Category - Christmas

Thank you, Santa Claus, for the excuse to greet old friends again, even if just once a year. Friendship has been a real blessing for me. I just wish I could acknowledge it more often.

This past year brought its share of challenges. On my 85th birthday in January, I awoke to a sharp pain in my knee that made walking nearly impossible. My trip to the hospital, hobbling into the emergency room with a cane, was just an omen of what was to come.

I wish this were a personal visit instead of a written greeting, but let this note with its brief update suffice until we do meet again. 

Any honest update from me would have to deal with the challenges of getting old, but you’ve heard all this from guys like me before. Maybe you’re even going through it yourself. If so, you know that becoming an old-timer does take a bit of adjustment. Not only to the aches and pains in the joints, but other things are just as bothersome:

Dear Friends,

Did you really ask “So, how was your year?” Or was that just my wishful thinking? Well,
in either case, let me offer a few clues.

You’ve heard enough about COVID and political warfare, one as toxic as the other and both of them shrouding much of the past year. I won’t mention them again. Instead, what if I just repeat a line that I often use at the close of these Christmas letters when I wish you… peace and a heart open to all.

That’s not just a pious wish. It’s a passionate pursuit of mine and a lifetime goal in my ministry from the very start—and that, my friends, is a long time ago!  Please permit me to track a few of the big steps along the way.

One of the keynotes of this past year was a home visit during the summer. It was highlighted by a week with a family that has grown closer over the years, even if the members of this broad group are scattered throughout the northeast.     

Where exactly is home? I sometimes ask myself. Surely not Buffalo, where I haven’t lived for the past sixty years, even though the city holds warm memories from long ago and is still the residence of some family and good friends. Not even Chuuk and Pohnpei, places that offer other rich memories and bonds. Nor Guam, where I currently work. As a Jesuit friend of mine, who passed away early this year, used to say of the island in which he spent much of his life: “We have here no lasting city.”

Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is traditionally a time of waiting. Kids everywhere know full well what this means, as their parents shop and decorate in preparation for the big day.

For me, waiting has defined the whole year… Waiting for the arrival of grant funds so that we can complete our video documentary on a major historical event on Pohnpei a century ago… Waiting for the local support we?re seeking to begin work on a new film on the homeless people on Guam, some 800 people without shelter… Waiting for the completion of the new website that will offer public access to the treasures of the MicSem library, now housed in Chuuk.

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