When a loved a one dies a lot of people tell you, “they’ll always be with you,” and “they’ll live on in your memories.” To be honest and perhaps a little cynical, for most of my life I when I heard this I thought; nope, that’s just remembering. They’re gone. We may meet up again some how, some way but for now, we are separated.

Julian of Norwich, the 14’th century mystic, has helped me reconsider that. She said, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is seen no person can separate themselves from another.” I think this oneing that she wrote about is true for this life and for this life after death. And, yes I meant to say “this life” twice. We don’t have two lives.

The Apostle Paul points at this unbreakable connectedness when he is making a rather extensive list of things that can not separate us from God or one another, and he includes that which we would think is surely able to separate us if anything is able, death (Romans 8). No, it is not able.

The truth that Julian and Paul proclaim is that we are connected, held together by God and by God’s love. We are one. Another way to put this is that we, and all things, are in God; held together in God. Paul again, “In God we live and move and have our being.”

Could there be a more powerful concept that speaks of connection than the simple word, one. In God, all are one. There is no separation, not even the seeming separation between the living and the dead. We are one.

Obviously, there are ethical implications to this idea. When we start to get it, we even read the command to love our neighbor as our self differently. If we are one, the commandment isn’t telling us to love our neighbor like we love ourselves, it is saying our neighbor is a part of our self. In other words, love your neighbor because your neighbor and you are one. Your neighbor as your self.

But, back to those who have passed.

If this is true, then it’s real. And, if it’s real, it can be experienced. How is it experienced? I’m throwing it out there that it is experienced like all those truisms say. Our loved ones are with us in our heart, in our grief, and in our blessed memories. All that we feel is real, not “just feelings and memories” They are with us and their hand is on our heart.

In fact, if I’m tracking Julian and Paul, it’s more than just a matter of their being with us. They are a part of us and we remain a part of them.

I find a good deal of comfort in the idea that just as I remember and continue to love those on the other side of the veil, they continue to remember and love me. We remain connected. We are together. We are one. The veil is thin.

Amen.

The other day I realized that I was in bad need of some time away, a retreat. I know that seems a little odd in the midst of the isolation brought to us by Covid-19 but that’s actually the reason I needed to get away.

About the time this stuff got serious my father died. We weren’t able to have a memorial service so I’ve been going through life like a guy who’s wound was left open after major surgery. In addition to that, we’d been planning a family vacation with my daughter and her family since October. A wonderful cruise was lined up, tickets purchased, and excursions planned. Nope. No cruise and it’s been weeks since I hugged my grands. Oh, and our portfolio (kind of important to retired folks) has taken a sizable hit. Sprinkle in a few barnyard crazy conspiracy theories and you get Jim with a nice case of stress, thinking John Lennon had no idea when he sang, “Nobody told me there’d be days like this.” But that’s just me.

As you can probably guess, as I have talked with others, there are a lot of people out there who know very well the kick in the gut that comes when you catch yourself thinking, I need to remember to tell Dad that joke and then you remember he’s gone. A lot of folks have lost vacations, graduations, weddings, honeymoons, and funerals; not to mention Palm Sunday and Easter. And, while most of our financial loss is still on paper, way too many have been furloughed or are wondering if their business will survive this. Now, sprinkle in a growing number of friends and neighbors that are requesting prayer for their child, uncle, or grandmother who is suffering from this virus and it can start to feel like the world is hurting all over.

I’ve been sighing a lot, drinking a lot, and eating way too much. I needed to get away.

So I did. Not to a different place geographically. I didn’t go anywhere, I just tweaked my days a bit and declared a three day retreat.

For three days I called myself to prayer four times a days, some kind of morning, midday, early evening, and bedtime praying/pondering. I did a little more sacred reading, cut back on tracking current events, left beer alone, paid attention to what I was eating, spent a little more time outside, wrote some, talked to my dog a good bit, and rested. None of this was a to do list, except the beer and a goal of hitting a high percentage of the prayer times. If anything started to feel like a chore or a requirement that I needed to fulfill if I wanted to do retreat right, I quit, moved on to something that felt lighter. That was my three day retreat.

I came out feeling like it was the most common sense thing I could have done. It was like a coach calling a time out when the game is getting out of hand. I needed it, badly.

Nothing magic happened, nothing changed, but I am feeling more centered and a little more able to share the pain others are carrying.

And there’s this. There was a moment I experienced during one of my prayer times.

I was centering myself, taking a few breaths after going through that afternoon’s order. Inhale, exhale… Most of the time when I’m doing something like this I imagine love in, love out or peace in, peace out. That day, I wasn’t feeling much love and peace so I found myself moving more toward gathering myself for something like a roar on the inhales and then giving an imaginary loud, forest shaking roar of pain when I breathed out. All in my imagination but just as satisfying as if I were actually hurting my throat when I did it. In, a gathering; out, a primal roar, “I’m hurting!” In, a gathering; out “I’m grieving!” In, out more than a few times then I realized hurting and grieving weren’t exactly the words I was looking for.

In, deeper this time; out, more emphatically this time, “I’M LOST! I’m lost! Somebody help me!” And, a word came from the Presence that never leaves us or forsakes us, “You’re not lost. You’re just leaving familiar territory.”

Felt timely. It was the word of God for me, perhaps for you.