Fleeting temples

We have so little of each other, now

A friend from my beloved church in rural Bremo Bluff, Virginia sent me this photo from her garden the other day. Messengers from beyond.

I love the way people sometimes greet each other by touching cheeks, first this side, then that. A kind of faux kiss. Especially when it’s people who are meeting for the first time – people new to each other leaning in close, with an innocence and gentle intimacy.

Some might say this is only superficial ritual. But I wonder, superficial or not, if it might spring from a deeper place. Maybe our soul nudges us to touch like this. Maybe there’s something in a person that knows we are here to care for each other. Something in us that knows we belong to each other in a way that words can’t describe, so we need a sign to show it the best we can.

A poem by Robyn Sarah recently had me wondering if it’s not only people but all of creation that participates in such soulful longing.

To Ninety

A city sparrow
touches down
on a bare branch

in the fork of a tree
through whose arms
the snow is sifting —

swipes his beak
against wood, this side
then that,

and flies away:
what sight
could be more common?

Yet I think
for such sights alone
I would live to ninety.

A city sparrow lighting into the open arms of a tree, swiping his beak against wood, this side then that. And then flies away, the way we all do.

Danusha Lameris reminds us in her poem, “Small Kindnesses,” that “we have so little of each other, now …”:

We have so little of each other, now. …
…Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together …

It all reminds me that Ash Wednesday is around the corner, and I’m thinking again about touching the foreheads of elderly people, young adults, children, and even babies, with ashes. A sign that each one is a fleeting temple; each one a true dwelling of the holy.

And after services on Ash Wednesday, seeing ashes on foreheads in the grocery store, at the gas station, on the street – reminders everywhere that “we have so little of each other, now.” And something inside nudging us to lean in a little closer. Spirits nudging bodies into “brief moments of exchange,” that remind us of who we are and why we are here.