Day of Hugs

Excerpted from the sermon, "The God You Don't Know Yet" (May 25, 2014)

You know, one of the facts about the way I believe is that I keep running into the God I don’t know... or at least the God I least expected.  It’s as if God has this wicked sense of humor, or else just likes to make sure I’m paying attention.  “Hello, I’m over here,” God will say.  And it’s true.

Some of you already know about my Tuesday, this past week. I am coming to term “my day of hugs.” During the span of that day, I was hugged by a half a dozen or so people.

This is unusual for me.  I am a person on whom my very tolerant wife has learned to place low expectations about such things.  Public display of affection is not something with which I have ever been particularly comfortable.

Furthermore, people in my profession of caring are warned nowadays to practice “appropriate boundaries,” which usually provide for a handshake or simple word of encouragement where otherwise a hug might do.

Thus we imagine, neither we nor the person we are greeting get the wrong impression of the gesture. Spiritual intimacy must not lead us down a destructive path.

Nevertheless, there are times when a handshake just isn’t sufficient.  And three of those times were Tuesday.

Early that afternoon, I had gone to spend some time at the bedside of a member as she lay dying and, as I often do with people who are otherwise non-responsive, reached out to hold her hand.  To my surprise, she took my hand in hers, then pulled it up to her chest and wrapped her other arm around mine – the best hug she could manage from a deathbed.  The moment was sublime, sacred.

Not long afterward, that same day, I attended with my wife a program of readings of original poems by my daughter's first grade class at school.  During the congratulations that followed, a familiar boy in the class arrived beside me.  He and my daughter had been part of the group I chaperoned for a recent zoo field trip.

It was nice to be recognized, I must say.  But he said nothing, just looked up and then tried to hold my hand. I gave his hand a squeeze and tried to let go, but he wouldn’t release.  Then my daughter came up, and he let my hand go just long enough for me to kneel down and give her a hug, telling her of my pride and joy at her performance.  Then, before I could stand back up fully, the boy folded in and hugged me too.

It was at this point that I realized neither of his parents was present.  So I told him that I knew his parents were proud of him too and wished that they could be there.  He squeezed tighter.  After that came a little girl, a playmate of my daughter whose parents also had been absent.  I told her as well how I thought she had done very well and how proud her own parents would be.

Now I started to stand up again, but the girl who was coming home with us for her and my daughter's standing Tuesday playdate stepped forward and, shrugging, said, “Well, I guess I’d better give you a hug, too.”  Although her mother had been there, Dad wasn’t able to be, and Mom had returned to work.  So, the process continued with her, and ended with one last hug for my daughter.

Tuesday evening, I attended my first meeting of the board of directors of the Interfaith Partnership.  I was honored to be seated next to the president, a Bosnian Muslim imam who attended my installation, four years ago, and had invited me to join the board, this past winter.  Toward the end of the meeting, we were discussing the recent flooding and landslides in Bosnia following the most severe rains to have happened there in more than 120 years.

There were tears in his eyes as he spoke.  His family was safe, and his hometown has seen little damage. But the destruction and devastation around them are such that they despair for the work ahead.  God will provide, we both said we knew, but it’s a mystery where the help will come from when even the hills are washing away. (compare Psalm 121:1)
I held him for what must have been only seconds but felt like minutes.  The commensurate masculine back-patting and quiet chuckling at the end seemed as ironic to the moment as our smiles to each other for strength, as we stood together, meeting God again.  I think that I was bound to bring him to that place with me, since I’d spent so much time there already, that day.