In Losing Moses on the Freeway, Chris Hedges writes about his father.  "But what struck me about him most," Chris writes, "as I grew older, is that he did not have to embrace difference.  Charming, good looking, endowed with an infectious sense of humor, it would have been easier to go along.  He could have simply been 'nice.'  He could have avoided the confrontations that tore him apart.  But he understood the message of the gospel, although I suspect his actions were less intellectual than instinctual.  I asked him once when I was a teenager what he said to bereaved families when he went to the farmhouses after the funerals of loved ones.  Surely, I thought, even my father with his close proximity to disease and death and grief would have some wisdom to impart.

'Mostly,' he answered, 'I make the coffee.'

It was his presence, more than anything he could say, which mattered."

That's it?

Yes, that's it.

We do find a way to complicate things, no doubt about that-by turning whatever he did (or had, or offered) into a program on "presence."  You know, with a sure-fire title like "Discovering the Five Steps to Presence."  Or requiring "advanced presence certification."  Churches, to be sure, would oblige the formation of a "presence committee."

But here's the deal: presence is not a skill set.  Presence is what spills from one at home in their own skin.  Or at the very least, one who has given up the need to impress or jump hoops for laurels.

It reminded me of Irvin Yalom's story about a friend's final days in her horrible fight with cancer, and the news that her surgeon informed her, "he had nothing more to offer."  "What is wrong with doctors?" she said.  "Why don't they understand the importance of sheer presence?  Why can't they realize that the very moment they have nothing else to offer is the moment they are most needed?"

Presence does not distinguish. 

Or judge. 

Presence just is.

Or mostly. . .just makes the coffee.

This sounds simple.  But is hardly easy.  Because presence is what happens even in the midst of life disagreeable, circumstances unfriendly, and grief all-encompassing.

I do know this: presence is surely not easy in a world where we have to be "on."  Or in a world that worships at the altar of the superlative.

So it is not surprising that we walk (or race) by these moments. . .to be present.  Or when presence is offered to us.   After all, there are so many ways to be derailed--be it distractions, diversions, multi-tasking or interruptions (or all the good work we're doing on the presence committee).

Even so.  Presence sees no boundaries.  Presence recognizes no walls.

Hedges writes that his father (while a pastor / chaplain at Colgate University) started a gay and lesbian support group under his own name because the group was unable to go public, for fear of repercussion.  He talked about his father's "ministry," and how it was predicated on knowing what it meant to be "an outsider. . .he know the awful cost of being different, the intolerance and hatred it bred, the way it leads us to deny the humanity of others, perhaps because of our own hidden differences, our fear that we too will be thrust aside by the crowd."

This story resonated with me.  And I realize why presence is so powerful and inviting.  Because every one of us knows what it is like to be on the "outside."

True, it's easier to imagine than it is to "live."  That's a certainty.  But that doesn't mean it's not real.

My grandmother--Southern Baptist born and bred--didn't cotton to folks in her church who played the judgmental-eternal-damnation-card just to feel good about themselves, or for the sake of proving a point.  She understood that in her church's "theology," there were many kinds of people "on the outside."  (Truth be told, in her church, "most" people were "on the outside.")  But my grandmother lived by an overriding imperative: "Anybody is welcome at my dinner table, no questions asked, no matter what."

In the latter years of her life, in the back yard of her home in northern Florida, my grandmother had a porch swing.  She liked to sit, and swing, and hum old church hymns.  I can still see her there, wearing a white scarf over her head, a concession to chemotherapy's unrelenting march.  When I visited her, as a young adult, she would always ask me to sit with her on the swing, for a spell.  She would pat my leg and call me "darlin'." 

As long as my grandmother lived--and in spite of her pain--there was always a place for me on the swing.  If I were asked to explain Grace, I would paint the picture of my grandmother's swing.  There, I never had to deliberate or explain or worry regardless of the weight I carried.  The swing--my grandmother's presence--existed without conditions.

And I am here today, because of that swing.

It brings to mind a quote from 9-11. During the days immediately following, first responders rested and were fed in St. Paul's Chapel. In St. Paul's one reporter overheard a firefighter say, "When I come in that door, I'm covered with blood sometimes, and they hug me. They love me, they take care of me, they treat me as a real human being. And then they feed me, and they massage me, and they give me adjustments. These are my people. This is my place. This is where I come to be with God."