GLOBAL FAMILY

We stood, gathered in a church courtyard. There were about 30 of us standing around a plot of ivy covered ground. A hole in the dirt is waiting for the ashes of my big sister, Kay. We were her family gathered from around North America to honor a woman who had blessed so many. Her husband, David, had asked me to say a few words on behalf of the family. How do you sum up the life of one who has lived a rich and full life?

As I stood and looked out on the gathered family, I realized that words could not do what the community who encircled her ashes did by its very presence. There before me were people with northern European heritage, African heritage, Native American heritage, Vietnamese heritage, Guatemalan heritage. They were all in Kay's family. We had come from Vancouver BC, Vermont, Rhode Island, New York City, Virginia, Indiana, Southern California, South Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, Illinois, Ohio. 

And we who were gathered were from every walk of life: grocery clerk, chef, teachers, business women and men, unemployed, nurses, professionals of all kinds. Some of us had multiple degrees, others had wisdom learned on the streets. Some lived with physical challenges, others with emotional complexities. Some were gifted in speech, others in music, others in compassion, others in empathic presence. All of us were there together, in all our diversity, because we were loved by Kay and we loved her.

What more needs to be said. Kay and Dave lived a life of generous hospitality. They always made room for more. Their family expanded the longer they lived, opening to people who were seeking home. There was always more room in Kay's heart even if she didn't have any more room in her home. Kay and Dave grew a global family and discovered the challenges and gifts of creative diversity.

It seems to me that the world needs more people like my sister Kay and her husband Dave. If we are going to learn to live together in this shrinking planet, we have to become family where all are honored whether they are like us are very different. As I say good-bye to my big sister, I say "Thank you Kay, for allowing me to see in you and Dave a taste of the reign of God. May your spirit infect us that we too might honor all as you did."

PORTRAIT OF A SOUL

It was a few years ago now.  I gathered with my siblings in Kansas City to celebrate the life of our mother, Oma. She had died and we gathered from around the continent to give thanks for her life. Siblings, grandkids, friends. We were there sharing our connection with this one woman.

And we talked.  We talked, remembered, laughed and cried. We told stories of our mother. We shared our experiences, each with different stories of gifts and discipline, of confrontation and affection. Each story was a brush stroke on the canvas of our memories--a stroke bold and dark, delicate and light, soft and gentle, edged and tough. With each story more texture and dimension was added to the memory's portrait of my mother's soul.

When we tell the stories of the moments of our lives we create a portrait of our souls. The moments of our lives remembered are placed on a canvas of memory and we try to understand what it means to be us. With each story we shared at our mother's memorial service, we added to the meaning we were making of our mother's life with us.  As we heard friends talk and tell of her acts of kindness and her commitment to the "least of these" we filled in with color the sometimes faint images that childhood memories have.

It is in the human heart to seek meaning. We siblings each shared stories, painting fresh and complicated strokes on each other's canvases. As one spoke, the meaning of mother's life to the rest of us was shaded with more depth and character. When the story-telling and the memorial service was over, we all returned to our own homes with a portrait of our mother's soul more imprinted on our hearts. We each have our own understanding of our mother's meaning for our lives, and by sharing the stories of our lives with her, we enriched each other's portrait.

YOU MATTER

I am a parent of three children.  Adults now. It has been a long time since I had young children at home but I suspect that children still can be both delightful and demonic.  They can bring joy and chaos. And and that may be one of the gifts of their presence. They tap the deep diversity of the human spirit and thus, enrich our lives.

I read something today that I thought might speak to an important part of parenting.  Yesterday I watched the Indianapolis Colts come from 28 points down to beat the Kansas City Chiefs 45-44.  Sports writers couldn't say enough about it. People commenting from Indianapolis and Kansas City were initially speechless.

In analyzing the game, some Colts players were talking about how poorly they played the first half, digging themselves a 28 point hole to get out of. One of the players said, "We weren't trusting each other.  We had to depend on everyone to do their job."

Just as a good football team needs to trust each other to do his job, family life is more dependable when "everyone does his/her job".  I remember as a child that we each had "chores."  Many of my memories of family conflicts were around our not doing our chores or not doing them well enough.  I am sure one of my parents thought more than once, "It would be  easier to do it myself."

And as a child, I didn't like having responsibility.  But, now I understand that those jobs or chores were ways in which my parents taught me that I mattered.  I mattered to the family system  I was important to the social fabric of my family life. I made a contribution to the lives of others. Things go better when each of us does his/her job.

This is not a bad thing to know.  We matter.  It matters to the family team that each does his/her job. We know we matter when what we do contributes to the well-being of the whole.  For a child to know this is a wonderful gift.

DISAPPOINTMENT

I read this quote recently on Facebook: "What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be."  I agree.  One way not to be disappointed is to not have any image of the way things are supposed to be.

But, I wonder how much we miss if we give up our imagination about what we would like life to be. Desire is vital to life. It is what makes the difference between existing and living. Desire is the driving force for activity.  The desire for the well-being of our family drives us to get to work and earn money. The desire for a better world drives us to work for laws that make a more just world.  The desire to live well in our family motivates us to be graceful and forgiving.  Desire is what gives shape and form to our daily decisions.

So, if we are to be alive, and if we are to desire life to be a certain way, what do we do when it doesn't turn out the way it's "supposed to be"?  How do we live with being disappointed when people don't do what we think they should do?  

One way to look at disappointment is as a loss.  When things don't work out as we want, we lose something. We lose confidence in our ability to make things happen the way we want.  (Maybe that is something like the loss of the illusion that we are God.) We may lose our belief that everyone else sees the world the way we do. We lose the illusion that others desire life just as we do.

And with any loss, we have to grieve it.  Grieving loss is at it's core an act of forgiveness.  One person has said that forgiving is forgrieving.  Our inability to forgive the world for disappointing us will destine us to live in the prison of past pain.  Forgiving others for disappointing us frees us to live a new way, maybe with the grace to accept that which we can't change.  It makes it possible to move forward in a world that isn't the way we think the "world is supposed to be."

What do you have to grieve during this holiday season?  Will you forgive those who disappoint you and open to the surprises of a world that is new and filled with different possibilities?