Weekly Message from T. J.

The Push and the Pull

I feel like I could break these reflections into a few categories. And if I did, one category that would make sense would be the “Visiting Friend” category. I’ve been blessed by so many visitors in my time here. And there are a number of things that seem to be the same about their visits. The one I think I like the best is what I call the “moving countdown.” This is the time it takes for a visitor from wheels-down on the runway to saying something like “I think I could live here.” I’m sure I’m not the only one who waits to hear this.

And another category of these reflections I think I like the least is the category I’d probably call “Leaving Friend.” This is the kind of situation when my inner Dorothy Gale says, “My! People come and go so quickly here!” And this seems achingly true over and over again as these leavings come to pass. One of my closest friends here let me know yesterday the actual date that they’ll be leaving next month, and their leaving seemed so real finally that I was momentarily overcome with real sadness at losing my friend, my confidant.

As a child I moved around a lot. There was a great deal of adventure in the new places. But like any new place, the real work, the real adventure, was building or connecting to community when I arrived. The skills you learn in this life are actually quite useful: finding commonalities, learning how to connect with people. But like many good qualities, there is always a flip side. Many hone these qualities to escape the pain or the fear of not fitting in, of not finding community or connection, of being alone. And fear can be a powerful motivator.

And somehow out of these skills, these ways of connecting, I began to have the sense that much of the Universe or much of the ordered (or disordered) world was driven and shaped not so much by a love that was simply present or preordained. I began to see the world as shaped by a more mutual, more relational, more chosen kind of love. This sense is present in many of the world’s religions, but like so many of those faiths, I wonder if they ritualize or honor an inward reality more than any ritual creates in us a new reality.

And this is a fun thing to think about. It’s a theological or a philosophical puzzle to tinker with, until it’s not. When a friend comes and I feel the tug of connection once more, not only to them but to all of the rest of what is around me, I know that the world must be pulled and pushed by the same or similar force. And more deeply, when a friend sets off, across an ocean and half a continent, the part of my heart that goes with them calls back over so much space to me, “Farewell, my friend. Aloha.” And for all these things I must say, “Mahalo.”

And may it ever (but less often, please) be so.

Rev. T. J.
minister@unitariansofhi.org