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Hug Machine. Called the Hug, the device is a soft, squeezable pillow with two arm-like extensions. It employs sensing and wireless phone technology to send a physical touch via long distance.

To use it, both the sender and the recipient need one.

Let’s say the sender is a child who wants to send a hug to her grandmother several states away. The girl squeezes the left paw of her pillow and speaks her grandmother’s name into a microphone implanted in the contraption. Voice-recognition software matches the name to a preset phone number and dials the corresponding Hug pillow at grandma’s house.

Grandma’s pillow then lights up and sounds off. To answer, grandma squeezes the left hand of her pillow and says hello. Once the voice link is established, the girl hugs her pillow as if it were her grandmother. Sensors in the other pillow pick up that sensation and, using small embedded motors, move the pillow arms to embrace granny.

There are even thermal fibers in the pillow’s middle to radiate “body” heat. When grandma has had enough, she presses the right hand of the Hug and says goodbye.

Kind of sad, in a way, isn't it? Even sadder if the hug pillow sits by itself, day after day, no hugs coming across the line. Then it's just a reminder of being alone.

We have technology to bring people together: telephones, even cell phones so we're always available. We can "connect" over the internet, we can "instant message" people through our cell phones, but sometimes it seems like all that kind of technological connectedness can only make us wonder why we feel more lonely than ever.

Sometimes technology makes things seem unreal. Things on TV don't look real. Mariah Carey, a pop singer says, "Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world I can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be that skinny. But not with all those flies and death and stuff." It turns out she may not have said that, but we know the attitude.

What is real? TV? Movies? News? There is something a little unreal about those things. But this I can tell you– people are real. You and I are real. And upon us comes moments when life seems more real than ever. Moments like witnessing the birth of a child, becoming married, retirement, and coming – at last – near to death.

At such times, we can have a heightened sense of awareness– because we know– deep in our bones– that we are in the presence of the really real. This is what Unitarians sometimes call being in the presence of the Holy.

If we are to be born, to come of age, to become married, to retire, to lay ourselves down in a serious sick bed, then it is affirming & good & holy to have witnesses – to have people we care about & people who care about us – to be present – to be with us – and we with them. Because this is how we can be real together.

In the story, The Velveteen Rabbit, we listen in on two stuffed animals in a nursery discussing this very idea:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Are you real? We are real enough when we are alone. But in some special way, we are more real when we are together with other people– when we do simple things like sending thank-you cards, return phone calls, greet our fellow Eliot folk– especially people we don't know very well.

When we help out at funeral dinners, when we seek common ground during disagreements, when we stop and listen to our children, when we visit friends and relatives, when we do these things, they are a spiritual practice. They may seem like inconveniences, but this is the work of Love with a capital L.

As time goes by, our hair will fall out, our eyes will dim, we will get loose in the joints, and so on. But this happens whether or not we are kind or generous or big hearted.

Let our hearts go out to those who need us. Let our real arms embrace friends & family. Because you know, now is all the time we have – this moment. Let us be glad to be together.