This Week at Trinity, Beamsville

For Friday, July 31, 2020

Dear Friends,

            This week I had a strange moment of stepping back in time, sort of.  For some context: I’d finished the CBC series I was watching from the treadmill and, after seeing some social media post somewhere, about Grey’s Anatomy building future scripts to include this pandemic, I realized I had months of untouched episodes sitting in our PVR.  I make no claims about its quality, but the series is a distraction, and so away I went on Monday, to start catching up.  Most of the time, I would just fast-forward through all the commercials, but that one time I didn’t, I heard and saw clips of a long ago evening newscast – from that once upon a time when the pandemic wasn’t yet declared, and most of us here hadn’t a blessed clue what was coming our way.  I can’t describe it as a moment of nostalgia so much as a longing to have known more, done more, sooner and better.  I’m sure it was also a longing to build that magic wand and make it all disappear. 

            Here’s the ongoing problem, though.  Were I to go back in time, like some strange version of PVR writ large, I would also have to let go of all the good that has been made known, in the midst of this very real present… and I don’t think I’m longing for that either.  Here’s my best, and most present example of why:

At the start of last week, I made a call to one of our wisest Trinity women, our beloved Pauline.  It happened to be her birthday, and she happens to be well into her 90s, but that’s almost incidental to the story.  In the course of our chat, Pauline started giving thanks:  for the people who support her, for the gifts of technology that keep us connected, and for the new found friendship she holds.  You read that correctly.  Yes, in the midst of a pandemic, Pauline named and gave loving thanks for her new friend Kay:  Kay, who she knew before as an acquaintance, but didn’t really know beyond a friendly Sunday morning wave; Kay, who has called Pauline faithfully since the middle of March, through our Umbrellas of Care; Kay, who has opened her heart and her life over the simplicity of a telephone, and received Pauline’s heart and life in return. 

            And so it is, that for all that I wish to be different; for all the lives I mourn and the suffering I lament, I am still holding fast to all the good that has come, along the way.  I am holding fast to the humble, caring, selfless, sharing ways of women, men, and children, all over the world, who proclaim with their very living that hope is alive.  With God, through God, in God, hope is alive, and so very, very well.  

With love to you all,

Heather

“…humble, caring, selfless, sharing.

Spirit of the living God, fill our lives with love!”

(Michael Baughen, 1982)