I told my counselor that I wasn’t sure how to end, say good-bye and leave Michigan this time around. When I moved a few years ago I was under the belief that I was just saying a see-ya-later-kinda-good-bye to everyone. Turns out, when you move, you loose contact, people continue on and things are never the same. This is how life goes—it flows on with and without you. So, reentering the stream this fall has been wild: old-time moments with folks who get me, new people and deepening friendships that have only bloomed these past few years. It’s taught me loads about how community works.
And so, this next week I leave Michigan with no plans to return, it feels weird. I need to say good-bye, not to a Mitten but to certain flesh and blood peoples that I love—deep in my bones. The intensity I think I owe them would be nothing less than sitting them down, looking them in the eyes—noticing the contours in their face—and telling them about their significance, the stuff they are made of. Its this stuff, their lives, that has encouraged me into open space. Just yesterday, however, the tables turned. Greg, my former youth pastor came in to work to say good-bye to me, it seemed really significant. It caught me of guard, perhaps because it was a real good-bye—one I felt. The distance, the encouragement and the significance of someone going out of their way to bless you, its a sending—but its an ending. I had told him about a job I turned down, that would have kept me in Michigan, but also, how I felt God’s frustrating tug to continue on the path I’ve been trekking out west—and he got it. He didn’t run through the pros and cons, the what ifs of the world, just got it. I felt sent by him. Kind of like when I sat down with my friend Matt years ago and he helped me see that Fuller might be my next right step. There is no right or wrong, no ledgers in these moments—just two people in a peace of mind and off someone goes, the end and the beginning happening at once, good friends pushing off from the same land toward distant shores.
I ran into a friend that is moving to Chicago this week. She was at work and I just happened to show up on her last day. The employees had made her a cake and were lined up saying good-bye telling her she should get off the floor and go eat cake, like-ya-do your last day at work. It all seemed really significant, the ending and the sending.
Now, some might say that with technology and blogs and cellphones and cars and Skype your really not saying good-bye, but I think that is bullshit. I give this excuse when I rather not feel the fabric of friendship rip, the sound being unbearable. The truth is, you leave and you land, but you have been redefined—and so have they. Your clan sends you and you either return a man or you start a clan somewhere beyond the territories of your kin. Abraham left to start a new family, and those of us who are not making babies, and stuff, start communities that work similar. But it all begins with, not so much being willing to leave (to adventure some place extreme), but in the ending and the sending, a certain kind of peace is enabled to lead us to a new land.
Several months ago I was going through one of the hardest times of my life, things felt crushing and Caila made a doorpost banner, from wood, that had the Hebrew word shalom and a passage from Isaiah 43 written in the letters. On the back of the thing the shema was written, that says something about writing Scripture on your doorpost. There is a lot to these verses, meaning and metaphor, I look at them everyday. I leave my room under this banner of peace, exodus, hope, justice and other big ideas that play themselves out in the everyday happenings of life. But I leave to return, I enter this space like a cathedral in time to rest and think and wonder. The doorway, however, is also a passage and entryway to the unknown and mysterious world in which I tread. We all tread lightly these days, afraid of the dragons that be abound. But I am, convinced more and more, that we might just be better off treading firmly and facing the dragons—naming the the chaotic powers with presence and love that redefines space, the landing of our lived existence.
