A COVID-19 Road Less Travelled

 

Last week, Lorna and I were travelling to our cottage in Price Edward Island.  I took the week off from this venue and focussed on preparing for the trip and leaving our home in Ontario.  

It was a journey which we had done many times before but it was also a new experience.  We have come to our cottage ever since I retire officially as a parish priest.  Until this year we have left at around the end of May and returned around Thanksgiving.  This year there was the road block on this journey because of the Corona Pandemic with prohibitions on travel.  It didn’t look as if we would be making the trip this year being in good company with everyone who had their summer plans disrupted and put on hold. 

We were resigned to staying put at home but as summer and the pandemic progressed, a window opened up and the possibility of making the trip seemed that it might be possible.  As plans developed, it was clear that it would not be a trip like ones we would normally make.  There were permissions to obtain, plans on how to handle meals and where to stay that would be safe.  Most of this planning was handled by Lorna - well okay, all of it was, except for the Air B&B reservation which is another story.  We managed it thanks to a friend who lent us a Koolatron, for our fresh food during the journey, a neighbour who is handling the mail and a friend who is grocery shopping for us during our 14 day quarantine at the cottage. 

With preparations made and many questions about how to handle washroom breaks and the need to sanitize at every stop, we made the trip without incident - passing all the border checks with flying colours, and are ensconced in the cottage and enjoying the peace and quiet of the quarantine.   

As many of you are aware, I consider life to be a journey which with God’s guidance will take us to a union with the divine when it is completed on this world.  It is a journey which is made up of many smaller journeys.  This was brought home to me as we made the journey to our cottage.  Travelling in a new way or to a new place is easy to understand as a journey.  However, staying where you are is also a journey.  They are all part of the journey of this life and all the journeys we have will bring us events which, however, much we plan for may bring us surprizes and the unexpected.  It is how we meet them that can tell us much about how we respond to the unplanned and unexpected and where God is in our lives.  I came across a short passage in a book I picked off the shelf at home which I obtained some time a go but had neglected read.  It is Christian Mythmakers by Rolland Hein. The book explores Christian writers who have added to the Christian Mythos.  The quote is about the mythmaker John Bunyan relating to his classic Pilgrims Progress:

The reader is seized with a compelling sense of life as a journey beset with perils and difficulties, trials and demanding earnest effort to overcome. To triumph over them brings the promise of a glorious afterlife.

My journey so far has been much more than that but perhaps Bunyan’s journey reflected that understanding.  I hope that the best is yet to come in this world and definitely in the next. There will undoubtedly be perils and challenges but there will be much more than that and above all that it will be a blessing.

Blessing on your journey.