Family Reunion

Still catching up here, as I share some thoughts from the family reunion at the YMCA Camp near Estes Park, Colorado. I arrived late Saturday night on July 1st to greet my wife and two daughters, son-in-law and two grandchildren and some 55 other people on my wife's father's side of the family. Been to this family reunion every five years starting in 1990, but naturally, we missed 2020. So it had been eight years since the last once, meaning many new children had been born and a few elders had died. 

 

“I have a feeling we’re not in Ghana anymore” the caption to this photo I shared on Facebook. Some 40 hours of travel to bring me to the next gathering. From the cultural beauty of Dzodze and the community of Ghanaians and Orff teachers to the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the once-every- five-years family reunion on my wife’s side. Returning to the divisiveness and ugliness of my country’s national discourse, a welcome antidote to remember that we too are capable of creating loving inclusive communities and can appreciate beauty in all its many faces. Not likely that we’ll sing and dance for hours on end like our Ghanaian brothers and sisters, but still I hope to bring music and dance into the mix and spend some time listening to morning birds, gurgling streams, the rustle of leaves on the Aspen trees. 

 

Back to another 60-person community, these brief tastes of communal living so different from our usual isolated lives in city neighborhoods where we don’t know our neighbors or suburban tracts where we might wave to our neighbor across the lawn, but hunker down mostly with our small nuclear family, for better or for worse. But here, we’ll break bread together each day (com-panion means “with pan/bread”), sit out on the porch with adult chatter while the kids roam freely about the grounds, bring out the card games and board games and jigsaw puzzles at night after a day of vigorous hiking. Looking forward to it all!