In the south of my younger days, it was commonplace that when a friend was in the hospital, a group of friends would assemble in the waiting room. They didn’t necessarily visit with the patient, visits were for family. They were just present.
In high school, I had a best friend. When we would get together there were times we wouldn’t even be talking and then one of us would start laughing. We both knew what was funny or what the other was thinking without a word passing between us. We don’t see each other often now since we live in two different parts of the country; but when we do, we still have our boyhood experience. Tom Ward calls this ‘communion rather than conversation.” He discusses this communion with God as part of the experience one has with God during “Centering Prayer.” Tom says this type of relationship is much like being in love and occasionally reaching out to just touch someone’s hand without saying a word. There is no conversation, just a presence that says it all.
During this Lenten season is there some one who needs your presence? Sometimes it might require at first — words, but the message is communion not the conversation. Is there someone you need? Sometimes we may have to initiate that call for communion by perhaps a note, a phone call or an act of forgiveness. Much like we call for God to be present during centering prayer, call that friend, child, spouse by reaching out your hand and placing it on another as an act of unconditional love.
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