I'm an Air Force brat. It meant that growing up our family moved every 18 to 24 months to a new place. It meant that I learned quickly to easily make new friends. But in the end it also meant that I did not have any really long-term friends.
I bring that up because I notice there is a difference in family in California and family in the Midwest. Family in the Midwest is the top priority of life. I had a friend who came from Minnesota and moved to California for a number of years. When he and his wife moved back to Minnesota he remembered a difference in life back there. He and his wife were driven crazy because they were suddenly expected to be at all the family events - weddings, birth parties, birthdays, graduation, the chicken festival in June, the corn festival in August, etc. Family was so extended and everyone expected them to attend everything.
Yet the further I go in this aging process the more I realize that family and friends are so important. A survey of people over 40 said this was the most important thing. It's because my family knew who I was before I knew who I was. My friends from high school and college were standing next to me as we decided by our choices who we were.
So every Sunday night our family holds a Zoom meeting. We get anywhere from 4 to 15 attendees from all over the United States. It is family and we are at the back fence exchanging the news. It ranges from the Chicken Festival I mentioned earlier (I actually won $500 a couple years ago on my raffle ticket). to new births to where our cousin is now living to the latest story about "that" uncle.
I love it because we are all well beyond trying to impress each other or position ourselves by what we say. We are who we are and it is what it is.
It is a place where we can just be. Again we move back to that precept in our lives that makes all the difference in the world. It is important to be valued and to be heard.
This happens all the time to us. We interact with people out in the world and they are not fully present with us. The modern world wants to make the journey from here to there efficient and quick. It is so easy to not be heard in the world.
Stop and smell the roses is such a simple statement. Deep listening is another important statement. It is profound to really hear another person. When I started my seminary program to be an interfaith minister we had an opening exercise. We all wore our name tags and walked into the room filled with people introducing ourselves. The sentence was, "Hi, I am Rev. Dave Lyman and I see you." The response was, "Hi I am Rev Smith and (deep breath taken) you see me. Thank you! The room was shortly filled with crying people who had never been seen. The moment we let the temporary human side slip away we really start to see each other.
And by God (literally), it is magnificent!!
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