[I read this at the beginning of the feast prepared and served to us fathers and sons by the mothers and daughters of the La France Area Gathering to celebrate Father’s Day.]
Lea’s father passed away yesterday afternoon.
Both Jon and Lea’s birthdays were yesterday.
My dad died 13 years ago on this day.
Today we are gathered as neighbors AND as friends AND as an extended family to celebrate Father’s Day together.
Not all of us are fathers, of course, but everyone of us began our life with a father – and an act of connection.
I’m overwhelmed this morning as I think about all these events and how they are connected – connected by MEANING.
As Jon and Lea travel this morning (and we will miss their presence here), they will be considering the loss of Lea’s father as an active participant in the big Story of life (we could call it the Book of Life) that is in a continual process of being created. They will be thinking of the stories that Lea’s father shared with them, and they will be remembering and telling the stories of his life to one another and their friends and family as they get together over the next few days.
Jon and Lea have been gathering with us for the last year and we have become included in their stories, and, in turn, we have become included in Lea’s father’s story as his chapter of life has come to its conclusion. Even though Lea’s father’s story telling days are over, the meanings of his stories and the meaning of his story as a whole continues, connected by meaning to our stories and to the meaning of the Story of Life – and that Story has no ending.
We are celebrating Father’s Day, but we are doing it in a womb which is this Gathering, a matrix where new stories and meanings are being birthed, and here we are nursed with the milk of kindness and love that flows through us to one another… and the Story of Life continues.