Families Gather

We gather together .... A trio who sang peace songs, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers, sang a curious one which had the following lyrics ... "And when I die ... and when I'm dead, dead and gone ... there'll be one child born and a World to carry on, to carry on." The Fox in the Little Prince says that ritual is necessary so that he knows when the farmers are busy dancing with the girls allowing his an entre into the chicken coops of his World in order to dine. The first works better for me, at least Playing in Life's Fourth Quarter. Perhaps, this holiday was the first for me in which I felt my family and its begats as an unfolding of generations ... M and I began this madness in 1965, the year that a harmless flirtation turned into a marriage. 1966 and 1967 saw the appearance of two cgildren and a tgird little miracle, this time a girl, appeared the same year the Eucharist Congress occurred in the Philadelphia we then lived in and was highlighted, just at her debut, by a visit from the Vatican's finest. In a talk around 2000, I spoke of another innocent flirtation ... this one not with a hot young girl but with a hot idea that would follow me through my writings from 1978 to ... well ... I imagine, at least, to the grave. This had to do with the primacy of seeing another as a person, a subject, a doer in their own right ... and how hard that was for humanity. In any case, the family enlarged with in-law kids and our charming grandspawn .... the first in 1999 ... then the only boy to come along in 2001, three more girls in 2004 and the caboose in 2009. While we've gathered many times, this year was different in many respects. For one, it was all planned in terms of travel and destination by our oldest. He chose a place most of us wouldn't have thought to come ... Disney Florida ... Grandpa Dork doesn't quite belong in Disney, except when he's on the jazz, possibly, and then as a character. Everyone flew except Grandma and Grandpa who sauntered down the thousand miles by car over some days. My children got along (six grownups individuated in their own very different directions, paired off as part of God's plan .... her mysterious plan) and the grandchildren, particularly, the three eight year old girls. Last night was our last one here and eleven of us were gathered in one of the two apartments that we took up during our stay here in Florida. The three eight year olds were busy writing silly and betimes salacious words on a hangman ap and the rest of us ... six of the adults and the two older kids ... took to discussing the religious proscription against gossip and bad speech. One thing led to another ... Leviticus 19 came into play ... "You shall be holy, for I am holy" the Writer/writer reasons and tgen goes on to list one after the other the component parts of the good life. Charity ... not taking advantage of the blind by placing a stumbling block (or does leaving one in place count, too)in their way .... honesty in business dealings .... and the Writer/writer repeatedly hitting the reader with "I am the Lord" or "I am the Lord your God" ... as if to say ... this is Godliness. Lots of effort was expended on the sentence that combines the need to eschew gossip but to disclose in matters of safety ... "don't stand by on the blood of your neighbor." Discussion wandered to matters of whether responding on the failure of a contactor to do a good job on a listserv was gossip? or protecting the deaf and blind? or honesty in business. Was there a notion of gossip in ancient Greece? Could there, indeed, be a polity in which these very issues weren't a prominent part of the discussion? What did it mean that Socrates was tried and executed for words? What moved me to quiet tears, though, was the manner in which a new generation and its 11 and 14 year old representatives stood up, so to speak, and announced their presence in this intergenerational and never-endinding discussion of the good life. "And when I die, there'll be 6 grands born and a World to carry on, to carry on." Pretty cool how this whole thing works. Merry, merry ... Happy, happy. Howard