There is someone I seldom see and whom I’d like to be better friends with, but where my hearing has gotten in the way as much as anything and we just haven’t made much of a connection.

She is a woman of faith but not of our particular flavor of it, although her husband is.

So I was surprised and delighted to find she’d been asked to give a Palm Sunday reading from scripture of the passion of the Christ to us. And she’d said yes.

She found herself stopping mid-verse a moment to wipe a tear quickly out of the way, and I think I did, too.

After the meeting she happened to be just on the other side of a door I was walking through. I stopped when I saw her, unable to find the right words to convey the power of what she’d offered us all, and simply said, Thank you, as we held each other’s eyes in our own.

Everything felt transformed right then and there for the better. She had no words, just joy, and finally gave a pat on my arm, nodding.

Love. It is all there truly is.