First farewells and virtual reunions

Monday 7 Dec

Since I am going to be away this coming weekend, yesterday was my last day at Church in Oxford. There were farewells and best wishes and kind thoughts expressed, which I really appreciated. In the short time I’ve been here I haven’t had a chance to get to know people really well, but I sensed some kindred spirits and feel regret that there is not the opportunity to develop a greater friendship. To paraphrase part of a poem I wrote a long time ago …

So now our paths begin to part,
Diverging, half a world between;
There’s emptiness within my heart:
I’ve lost some friends that might have been.

I’ve always had difficulty dealing with the transient nature of some relationships as “life moves on”, because despite wanting to keep in touch we all know that the immediacy and proximity of our current concerns makes it harder to maintain contact with people who have moved into and then out of our spheres of involvement. And it’s not just “contact” that we want to maintain, but our genuine interest in what’s happening in their lives, in the same way that regular encounters keep us up-to-date with the ups and downs in the lives of our more local friends.

Current technology is actually helping to ease this problem. One of the reasons I started blogging was because I was inspired by my friend Helena’s blog. I’d met her on my last sabbatical in Newfoundland 11 years ago; we became friends, and sort of kept in touch after I left via Christmas cards and the occasional email. With her blog, however, I’ve been able to see her changing family and keep informed about her current interests and activities. I can also choose when and to what degree I’m going to pay attention; so, for example, I might not read it for a week or two and then I’ll do a big catch up. A big bonus, for absent-minded folk like me, is that I can go back later and double check about things I might be unsure about.

Curiously, the combination of Helena’s blog and my own provoked a virtual reunion overnight. I’d provided Helena with a spreadsheet to help her calculate lengths to make some chimes, she’d made the chimes and blogged about it with a link to my blog, and—lo and behold—I hear from another Newfoundland friend whom I’d lost track of completely. That was a nice start to the day, and it’s one of the reasons why I like the comments feature, because it allows me to hear back from my friends.