HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 7/22/19
July 22, 2019
Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)
“At a time like this, how beautiful is every human face.”
– News Commentator
The occasion was the death of Robert Kennedy, and the newsman was watching the long line of mourners slowly moving by Kennedy’s body as it lay in state.
I think of this quote again as a camera plays over another crowd, this time at a political convention. The speaker is talking about her experience of contracting the AIDS virus through a blood transfusion, and of the subsequent death of the son to whom she later gave birth. The crowd is hushed. People watch with tears in their eyes – no hint of the stridency and competitiveness that have colored this convention and will again.
Perhaps these two scenes remind us that as we confront death, there is a reservoir of love and compassion in the human community. We don’t need to be afraid to show our vulnerability, because to mourn when we are bereaved is not a sign of weakness but a stepping into the circle where all the brothers and the sisters can put their arms around us and hold us close, if we give them a chance.
The love inherent in the human family is available to me.