God setteth the solitary in families: Psalm 68:6
It has been an extraordinary Christmas Day, beginning with midnight mass last night where my family occupied most of two pews and took up half the altar rail to receive Holy Communion from my hands.
For the first time in half a century all our children, and their entire families, are together at the same place at the same time.
"Our children" includes the spouses of our bloodline descendents. "In-law" is an irrelevant technicality. “Entire” is 18 souls, including a boy child who will not make his appearance until springtime, but his mother says he is already making his presence felt. He is the fourth of the fourth generation together here today.
This house on the side of a Colorado mountain, built by our firstborn and her husband, is, today, the most important place on earth to me; its occupants the most important people on earth.
At the primary position of importance is the woman who 62 years ago agreed to marry me. She won’t say if she has ever regretted her recklessness, but she’s here. The respect and reverence in which Gran is held is palpable.
Earlier today, in front of the huge ranch house fireplace, using a table for an altar and a length of white ribbon for a priestly stole, I baptized into the household of faith our newest member. A two-month-old charmer, she is seemingly unperturbed by the sea of faces and the hullabaloo of voices all talking at once. She is being cooed at, fed, picked up or carried about by everyone else in the room except her toddler cousin. She and her mother are today being initiated into a rest-of-their-life membership in this family.
I was gifted some one-on-one time today with a beloved thirty-something man of the clan whose chosen occupation requires him periodically to be in harms way halfway around the world. Major harm! Two months ago he survived the blast of an explosive device that killed the man next to him. He doesn’t talk about it much, but today he talked to me. And he is here, a gift of enormous proportions to all of us.
So this has been a day of receiving great gifts.
A couple of years ago we liberated ourselves from the frenzied routine of exchanging bought Christmas gifts. We agreed that adults would give or receive only gifts that are made by, or already owned by, the giver. We may anger all our retail merchant friends, but it sure works for us and no one has to lose their sanity at the mall or take out a loan to pay the Christmas bills.
I received again the gift of not being solitary in this world.
I received the gift of being old. Our kids, the down-line three generations, are considerate, solicitous, and do things for me I could do for myself. As “coffee’s ready” was announced and I started to get up and refill my cup, one of them said, “Let me do it, Grandad, it’s just a way to say “Thanks, we love you.”
Lump-in-the-throat-time. Again.
All the foregoing can be subsumed under the single rubric of I received love. There is no greater gift. And the Psalmist reminds us that is the natural order of things: God eliminates the awfulness of being alone, He sets us in families.
With a brief silent prayer for those in the world who are truly alone, or who hurt because their family is fractured, I end this day that celebrates the incomparable ultimate gift of the Creator.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
Editor's note: W. Jackson "Jack" Wilson is a psychologist, an Episcopal priest, a sometime academic and a writer living in Colorado. He writes with humor, whimsy, passion and penetrating insight into the human condition. His e-mail address is [email protected].
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