Oh, I didn’t die
I should be satisfied
I survived
That’s good enough for now

 Sky Blue Sky, Wilco

That Wilco song is from their new CD, Sky Blue Sky, a CD I am enjoying a lot right now. It is about making it through a difficult time, and the opening image is of a high school band playing. For many, just surviving high school, relatively unscathed and with some degree of mental health intact, is good enough. Those can be difficult years. For others, the high school years seem to be the best years of their lives.

High school for me was somewhere in between. I did better than just make it through. There were a lot of things I enjoyed about that time in my life. There were also heartaches and pain as I tried to figure out who I was becoming. And there was dating – talk about heartache!

About a week ago I attended my thirtieth high school class reunion. East High Wouldn’t Be Heaven Without the Class of ’77. When I think of our class slogan, I also think of the Willie Nelson song, “Sometimes its heaven and sometimes its hell and sometimes I don’t even know.” That’s more like high school! Anyway, I attended my class reunion. I have not stayed in touch with most people I attended high school with, so going to reunions has meant seeing people again for the first time – so to speak – though I did go to my reunion five years ago.

Sometimes reunions can be like high school itself - sometimes heaven, sometimes hell, and sometimes the goal is just to survive (that’s good enough for now). Well my reunion this year was a lot of fun. I saw people I had not seen in thirty years – the woman who was my “date” for the ninth grade dance, the woman I should have asked to the prom but was so shy by the time I screwed the courage up to do it she had been asked by someone else. Sadly, this second woman is a widow. That’s something I had not expected to encounter at reunions quite yet. I chatted and laughed with people who go back to elementary school with me, and people I was confirmed with. I’ve grown less shy over the years, so starting up conversations has become easier. It was wonderful to see all these people, to share warm handshakes and friendly hugs.

But one of the surprising joys of the reunion was sitting at dinner on Saturday with people I barely remember from high school. My wife and I joined two other couples at dinner. For both, it was their first time at a class reunion, and neither of my class mates in the couples came expecting to see former friends. They were not quite sure why they decided to come to this reunion, but there we all were, and it was delightful. We shared stories about our families and our children, about our jobs and about our weddings. We laughed and ate together – and as I read my Bible, feasting is a prominent image of “heaven,” so this was on the “heaven-side” of high school experiences. Good thing, given our old class slogan.

Being able to sit with people who are different, to share common humanity while sharing food, to listen with respect as you hear the life story of other people and to hear in their story and see in their faces something that connects you – that is one of life’s true joys. It is not a joy most of us experience in high school because we are often too afraid to let our vulnerable humanity show. We are still trying to figure out how we will be human and we stick pretty close to others who seem kind of the same, sometimes shunning those who are different. Unfortunately, some of these tendencies stay with people for a lifetime – fear, clinging to the familiar and shunning the unfamiliar – and a little of that was in evidence at my reunion. Truth be told, we are all tempted to give in to such things from time to time. It is nice when we can get beyond them and simply enjoy the gift that comes from other people, and share the gift that is in one’s own life.

And it’s just five years to the next reunion.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David