Living our existence in gratitude

It was golden hour a couple of weeks ago, and I was walking to Mass at the church I'd attended during undergrad, where Father Bill had been chaplain. I hadn't been there since his funeral in April.

A lyric my friend Claire Moore wrote in her song "Smile For You" was running through my head: "It's true I still miss you in every way. Time doesn't heal all of the pain, but it's time for me to accept the things I cannot change."

This honest lyric had struck me when I'd first heard it because of the way it calls out what people usually say -- "time heals all things." Maybe time does, and I am not yet old enough to realize it. Or maybe time doesn't. Maybe we always ache a little bit where love has been deep and is no longer present in the same way. Maybe that ache is good, and an acceptance of it reminds us of this love, reminds us of process, that God is always working in us to make all things work together for our good. Maybe it allows us to feel our incompleteness, draws us to our God.

One of my favorite hymns, "Here I Am, Lord," says, "I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart."

When I sang this line this past Sunday, I was thinking about my Athens family, my undergrad friends dispersed all over the globe, my own family and all the people I will get to encounter in the future. I realized this is the gift we're given: to know and love deeply as people come into and out of our lives and to hold them in our open hearts, with open hands, as a prayer. To keep loving them as we each live our lives. This is the painful, beautiful burden we get to bear.

When I was at Auschwitz this past May, all I could do to process my own powerlessness and inability to comprehend was to say "thank you" for each person's life who was pictured in a hallway, or whose shoe was in a glass case or whose suitcase with address written on it was in a room.

When Claire and I visited Father Bill's grave for the first time this past weekend, again the only words I could find were "thank you."

I think there is a real power in praying "thank you" for each person we encounter, in acknowledging the unique, irreplaceable presence they provide in the world. There is a real power in acknowledging someone apart from how they relate to ourself, in acknowledging they are good "just" because they are, because they were called into existence. Everything starts from gratitude.

We don't possess other people; they are not ours. We can only be thankful for the gift of them and the gift of love they bring into our life, realize this love is real, realize they are real, and live our own real existence in gratitude.