Man, what an emotion ladened weekend!  I have been weepy, tears just behind the eyes, catch ready to happen in my throat for two days.  Yesterday, some of that was relieved by a walk around Walden Pond.  

It was an incredibly beautiful fall day, a bit warm for my still Wisconsin standards, but delightful to walk.  I was looking for a contemplative walk in the woods, a la Henry David Thoreau.  Instead, the biggish beach and the tiny beaches all around the pond had families, picnickers, swimmers and kayakers chattering and enjoying the day.  And the path around the pond has a layer of small stones and our shoes made noise as we moved along.  Julia didn’t mind at all and I had to smile that I actually expected a quiet, mystical stroll. There were a few moments, a few feet of the path every so often, where there were no small stones and where we were not close to those playing in the water.  And for those few moments, it was blessedly quiet—once I turned around to make sure Julia was still in back of me.  And the quiet captured some of what was in my heart.

And then today was the first time we were physically together in our church since March, 2020.  We were all masked and spaced.  Only the choir sang—those no in choir were allowed to hum during the last tune and as it is a favorite with many UUs, I wondered if anyone sneaked in a few syllables.

I had a moment of panic as we were warming up before service.  In our masks and spaced apart as we are, I heard us not singing together.  I felt a flutter of panic.  Maybe it was a beat, maybe just a half beat, but we were off.  I needed to concentrate very specifically on something that comes so naturally to a group of people singing together.  That and of course, watch our director.  At service, I think we sounded fine.  Missing some of the crisp consonants but happy to be there, doing what we could together.  And at times during our service—at the beginning when our minister welcomed everyone home, as we did the gathering of waters, as our minister repeated some of her remarks from the beginning of the summer, and as we stood  in positions for our first tune—I was close to tears, closer than usual.  I am expecting many more of these weepy moments in the coming weeks.

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It is good to be in community again.