Dear Inner Circle,

“Hey Rev, I found my Mum.” I was looking into a face that couldn’t have been forty yet. It was what I call a “high mileage” face but with unmistakable beauty and character. Our eyes engaged from the first second of our meeting. This was a man who had looked for his mother for most of his life, having been given for adoption as a baby. Although he’d recently found her, she is dying. He discovered that he had three sisters. “She never gave any of them away. Just me!” he said. Every word seemed to hold both the joy of finding his Mum as well as the pain of her imminent loss. He couldn’t yet begin to understand why he was given up when there were other children who grew up with their mother. He was busting to ask her about how this all happened but instead he just asked if there was anything he could do for her. Her reply was that all she needed was to know that he would always be in the life of his own son. Her greatest fear would be that she’d caused injury that might sustain for generations.

How life is unleashed when we are not central to the story. The young fellow asked me to pray for his Mum. I have no idea what I said nor does it matter. We spent a moment where what mattered was, Mum. He knew I had no magic but he had freedom to be with me in a space without answers. There wasn’t an outcome in sight. I felt no necessity to find a prayer that would, “work” but bare hearts groaned together for life lost, for ground impossible to regain and for a lifetime of longing and love unexpressed and unfulfilled yet alive, fluttering and awake.

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