Let's Keep Hugging

"I am a rock I am an island And a rock feels no pain And an island never cries"- I Am A Rock, Simon & Garfunkel Lyrics It had been a tough and difficult year filled with adversities. A much taller and older muscular gentleman was a co-worker in the field of ministry endeavors. We were somewhere between being acquainted and friends; but we were not really friends. When we saw each other at a church convention, he reached out and embraced me. I don't remember a prior hug from him, but I will never forget that hug in or about the summer of 1976 in a hotel lobby in Dayton, Ohio. Some 45 years later, I still sense and feel the caring concern from him. That hug is like an oak-like fixture in my soul. I did not know that I needed a hug until he gave me that one. It was as if a load, a burden, left me and entered into him; thus fulfilling the Scriptural admonition 'to bear one another's burdens'*. Any feeling of 'A Rock or An Island' disappeared that afternoon in The Buckeyes state. Any and everyone has a need for hugs aplenty. Animals as well as humans need hugs aplenty. Without hugs, there is a void and an emptiness; There's the feel of aloneness on an uninhabited island . The song by Simon & Garfunkel reminds us of our need for connectivity, and that we are lost without each other. A hug is something more than a look, a touch, a hand shake, or a kiss; all of which are great, but sometimes, we need a hug. Hugging is a great physical symbol of personal caring and loving. Hugging shares body heat and electricity with another. There are right ways and wrong ways to hug each other, just as there are differences between lusting and loving; like there's difference between love and Judah's betrayal kiss. We can feel that soothing and calming tone from soul to soul. I have not heard how it is around the world, but in America for several years now, I have observed a lot more public hugging. Let's keep hugging. 072321PSCtest, I See Love, Mystic Rose Rose. 1P *Gal 6:2