Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?

We're back to blogging after a few days to focus attention on family and friends. Having been away from posting and realizing how excited I was to get back to it this morning, I suddenly heard the old axiom, "absence makes the heart grow fonder" rattling around in my head. I am wondering if that is universally true.

I know that I have missed the opportunity to express my thoughts and questions on spiritual stuff every morning. I have missed the way it forces me to jog my own brain and I have missed hearing from others how it jogs theirs as well. The discipline is welcome in my life and my sense of wanting to entertain and provoke the thoughts of others is well served by this blog and is missed when it is absent from my day.

• What of people and their Spirits though?
  
• How many generally absent friends or family members did you see this holiday that lifted your heart?
  
• What was it about them that you missed?
  
• Were you able to tell them?
  
• Are you going to maintain the relationship throughout the year, or is it best to keep the absence, lest the heart grow weary of them?
  

One of the most interesting absences I was blessed to rekindle this holiday season was not a person, but a familial relationship. I always see my Mother and my Siblings over the holidays but this year we were able to spend time together with a cousin. I see this cousin regularly, and I love him, but it was the community relationship that I was surprised to see had been missing. The addition of this member of our extended family who had been absent from our holidays for at least 30 years gave us a larger communal memory to look back over, to laugh about and to cherish. It was almost as if our family's touchstone of memory was increased exponentially by this spirit that had been away for too long.

Did the extended absence make any of our hearts grow fonder? I don't know. I can tell you that the reunion of the family made our hearts grow larger. We laughed harder than we had in the past, we felt fuller and more complete than in previous years, and our spouses and young children saw and heard parts of our history that they were never exposed to before. All of these things added up to a richer and more Spirit filled holiday.

Now, i am very aware that sometimes absence is necessary for the health of a person or a family. I know that there are some who are absent that should probably remain that way. What I would ask you to consider though is if your heart was lightened when you reunited with someone who has been absent from your life;

• what can you do to keep the absence from reappearing?
  
• what common glue can you find to "keep it together"?
• can you, at the very least, express to them what they mean to you?
  

May your absences in 2009 be few, may your heart be fonder of everyone and everything, may you grow in peace.

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