This Time of ComeAparts

It took moving to California for me to better appreciate Southern culture – and most especially Southern sisters and brothers using words just right. Words don’t come together or say-what-they-mean-to-mean-what-they-say anywhere else like they do in the South. All places have their particularities and accents, but when you’re in the South talking with true Southerners wit and wisdom more often than not find their way home to you.
 
Not long along I was introduced to a phrase I’d never ever heard, but one that has somehow long known me: “ComeApart.”
 
(Of course) I was at a Waffle House having breakfast with my dear friend, Susie when she gifted me with – ComeApart. [Editor’s note: She didn’t spell it, and I know that in traditional English these are actually two separate words, but I also know there are times in life when two words can sometimes come together to form one.] My friend can tell a story, and she was recanting one of our shared ones - and we are blessed with many -  from our one of our times past, “You was in the middle of your `comeapart’ when you…”
 
Southern phrases have forever been passed friend to friend, mothers to sons and fathers to daughters. They (perhaps) come from the living of life in the sun, in the woods and along the sea. I’ve learned some great ones: “Well, Les, I’ve been knowing you since…” “You want to carry me to the store?” “Love you to death…” and now being “in the middle of your comeapart.”
 
I believe we are living in a significant comapart time now. Every day it feels like there’s an upsetting in my gut and an unsettling in my heart. I see comeaparts happening in parking lots and store aisles. I overhear them when walking past folks yelling into their phones or overhearing kids arguing on the playgrounds.  I’m wondering if there is some-great emotional residual something floating in the air. I’m wondering if any of us have begun to process all that we experienced during COVID. 
 
It is amazing to me to that (because someone had to do it, it was the CDC) we have officially ended the Pandemic. This global crisis is now officially in our rearview mirror. And we’ve moved on. We’ve turned the page. But…have we? Have we had a time to sit with and feel what it was like to live through those days when the world was turning on her head? Those weeks when the world literally came to a stop. Some of us lost family, friends, colleagues. Some experienced illness and have lingering effects. Many of us are still grieving. Have we had the energy or time or courage to feel how this feels for us now?
 
In this time of seeking after wall building, of us vs. them-ing, of comeaparting can we invite ourselves to pivot? Can we shift from patterns that have been pulling us apart toward practices that might knit us back together? Here in Advent’s first week may be as good a  time as any to pay attention to possible comeparts within and around us.
 
In these weeks leading to Christmas, many of us are seeking a long-told story of hope. May this be a time of re-connecting. Of re-membering. Of re-storing spaces and places for blessing your heart and your neighbors’, y’all.
 
[Thanks, Karla, for this picture]

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