At New Year, like many of you, I looked forward to what this next period of time may bring. I did not experience fear. I had no presentiment of what may come. We never do, of course, any day. Each 24 hours of our lives is filled with mystery – 24 hours with each minute bringing a million possibilities.
The minutes of these days, the ones we grapple with now, bring us sorrow, so much sorrow. And fear of what may come because we now know well what that may be. Will we be the lucky ones who count those we love around us after all this? So many of us will not. My heart goes out to you who will have to withstand this terrible loss. Like you, I hope and I pray to be with my people again.
We have lost also our liberty, our ability to hold one another, to be together, even as we die. Many of us have lost our livelihoods, the things we were doing well, things we trusted to carry us through into a safe and prosperous old age.
What we have gained, though, is a few minutes in the march of time, to come home to ourselves. When you go for a walk in your neighbourhood, don’t wear your earphones for now – listen to the peace, listen to the birds, call a greeting to those who pass 2 metres away, look at the glorious colours of the trees that sustain us.
Bring your mind home to your body and breathe in the delicious days of autumn, feel the sun warm your back, smell the rain and the dampness of the Earth. You will remember that you love your life, this chance to be at home, in the only real home you have. This frail body.
