Advent Day 7 (also incorporating Days 5 and 6)
Today I had one of those Facebook conversations that connect you to old friends and within a few shared messages you remember just who you are and where you come from.
Imagine if you will two 9 nine year old kids in the same class at school, sharing the same community and the same world. Each morning one knocks on the front door and the other comes out ready for the walk to school. On the way we would knock on at least two other doors collecting pals as we wend our way to the school gate. I remember the streets, the short cut through the church (which was actually longer but more fun) I don’t remember it raining just sunny mornings and running skipping and jumping along the street just because we could
Later, much later we would grow into teens and the boy/girl friendship thing would fade away. We would forget the freedom of just being that we had when we were nine and get far too involved in how we looked, what our new friends thought of us and not how we used to be.
Later still, having made lives across at least two continents and in lots of towns and cities, we had carved out careers, changed them for other careers and found a special place in the world, then who would have guessed that the wonder of the internet would bring us back together.
There is a real connection with people we meet again in middle age who remember us as children. The crazy years mean nothing, we didn’t see any of the mistakes we may have made along the way. We are remembered as a preserved memory, with non of the baggage life has created. It is powerful friendship rekindled and means a great deal to me.
It was this friend who held out the hand of friendship and a voice of reason at a tricky time for me this year, it was this friend who understood exactly what I was on about, he had also faced similar situations and lived to tell the tale.
So tonight’s Advent is about friendship, about being positive and about grabbing life and living it. It is about where we come from, the places we have been and the place we are right now. There can only be one song from our childhood, one song from the band we all claimed to know personally, and about the one place close to all our hearts.
I hope that next year we will have the chance to meet in person, I owe this friend and several others who were instrumental in us meeting again a large hug and a nice pint! To say Cheers, to life long friendships, to memories of being young and free and for the rest of our lives, the best is yet to be.