Something is happening to my heart.Today, visiting my father’s church, I noticed that I actually wanted to be there with him. I noticed that instead of the old people (and his church is 95% old people) being, well – let’s see. It’s not that they have ever felt a bother, or not worth my attention, or even boring. It’s just that the only reason I would ever go, do ever go, is out of courtesy to him when I visit this little southwestern town where I grew up.

But today, I saw them, felt them, felt their humanity, felt our connnection as humans, felt their frailty just as I feel my own. I found that instead of the usual feeling that I was giving them some nice friendly strokes, as it seems my role is there, that I was receiving it all as well. These creatures are my species. We are here on this planet together. Our hearts are connected. I am nourished by them, and they are nourished by me.

Then at the end of service, they do this very sweet thing where they hold hands with those close by, and sing ‘We are one, Lord make us one . . ‘ and I happened to be in the front of my little group, so I turned around and saw the whole bunch of them singing this together and – yes, we certainly are, and yes, this is part of what it means to be human, to notice our inherent connection with others. The prayer was not to make us one, because we already are. The prayer was to make us notice that we are. Perhaps that is the way of all prayers.

I remember a dream I had many years ago. It was the strangest one ever. No words, no story line, not even a setting or characters. It was this.

Have you ever seen, maybe in a picture, or for me it was in high school biology class under the microscope, an image of the cells in a blade of grass? Luminous light green, each cell with its own boxy shape, competely contiguous with its neighbors. In my dream, I was one of those cells. Just hanging out, being. It was the most blissful feeling I have ever had. It is now barely remembered, at the edge of my awareness. Blissful, completely belonging, completely in my nature and purpose and aliveness. No questions, no thoughts, no figuring out, no conflict with neighbors. Not even the possibility that any one cell is any more worthy than any other.

These, of course, are now my thoughts about it. But the dream was no-thought. Only green amongst my kind. I sometimes think about that feeling, purposely recalling it when I need to remind myself of the nature of life.

So seeing the old folks today, and noticing their hearts, and my heart, and their frailty, and my frailty, I drank up the greetings, the hugs, the how’s-your-daughter’s, the how-long-are-you-here-for’s, and even the jokes about aging.

We are all just cells in blades of grass. It’s just that we are very very complex ones.

Sitting in the pews, singing my favorite old hymns, I relfect on my work. Well, you know, it is church, after all.

Later, over cookies in Fellowship Hall, a retired minister asks me what I do. I tell him I counsel couples. I leave off the sex part. No need to confuse. He tells me this story.

Once, a couple came to him because they had visited a lawyer to begin divorce proceedings, and the lawyer instructed them to visit a minister first, as part of the process. (this was in the 40’s, when most people had ministers). So they dropped in on him just as he was about to close the office. He asked them about themselves and let them talk a bit. Then he asked if he could pray with them, they said yes, and he did. Then they were gone and he thought no more about it. Some months later he noticed a seminar on marriage, dropped in on it, and who should he see up there on the panel but this couple, testifying to, well, actually I don’t think he said. Then, with his eyes moisting, he told me – not to preach, but just to share his wonder – You see, what God does?

Yes, I said, I see, and let my own eyes moist over as well. Yes, he said, I can see you do.

These people! So tender, so unique and so utterly the same. So full of hope and awe and pain and despair and glory and failure. And I am one, too. One of the cells in the blade of grass.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under just life, Deep Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.