Welcome

The day is overcast and the temperature has gone up just a bit to 53 degrees fahrenheit. Today is Wednesday.

Welcome to this day in which anything is possible again. We can easily forget that every day brings the chance for opening new surprises, encountering what might be called "magic", creating new friendships. This is the reality and we forget this so easily. And we tend to associate the word "welcome" as an entry into a positive experience beyond. But maybe that is not always the case.

Even in listening to the stories of people who are part of our day's encounters can be an awakening to our humanity. The basic opening is one that invites each one of us to become more human, or a better human. The message came very strong and clear from a woman living in Lebanon in a refugee camp, working with the disabled. "God created us to care for one another, not to kill and destroy and create suffering." She was speaking to the numbness that wraps around all the events that deliver tragedy into the world and invites us to give up on humanity. She refuses. Her way is to take what exists and to ensure that love and care do not get lost in all of the insanity.

There is no need to accept the conditions of despair. The way to set aside the tragedies is to face the fact of tragedies and start from there - a place of truth, not just our own truth but the truth of what exists in our collective reality today.

There can be a way to engage WCNSF - wounded child, no surviving family - a new medical term that has emerged from the war in Gaza. This medical term is one that had to be created because of the violence that has been created. The emergency medics had to "classify" the damage to bodies that were sacrificed in the violence.

Engaging with other people who know truth beyond what news reports offer is a great source of welcoming back into our humanity. Even if what is being shared is full of sadness and seeming impossibility for survival, the shares reach a part of us that we can forget exists. Sitting in circle with such others is a real gift. One never knows what will be brought forth in moments when defenses are let down, connection is safe and in real time.

Even the "negative" information that comes with these kinds of encounters, or from news feeds and social media can be treated as another form of welcoming into our being - our human being. We are invited to learn and see reality as it exists, not as we choose. We are given a little more of the truth of human existence in these encounters. We are given a chance to allow ourselves to feel into the pain that so many must endure without having a way to relief. It is a practice of engaging our capacity for empathy.

Then, what do we do with all of what welcomed us into the experience? The answer to this question is often pray, bear witness, create a way to bring relief - small or not. It can be to not allow ourselves to normalize the pain, fully feel it.

We welcome ourselves into reality - not as we wish it to be, but as it exists in the world today.