Sunday, December 23, 2001 8:36 AM
Family Christmas Party Prayer Dec, 24, 2001 Sometime in the evening.
I live, as we all do, in a myriad of intertwining worlds.
You can almost draw it out in a logical diagram.
Circles within circles intersecting circles.
Here is the circle of my beloved children, brother, sister-in-law, niece and mother and father, the expanding circle of Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Second cousins, Third cousins, Nominal cousins, some living some passed on but all with us. Here is the office where I work, here are my long term friends, here my comedy group compatriots, and there receding like galaxies in the expanding universe are the circles of dear and scattered friends from college at Skyum Bjerge, Thy, Danmark, other offices other times, people who I shared in the Summer of Love in Berserkley California, a cluster of high school friends; ever farther out, grade school, and yes even the people from Larimar Avenue whose streets and names reverberate so deeply within me. But as these circles intersect and connect, shrink and grow, I look more closely at the universe that encompasses them. I discover something.
All of these worlds of mine sit, live and react on the deep field of family.
It is Family that nourishes and accepts and expects the best.
What a remarkable thing!
For I realize that there are lost souls in the world who are not nourished or accepted. And when the wind blows they blow with political and social movements that mimic the field of family and what is expected is not always the best. Quite the contrary!
This tradition that we all share tonight, which seems only a few years old, but which really was started by our parents and influenced by their parents and so on ad infinitum is the supreme representation of family. We meet here tonight and mix all of our circles and make them more rich, more complex and we breath in this night in this room the sustenance that keeps all the intricacies of the circles of our lives vibrant, glowing. We go from this room, this night, into the world and every one of the people that reside in our circles on the field of our family are carried and influenced by us and their circles in their turn influence and enrich us.
So are we all blessed!
Amen
