Hello Friends,

John and I recently saw an intriguing film, actually a collection of eighteen short films, entitled “Paris, Je t’aime.” Each vignette depicted a variation on the notion of love, or something like it, from an unusual point of view. Far from being all hearts and flowers sentimentality, the stories found their characters encountering unexpected or usually hidden dimensions of what it means to be alive, and to know (or wish to know) love.

We were exhausted by the end, as there were so many stories, and so much humanity, to take in, in one sitting. Part of what wore on us was the incessant, perpetual, and unresolvable longing for home with others, that pervades so much of our experience as humans.

Each person carries her own struggles, her own pain, her own loneliness, her own questings, close to the heart—and for so many of us, it seems, there is a hunger to be known, and accepted for who we are. Far too many of God’s beloved people don’t feel loved, or heard, or seen, or cared for by their world.

One story depicted a young immigrant mother, who sings a lullaby to her baby left at a sterile daycare, then has to make a long, arduous, and lonely journey each day to a wealthy home, where she is left to tend the rich woman’s child, to whom she sings the same lullaby, while looking out the window, her heart tending toward her own little one, left without his mother’s voice, so his mother can feed him.

Even in the stories that had “happy” endings, where couples found love, what came through was how little each one really knew about the beloved other.

That’s part of the wisdom of Renita Weems’ depiction of the sisters Mary and Martha, whose stories we heard on Sunday, as we read from her book Just a s Sister Away. Through the sisters’ monologues, we learn that Jesus’ chief ministry to them was in opening their eyes to the other’s reality, so as to help them respect, honor, and support each other.

The human heart will always be “a lonely hunter,” as one writer describes our condition—ever restless, ever searching for home.
Augustine reminds us that “our hearts are restless ‘til they rest in Thee,” in God, the ground of our being.

But meanwhile, what can we do to stay open to our fellow human hunters for home? How can we keep our hearts awake to the holy humanity of our brothers and sisters, especially those who can so easily become invisible, because they lack voice, power, prestige, or prosperity?

I look forward to hunting with you for some avenues to that openness, this Sunday, and all our days to come.

Shalom,

Sarah