We are built for relationship, we humans. We gather ourselves in couples, in families, in tribes, in working groups, in nations. Someplace deep within we know that the ability to reach out and hold onto another hand gives us security to cross the street….to face a fear….to celebrate….to mourn….to show our love. Feeling our unique, God-shaped fingerprints pressing against those of another stirs something deep and real and true in us. We can breathe more fully, feel more whole.

These groupings of relationships help us to share a history and to build a common story. Anyone who has ever attended a high school reunion sees this phenomenon come to life as people, now often far-flung, come together to be reminded of the genesis of their story. You can see people slip easily into the place they once held in the common story being played out. While everyone may have changed in countless ways, may have experienced things uniquely their own, when we return to one of our first tribes, we take up the role we once were given or chose. The class clown…..still funny. The shy, quiet kid who always waited to say just the one sentence that made everyone stop and listen…..still on the edges waiting their turn. Something about being together around the fire that once warmed us not only reflects who we have become but also who we once were. There is generality in this description but my experience tells me it also holds truth.

And when families gather, especially if they have found new homes away from their original circle, the same thing can be true. It always amazes me how at some point of a visit with my own family of origin I begin to feel once again my place in the make up of who we are. I go in carrying all the baggage of the life I have created away from them but soon I have slid right back into my first-born, only daughter role. I don’t mind it. I just find it interesting.

This week I had the gift of being present as family gathered to celebrate the life of my mother-in-law. Cousins who hadn’t seen one another for some time circled round to remember, to grieve and to share in the witness to a long and beautiful life. Stories were told. Memories were shared. Tears were shed. Laughter rang out. I watched from the edges as the stories gave birth to other tales, memories of childhood experiences shared around tables and in backyards, over birthday cakes and cookies created from family recipes, sugary treats that now sat on a platter at the center of this circle, minus one. Manna for a tribe that had wandered in the wilderness until finding their way to one another yet again.

It reminded me that for those of us who find ourselves in the Christian household that this is what we do each Sunday when we gather. We circle the wagons of the tribe we have chosen or that chose us and we once again tell the stories, share the memories and re-member who we are. During this season of Lent we have been walking around in the stories that shaped not only the early followers of the Way but also those that had shaped Jesus in his growing years as a Jewish boy. Circling. Telling. Re-membering.

This Sunday we will once again hear the graphic and fabulous story of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones. This early resurrection tale reminds us that we are often pulled apart, separated, dying of thirst, dead. Until….until the Spirit breathes over us and through us and in us and then things begin to happen. Bone and muscle and sinew come together and we are animated for life. We come together and find the hand of the newly resuscitated just within our reach and we hang on for dear life.

And maybe this hanging on for dear life is really what it is all about any way. These relationships we form help us to hang on for all we are worth to the preciousness of this life. Sometimes we may resent the role we have been given but the hand, the warm hand that holds ours, always brings us comfort, a sense of belonging and a reminder of what it means to be human.