Put Your Whole Self In: Connecting

Put Your Whole Self In: Connecting!

The play "Streetcar Named Desire," is about loneliness and love, about connection and the life that is lived, tragically, without connection. Blanche Du Bois, the heroine is trying to hold her life together. With her world falling apart, she is looking for solid ground, for a center to her life. In a way familiar to all of us she is looking for love, for a deep connection to another human being. The play really is quite sad as Blanche grasps for love in her life, ceaselessly talking, repelling the very people to whom she would be connected.

But, then something seems to turn in her life. Blanche meets a man named Mitch. Mitch, too, is very lonely. He is overweight and shy. Blanche shares with him one of the tragic and painful moments of her life. This strikes Mitch as he takes her in his arms and says, "You need somebody and I need somebody too. Could it be you and me, Blanche?” She looks at Mitch and with tears in her eyes she says this, "Sometimes -- there's God -- so quickly."

That's how it can happen in our lives, they turn, so quickly. We long for human contact, for the connections to be made, connections that will run deep in our lives that will strike us to the soul, binding us to another. And it happens -- just like that. I am amazed at how quickly those changes have come in my life. The heart reflexively turns, and in turning says "Yes" to love, "Yes" to a deep connection to Life. When we say yes to God in this way, as we affirm our human connection to the Divine, we find that we experience a re-orientation in our lives, what Jesus referred to as being "born from above," or what we know of as being "born again."

The connections that we make in our lives are where we find reason to live, connected to God and to one another. In this our lives have depth and purpose. This Sunday we will be celebrating the human and the divine connections that make us who we are in Love, in Christ. I look forward to seeing you all in church.

Blessings, David