Dec 28

              Back in Honduras driving home from the airport our car slumps to one side, “we have a flat.”

“No, we lost the wheel- look.” The back left tire is rolling ahead of our sliding and screeching car. Only in Honduras do we lose the whole wheel more often than getting a flat… only in Honduras would a young dad stop with his two young girls in his truck to help us and loan us two bolts from his tires to secure our wheel until the next town.

              

The Dickinson family christmas village puzzle

Aunt Karen and I at the piano

               Coming home for Christmas meant going back to my start. I lived in Pleasant Hill, CA near my aunts and grandma until I was eight. This Christmas was my first time back in five years. Johnny Mathis’ music filled the house while grandma and I were building up puzzles and tearing them down. My aunt Karen and I sang hymns on the piano and my aunt Kathy got me dirty. I joined her Mexican-American landscaping crew four days, we took one flooded backyard and another weeded hill side and cultivated them, “Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)”

                

DK Landscaping!

Kathy and I finishing up on Christmas Eve

                 Kathy likes the expression “we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul” to describe moving one pile of rocks/dirt from one place to another. So working in Berkley she was shouting “we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul” and I’m trying to tell all the concerned neighbors walking their dogs that her crew and I are not robbing anyone.

                Kathy’s crew works very hard and lives together to send money to their wives and kids in Mexico. Spanish opens doors and it helped me bond through work with Leon, Jairo and Leonardo. A real leader serves and my aunt Kathy washes her employees’ feet with motivation on the way to each job, patient listening to all their problems after each day and the best food and pay in the San Francisco bay area. “Treat others the way you want to be treated” she told me riding in the truck. I threw my head back and laughed just as Jesus had upon hearing what I had just heard and said “You are not far from the kingdom of God. (Mk 12:34)”

                In the Sunday mass before Christmas an African woman PhD candidate of Divinity gave the guest homily. She spoke of the importance for the next generation to know the significance of their name; where they come from, in order to find out who they are. Coming back to Honduras I know I come from a grandfather who rode a German horse bareback in WWII and flew a glider plane into D-day and from a grandmother who spent her life as a scout leader and church youth group leader. I come from enough glass-ceiling-breaking-aunts to know adversity is a challenge. So I found part of myself. Then I lost myself alongside my aunt Kathy and her crew cultivating the earth and serving others, which is what it is all about.

               

Jack Lawton

                It is important that we look back on the holidays and ask ourselves what we liked, what made us know and love more, what made our life more satisfying. “And weep'st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at? (Dante’s Inferno XXXIII)”- The prisoner in the ninth circle of hell is asking Dante “well what moves you to tears if not my story?” All the special moments I shared with my family do not belong to me, neither did I create nor decide when I would feel love or joy amongst them. All these special moments, like a funny story naturally told at dinner, are presented to us from Another; a proposal and a response. 

                My life is dramatic; if it did not belong to Another it would be tragic. My aunt took me to see the Stephen Hawking movie where the actor described his life’s view as optimistic because although the universe is expanding and dissipating away, physics is all there is and we create our own meaning to life, making us gods of creation. In my opinion this Atheism is tragic. It says everything is falling apart like a house crumbling away and the strong can make themselves happy by sheer willpower. Have you ever tried to have the perfect family holiday where you created and controlled everything?

My cousin's son and I learning all about Minecraft

                 I have been too much aware of time passed, especially as a missionary, to be fooled by Atheism. Every story of human experience I have seen (or that I continue to live) did not start and end with the protagonist deciding where they would go and what they would learn. There is a proposal and a response, an I and a You, life is a living dialogue between man and his Creator who continues to hold him in existence. Visiting my retired relatives made clear my life builds off of theirs (immigrating to America, passing on the Catholic faith). Look at my Lawton family tree and tell me we are dissipating into nothing. I see creation.

                So let us ask ourselves what we liked about the holidays. Did I perfectly create the dinner? Or did I respond to a proposal to bring the family together and let Another create something?

                   What is beautiful here is "He who possesses time dies for our time. He gives us more and more time. 'He is patient with you, not wishing that you should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)'- Fr. Giussani