same story

the screen-saver scoops up photographs and creates a mosaic. and as the images multiply, they combine to become yet another photograph – an image of my little nephew, minutes old. swirls of red paint i made last summer with my right hand colour his florid cheek, sylvia meets jonah charging in the bend of his arm… and a favourite moment of you, laughing with head thrown back, melts deep into the black of his eye…

Even if I were to stretch this letter out, God forbid, to a thousand pages, would I ever be able to convey my full story to you? I suspect the answer is no. I suspect that our stories in their fullness will always be hidden from each other and that all those whiskered old men and bonneted old women looking out at us from their photographs in the family album will always remain mysteries to us even if, like me, they happen to have written their memoirs. And yet I believe that all is not lost. Maybe we can never know each other’s stories in their fullness, but I believe we can know them in their depth for the reason that in their depth we all have the same story.

Whether we’re rich or poor, male or female, a nineteenth-century Swiss jeweler like Isaac Golay in his oversized frock coat, or a twentieth-century American clergyman like me with a penchant for writing books, or a young squirt celebrating his twenty-first birthday in the twenty-first century like you, our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do. We search to become human in a world that tempts us always to be less than human or looks to us to be more. We search to love and be loved. And in a world where it is often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to beleive in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.

– from letter to benjamin, by frederick buechner, in the longing for home (1996)

all witnesses to one another’s becoming… it was never your destination i cared about, just as i’ve long since forgotten the punchline. your laughter made the air vibrate…
i watch you in the transformation…

LB

big sister, little brother

*sniff*

i hope Lochlann will be as much of a blessing to Sequoia as Ewan has been, and continues to be, to me.

LB

au revoir, beloveds

with tomorrow night as my last night sleeping north of the border, tonight marked my last night, for a while at least, at the tuesday table.

i am so grateful, and always will be, for the deep connection i have forged with the folks around that table. those who challenge me in a way i have never been challenged anywhere else. because, as i said to them tonight, these distinct voices around the room, i carry in my mind like a prism. each one has a unique take on the world and together their voices make for harmony.
it has been a real gift to have their individual and collective presence in my life. and i realise now just how much i will miss them, their constancy. miss the reflecting i get to do each week as i replay our conversations and look at the scribbles in my notebook and feel them adding shape and texture and colour to the themes that unfold.

i don’t think any of them know just how much influence they have had on me over the years. i realised too tonight that the sharing of a journey together has been so valuable, so important to me, in a way i don’t yet fully see. we have shared memory and that strikes deep for me. i value it more highly than i can find adequate words for. and i’m not even sure why that is so important. perhaps… perhaps because they have stayed true as much as they have stayed constant. they have my trust.

as i move back to the town that was home for many years to connect with my biological and blended family and do the work of allowing myself to be a part of that just as i am, i know i have my family of choice back here. a table to come back to. and wherever team fury or i am in the world, they will always be family to me.

so, with deep deep love and immense gratitude for getting me to here, for making tuesday the new sunday and for always holding on,
it is with a smile and with some tears, i finally hear myself saying, this really is it. i’m moving.

thanks family.
i’ll be back soon.

c,xo