Precariously... normal

World AIDS Day today.

I have been blessed these last few years with the friendship of several people who are living with HIV. My congregation, Marble Collegiate Church, has been a relatively safe and welcoming place for people living with the illness. We held services last night to mark the day and opened the doors for free testing. It's a small, but important gesture of solidarity and care, led by our GIFTS (LGBT) fellowship.

Against the image of the person suffering with full-blown AIDS that I was exposed to at a hospice in the 90s (and one that I witnessed at hospices in South Africa in my visits these last few years), my friends with HIV here in New York are robust, energetic, vital, and (in part because of their personal struggle with their own mortality) they are deeply sensitive, caring, prayerful people.

My image of a person living with HIV/AIDS has been transformed by the blessing of friendship of people living lives of deep meaning while they fight the disease.

There's a double-edge here. These friendships have also made the epidemic seem... somehow... manageable. It's hard for me to hold in my mind the very different realities of the person receiving medicine, living and working and praying in New York, and the reality of the person lying in a bed in small tin house in a village far outside of Jo'burg. The issue of the affordable distribution of medicines is complicated and hard to know how to impact from my social location.

Even more challenging is knowing how to engage my friends with HIV here in New York. Am I doing a good job of being a pastor a friend? Do I treat them "normally," while still recognizing the daily physical and psychological challenges they face? If anything, my present daily walk, filled with doubt and fear and also the hum-drum of regular life, has given me insight into what it might mean to live a life with HIV that is at the same time precarious and normal.