LIVING THROUGH

There are things too hard to watch. Still, we are called not to look away.

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The first thing I remember thinking when the towers fell was how relieved I was that my mama wasn’t alive. It would have been too much for her, this sadness over what had become of the people involved.

In the end, we all were part of the story, grieving in our own ways.

I was standing in her closet helping her dress when I realized she was departing, not all at once, but pound-by-pound. And it wasn’t long after that I began losing weight. When Jackie died, she and I weighed the same. She was five foot two.  I was five foot ten.

There is no human way to exist within the greater framework of tragedy without being a part of it—

We mistake that our horror is some detached response, a morbid curiosity to what we see from far away.

But ours is an interconnectedness that goes far beyond what our biological senses can explain.

In the end, what happens to you, happens to me.

Proximity is not the necessary component to ache, to long, to hold, to weep.
What is necessary is the opening of the heart to larger and more far-reaching degrees.

If Christ felt the energy drain from his body before realizing his garment had been touched, so do we have the capacity to apportion our collective power to those in desperate need.

We are remote but not isolated from something grander that can’t be seen.

The stories of haunting heroism stay with me long into the darkness.
And I yearn to be with them—digging, feeding, serving, holding, mourning.

But then this vision of me comes, of stretching my arms toward the one we pray for in church on Sunday morning. Not some overture of feigned affection. But a belief that the energy in me advances forward to those in need.

I am stretching my arms out a lot these days.

There is no limit to the fortification we offer, no barrier or distance that the Living One inside me cannot cross.

And He hungers as I do to reach them.

And He reaches them through me in prayer.

And though I am here, a part of me goes in Spirit to where I am needed.

The sacrifice of who I am [Body. Mind. Spirit.] eagerly lays itself down.

We are not helpless in the looking on. We who are indwelt with the Spirit are limitless, our petitions go forward as convoys of advancing help.

This Living Through. None of us are pardoned or exempt.

What we have to give, from a distance, is not the drama of our surprise, nor idle detachment, but the full force strength of our humanity, joined with the authority of the Living God.

Our hands reaching, supernaturally become hands holding back the darkness, and pressing forward light.

Power and might are in your hand, and it is in your hand to make great and to give strength to all—this is what the God of the Universe imparts. And I believe.

There is no absent one in Jesus. We are, every one of us, omnipresent in his might.

NOTES

For our brothers and sisters in WNC, I join you all in prayer.

Donate to those on the ground doing the most for those who are getting the least:

~Mountain Mule Packer Ranch blessing the hard to reach by mule…give at https://venmo.com/u/Michele-Toberer

~Leigh Thomas Brown, Realtor in WNC, knows the communities and families affected intimately and is coordinating donations for hard-to-reach areas…give to venmo @itbinc [see my FB post for further details]

~Hearts With Hands, local disaster relief organization based in Swannanoa https://www.heartswithhands.org/

~Root Cause Farm, feeding the communities for the long haul www.rootcausefarm.org/give

Operation Air-Drop, operation-airdrop.com/hurricane-helene