THERE ARE STRINGS ATTACHED

Over the years we all have been offered something with what the giver calls "no strings attached". The point the giver is trying to make is that if we accept their gift, there will be nothing expected from us in return. Of course, there is that cynic inside us that does not believe it for a minute. There is no such thing as a free lunch, we say to ourselves. Everything, it seems, comes with some kind of string attached.

Sometimes in our cynicism we believe that gifts even from loved ones come with strings attached, strings that can seem like ropes trying us to the gift giver. We are expected to give a gift in return. The more this give-and-give back continues, the stronger the string becomes. It is part and parcel of our relationship with the one or ones to whom we have bound ourselves and who have bound themselves to us. It is life-giving and life-receiving for both. Neither would willingly let go of the string because each holds on for dear life, truly dear life. Sometimes it is only broken by death.

The same is true for any relationship we have, not just those that are one-to-one, friend-to-friend, spouse-to-spouse, lover-to-lover. It extends to parent to children, teacher to student, member of a community to a member of the community -- and vice versa in each of these instances. That invisible string that is often made manifest by visible gift-giving is the commitment each of us has to the other to do whatever it takes to make that relationship not only last but to grow even stronger.  But before any of that can happen, we need to be aware that such relationships do come with strings attached and that we welcome and accept those strings with every fiber of our being. That is not always easy to do.

We have all had those strings broken by the other and we have broken them ourselves. It has almost always, if not always, been a painful experience. It has been painful because both partners have expended much time and energy and love to make the relationship work even if the relationship was never meant to be life long, even if we knew it would be temporary when we first entered into it.

As a parish priest it has always been painful to break the strings of my relationships with the people I was called to serve even though I knew and they knew this relationship would not last forever or, perhaps, even for very long. But for however long it was going top last, and, again, none of us knew how long that would be when we entered into it, we grabbed the string and held on for as long as we could, each doing what we needed to do to keep it as strong as we could for as long as we could. And then when it came time to break the string and for us to separate, it was painful, but it was pain tempered by loving and lasting memories.

In the end, when the strings are broken because of circumstances in our control or out of our control, all we can hope for is that the pain that comes when the string is cut is softened by the love that still remains. In this life strings are always attached in any voluntary relationship. That is good and it is good for us and so we must do all we can to keep the string strong.