Learning to wait off the map.

Now that we have been through the initial days of this strange new life we find ourselves settling into a routine and this gives space to look around and ahead a bit further. The question on many people's minds and often aired in the media is...how long?? How long till the first loosening of restrictions, the first step around the corner, the first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, the first turn towards home?

We don't mind the waiting but we'd love to know how long for! The human spirit needs a reference of time so we can then adjust our emotions accordingly. A 400 metre run, a 1500 metre race, a 10 Km race a Marathon, all require different pacing. It's as if we have started running but we don't know how long the race will be. We are trying to nurture and ration our hopes and fears, our expectations and dreams, even our love and compassion and patience, but we don't know if we will have enough to see us through.

The uncertainty of the length of the journey is matched also by the uncertainty of the perils we may face within it, medically, socially, relationally, economically, spiritually. We are off the map now and the old cartographers beyond this point of the known world used to write here be dragons. Will we be up to facing these unknown dangers, even the ones that we don't know that we don't know? Rarely, if ever, have we collectively as a race and also collectively as countless individuals, with precious stories, faced such an uncertain future.

We would love the map to go further, to see how far we have to go and what may lie in between us and safe harbour. The bible (and certainly any government) cannot offer us that, but the bible does offer us a Guide into that unknown. I find these rich words, with echoes of Psalm 23 from Thomas Merton, great explorer of the off map worlds of the inner world, both honest and in some measure comforting.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will,
does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire
in all I that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this
you will lead my by the right road
although I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always,
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death,

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and will never leave
to face my perils alone.
Thomas Merton

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