Fall came with many changes for my family this year. My middle child went off to college, and my youngest began high school. As an interim pastor, I am learning the names and faces in another church family, in this case one with lots of children.

On the first day of church school, we talked about the Great Commandment, the instruction that we love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, and love our neighbors as ourselves. We considered the ways we might live that love for neighbors in our classrooms.

We could listen, suggested someone. Well, that might have been me. But at least one child made the universally popular suggestion, at least with the adults: "We could clean up!"

It's a time of year for setting parameters in our new communities. At a meeting with returning students, the Class of 2013 heard a lot about how at Portland High School "we don't put our hands on each other." This is Principal Michael Johnson's euphemism for "fighting."

He doesn't tolerate fisticuffs, and he admits with some reluctance that most years there are as many as three or four incidents of "hands-on behavior," as he put it to the freshman parents at an orientation meeting the night before school began. He is rightly proud of a recent year with no such incidents, practically unheard-of for a large, diverse American high school.

Not yet indoctrinated to the language of the Portland High School culture, the freshmen were a bit puzzled. Perhaps it would have been clearer if someone had said, "We don't fight here."

But they kept hearing the words, "We don't put our hands on each other." Finally someone asked the question on many minds: "Is it OK if we hug?"

Yes, it is.

I first noticed this hugging thing when my oldest went to college five years ago, or rather when I went to pick him up for fall break and all his male friends hugged him goodbye.

Kids hug each other now. They greet each other this way. Hugging is the new handshake. I'm happy that people have become less formal, more open and more expressive. It gives me hope for the day the world is in the hands, or the arms, of Generation Hug.

My middle child will spend the school year in a high-rise dormitory with hundreds of other young musicians. As I got into the elevator to go to his room for the first time, I heard a resident saying there would be a discussion of swine flu at the hall meetings that night.

In the narrow hallways and the small, shared rooms, they will be breathing the limited air supply and, no doubt, swapping germs, whether or not they hug.

What does it say that during the rise of Generation Hug, we find ourselves on edge at the prospect of a virus?

In a school, in a church, in a family, we set parameters. We decide what's reasonable. We measure our responses. We determine our community standards.

If you want boxes of Kleenex in the pews, please be sure to dispose of your own used tissues! If you need to cough, turn your face toward your elbow. If you feel ill, stay home.

Staying home makes sense, but of course we won't all do it all the time. We'll be tested by feeling necessary or by not wanting to disappoint others or by fearing what we might miss.

I think the lesson of Generation Hug may be that we embrace the feeling even when we cannot feel the embrace. In this season of preparation, churches are talking about how to pass the peace. The French are worrying about the double-cheek kiss. Inventively, we look for ways to show love for neighbors without risking the other person or ourselves.

As a pastor in the congregational tradition, I believe in the power of the gathered body, but as a sometime poet and aspiring mystic, I know the power does not rest in the number of people who gather or even the gathering itself. The power arises from the love expressed to God and the love expressed to one another.

So a hug does not require an embrace with arms. I can give it to you with my eyes, if necessary, right after I remind you to wash your hands.