Once, in a public place, I overheard a couple of men talking as they walked along behind me.

The deep-down goodness of the “average” person gives me awe. No wonder the psalmist, even after experiencing the worst human beings are capable of, exclaims: “you are gods, children of the most high, all of you” (Psalm 82:6). For, as Jesus reminded His hearers when quoting this verse (John 10:34), we’re capable of receiving the very word of God. When we lose everything else, we must hold on to this truth.

Walking down a city street, I overheard a real estate agent talking with a prospective buyer about a house on the street.  “And when that stone church on the other side gets made into a condominium, the home value will go up,” she reasoned to her customer. 

In a parish discussion — a mini-synod, you might say — we had a roundtable talk about whether people would return to Church once pandemic restrictions ended. One young participant saw it this way: “If the Church has something people need, why wouldn’t they return?”

There are moments when the ground beneath us shakes, and we get a shocking glimpse of our failing in love.

“Christianity’s holiest site,” a news story said, is Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher, “the place where Christians believe Jesus died and was buried.”

We humans need to be tended. Sheep are tended by a shepherd. Gardens are tended by a gardener. Even databases are tended by experts.

Sam was trying to decide if he should apologize to a high-school friend of his. They’d gone out for lunch, re-connecting after having being out of touch for a while. To Sam’s surprise, his friend Kim remarked smilingly, responding to a story he’d recounted:  “I can see how that happened to you. You always were a fool and a nuisance.”  The conversation continued, but a sick feeling in Sam’s stomach stayed with him throughout lunch and long after they’d parted.

A local parish held a small procession, which included standing on the corners of a busy downtown intersection holding signs for an hour. These were not rabble-rousing parishioners; quiet and unobtrusive, they were the most diffident, retiring sign-holders who ever pressed themselves against walls. Many passers-by called encouraging words or honked supportively if driving. Many others shouted derisively, called names or yelled recriminations, one even throwing a soda can at one of the sign-holders — who, as she later reported, simply stood still praying for the can-thrower.

These are dangerously murky times. Passionate voices ring out all over; few listen to each other. We risk losing one another as forces pull and push us apart, like the sudden crush in a crowd, when people going different directions create forces by which some get suffocated and trampled. How can we find our way together amidst such forces?