I can very clearly remember driving into that tunnel!
I was twelve or thirteen. I was with my parents, traveling through Sweden and Norway. We were way up north, I think, in Norway, driving west. We entered a tunnel that we knew was going to be long. But numbers on a map didn’t prepare us for what we would experience.
You have to realize that this was not a busy road/tunnel. We hadn’t seen anyone on the road for a LONG time before we entered. But we had a fully fueled car . . . and Mom and I trusted Dad to have the overall map in mind. And, so, entering the tunnel wasn’t a big deal. Until . . ..
We had driven a while (in retrospect it seems like HOURS . . . probably minutes), and, then, Dad stopped the car, turned off the engine . . . and turned out the lights.
We were in pitch-black. And that is NOT a metaphor. The only light was from the (now-I-realize-radioactive) dots on my watch-face. The road was empty in front of us and behind us. And we were—by reason of distance or turns-in-the-road—prevented from seeing either entrance to the tunnel. Both my mom and I were freaked out.
After seconds/minutes/hours/days/months/years/decades . . . Dad re-started the car AND TURNED ON THE LIGHTS! Oh, what relief, what bliss! We continued through the tunnel. I think the next thing I remember was seeing a Norwegian fjord’s beauty (but of course, my memory is a bit “iffy”; it may have been a pasture).
After fifty-plus years, I still remember that experience vividly! And I remember what it taught me about being in the dark . . . but on a road. And that is: “Roads are NOT built to nowhere!”
We, at Good Shepherd, have been in a tunnel in COVID-land. There is NO doubt about that. Some of us feel that we’re stopped, with no light . . . except some memory of the scenery before we entered. Others are simply anxious to get out the other end (“Who cares what things looked like before!”). Together, however, we have left someplace beautiful on our way to an equally gorgeous destination.
But in the tunnel, it’s hard! There is no doubt about that. It’s hard for many who worry about contracting the virus. It’s hard for parents trying, in the midst of home-schooling/remote learning, to provide a spiritual foundation for their kids. It’s hard for musicians, who are so limited in what they are able of bring to their ministries to the congregation. It’s hard for those who live alone, who count on Good Shepherd for community. It’s hard for those of us who simply long for familiar faces IN PERSON (rather than on the computer).
It’s hard.
I get it.
We want more light.
And it’s coming. By the time you read this, we should have plans in place, not only for re-gathering, but also for communion. It has been a long time in a tunnel, longing for the end. And we’ll see an end . . . but also, I suspect another tunnel. We ALL hope it will be shorter, and that, at the end of that tunnel, we’ll see level land (or maybe a fjord!). And the tunnels will be behind us.
We will regather. We will be around the Table again.
But we are still the Body of Christ now. We've shared our community in imaginative ways. We’ve learned new things: what’s important, what’s life-giving, what we don’t need, what we DO. We’ve seen the members of the body step up! And when we drive out of that tunnel none of that will have changed. Only the environment.
We will be Good Shepherd in a new pasture.
Blessings on this journey!
Fr. Gary +