TOUCHING OTHERS

When we talk of touching others, we’re usually talking about physical touching – the holding of hands, for instance, or just the unintended touching of two people, the casual contact that comes with living among others – but this morning I’m writing more of what I might call mental touching. When I’m thinking of other people, I have them in my mind; I’m holding them, in a sense, as carefully and completely as I hold a cup of coffee. For as long as the thought of them is inside me, so are they -- not the physical persons, of course, but even better, the perfect and complete picture of who they are to me at that moment. Even someone I pass by chance is touched by me as I see them in my mind for those short moments. My thoughts of that person touch the person as certainly as if I really reached out. The person knows not that I made this silent contact, but it happened nonetheless – a brief holding of her or him in the hands of my thoughts. It happens continually for all of us. We think of others, and therefore we touch others. It’s like a never-ending family finding, again and again, a way to take each other in our hands.