the one a cancer nurse offered a patient at their first treatment: “Whatever it is, it is going to be okay…” Or it is that anonymous person, who in a time of need, offers us a word or touch that no one else could.
In her book, “Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes, “On the first Sunday of Advent our preacher, Veronica, said that this is life’s nature, that lives and hearts get broken, those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet. She said the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward, and that we, who are more or less OK for now, need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes. You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and graham crackers.”
Offer the tenderest possible care. Offer juice and graham crackers. A cup of coffee or hot chocolate. A hand, a hug, a touch, a word. We never know what it is that will bring healing. But know that each one of us is capable of it and each one of us can offer it.
Peace, Shalom, Salaam,
Rev. Lo