Presence

The sky is a white-grey and the air is moist with cold.  It's trying to be spring outside and I sit in the sunroom where in past weeks I have been nourished and warmed by the shining sun.  Last week I worked a couple days and now I sit here wondering and waiting, "When will I work again?"  I was encouraged and felt alive working at the ministry I love--chaplaincy--last week.  I was seeing patients and families in hospitals and celebrated the feeling that I awoke the possibilities of connection and hope in the rooms I visited.  Of course every visit doesn't contain this kind of celebration.  There are the time when all I can do is sit with a family member whose loved one is seriously ill or just died and sync my breathing with theirs.  There are no words or few words.  Presence is the only message. 

It is hard to quantify this work and some people do not want to justify it as work because there is no identifiable product.  And yet I know and have experienced and know others have experienced the change that Presence elicits.  People move to a different place and space when they know they are not alone, they are connected to something larger than themselves.  They can find within themselves a courage, a purpose, a calm, whatever it is that they need in the moment when they are reminded of Presence. 

PRESNCE

I toast Presence.

"Now that seems trite!"

When as hard and harsh

life is

to raise a glass in toast

seems almost to miss 

the point.

The point

to be present to Presence

who accompanies us

to the depths of despair,

to the shores of sorrow,

to the ruins of remorse,

to the waves of worry

and back out again.

So "Here's to you, Presence!

Come woo me back to life."

You may not or you may know Presence.  I give my allegiance to the affirmation that Presence of the Universe is the matrix in which we live and move and have our being.  There isn't a thing we can do or be that doesn't have an impact on the universe in which we live and die.  That gives perspective to this time in my life when feelings of worth are hard to come by.  It makes the times between outward productivity times of thriving not just surviving. 

Hear you here next time....