Heaven and Earth Touch...

 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God..."

The place where Heaven and Earth touch....language for an act that I have led and received infinite times.  First (unofficially) placed in my 4 year old palm during my grandmother's Catholic funeral because I reached for it.  Then (officially) offered at 10, by my grandfather--welcomed as a guest minister for the occasion of my First Communion.  

Throughout the pandemic, our family gathered around the kitchen island Sunday morning. Sometimes using homemade naan. Sometimes Kroger pretzel rolls. But always Manischewitz.  Amid the crushing weight of responsibility I felt as I entered into Nursing Homes and COVID unit others could not...as I began to see the Ruach pulled from the bodies of my patients...And awaiting the wave of death I knew I was going to witness in this war, my soul demanded that I experience Heaven and Earth touching. I spoke the ancient and familiar words that felt foreign in my home. Feeling connected to generations who spoke these words in exile, amid war, in bombed out churches, in refugee camps, at the bedside of the dying.  I did not expect this to last forever--but I empathized with the desperation  exiled followers must have felt, desperate to receive and demanding they keep the WORD alive.  

A 80 year old silver platter my grandmother had received for her wedding, with a brass chalice sculpted by my great uncle beside it. A  cinnamon apple candle providing the LIGHT.  The WORD was spoken and Manischewitz became a tsunami of grace.  Heaven touched this broken, hellish Earth, and redemption, hope and God's love was placed in the palm of my hand.

"See, the home of GOD is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his people, and GOD Himself will be with them. 

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away...."

A family that had been granted a "window visit" to say goodbye to their loved one with COVID.  I was in the patient's room offering impotent sympathy to the family through the open window.  Before I arrived, they had broken the screen out (an action that became more common as grief and anger grew over months). Their fingertips reaching out, just to touch the floor of the room their loved one was in.  I spoke the WORD, using a gloved hand to place a drop of wine of the lips of one of the 601,341 souls who had the life stolen from them. 

Then, reaching through the window, offering only the bread to the outstretched fingers that met mine.  

The Ruach rattled in the man's chest, and it seemed as if more tears flowed than God could ever wipe away behind the masked faces of those outside. Layers of protection separated me from the earth--the only N95 I had for months was covered by a surgical mask. A single use gown I had worn all day covered my scrubs. Gloved hands wiping knotted hair away from my goggles and face shield. They wanted to have one last physical touch of the man they loved before heaven came to earth to take him away.  

After Heaven and Earth touched, and the commendation prayer was spoken, I laid on the floor, reaching my fingers to touch theirs, my arm rising up to the bed, stretching to hold the foot of one whose new heaven was about to arrive....my physical body, filled with the Body of Christ, trying to connect the Body of Christ...

....on earth, as it is in heaven...Give us this day, our daily bread....

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God...Behold! I am coming soon!  Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy...."

Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!  Alleluia!

For a SECOND Resurrection Sunday, the empty tomb was revealed in our home.  Neighbors, who first gathered around a driveway firepit to sing Silent Night, then stood by a mailbox for the Imposition of Ashes, brought lawn chairs to the backyard to hear the promise of the empty tomb.  Bubbles exploded from yellow and green wands, as preschoolers heard that God's love was EVERYWHERE, just like their bubbles.  Homemade bread on a pottery plate and Mogan David in a glass cup were placed on a folding table altar--a great grandmother's linen table cloth covering the mensa. Lifting up the full, still warm loaf, I tore it in two, an act not of separation but unification of Heaven and Earth as they touched on this glorious broken, restored, joyful, bittersweet, orthodox, unconventional, familiar, foreign Resurrection Day.  

Johnny Cash's Breakin Bread the Communion Hymn flowing from the bluetooth backyard speaker.

And the glory of Heaven touched the Earth.

I didn't have the words in the Before Times--but that's what it is....Heaven touching the Earth...how it was what I so desperately wanted and needed and longed for.  AND YET (because with God there's always an "and yet") AND YET heaven never left.

It. Was. Right. There. 

On my kitchen island. In the room and through the window. Filling my physical body as I lay flat on the ground covered in sweat and PPE and filled with rage and grief. 

And with my beautiful neighbors on that Resurrection Sunday in the warm homemade bread and precious cup.

Amid the isolation and death of this earth, heaven was always there....