More Than Keys to a Home

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It is hard to believe that it was only a little over two weeks ago that Edge Project 2015 came to an end; the group said their goodbyes to each other, and to this beautiful, precious town. Goodbye’s were not easy; we have come to deeply love this place and the people who live here. Many new friendships have been formed this summer and we are thankful for each one.

On our last day, one of the participants and I went to say goodbye to one of our friends, who worked on El Paseo. He had come to several of our community meals and we were blessed by his presence as he was always willing to share thoughtful insight and open his heart to us – he was only one of many that encouraged us in this way. As we told him it was time for us to go, we told him how thankful we were to have met him. Then we shared a very special moment. He told us that Altea was our second home now and that if we every returned he was giving us the keys to his house, and we were welcome anytime.

These were such simple words, but held so much meaning to us. In Spain it is a rare, and only a divine blessing, that someone who you have known for only a short time is willing to open up their home to you – because it is more than someone giving you the keys to their house, it means that they have given you the keys to their life and to their heart. The friendships we have made here are more than just bonds of connection, they are bonds of Christ’s love. We have been willing to unlock the doors of our hearts and have been met by a response that does the same. To have been able to share life together these past weeks has truly been an honor, and I’m encouraged that this sharing of life goes beyond this time together; these bonds –whether only lasting for those weeks or continuing to grow longer – have been something that will continue to impact our lives forever. Our stories were intertwined at Edge; locks were opened; hearts were changed.

A Farewell, a poem by Tober Corrigan 

Dear friends,

 

The hour has come. Soon the clock will strike midnight.

the clouds will consume the sky,

the breeze will die, and the

night will fall in a low whisper.

This will give way to a morning

we will have forgotten to prepare for –

the one in which we say goodbye.

Goodbye sea.

Goodbye heat.

Goodbye moomoo.

Goodbye afternoon siestas.

Goodbye church on a hill.

Goodbye rocks – both painted and unpainted.

Goodbye friends.

Goodbye family.

Goodbye loves of my love.

 

I leave you all as I leave this place:

with the steadfast, if romantic, notion

that I’m never really leaving at all.

 

Somehow, I’ll carry you all with me on the ocean of my thoughts. When I need

you……or you…….or you

 

I will grab my trunks, lather up the sunscreen, and go for a swim, breaking the surface and snorkeling a bit until I find you just where I left you.

Don’t worry. I’ll put you back where I found you . . . at least at first.

 

Now, I can’t guarantee that as I get older, the waves won’t get choppier, rough-and-tumbled by the burden of life experience and deteriorating mental powers. It may get harder to go out there on those hotter days. I may even at times let you get far out from shore, and it will take an urgent prompting of the will to charge back out there and reclaim you.

 

But then, one day, I may involuntarily allow you to float away for good, to be left adrift among unknown rocks, where even the lighthouse cannot find you.

That farewell would be the final one, for I would no longer even remember what it meant to say farewell,

or that farewell was a word,

or that words were words.

 

So I wrote this.

 

That way, centuries from now,

someone can say,

‘I was here,

at this place,

with these people,’

so that I become a drop in someone else’s ocean,

and it’d begin to seem,

in some weird spiritual sense,

that we had never said farewell

at all.

 

 

Again, only a writer’s romantic notions getting the best of him.

 

Alright. How about this.

 

The only foolproof way to leave you all behind without feeling the side effects, is to imagine us all being part of

a much greater ocean than the ones of our thoughts. A place where

we can be composed of one mind,

with something else, something greater,

remembering everything for us.

 

So if say goodbye, have faith that it’s only a welcome back in disguise.

We wouldn’t want to get ahead of ourselves,

would we?

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