A recent piece on NPR told of a family reunited with a dog that
had gone missing a decade before. One columnist in the Chicago Tribune has
been highlighting the story of an asylum seeking Congolese mother who was
wrongly separated by immigration officials from her 7-year old daughter last
November. The mother is in California and the child, here in Illinois.
Thousands of readers now wait for news of their reunion. Tools like FaceBook
now join the media, who for decades have provided us with images of service men
and women reunited with loved ones.
We have plenty of opportunities for reunions of all
sorts. Holidays or summers can mean big family reunions, but so can
weddings and funerals. One friend is regularly engaged in her high
school’s reunion activities and another with his college graduating
class. Believers and seekers gather for weekly services and may sense a
connection to historic saints or ones in their own lives, and through liturgy,
prayers, music or communion, gain a reconnection with self and soul.
Reunions remind us of the passage of time. With the change
of seasons, gardeners and farmers wait anxiously to see the results of past
labor while the rest of us may change wardrobes. Some reunions generate
smiles while many can be painful, or at least bittersweet. If you’ve ever
done major downsizing or made a significant long distance move, you’ve had the
experience like one friend who recently was symbolically reunited with long gone
relatives as she decided whether to keep or donate once treasured items. Each
of us has dark corners in our past. We don’t like it when something happens to
resurrect that part of ourselves, of our journey, when we were victim or
perpetrator, careless or cruel. Just as my friend gave away her brother’s vase,
a pie plate from a dear aunt, and a pair of shoes worn on special occasions, we
can use those reunion moments to shed light in that dark place within us and
seek to find understanding, resolution, forgiveness, grace, or peace.
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