"...we were together"

There is a saying around here. It's an odd one for me, one that I had never heard before this place. It's the kind of saying that makes my mind wander away from a conversation, imagining the many layers of meaning in it. (I'll admit, my mind wanders easily, anyway).

The saying goes like this, "...we were together." From what I can gather, it is a saying about friendship. But it's more than that. It is about friendship and proximity. It means something along the lines of, "we were friends and we spent a lot of time with each other."

And yet, the saying seems to be even more than simply friendship and proximity. There is a particular quality about it that is hard to put into words. "...we were together," has a sense of longing, a sense of leaning into a complex history; it has a quality to it that I don't encounter when someone says, "we were friends," or, "we used to hang out." There is a past-tense quality about the saying that seamlessly transitions into a longing for the past.

I have only heard the saying spoken by some of the older members that I visit. So this leads me to think it might be more of a generational saying than regional or cultural peculiarity (it could be a combination of all of these).

In any case, I like it. Let me give you a sense of how it sounds when it is used. "I had a very good friend in seminary; his name was Nathaneil and 'we were together.'"

The saying is a turn of phrase that gives a weightiness to a friendship in the past that is now somehow different because either, 1) the two friends are separated by a distance or 2) one of the two friends has died and joined the Church Triumphant. In most of my conversations, I encounter the latter of the two connotations. A friend is longing for someone who has died. (*note* Nathaneil and I are still good friends and he is still very much alive; only, now we are separated by a few thousand miles).

For this All Saints Sunday, I have really been thinking a lot about this turn of phrase. It is such a unique  and beautiful way of talking about a relationship that is both very meaningful, but now somehow different than it was before.

It gets me thinking about the saints of God who have gone before us, who are leaning forward into the gates of eternal life. And then it gets me thinking, what if those of us who have victory in Christ, because of God's gift of forgiveness and salvation, are simply only standing a little bit straighter, a little bit more upright than those who are leaning forward into the gates of eternal life?

Perhaps the saying, "...we were together," is simply a way of longing for a future together, not longing for the past. Perhaps there is a quality about the phrase that leans not backward into a complex history and longing for a past like I thought, but leans forward into the unknown future of God. And perhaps those who have died and gone before us are simply leaning a little bit more than those of us who are still living now.

When we say, "...we were together," about a relationship we had with someone who has now died, we are not saying that the relationship is over, but that it is different; and the difference is in the angle of our bodies as we lean into the future that God has in store for us. Perhaps, "...we were together," is a way of talking about believing in the, "communion of saints," both those who have died and gone before us, and saints/sinners who are still now living in the present. Perhaps, "...we were together," simply remembers the angle of our bodies and the angle of the bodies of those who have gone before us as we all lean toward the future God has for us.

Or, I have had too much tea and it is a Friday afternoon! :oP