When This Ends

Good Friday today and we’re all still apart, attempting to keep our communities going without the ability to really gather.  And from all signs we are doing it, albeit in different ways across the country.  It’s never an easy thing to see that it is the poor, the indigenous, the unemployed and underemployed and other marginalized communities that are faring the worst.  Yet we aren’t complaining when we see our various levels of government roll out relief financing for these challenged groups since we feel vulnerable at the moment.

But we feel the yearning for others, for the need to be part of someone else’s life in order to fully feel human.  We were designed this way from the beginning, wired for community, destined to come together.  Though that’s largely undoable presently, there’s a growing sense that we’ll get there.

In this spirit, I thought I’d post a poem sent to me by a new friend - Corrie Gicante.  We are on the board of our local hospice and in a conference call yesterday she shared this moving piece by Laura Kelly Fanucci, titled When This is Over.

Till then.

May we never again
Take for granted
A handshake with a stranger
Full shelves at the store
Conversations with the neighbors
A crowded theatre
Friday night out
The taste of communion
A routine checkup
The school rush each morning
Coffee with a friend
The stadium roaring
Each deep breath
A boring Tuesday
Life itself

When this ends,
May we find 
That we have become
More like the people 
We wanted to be
We were called to be
We hoped to be
And may we stay
That way – better
For each other
Because of the worst