Moving
Parish Diary
Fr. Peter J. Daly
Nov. 4, 1998
Moving
After death and divorce, moving is the
most traumatic event in life.
That's what I think, anyway.
This past week I helped my mother move out of her
house. For the last 30 years it had been
our family home. For 30 years it was the
site of all our major and minor family events.
The reception after my sister's wedding, the place we received callers
after my father's funeral. It was our
regular destination for the family feasts; Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and
summer holidays.
After 30 years in the place, it took on our character and
taste. There was not one square inch
that someone in the family had not hammered, painted, papered, sanded, scraped,
or plastered. When you live in a house
for that long, your sweat is in the walls and floorboards.
When the place was nearly empty I took one last nostalgic
walk around the seemingly larger rooms.
I found my brother sitting in his now barren bedroom, looking at the
walls, lost in his thoughts. I couldn't
speak. Neither could he.
But it was time to go.
My mother had raised her family and the season of life that called for
big rambling house for her eight children was over.
Americans move a lot, on average every four years. This sense of loss and new beginnings is part
of our lives. It makes us a nation of
strangers and vagabonds.
My
parish has its share of transplants. Many of them having moved to this rural county, from nearby
For all of its spiritual trauma and sense of loss, there
is also a spiritual value to moving.
First of all, if we take advantage of the opportunity, it
gives us a sense of spiritual detachment.
Once, when I entered the seminary at age 32, I had to move to
Secondly, it reminds us that we are only pilgrims in this
world. No matter how permanent and fixed
this life might seem, we are all only passing through. A little mobility reminds us that this world
is not our final destination, but a process of becoming.
A third value to moving is that it teaches us to make
friends quickly and adapt to new environments. It makes us culturally
flexible. Especially
when we move to a new culture and adopt a new language. It is the experience of being a child again;
full of wonder, discovery and the pain of learning things from scratch.
Finally, moving teaches us that it is relationships with
people that are important. Not our
stuff. When the moving van comes and
hauls it all away, you realize what a humble collection of things it really is
anyway. If all the things were lost on
the way to the next house, it would not really matter if the people you love
were still in your life.
I don't wish moving on anybody, but there are some good
things to be said for it. It reminds us
that we are the disciples of an itinerant preacher in