Witness

Sometimes when I'm feeling quiet I start scavenging through my RSS reader, searching for something specific but hard to name.  It's something like comfort or recognition of some kind of togetherness in the human condition.  Something that will make me feel like all of us reading are somehow holding hands and murmuring, amen, at the end.

Then I think about Anne Lammot saying, Write what you wish to come upon in the world.  And then I immediately wish I were in a state to do so--that I hadn't lost my appetite for words along with my appetite for food.  I wish that I could muster a benediction or a compline for us, or any of the strange murmurs that pass for these things in my world these days.

All I have tonight are some things I know now, that I'm holding in my palms like sea stones, carrying in my pockets and returning to again and again as if in remembrance of something important I witnessed on the shore.

Some things can only be taken in through our bodies.  Saying them, hearing them, writing them and reading them can be insufficient, especially when life sends us reeling or doubting or lost out to sea.  We need to see that we are loved in each other's eyes, feel that we are not alone with our hands and arms as they find the company of another's.

Some people will always feel like home.  No matter how far you travel, how many languages you learn or experiences you have along the way.  Not even the passing of time, or all you have lost or gained can change this.

Being seen, being known, being understood and embraced--it doesn't get better than these.