From Handshakes to Hugs

This past Monday, our chapel service honored the International Day of Peace with a service that incorporated an opening litany where four individuals described experiences with war; multi-lingual responses to those litanies; hymns and songs about justice and peace and goodness being stronger than evil; and a hands-on offering involving writing down one's prayer for peace onto an origami paper and creating a pinwheel out of that with the help of a pencil and a pin.  (see the pinwheels in the picture above?)

Normally, at the end of every chapel service, the community both greets and departs with handshakes and "Peace be with you"s.  After this particular service, a service in which I'd seen the most raw emotion--real tears and relived feelings from sights of battle, refugee camps, and leaving family behind in war-torn places--handshakes melted into hugs, and the simultaneous frailty and strength of humanity gripped me as I connected on a bodily level with my classmates.

We were all at chapel that day because it was something offered to our community on a daily basis.  We greeted one another with handshakes because that was a way of connecting and blessing each other in a manner congruent to our faith.  But hugging--that took things to a whole new level.

I hugged not because it was the polite thing to do with my community.  I hugged because hugging is a very human thing to do.  In a season of life where I don't have access to the hugs of my family of origin, it was an unspeakable blessing to embrace and be embraced by my Divinity School community. I knew that, in the ebb and flow of things, hugs would most likely fan out into handshakes again after we'd dispersed and forgotten about the intensity of that shared chapel experience, but for that day, I got what I needed from the humanity of my community.

Later that day: attending a talk by the President of the Republic of Macedonia on "The Macedonian Model of Coexistence: Tradition of Respect for Diversity" and getting a performance by Yale's Slavic Women's Chorus at the reception afterwards.