When it rains, it pours

And is that rain cleansing, the gentle rain from heaven we await in the Christ child? Or will we drown? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

I'm home now, here in Mechanicsburg, not quite sure what time it is or why everything is so quiet! No hum of traffic, no loud laughter three floors below, only the sound of 'Elf' on TV. Flying is so surreal - you lift up into the sky, and land a few hours later an unthinkable number of miles away, having skimmed over all the countours of a landscape just as quick and smooth as can be.

Every end is a beginning - in every death comes new life, and every hello has an embedded goodbye within it. So as I say goodbye to my housemates, missing them the minute I drag my luggage inside the airport, I anticipate saying hello to my family, and then goodbye to them, and hello to my housemates, and all over again!

But when I return to Denver, there will be one less housemate to say hello to - one of our twelve will not be returning, and the lot of us are broken-hearted and numb. I don't feel at liberty to disclose the details, and besides, they don't change the lopsided sensation we have now, the tragedy of memories fixed in time with no chance for progression.

In Spanish, there's a wonderfully descriptive word, tuerco, that denotes literally someone with one eye, figuratively someone without the proper perspective. And now, after we've been accustomed to living with 12, we will feel tuerco all together for a while (how long?) as not just one person but eleven dynamic relationships are gone, with an unsettling feeling as the result.

Goodbye and hello, coming home and leaving what has become home. Where do I belong now? I think too much time spent in an airport leads to thoughts of life's transitoriness, how often we feel neither here nor there! I need the grounding of the manger, a God in time and space, to give me a little breathing room.