We Are Connected

Today we’re looking a bit to the future as we plan to leave for another jaunt to Cambria, one of earth’s great places. We’re looking forward to living for a little while without dust. And with a kitchen!

It’s possible that the cardiology nurse Merrie is seeing tomorrow will put a kibosh on the trip. If so, we’ll make the best of it. But we really, really, really want to go.

As a minister, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about our connections with each other, and our influence on each other. At first look these seem like straightforward and simple ideas. But they are neither.

Our connections go far beyond anything we regularly think about--even if we stop and think about them. They extend into the past and future, and cross boundaries beyond our awareness.

This poem by Carl Dennis is a terrific meditation on this:

“Candles”

If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle

To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra 

To honor the memory of someone who never met her, 

A man who may have come to the town she lived in 

Looking for work and never found it.

Picture him taking a stroll one morning, 

After a month of grief with the want ads,

To refresh himself in the park before moving on.

Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards

Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,

Then still a girl, will be destined to step on

When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic

If he doesn't stoop down and scoop the mess up

With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.

For you to burn a candle for him

You needn't suppose the cut would be a deep one,

Just deep enough to keep her at home

The night of the hay ride when she meets Helen, 

Who is soon to become her dearest friend, 

Whose brother George, thirty years later,

Helps your grandfather with a loan so his shoe store

Doesn't go under in the Great Depression

And his son, your father, is able to stay in school

Where his love of learning is fanned into flames,

A love he labors, later, to kindle in you.

How grateful you are for your father's efforts

Is shown by the candles you've burned for him.

But today, for a change, why not a candle

For the man whose name is unknown to you? 

Take a moment to wonder whether he died at home

With friends and family or alone on the road, 

On the look-out for no one to sit at his bedside

And hold his hand, the very hand

It's time for you to imagine holding.

(From “New and Selected Poems 1974-2004” by Carl Dennis. © Penguin Books, 2007. Reprinted with permission.)