I came from a small family with few extended family members. Our family owned and operated the local ice rink in Modesto, California and we all worked full time at the ice rink. We hosted hockey games, skating competitions and ice shows, birthday parties and church events, and we saw plenty of people all though the week. We ate our meals at the ice rink and my entire social life throughout high school existed within an ice rink. Those who came to skate and those I worked with were my social network. I don't remember attending a school, church, or community function socially, my world was inside the ice rink. Perhaps because of this somewhat unusual situation, added to my extreme shyness, and the fact that we moved in the middle of my high school years I don't have friends from those high school years. I also did not learn to be community or social minded. I didn't attend church until I became Catholic at age 30, my first funeral was at age 21, and my first wedding (one I planned by reading a library book about weddings) was my sister's ten weeks after my first funeral. The second wedding I attended was my own. 

I married into a big family, with family and social obligations almost every weekend. Socially challenged, I had no clue as to the social etiquette of showing up or not showing up as I began to navigate the terrain of new family relationships, a new community, and a new faith. The only thing I knew for sure was how to write a good "thank you" note. My mother and Grandmother had adamantly instilled this in me from a very early age. Learning the social roles of wife and mother in community meant learning the politics of good social behavior and was not easy. I had no tutorial, no mentor and learned most lessons through the humility of social gaffes discovered after the fact. I had little experience and an introverted personality. Occasionally I heard comments that I seemed 'standoffish' or 'arrogant' and was shocked to discover these adjectives applied to me. I thought, "If they only knew how insecure and inept I really feel". On most social occasions I would find one interesting person to talk with and stay planted, or remain like a barnacle on my extroverted husband's arm. Eventually I discovered that drinking calmed me and I often gulped a few glasses of wine before leaving for any function.The liquid courage gave me the initial confidence I felt I needed to be a social butterfly.

As life moved on and I had to attend my children's school events, my husband's work conferences, funerals, weddings, baptisms, baby showers, anniversary parties, and hundreds of family events I developed an intuitive compass to steer me through, what remained more anxiety ridden than fun, social events. When my life became so busy that it appeared  a morass of get together's with no 'get-aparts' I began to lose my footing and any sense of 'me'. I found it increasingly difficult to battle my way through the anxiety and a deepening depression out into the social arena. Eventually I descended into a depression that sucked me into a quiet, dark place of solitude that did not allow anyone in and a place I couldn't or wouldn't leave. It was through this difficult time that I crossed a chasm to discover, for the first time, a relationship with myself, God, and the beauty of God's creations. I sat in this pool of sad silence and solitude and listened to the stillness of God. For the first time in my life, I traveled alone. I drove to a monastery in Kentucky and spent five days separated from the busyness, the people, and obligations of my life and found myself more connected to God, myself and others in this strange silence and solace, than I had ever been in a group. When I returned I found that the rupture in my emotional well being had realigned the landscape of my relationships. I began to discover islands of contemplative contentment, which freed me to be more fully present to the present. My husband no longer cajoled me into attending every function with him, and I noticed he sometimes even visited my island of contemplation too. 

I thought about these things, as the tide of people who had come to town for our daughter's wedding receded. The many relatives and guests, traveling from Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Colorado, California, Texas and Arizona had come for a round of social events celebrating a marriage. The occasion had been one of the happiest of my life.  Waves of people arriving and departing throughout the week of the wedding, every bed and room in our home full and meals and lively conversation with old friends and new people. There was no anxiety or trepidation, I had thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was pleasantly surprised, even thrilled to discover the effort and distance many of our guests were willing to travel to be present at such an important event in our family. My father, older now and easily tired had not been to Ohio in 15 years, came, celebrated. His traveling included a one hour car ride to the nearest airport, a commuter flight to San Francisco, and another 5 hour plane ride to Cleveland made the 'voyage'. He had not been to Ohio in 15 years and he came and celebrated his granddaughter's marriage. The groom had friends with busy jobs, young families, and little money and they came. The bride had cousins, aunts and uncles who came to celebrate. It was the people who had made the occasion so special.

Yet there were those who chose not to traverse the distance, leaving distance in relationships by their lack of presence. Confused and hurt by a few of these "will not attend" checked off, I reminded myself about my own dark times of "will not attend"  and that perhaps my lack of presence had hurt others too. The truth is we all struggle to figure it out. We each have a family history where we watched early on, how the adults in our lives acclimated social obligations into the family system. We each have our extroverted and introverted personalities that make it easy or difficult to engage with groups of people. We each are in a particular stage of life which requires more or less of our time. If we are raising a young family, working, and community minded we may be saying so many 'yeses' that we don't have any more 'yeses' left. We each have financial situations that influence where we go, sometimes we just don't have the funds to get from one place to another. We each have a sense of our essence and the effects of our presence with others and may find it too difficult to navigate some terrains. Hurt or angry, disappointed or betrayed, we may just find it too difficult to attend a particular event. Yet, despite many factors, it remains true that to be present to life's unfolding, present to this moment and these people is perhaps one of the most significant gifts we can offer another at any given time. Our presence in the events of life; birth and death, baptisms and funerals, birthdays and showers, graduations and marriages is how we help one another grieve, celebrate, laugh, cry and love. 

My favorite Scripture passage is the Samaritan woman at the well. A woman, an ostracized Samaritan woman walks to the well in mid-afternoon. She knows that this is the most likely time when she will not encounter anyone. But there is someone there, Christ is there. He is present. He understands her presence, her past, her needs and He offers her "living water". Life giving water is the human presence of our living being, which God offered to mankind in human form. It was the presence of Christ on earth that forever changed humanity with a gift of love beyond anything we had known. And so we are reminded that our presence, our love, may forever change someone's life too. It is this living water which can slake the thirst of loneliness and despair, giving dimension and beauty to those very human events of life that we share. God created us for one another and commanded us "to love one another as I have loved you." Perhaps our presence may change someone's life--whether it is a celebration we share, a kind word, tears, or silence. The hardest thing to do may be the most important---showing up.