This Is Not a Valentine’s Post

As I watched the horses and buggies clip-clopping down the road on that bleak Monday morning, my thought was that the lack-lustre tone of the day was appropriate garb for mourning. In a farmhouse across the fields, a woman and her nine children were preparing to bury their husband and father. A tragic accident took him in an untimely (at least by my assessment) fashion. As knots and tangles were smoothed into braids and buns, I wondered about the knots and tangles in the pits of stomachs. My Mom said that the community response would be one of acceptance and viewing it as divinely orchestrated. That then made me think of something our pastor said – that (and I paraphrase) having a view of a loving Divine as one who engineers suffering can be unhealthy and will warp and crease your soul. But, who am I to think that I need to point out presumed wrinkles in another’s soul when my own iron all but rusts on the shelf.

Earlier this winter, I read through an old copy of Pilgrim’s Progress – an allegory of one man’s journey through life, with its quagmires and places of rest, until he reaches the end where he crosses over to the other side of the river and into another kind of life. With the likes of character names like Mr. Pickthank, Madam Bubble, and Mr. Ready-To-Halt, I was reminded of precocious Anne and her colourful naming of things. And with monsters being slayed and giants holing up in castles, there were similarities to The Hobbit or the events in Narnia. The author, John Bunyan, wrote it from his prison cell where he was being held for going against the status quo of the church in 1678. It details the events of a dream he had and apparently remains a popular read to this day.

Something I have thought about the most since reading it is how each of us has to make our own life journey. We may have people and communities with whom we can share the journey, but even within that, we are still figuring out the details of our own path. Pilgrim could not convince his wife and four children to accompany him. He felt compelled and chose to set out anyway. It seemed to me that the more loving, the more christian thing to do have been to wait for them, wait until they too felt the compulsion to venture out on the journey. Could he not have set aside his calling in order to nurture the souls of his family? Or, like the man who was buried that Monday morning, did he not have the choice?

The Romantic in me wants Pilgrim and Christiana to join hands all sweet and tender, and head across the field, four boys in tow, to that small gate and embark on the journey together. Life (nor dreams) rarely works that way.

“Life is a highway

I wanna ride it all night long

If you’re going my way

I wanna drive it all night long”

~Rascal Flatts – as sung by Tom Cochrane~

Can we travel life’s highway even if “you’re [not] going my way”? We really don’t all travel the same paths or roadways, navigate the same valleys and mountains, or interpret the road signs to mean the same thing. Be it spouses, partners, friends, families, or communities, we will all in some way have to travel alone. While there may be occasion to nudge someone from a course of self-destruction, we still cannot walk the path for them.

When our paths take us in different directions, and the distance feels like its widening to the place of needing to shout to be heard, to be seen, what then? How can we be a safe space when we’re not in the same place? How can we respect the individual journey but not lose touch? Is distance sometimes a part of safe spaces?

Often my head is down, focused on my own footfalls, watching for the tripping places. Is it enough to stop and sit, enter into a spaciousness with each other that is still and gentle, where it’s safe to be wrong and unimportant to be right? Where we are seen? And heard?

The day after that funeral (why is the word ‘fun’ in ‘funeral’ anyway?), my Groom was heading into the city and saw two little schoolgirls, daughters of the grieving family, bundled up and trudging along the shoulder of the road on their way to school. Backpacks on their backs, they were little pilgrims in their own right. Knowing their road to school would take them past the spot where their Dad died, I wanted to impose my idea of safe space and urge someone to keep them home, cozy by the fire. Or is putting one foot in front of the other, literally, the way forward? And putting one foot in front of the other is always better than putting one’s foot in the one’s mouth.

Safe spaces are always places of kindness and respect with a posture of openness towards other. May we all sort out how to take that stance.