It’s been a busy past few months, and I’ve given permission for many things to take me away from writing and painting.

Isn’t it wonderful how, in the midst of our hectic, over scheduled, anxious and often chaotic lives there are these shining moments of profound joy. Moments of Grace, some of my friends would say. Yes, I agree, moments of grace.

A few weeks ago we got a call from an old neighbor, someone we hadn’t seen in quite a few years and someone with whom we never spoke frequently but with whom we always had a close and warm friendship built over decades of living next door to one another and always insisting on intentionally holding a gracious, inclusive relationship. There were never disagreements, there were always helping hands, there was always genuine happiness in greetings and, as with so many things that bring us such joy, never enough time given to the friendship.

The phone call brought us back to our old haunt in the form of attending a block party set up by the newer, younger residents who now called the alley home. We were the “old timers” who had helped create the new neighborhood through advocacy, political will and persistent presence. We were the ones with the infamous Christmas Tree that could be seen from Outer Space. We were the ones who had hosted a large, neighborhood inclusive holiday gathering with abundant food and drink for all who dropped by.

We were fortunate to run into several people who were either still living there or who had returned to celebrate the block’s continued success in building community. And this brings me to my point today.

You know that feeling when you run into someone with whom you were close — perhaps not the best of friends, but always warm and open and direct and loving. There must be a word for it somewhere — perhaps in Scandahoovian. “That feeling you get upon seeing an old friend after years apart, yet it feels like you had never been apart.” The way you feel warm inside, the smile that you couldn’t keep from your face if you tried, the strong and gentle embrace or handshake, the look of kindness and acknowledgement in each other’s eyes.

We have these moments in life with different people we know as they come back around – by phone, now by email, in person at a gathering or even still by mail. We bask in the warmth of the shared affinity for one another – the sense of connectedness that will never go away.

I still have this feeling when I reconnect with someone I haven’t seen since my youth — my childhood, my teens, my college years. There is some sense of knowing that we have both “survived” all these years and — well — there you are. Hello there.

When I look back at my friendships through life, I mourn for so many that are lost and that I feel sure will never or could never be returned to. Perhaps that is fine for some relations; perhaps they were meant to be temporal, period-specific, right for the moment. But others I think are friendships of the soul, even if they are not powerfully deep, they can be strong across time. And then, of course, there are those that are indeed powerfully deep over time – those friendships where the connection is visceral, where you can feel it even through a mention of the name, where the memories are so evocative of the power of the connection that you are moved just in the thinking of the person.

How lucky we are to be humans and to have emotions like this! To truly cherish people we know and that we have known, and to be able to reconnect with those emotions and those people despite great distance and times apart. Not that I think my dog does not have this power — oh, for sure he does! But how fortunate are we that we can choose to pull out these memories like old photographs, to pick up the phone, to call, to connect, to hug at a block party in an old neighborhood, to smile and say “hello there, dear old friend of mine.” A feeling like no other.