A Hallmark fill-in-the-blank card, handwritten by the niece who will, next month, become a first-time grandmother, was more than an invitation to a baby shower.  It was – connection to faraway family.  It was – memory of times together.  It was – sadness as we remained in Minnesota and did not travel to Oregon as we might have done before Parkinson’s Disease.  And it was – joy at celebrating the miracle of new life.  The simple card sat on the dining room table for weeks; a physical sign that people were thinking of us and we of them.  It provided the gentle nudge to keep knitting so to fulfill my practice of gifting hand-knit sweaters for new great-great nieces and nephews, as well as the reminder to start this baby’s library with the best in children’s literature.

The most prestigious invitation ever received by my family invited my parents to the 1965 inaugural gala for Lyndon Baines Johnson and Hubert Horatio Humphrey.  The Office of Alvin E. O’Konski, Member of Congress representing Wisconsin’s 10 Congressional District, sent the invitation in acknowledgement of how instrumental my parents had been in 1962 during his tough re-election campaign after re-districting and his again successful bid in 1964.  While my parents did not travel to Washington, D.C. for the festivities, the large, engraved invitation issued by the Inaugural Committee, with an embossed gold seal, hung for decades on the wall next to the custom-built oak desk and bookshelves.

As exciting as it is to receive such honored surface mail, Mary Oliver reminds the readers of her poem, Invitation, that not every invitation will arrive printed on heavy bond paper or translate into a party.  Rather, the invitation may come in the form of “goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles” calling us “to linger just for a little while.” 

I find it takes a conscience effort to linger, to slow down, and simply appreciate.  Electronic devices, apps, and online meetings both ease and complicate our days so that to pause feels almost wasteful; a guilty pleasure since there are always more tasks on my to-do-list than time in my day.  And yet, Rev. Ruth MacKenzie writes that to be “our whole and holy self” requires us to act in an “absolute present tense.”  That act of being attentive to the whole person is not easy, whether that focus is time for personal introspection, connecting with a friend, or meeting a stranger.  That then is the challenge (or more appropriately stated for this post) the invitation to look beyond that which is unfamiliar due to all the factors that form our individualities – family, heritage, language, ethnicity, education – and to linger with the individual, focused on the “whole and holy.”  And, sometimes, to accept the invitation Mary Oliver describes, to listen to the goldfinches …

... as they strive
          melodiously
               not for your sake
                    and not for mine
and not for the sake of winning
          but for sheer delight and gratitude -- 
               believe us, they say,
                    it is a serious thing
just to be alive
          on this fresh morning
               in the broken world ...

Photo credit: Andrew Patrick Photography from prexels