World AIDS Day

Every year this day strikes me like a brick on the side of the head. I am HIV-free. I live my days largely unaware of HIV/AIDS. And I just forget that this disease is still going on and going strong. I know better. I still forget.

I even forget that I work and share life with those of you living with HIV/AIDS. And then we're talking and out of the blue you share your story with me. And I am often struck by my ignorance in thinking how "healthy" you seem to me. I guess that's a credit to what medicine can do now. But I know that you don't always feel healthy. And I know that living with HIV/AIDS is a heavy weight.

I sat in church tonight during our World AIDS Day worship and I remembered everyone I've met who shared their story of HIV/AIDS with me. The first man I ever remember meeting with AIDS--thin and frail, living in a hospice in the mid 90s--how strange and frightening he looked to me then; how I was afraid to touch him. I remember the "normal" families in South Africa--so many of them--who've taken in nieces and nephews, raising grand kids orphaned by AIDS--seeing a whole generation disappear. I remember the hospice nurses at Tapalogo and their ministry of grace and love for the dying. And I remember all the women and men of my church--those whose status I know and those whose status I don't--who quietly live and thrive as HIV+ people--feeling fortunate to live in a time of better treatments, still conscious of unequal access to these treatments.

I let the poetry and music of this evening wash over my ignorance and my memories.

My colleague, Rev. Jordan, ended the service with a benediction from Deuteronomy 30. It was for those living with HIV/AIDS, but it's for all of us. Moses tells the people that God has "set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life."