An invisible thread.

I had this dear professor in grad school, K.L. He was one of those teachers I couldn't help but love, even though he was an expert at getting under my skin and making me cry. He isn't just a therapist - he lives therapy. Often times along my journey, this was both a blessing and a curse.

K.L. really loved rituals. There was always a beginning ritual, an ending ritual, a just because it's Tuesday ritual. On my cohort's last day in a class towards the end of our graduate school journey, K.L. did an ending ritual with our group - he walked around the room and pretended to tie us all together with an invisible thread, and then talked about how this thread would link us wherever we go, no matter how far we go, etc. etc.

So last Thursday I was in Maundy Thursday service at church. Communion started, and the second song was that old faithful communion hymn, Let Us Break the Bread Together. Up until this point I'd been holding it together pretty well, but as we sang the words the meaning of the evening and the Maundy Thursdays of the past flooded my mind. I could hardly stand not having my family there to break the bread in all of the old ritualistic ways, and tears streamed down as I recalled the old moments of liturgical significance that have now seeped into my being and shaped my understanding of God and the world.

I've been struggling a lot lately with this feeling of loving people and leaving them - been missing Chicago, been missing my best girlfriends, strewn all over the country, been missing my family. And thus, in this town I love, surrounded by my dear husband and friends and coworkers, I have felt this extreme sense of loneliness.

Which brings me back to Maundy Thursday, and to K.L. and his invisible thread. As I was sitting there, trying to focus on my thoughts around grace and sacrifice and Easter, all I could think about was the damn invisible thread. Finally I surrendered to it, and in that I was able to create a metaphorical understanding of how God ties us together in this vast and overwhelming world - how closely tied I am to my family, sitting in Maundy Thursday services in four other states, and how the invisible thread is suddenly made tangible by the rituals, like hymns, that are weaved into all of our understandings of the world.

And so we broke the bread, we sang the songs, and I felt washed with grace and love.

Happy Easter...enjoy spending the day with those you are with in person and those you are invisibly tied to in spirit.