Sitting with

This evening it seemed like old times in ministry, late visits to the hospital, sitting alongside a person on the threshold between life here and life beyond. I sit and talk and pray, I cry and sing. Each moment marked by a breath, my breath and that of this beloved person. The noise of the hospital ward seems to recede and the world seems to contact to this small space where the sound of breathing and the seemingly intense click of the wall clock mark the passing of moments. Leaving here the world seems different as I walk to my car several streets away, my tears mingled with the slow spitting rain sipping bitter coffee from a cardboard cup from the hospital vending machine as a kind of communion. Laughing young women in pretty dresses and high heels bring two world together. Their voices sound at first discordant and then hopeful as I cross back over the threshold.