It is, indeed, strange to wake up and have nowhere to go. For all but about one day in the last six weeks we have had to get up each day and either travel or prepare to travel. It has been good to do that, and it is good to be home.If one were to wax philosophical about it there are at least two contra musings that may be made.
We are always on the move. Some days the journeys are little and some days they are big. They can be big or small, important or unimportant, totally different from or exactly the same as the day before and the day before that.
But we move on.
I have found engaging with that idea to be challenging, because I guess I am the sort of person who tends to try and organise my life so everything is running smooothly and fairly well under control. And yet of course it never is, each day brings about it a sense of difference and change. And its own particular challenges.
Sometimes the challenges of a day seem intimidating, but day after day for six weeks the challenges have been met and the problems solved. Even where some of it has filled me with foreboding and dread, we have managed to weather storms and move on.
The second sense that I have today is that
Everything stays the same!
You forget when you are in new places and nothing is the same that there is a familiar and a usual. Yet the house and garden to which we return is just like ti was, the grass needs cutting and there are still jobs to be done that were there when we left. They didn't go away. No one called room service or house management to fix them!
Indeed the familiar has about it the same sort of challenge as the different.
Each day brings about it a sense of difference and change. And its own particular challenges.
So back to reality....!
2 comments:
Like most people who sit in the pews and let people like you do all the work each Sunday morning, I probably have an inaccurate idea of what you face each day.
However, I would have thought that in ministry, especially in Australia in this first bit of the 21st Century, you would be facing new things every day. That you would never know from day to day what might appear on your door step that morning (perhaps quite literally).
Welcome home.
Yes, it has always been rather like that. (not just in the 21st century!).
There is, though, a sameness about the fact that every day is different...if that makes sense.
Being overseas is very confrontingly different because you are very exposed if things go pear shaped. I have rather surprised myself by how easily I have embraced this and got over my natural sense of panic at not being in control.
Of course we are never in control as much as we think we are, and we don't need to be.
It is good to be back.
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