Showing Up

                                                                                                                                            Holding On                                                                                                                                                                                                   

​   My friend Kimberly and I like to walk together. More often than not on Saturday mornings, we walk to breakfast to meet Booth 25. It’s a practice we’ve shared for 13 years – give or take. Booth 25 was the corner booth at Evans Fine Foods back in the day. For years, Susie, Kimberly, Ellen and I meet for breakfast most every Saturday morning. Through good times and bad, through celebrations and griefs, through holding on’s and letting go’s, we would show up at Evans and be offered grace from our guru, Martha on Saturday mornings. Booth 25 has been life together. 
 
     Now that Evans has closed, we meet at different places in Decatur, but we share the same practice with one another. We show up. We check in. We listen. And in the midst and the mess, we share our lives together. We’ve lost loved ones and showed up for one another. We’ve had remarkable discoveries and celebrations and showed up for one another. We’ve had “nothing much to say,” and showed up for one another.
 
     A couple days ago Kimberly and I walked back from breakfast together. We talked about the virus. We talked about how that would affect our work and our lives. We talked about things we knew and things we probably would never know. And along the way…
 
     …and along the way Kimberly took pictures. In the middle of COVID-19 it matters that we not miss what is happening all around us. Along the way, walking home from breakfast, Kimberly and I saw glimpses of spring’s coming. In little and great ways, spring will come. In beautiful and unexpected ways, spring will come. In some of our most uncontrollable, some of our most vulnerable, some of our absolute best moments, just the best moments, spring will come. And it matters that we don't miss it. 
 
     I am holding on to this truth. I am holding on to the promise of spring. I am holding on to the beauty of spring. I am holding on to the what-has-been-happening-all-this-time-to-get-us-to-this-moment truth of spring. Of all the weightiness, of all the despair, of all the fear of COVID-19, there are greater truths that COVID-19 will ever be able to touch – spring. Spring’s budding and blossoming, spring’s indescribable colors and shapes, the sound of the bird’s song at dawn, and yes, EVEN the pollen – COVID-19 can’t touch these. Because they are earth-born and human celebrated. A virus can never get its heart around these things, because it has no heart. But, we do, you and me. We do. And our hearts are leaning into spring. 
 
     I’m holding on to this.    
 

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