It’s messy, love is.  There is no pain or savor like that borne in its being and there is no greater teacher than the insistent call that is love.

I spent Friday night with people who are students with me in the thing that is loving:  Cousins and offspring of same, siblings, uncles and aunts, my mother, and a whole collage of people marking the life and legacy of my aunt.  She set the table at which we gathered.  Her table, as my cousin John spoke it during her funeral, was one where good manners mattered, graciousness was foundation, and hospitality given gift.

Every family has their DNA.  The Fawcett strands?  Strength, laughter, dogs, rascal, integrity, loyalty, poetry, clan, beauty, soul, curiosity, people, vulnerability, grit, pride, humility, grief, heart, generosity.  Seeing cousins after a decade or more of living was wonderment.  In them beat the shared longings and promptings that were dished out through our births and around our growing up tables and we are many and we are one and we are blessed.  From a tall physician and a petite musician came this clamor of life in the bodies of their offspring.  And we have played it out, this clamor.

We have loved and lost, grappled with pain and betrayal, run from and run to.  The strands of our being have hummed with sureity and jangled with doubts and somehow we have come round right and Friday was reminder that there is no knowing like that of family.  We share a story deeper than the changing scenery of our days.

We have lived the challenges of the gift of love and we seek its wisdom yet.  Some of that wisdom can only find fullsome voice around the table that is family. 

For the gift and stumble of learning love through kin, my wondering heart gives thanks.