HIDE AND SEEK...

I realize that I'm an old geezer, when hide and seek was a fun game -nowadays, teenagers and 20 somethings would laugh.
I remember playing 'hide and seek' in the late afternoon, and it took me a long time to realize as darkness came, that the game was over and NO ONE had come looking for me. I remember that because I have struggled during my life with the same question that my father struggled - what difference do we make? or do we. One might think that God was playing a game of hide and seek with the troubled people of that day. the King for which they had been searching, the Liberator who would rescue them from their common ordinary pathetic lives, didn't come where or how they thought//but rather in an obscure village of Bethlehem, and then in a Stable.

Young parents might identify the need when a new child arrives, at wanting to shut the doors, keeping relatives, friends, well wishing people at bay and have some time alone. Mary and Joseph might have identified with such feelings, although there was no doors in that manger, and the animals, and riff raff stopped by, and there was no privacy. It was a different world back then, just as it was when I was young. As a minister, I was 'expected' to always be on call, to smile even when I didn't feel like it, to comfort the afflicted, and as some would say afflict the comfortable. The day after Labor Day on the Vineyard, I finally took a day off to go fishing on Chappy, and the police were sent down to seek me out ...there was no privacy.

My father and I used to play this adult game of hide and seek...and when Phyllis died, and I moved down to Melbourne two years later, everyone wanted and needed to know where I was ' are you okay?" Forget about the fact that I was in my 50's, and I didn't know where anyone else was. I realized that having lost everything else in life, including control, i only controlled if I answered the phone or not. Like the Prodigal father that he was, Dad kept calling, and I kept not answering. He would ride his bike 10 miles from where he lived "just passing through the neighborhood." I knew where he was, and that he was there, but I also knew I was protecting THEM from my emotions.and feelings. which ran deep. and the ONLY person who understood those feelings was my father...

Each New Year's Eve when we were young, we wrote a letter to ourselves, putting it on my father's Office Desk and he would lock them away until the next new year's day. We might talk about resolutions, or dreams, or what we thought might or might not happen...I still do that...the last day of 1992, having written my letter while doing my Chaplain's job at the Island' Hospital, I said 'NOTHING NEXT YEAR CAN BE WORSE THAN THIS YEAR." I even mentioned it to Phyllis when I got home, what I had written...we had lost so many Churchmembers and friends that year... Little did I realize that as 1993 dawned, that my life, and that of Heather and Jennifer, would change forever... I already have remembered that in last year's letter, which I shall open on Tuesday I had written that my father would die this year...

As I get older, striving to spare those around me whom I love and cherish, the deep emotions, tears, and feelings which are part of ME, I have isolated myself...and while I hope that they understand, if they don't, then I still have to do it...I wonder if that wasn't part of what God was doing, when they first heard the whimering of a Child????

MY CHRISTMAS LETTER TO FLORIDA TODAY

I AM FAMOUS/INFAMOUS FOR MY LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...They have been written less of lately, but this Christmas I have felt compelled to say what was on my heart...the local paper censored part of what i had written - when I suggested that the politicians shut off the microphones and cameras, and go to New Orleans and help build a house, or visit a nursing home and its people and spend time with them, or go to a salvation army with cameras shut off and spend time reading a story to the children, and listening to them...

Only one person's opinion, but I share it with you, with a prayer on my lips that your Christmas was filled with peace and love...Blessed Christmas to you and yours...

Politicians not following star of Bethlehem

I am finding it more difficult in my journey to Bethlehem this year because unlike that journey thousands of years ago, there are political candidates of all parties and persuasions asking me whom I'm inclined to vote for.

They even have their press officers handing out flyers to remind me their candidate is more Christ-like than the other candidates.

As they journey, they are not following a star in the heavens that God placed before them, they are not compassionate to people of varied faiths and beliefs, and they are using the journey for their own agendas.

It certainly doesn't involve a child for them -- just look at the president's veto of the SCHIP health insurance bill for needy children.

Those who understand the meaning of the journey and the star wish the politicians would just shut up.

I walk towards Bethlehem following the star, having just lost my father, a daughter who has cancer and myself in uncertainty, because I still believe in God.

And in the belief that a little child shall lead us toward that time and place of new beginnings.

Rev. Peter Sanborn

Melbourne

And so we come again, to Christmas...

A special Gift on Christmas Eve...

I was up early on this Christmas Eve, and drove through the fog out to my sister's home in West Melbourne.
She and her husband had to be out - and I was to spend the time with my Mother. We chatted as she ate her breakfast, and I explained to her how this journey to Bethlehem was a bit difficult for me this year. She went in to get dressed for the day, and came out and I received this special gift..quality time with my mother, who had just lost her husband of over 68 years. She talked about this knot inside her chest, and she couldn't make it go away. She talked and I listened...and she told me about some feelings she had as a little girl, and talked of how other people thought she should be 'more sad by your Dad's death..." I explained to her that these feelings were normal and okay, that I didn't feel sadness with the fact that Dad had died, but selfishly I missed him dearly, and my sense of loss was only meager compared to hers!

We talked of the meaning of 'selfishness' that she felt badly when she felt such, and I explained from my own heart, that sometimes we HAD to be selfish about our emotions and feelings. Such feelings are new to her - and I listened to this woman who had given me birth 64 plus years ago, and felt as though God brought us, Madonna and child on this Christmas Eve to have this conversation... It was one of those conversations that happen rarely, if at all... I explained to her that what others felt about what was an 'appropriate' sadness was important, but that her emotions, as mine, overwhelm us particularly this Christmas season...

As I got up to leave after five hours, I told her that I love her, and I thanked her for this special gift which we shared with one another - it's not a gift that can be wrapped up, and placed under the tree...it is a gift which she and dad have shared so often with so many in their life together...and which I shall treasure for as long as I live... it's like the gift that the girls, Matt, Kyra and Lucas gave me - front row center seat for an Amy Grant/Vince Gill Christmas concert...two or three years ago this was their gift to me, and I think about that evening so often, and on this Christmas Eve as I gaze out my window when a gift touched my life with a bit of Heaven that I shall cherish always, as I will the gift today...

pictures from Peter's home grown pageant...

And the Angel said...

Good News from Peter's traveling Pageant