The Great and the Sad

Most all readers of this blog should know that I'm in the process of moving to Seattle, and tonight's entry is being typed from a motel room in Boise, Idaho, that is lacking most of the buttons on the in-room phone, was lacking toilet paper upon check in, and has a curious brown substance emerging from the faucet when I turn on the cold water.

Yet, this is all part of the adventure for me. I love staying in crappy motels and enjoying all of the fascinating problems and/or challenges that they offer me.

My absolute favorite is the one in San Diego that is directly across the street from the end of the runway of the airport there. When the jets fly over, they fly immediately overhead, such that somebody with a decent pitcher's arm could literally ding the fuselage with a well-lobbed baseball. When the jets fly over, my whole room would quake - and I would squeal with glee at the fun of it.

I'm not trying to make a vacation out of this journey north, but I am trying to be intentional about this process: leaving, journey, experience, reflection . . . and either tomorrow or Friday, arrival.

Let me commend to any of my Phoenician friends with wandering souls the drive from Flagstaff to Page. It's been a very long while since I've driven that route - or, the route from Page to Salt Lake City for that matter. The scenery is amazing along that stretch of road - from the holy emptiness that is the Navajo reservation to the amazing mountains that frame the cities from Provo to Ogden. It is all deeply beautiful.

The holy emptiness is what draws me to my favorite places in the Southwest, because I think myself is reflected back to me. Much of my worldview is that of the Preacher. The writer of Ecclesiastes sees meaninglessness - but sees that in the context of God's meaning that embraces our experience of meaninglessness without nullifying it.

Earlier this week, one of my new colleagues in Seattle and I were talking about the idea of being present to "both the great and the sad", as he put it.

As I was leaving town on Monday, I was having much more of the experience of the bitter rather than the sweet as I was remembering my goodbyes to my Phoenix friends, wondering how many of them I would actually see again. One person who popped up suddenly on that goodbye tableau was a high school acquaintance that I hadn't seen in 13 years. This simply tells me that we cannot ever have any kind of leaving that is assuredly permanent.

At the same time, we can't ever be completely sure we're going to see - in person - these loved ones again that we leave behind.

As one of the members of St. Augustine's reminded me on Sunday - I'm leaving Phoenix for Seattle, but Phoenix is going to go on without me, and when I next step back into its desert, it is guaranteed to be a very different place than the one I've left.

This is a sad reality, isn't it?

Again and again these past week's, I've heard priest friends of mine preaching and talking about the ideas of letting go - of not trying to cling to the past tightly or for unfortunate reasons remaining entangled in one's old life that is left behind - for good or ill.

These messages are so right, so very true, so very prescient.

However, it is a corollary to this thought that is swirling through my head this late night in Boise: letting go of potential situations that, were it not for some slight change in circumstances, would have resulted in a more favorable outcome than what actually came about.

In other words, if the butterfly had flapped its wings a few more seconds, life would have been totally different.

And, of course, I don't know what all of those parameters of that life would be, and nobody does. At the same time, I think that I personally have acknowledge some very likely possibilities that could have arisen should the deck have been shuffled just one more time before the cards were dealt.

This is coming up because I had a very powerful experience yesterday of this very fact. I could see how my whole life could have been different - and someone else's life could have been different - if the wind had just blown in a slightly different direction.

Friends, I am sad this evening that the dice did not roll as favorably as I would have had them roll.

I could patronize myself and talk about how everything that happens is willed by God or some other such pandering crap, or I could go a little more Anglican and talk about how God makes good things come out of a bad situation. Or, I could go a step further and speak like Bishop Shahan used to say, that God's will for any situation is always the same - it is God's will to redeem it.

Those words again are good words, full of truthfulness and wisdom, words that need to work themselves more deeply into my soul and psyche.

It's accurate to say that I am a person that often does choose the road less traveled- in so many ways that are sometimes bewildering to me and my friends, but even actualized rewards can't compensate for a greater potential that could be envisioned.

So, today, I had to spend a little time on the boring road to Boise grieving the economics of life that do not allow us to experience both the well-worn road and the path that we have to blaze for ourselves.

I'm sad that I'm not an electron - I cannot potentially live the consequences of all of the butterfly's actions in the same instant and then, also in the same instant, choose the one I like best.

Instead, I - like all of us - have to make the best decisions we can based on limited data and our most realistic projections and contingencies, and then live through the consequences of those decisions.

Which means that before, during, and after any decision, we do have to be intentional - or, as my Seattle colleague said - be present . . .

...to both the great and the sad.