Hesed

Chiquitita, you and I know
How the heartaches come and they go and the scars they’re leavin’
You’ll be dancing once again and the pain will end
You would have no time for grievin’¹

Hesed is Hebrew for grace, and one of the few words in my Hebrew vocabulary that I can actually remember. (It’s a pretty good one to remember). Hesed implies more than just unconditional divine love, or even God’s love for God’s beloved. It connotes a covenantal relationship: you give, I will give. Hesed is also active: it shows care, it shows up, it is compassionate and it follows through.

We can see this kind of love in our relationships with our divine, but we can also see it in human relationship, and our relationship with other beings in our life. I’ve never seen Hesed better expressed than in my friendship with my best friend Gracie. (aptly named).

We started getting to know one another going on coffee walks with our dogs. Then we started “Grandma Nights” where we watched some trash television, knitted, and wore our matching slippers while eating Girl Dinner™. We bonded over being care professionals, dog parents, and young people in an increasingly bereft world. Eventually those get-togethers transformed into emergency contacts, hospital companionship, deep therapeutic conversations, and support through The Loss Years when everyone else seemed to fall away. Gracie quickly became the standard for the care I should expect from a friend, or anyone I was in relationship with.

Driving on the highway to visit Gracie and her dog Lizard this October, I was reflecting on how grateful I was for this Hesed. How remarkable a note on the community board of an apartment building turned into someone becoming my North Star.

It was my undergrad faculty advisor and mentor (h/t to Dr. Colleen Windham-Hughes) that introduced me to the idea of our relationships of support being members of a constellation. The constellation model allowed for different relationships to have different roles, different intensities, and different levels of intimacy. Different roles (or stars) shine at different times. The constellation model also allows for change, rotation, and shift. No one person is bearing the load of being the be-all end-all. A constellation in rotation, if you will. Gracie has long been my North Star, guiding the constellation as a whole.

Hesed means grace, and she surely lives up to their name.

May you find Hesed, and may you be Hesed.

1. ABBA, “Chiquitita”. ↩︎