Airborne and In Between

I’m 35,000 feet in the air, snuggly encased in a narrow seat in a plane that’s taking me at 500 miles per hour from one world to another, from tropical Barbados to wintry Pennsylvania. And even though I face forward, I’m looking back.

I’m divided and in between, breathing the in-between oxygen circulating in this sealed cabin. Even more than my lungs, my heart and mind are in between.

Yesterday I was immersed in the enchantment and wonder of a glorious green world: Hunte’s Garden of Barbados. Created within an enormous sinkhole, the garden overflows with the amazingly varied beauty of tropical plants, trees, shrubs, vines and mosses. I never knew there were so many shapes and shades of green. And the flowers! I slowly strolled stone paths and listened to soft music floating through the air. I sat on a bench and watched a hummingbird flit from flower to flower while the brilliant exuberance of the garden stretched out and far above me. Such beauty is a gift for the senses and a renewal for the soul. I drank it in, and was at peace.

That was yesterday. Tomorrow is Sunday, and I will be at home, joining others of my Quaker Meeting in worship. Our worship is grounded in a quiet, expectant waiting for the Spirit to give a message, a Truth, to draw us close and refill us. Gathering together in worship is much like walking through Hunt’s Garden. Body and soul, I am quieted and refilled.

But my Quaker community is not a kind of set-apart Eden where pain and fear cannot enter. My Quaker “region” was recently among the Quaker groups joining a federal lawsuit to protest immigrants being rounded up within houses of worship. I know immigrants who have worshipped with my Quaker community. The image of such an event happening within my own community and during our worship is horrifying. It is heart-wrenching when I consider that people may be afraid to come to worship.

I’m returning to a challenging world, and there’s a big part of me that would rather be back in Hunte’s Garden. I know Barbados is not Eden either. Even surrounded by its lush green beauty and flowering exuberance, I couldn’t forget its history. The island’s riches of sugar and rum from two centuries ago came from the labor of the enslaved population. It’s a story of great cruelty amid great beauty.

But home for me is in Lancaster, a city called the “refugee capital of the U.S.” As the plane begins to descend, and I look out onto a wintry landscape, I know I’m still in between, caught between the gladness of beauty and the grief of cruelty. And I wonder: How can one bear both the overwhelming beauty of the world and the pain of our human dealings with each other? How can one live fully awake to the beauty — and to the pain? How am I to be, what is mine to do in this world?

I have no answer, but I offer this poem.

There are hands
   that will be untouched
      unless I touch them.
There is grief
   that will be unseen
      unless I notice.
There is truth
   that will be unspoken
      unless I speak.
There are songs
   that will be unsung
      unless I sing.
There is love
   that will not exist
      unless I love.
O God, help me to grow
   a heart for loving,
   a joy for singing,
   a courage in speaking,
and eyes that will notice grief
   and the untouched hands.
   
    

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