As someone who struggles with routines, I find it slightly astonishing that, with the exception of 2-3 Sundays, I have managed to be in this Coffee Hour space every week since we first began in March of 2020. This is in part because there is something in me that needs the space — but this itself would not be enough to assure such regular attendance — and overwhelmingly because of the others whose presences reassure me that I don’t need to do everything. I don’t really even need to do mostlything. As I attempt to say less awkwardly each week, as long as the 3, 4, 5 of us are present, the sacred also is. Which is reassuring. Because I am not in control, and I do not know everything.
This space is 5% some forethought about what is rolling around in my psyche in response to things I am reading for the dissertation, 5% preparedness to respond to things happening in the world and maybe the lectionary, and 90-100% the recombinant presence of the people and (——). (Breaking math rules to preserve the mystery of said presence).
The beginning of this week marked an important closure in my life, and I feel a strong need to spend a weekend mostly away from screens and the internet, to give myself the chance to clear away what is done and gone, so as better to be present to all that is in front of me. Danica, who is at Coffee Hour pretty much weekly, graciously agreed to hold the space. I am always grateful for Danica’s open and honest questions, her wonder, creativity and humor, and her search for rituals to make structures of meaning that her babies can grow inside of. She suggested sitting with a stunning poem by Ada Limón, “On a Lamp Post Long Ago,” which you can read (and hear) here.
With permission, I am sharing Danica’s beautiful reflections and questions just as she shared them with me by text. (grateful also for the message in which she gave said permission, adding: “Ha, yes, I should have used better grammar! But yes, go for it! I need to not worry over it too much.”
Which is exactly right, and how I want to be in this space.
Coffee Hour is a lightly facilitated, gently theological online space where you are welcome, no religious commitment assumed or expected. It happens every week at 1-2pm Irish time. The password changes (today it is: AdaLimon); the video conference link is always the same: https://meet.jit.si/CoffeeHourWithFriends2021
feeling is mutual 