In our God Space small groups, when we share with Scripture, we reflect not on what text means but on what the text means to each of us, in our lives, right now. We open to what God wants to say to our hearts through the reading and through our sharing. So, when I pray with this reading from Genesis, it has something to say to me about God’s love for humanity and how that love is expressed in our human relationships. I notice the equality among the genders – created side from side to live side by side – and our desire for relationship with each other. It affirms how marriage, when two people leave their families of origin and become a family of their own making, is sacred. Humans are not meant to be alone. We’re made to be close to God, and we’re created to be close to creation, but that’s not enough. We need each other.

This pandemic has been hard on families and communities for lots of reasons, but one of the biggest is that it separated and isolated us. So many people were alone and disconnected from their support systems. For some, it left them home alone and cutoff from other people. For others who were together, it meant that they suddenly had to be each other’s entire support as work, school, parish, and other communities were disconnected. That’s a lot of pressure. Yes, family is sacred, but families and individuals tend to connect together in larger communities, and the pandemic shut a lot of those communities down, at least at its beginning. From what I’ve heard, the pandemic has been hard on a lot of marriages, and I have seen how it has been hard on my community. We are not meant to be alone. We need each other.

Early in the pandemic, I happened to be living by myself, and I spent a lot of time planting things and working in the garden. It was life-giving, but, like Adam in the first garden, it was not enough. I remember a conversation about this with another God Space community member who was also living alone. Being in nature was helpful to her too, and she told me how sometimes, when she was out hiking, she would stop and hug a tree, just to put her arms around a living thing. We did what we had to do to cope, but what was the most meaningful for me were human interactions – like when the two of us met and hiked together. Community prayer was helpful, even on Zoom, and it was so touching when a sister called to check on me out of the blue, even though she herself was stuck out of town during the shutdown.

Creation does reveal God’s presence, but it’s not a suitable partner. Hugging a tree is nice, but it can’t return an embrace like a person can. We need other people. Maybe that’s partly why God chose to enter into the human experience as an actual human being. The author of the letter to the Hebrews says that Christ “‘for a little while" was made "lower than the angels.’” God willingly entered into human reality, with all its difficulty and suffering, to be close to us. Why would God do that? It would be a lot easier to remain distant and just let creation play out as it does, and yet God desires to be close with us. And I would say that it wasn’t just for a little while but for all time. Christ is still with and within each of us.

So, what do you make of this? How do we allow Christ to enter in as Christ wants to? And how do we deepen our connections with each other, even though we’re still negotiating the restrictions of the pandemic?

Like my tree-hugging friend, many of us learned to cope with isolation and to meet our needs as best we could. Maybe that took thoughtful reflection and prayer, and a little crying now and then, and, of course, getting close to nature, but we dealt with it. Sometimes. But what about people who don’t have that capacity? What about people who were already lonely before the pandemic, people who don’t have families to look out for them and communities to check on them? How do we as Christians respond to the pandemic of loneliness happening around us – and to us?

I don’t have an answer, but I do hear a call in the readings for this Sunday to care for each other. Some of us are worse off than others, but each of us is a vulnerable human in need of connection and relationship. When things are good, it’s easy to feel self-sufficient, but that’s not real. As Pope Francis writes in Let Us Dream: A Path to a Better Future, “We need a movement of people who know we need each other, who have a sense of responsibility to others and to the world. We need to proclaim that being kind, having faith, and working for the common good are great life goals that need courage and vigor . . .”

Do we have that courage and vigor? I think we do. We need each other. What happens to one of us affects all of us, and so, like Christ who enters intimately into our lives and loves deeply and expansively, may we move toward each other in love and mutual compassion. It is not good for us to be alone.

For Reflection:

• When you feel lonely, how do you cope?

• What human connections and relationships are the most meaningful for you?

• As you think about the people in your life – those close to you and those who are more peripheral – who is in need of your care?

• How is God present to you when you are in need?

by Sister Leslie Keener, CDP

Sister Leslie Keener, CDP is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She also serves on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She enjoys music, dancing, meaningful conversations, and pumpkin spice.

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