Separated from one another—yet still in harmony

A few weeks ago a beloved member of my congregation, Ildiko Szabo, died unexpectedly on a Sunday evening. Ildiko organized Bible studies, flipped pancakes for students on Mardi Gras, welcomed visitors and regulars with the same enthusiasm, and seemed always to be searching for ways to fill in the spaces between those around her with love and attention. She was one of the people whose face I always sought from the pulpit, and when I began taping my sermons for broadcast on the radio, she was one of the faces I imagined as I preached into my computer or my phone.

When we stopped worshiping together in the sanctuary in March, Ildiko began writing to me every Sunday, sometimes before the service began and sometimes just after it ended. Often she would attach photos from the arboretum where she loved to walk—insisting, always, on the beauty of the world. After she died, I scrolled through her emails, listening for her voice.

What struck me was how Ildiko’s imagination had functioned for her during lockdown like a spiritual sense. On March 29, she wrote to say that it moved her to think of the ministers and musicians in our separate homes preaching and praying and making music to be knit into a service and broadcast on the radio. As she listened, she wrote, “I searched for your faces in this virtual environment.” I wish I’d been more attentive to the fact that this had been one of the invisible threads connecting us during our separation—the creative work of conjuring each other up, each of us seeking the other’s face.