By the time you read this, Bonnie & I may have a new daughter. I have to say "may" because for those of you who know about delivering babies, the moment of birth cannot be predicted with exactitude, so she might have been born by the time you read this or we may still be waiting. I have to say "daughter" because Bonnie & I have yet to agree on exactly how to spell her first name or what her middle name will be. Picking the name seems to be one of the few choices one has once a baby is on the way– it seems at once of extreme importance and of little consequence.

"A baby is God's opinion that life should go on." wrote Carl Sandburg. And Sophia Fahs (UU religious educator) writes in our hymnal (#616): "each night a child is born is a holy night." I am in full fatherhood mode– reflective anticipation, relaxed curiosity. I feel the calm before the welcome storm of new birth. A new person I have yet to meet is about to enter my life and change it forever, bringing tears to my eyes and laughter to my throat. How can I sum up a life-long relationship that is just about to begin? I can't.

I will be the little girls' father, Bonnie her mother, Jessica, her older sister. She will have one great-grandmother, three grandmothers, two grandfathers, three cousins, plus another cousin on the way, and dozens of extended relations, many of whom she'll never meet.

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright John Guare, in his play Six Degrees of Separation proposes the theory that everyone on the planet can be connected to everyone else on the planet by no more than six steps. According to Time magazine, a German newspaper, Die Zeit, decided to put this theory to the test:

"The paper asked Salah Ben Ghaly, an Iraqi immigrant who owns a local falafel stand, to whom he would most like to be linked. Ghaly, naturally, chose Marlon Brando. It took some months, but Die Zeit managed to relate them. A friend of Ghaly's who lives in California works in the same company as Ken Carson, boyfriend of Michelle Bevin, sorority sister to Christina Kutzer, daughter of Patrick Palmer, producer of Don Juan de Marco, in which Brando starred. Alas, Brando seems unmoved by the relation. He's yet to return Ghaly's calls."

The idea of six degrees of separation illustrates the "interdependent web of all existence" to me in a new way. It also underlines the wonder of a new connection about to enter the world. Who will she provide a link to?

But for my spirit right now, it is almost like Christmas Eve: a dark room lit by candles, awaiting the birth of new life, awaiting a new light to enter the world. Life indeed, should go on.

Daniel

(Rev.) Daniel Simer Ó Connell, D.Min.
Parish Minister, West Redding, CT