When we get through this, I want us to set a table with all of the loaves of bread we’d practiced in our quiet houses.

I want us clutching fistfuls of the cilantro we coaxed from our city windowsills, and I want the nascent musicians, the ones who learned old songs on their new ukuleles, or warbled choruses on isolated balconies, to take the stage together.

I want all the knitted, crocheted, stitched, and mended things pooled at our feet, warming our ankles.

I want us to greet each other in unfamiliar languages, to tell the stories of those who have been lost. I want us to look, in unison, toward the world millions of miles and light-years away, to take in what is before us, and beyond us.

I want us to wake to the magnitude of our fortune against the smallness of our time. And then I want us to remember this, and to keep remembering.

Maya Stein

Over these past few months that we have been writing the Reflections and participating in worship services, it seems that we have spent time with lamenting and looking at what we have had to tolerate and dig deep for patience. We all have been experiencing the pandemic with the COVID restrictions, but we each have coped with it in our individual ways. Some of the losses are new beginnings. Although we lament that we have lost, we have also gained: new perspectives, new friends, new ways of communication. This poem reminds us to remember what we have gained.

We cannot go “back to normal.” Let us take what we have gained, and move forward with new purpose. The CPE Internship is coming to a close. Our graduation is April 11, and our official last day is April 14. I am moving forward into an unknown land with new beginnings, but I am moving with new perspectives, new friends, and many gains. I am filled with gratitude for all of the experiences I have had at HHH during these past 6 months. I will remember this for a very long time.

Grace and Peace to You,
Mary Anne
CPE Intern