“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Dear friends,
This past week was a particularly tough one for me. On Monday, I was laid up in bed with body aches from my second COVID vaccine. On Tuesday, I learned that my best friend’s nephew was accidentally shot and killed by his friends playing with a loaded gun. On Wednesday, I learned that a former student was shot and killed along with her mother and younger sister by her mother’s boyfriend.
My heart is heavy and I feel like I’m carrying a weight on my chest. And yet, since the shock has dulled a bit, I’m also approaching this experience with curiosity.
In my younger days, I would have sprung into action to organize, to fundraise, to do in order to not sit with this sadness. Motion comes easily to me; sitting still and feeling my feelings does not.
Since I’ve decided to experience this sadness, I’ve also decided to wonder what I can learn.
When wracked with fever and body pains, can I learn compassion for those living in pain and for those who have died from COVID?
When faced with the untimely deaths of beloved young people, can I learn about what loss feels like and find gratitude in those that are living?
Can I transform this energy for some purpose so that no other family has to experience preventable loss?
Can I remember to feel gratitude for being able to wake in the morning?
Can I remember to cherish and love my friends and family, even without terrible tragedies to remind us of our mortality?
In the end, none of us is getting out of here alive.
But, how can we make our limited time here worthwhile?
While I mourn the loss of these two promising young people along with the hundreds of people who knew and loved them, I am resolved that their deaths should spark some good in the world.
Even if it’s just a reminder to hug your family close.
Rest in peace Daniel Hughes and Solei Spears.
