Sacred Spaces -- Part 2

I have a love-hate relationship with flying. For one thing, I truly believe flying to be safe in the logical part of my brain (I've certainly flown often enough without incident). On the other hand, my brain and my heart feel disconnected as I sit in a jet, expecting that nearly a million pounds of metal, luggage and human beings will somehow not only get into the air but stay there until the pilot wants to come down again. My pulse always quickens on take-off and landing and in turbulence ("Keep us safe, O God!"), but it quickens in the same way when I ride a roller-coaster ("This is fun! ...I think"). Plus, I'm a solid X on the introvert-extrovert Myers-Briggs scale. So I never know whether to talk to the people I'm sitting next to or leave them alone, and I'm never quite sure if I'd rather have them talk to me or be left alone, either.

There was a time that I flew through Detroit often enough that I knew the location of every Starbucks in the airport, and knew immediately, based on the gate we were flying into, which one I'd be stopping at on my way to my next gate. Think what you will about Detroit, but that airport is one of the nicer airports I've flown through. (Though I'll admit that probably had something to do with the Starbucks-to-gate ratio at the time.) So, it was not an airport I particularly minded sitting in, alone, sipping my latte and reading a book while I waited for my next flight. However, on this particular day, I could not focus on what I was supposed to be reading -- and "supposed to be" was true, because I was missing classes for this flight. I was flying "home" to a congregation I had served as an intern, to participate in the funeral of one of the most beloved women in the church, and one of my most beloved mentors. I had only returned to school 6 weeks before, and before I left, Donna had looked just fine. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, but our conversation still held great hope for her future -- there are incredible treatments for breast cancer these days, and she was still young enough and healthy enough to fight it. But somehow, her body had failed her. She had not taken well to chemotherapy, and took ill with a case of pneumonia that she could not fight. Her vibrant life faded over the course of just a couple of weeks, and she passed blessedly quickly but almost without warning. The congregation, already grieving the loss of a pastor and then my return to school, was thrown into a roiling grief again... a third loss, another hit for which they felt totally unprepared. In fact, the congregation had paid for my expensive short-notice plane ticket so that I could be with them for the funeral. They needed me there with them as much as I needed to be with them. Yet, in my own private grief, I wondered how I would ever be able to minister to my grieving friends and mentors.

And so, sitting alone in the Detroit airport, I grieved.

And then, suddenly the woman sitting next to me pulled out her carry on bag. Throwing me a shy, guilty smile, she pulled out a little white mop of a dog and sat him on her lap. "I'm really not supposed to do this," she explained, "but he's been all cooped up in there for so long; I thought he should stretch his legs." He hardly had any legs to stretch, but he was perfectly happy to lick at my hand and allow me to pet his head. Making small talk, I asked the woman where she was going and why. After she shared her story with me, she asked the same of me. I explained that I was headed to a funeral in Charlotte, Michigan, a small town outside of Lansing. Just then the woman sitting behind me turned around. "I couldn't help but overhear that you're headed to a funeral in Charlotte. You wouldn't be going to Donna X's funeral, would you?" As it turned out, this woman had been Donna's best friend since kindergarten, and she was flying in from Florida. For the next 15 minutes, while we waited for the plane to board, we talked with each other about Donna, her love of life, her stubborn character, her love of God. We dawdled when our boarding numbers were called, so glad were we to have each other to share our grief with. Finally, we boarded our plane. And, we discovered, our seats were located across the aisle from each other.

And so, for the next hour, a woman whose name I cannot remember and I shared our private grief with each other, across the aisle of an airplane. We shared our stories and our memories and the reasons why Donna had been so important to us. As the plane landed and we said our goodbyes, I discovered a strength within myself that I hadn't known before. Still, I grieved. But my heart hurt just a little less, the laughter and shared tears having lightened my burden. Getting into a church member's car for the ride home from the airport, I felt ready for the conversation about grief and shock and death that awaited me. I felt strengthened to be present with the congregation, vulnerable and grieving and yet strong.

In the shared experience of grief and laughter, I found sacred space. In the middle of a busy airport, aboard a crowded airplane, I experienced the sacred. In the happenstance relationship, the mutual sharing, the invitation to be who I was and fully present in that moment without judgement, God opened safe space for me to grieve, and grow, and discover courage... the courage to be more fully who God was calling me to be. I can only imagine that the woman I was talking with found the same thing. In a moment that we needed it the most, we found sacred space.

I truly believe that every child of God, every person in this world, needs to find sacred space like this.