January 4, 2013
Happy New Year and best wishes on Day 3 of your resolutions!
I share a few thoughts, somewhat random, related to being together at Christmas.
Of all times of the year, this season is the one that leaves me with the keenest sense of those 10,000 miles that separate me from family in New Zealand. You can keep White Christmas. Give me shorts and flip-flops and a day at the beach with the family. This year, the folks down under complained of the heat (temps in the 90's). I wish.
Of course, it's more than the weather. Being together with family is something I appreciate more and more now that both our children are in college. When you work in schools, Christmas is always relished because it's a break from the day-to-day intensity of school life and a time to experience restoration. The Feast of the Nativity is both joy and mystery. At the center of our Christian faith is the Incarnation and, like Mary, we wonder, "How can this be?" that God would send the gift of His Son. At Christmas Mass at St. John the Baptist in Silver Spring, I felt the warmth of the wonder and celebration with a larger parish family. Who could not love seeing all those excited children in their Christmas finery and hearing those beautiful voices?
For all the joy of gifts given and received, much fine food, and simple companionship, the extended time to spend with family can be exhausting. My son and daughter, both in college, came home. Who knew they could generate so much laundry and so many dishes? I'm pretty sure we had the occasional snippy conversation about it. But, what dominates for me, is a sense of being made whole. I appreciate how my mom and dad must feel when we make it across the Pacific.
I'm not in the habit of plugging movies but over the break my wife and I saw the movie "The Impossible." The movie was based on the true story of the experience of a family of five caught in the catastrophic tsunami that devastated coastal areas of Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004. At a beautiful beach resort in Thailand, a huge wave thunders in and scatters families. The story of (spoiler alert) the extraordinary journey to reunion was one of the most emotionally wrenching films I've ever seen. Much of the movie's power was in the scale of the devastation – lives lost, property destroyed, landscapes altered. Perhaps, though, what made the film so intense for me was the vivid awareness of the suddenness with which things taken for granted about our most fundamental relationships, can be torn apart. Family ties matter.
God bless your family in 2013.