The Shared World
May 25, 2020

+Porter Taylor

Okay, if you read the reflection last week, you know I am a Naomi Shihab Nye fan.

She wrote an article in 2007 (“Gate 4-A”) about being stuck in the Albuquerque Airport and hearing this announcement: “Anyone near Gate 4-A who understands Arabic please come to the gate immediately.” Because she spoke Arabic, Naomi went to the gate and found an older Palestinian woman wailing loudly. The woman thought her flight had been cancelled. She needed to be in El Paso for a major medical treatment the next day. Naomi called the woman’s son and got him to quiet his mother down. She told the son she would stay with his mother until the plane took off, and because she was taking the same flight, sit with her.

As they waited for the flight, the woman took out homemade mamool cookies: “little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts.” She passed them around the waiting area and everyone took one. “We were all covered with the same powdered sugar.” Then the airline attendants handed out apple juice.

Nye concludes with, “And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world….This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

As human beings much less Christians, we are hardwired for communion. And given that we haven’t had the Holy Eucharist in church together for a while and it doesn’t seem likely that this will change soon, it’s important to remember that the Eucharist is there to equip us to commune with one another and God everywhere. Indeed, there is little you can do solo in Church. You can’t be absolved, nor take communion, nor be blessed, nor have hands laid on you for healing, nor take the peace. “Where two are three are gathered together….”

We yearn for the “shared world,” but let us remember what Naomi Shihab Nye tells us: the shared world is everywhere. It’s not about a building or even a liturgy. No, we can’t do what we are used to---but neither Nye nor the Palestinian woman expected to have a sacred feast in an airport terminal either. The questions are: “Can we be open to the invitation to the shared world and participate in it? When some voice declares that a fellow human being is lost, will we respond? Have we limited God’s presence to designated sanctuaries?”

Of course, we need to be safe in this time, but we also need to listen for the Spirit calling us into communion. The truth is---this is the only life we have to live and this is the only moment we have to experience the holy and be drawn into the “Shared World.”

It’s not likely to be in an airport any time soon and we’re not likely to share food during the Covid 19 time. However, we are wired for communion by God and God’s deepest desire is for us to remember who we are. Therefore, let us look for the “Shared World” everywhere. Let us listen for the voice that is calling us to speak the word that needs to be spoken so that we might feed and be fed.