Still practicing

Yesterday I promised I wouldn't let you down. I said I would not forget to open the fourth door of this year's Advent calendar on the 24th. I left you with a message on the phone.

Then, the next day I opened:

a book. It said that the young lad would be baptized in the country of his birth. At the stipulated hour, I too was to go to a chapel in the city that would soon be his new home. There I was to read the baptismal liturgy and light a candle. He was to know that he would be welcome wherever he went.

Over the years, we have shared countless moments of discovery. Like all those late evenings, when he entered - as I re-entered - the giant closet full of myths and fairy tales. Then we thanked God for the day and all the people who made our lives worth living, and I recited the Our Father before we said good night. A lively lovely child, seldom keen on sleep, he saved the best surprises for Our Father. That’s apparently when he felt free to interrupt, and either entertain by singing all ten verses of a song he had learned that day at the Day Care Center, or with questions like, “Who was your father?” or “Why are there so many religions in the world?” In those days, not being able to think quickly could be punished by having to spend a sleepless night with an over, or perhaps under, stimulated young one. In response to the latter question, I recall answering:

"You know, that people live in so many different places on this Earth…in warm and in cold countries, near the ocean, in deserts, and in the mountains. Some are black, and some are white, and some are mixed…but wherever they live, and whatever they look like, they all ask the same kinds of questions, like: Where did I come from before I was born? Where will I go when I die? What is the meaning of my life? And even if these questions are the same all over the Earth, the answers are different depending upon where you grow up. That’s why there are so many different religions. In our family, we have been raised in the Christian tradition and so it is natural for us to look to the life of Christ, his disciples, and all the saints to answer these questions.”
"Humf", said the young child, and fell immediately asleep. Another Silent Night. I sighed over the baptismal pyre.

Today, many years later, the same question probably wouldn’t work up the same sweat. The cross is no longer a yoke but, but a symbol with open arms that I can choose t embrace, or not. And day after day, year after year, my inner music box returns as my guide, to practicing presence wherever I am.