By Rev. Elizabeth Rechter, Executive Director

Life is always small.
It is always vulnerable.
It never shouts or screams.
It always needs protection and guidance.
Saying “yes” to it means being willing to look at the small life that seeks to be born in your heart, in your body, in your mind, among people.
Death is always glamorous.
Death shines; it is always big and noisy.
Death goes bang, bang!
Because life is very small, you can never see it happening.
Have you ever seen a tree actually grow?
Can you see a child grow?
Growth is too gentle, too tender.
Life is basically hidden.
It is small and begs for constant care and protection.
If you are committed to always saying “yes” to life, you must become a person who chooses it when it is hidden. 

-Henri Nouwen

After doing my very best to protect myself and my household from getting the COVID virus, this March 2022 I tested positive for the first time. I don’t even like writing these words. Gratefully, having received the protection of vaccines and a booster, my symptoms were hardly recognizable; so much so that I only tested myself because the group I had been with were all asked to test. When I saw my result looking back at me, I had an unclenching moment. It had found me. No more running. A weird kind of relief.  I followed all the protocols of quarantine and continued testing, but honestly it felt a little odd, because I felt fine. 

A friend told me, her experience was the same, except she said, the lingering fatigue is real. 

I wondered about it. Fatigue? Who doesn’t feel fatigued these days?  I went on with my life. 

About two weeks after my quarantine lifted, I realized I was feeling so much better. I had so much more energy and lightness. Not until my body recovered did I recognize how I had been impacted. It was coming back to health that let me see most clearly my disease.

This is a good metaphor for me right now. The effects of our pandemic time may just be coming to light. A few in person meetings recently have helped me see and feel all that was being endured on Zoom. When recently I was able to sing again with others, I felt a new kind of joy inside not known before, and felt the importance of it in my life. 

We did our best. And the fatigue is real. 

We may not know the whole of it until we start to feel less tired in a few weeks or months or years. It is the way of things. And it means “being willing to look at the small life that seeks to be, born in your heart, in your body, in your mind, among people.”

I need others to help me. This may be our most frequent refrain: Spiritual growth needs companionship.  Who helps you linger with what is most real in you right now, without fixing it or changing it, just being present to it?

Blessings for your Journey, 

Elizabeth+