Companions for the journey

By Pastor Tom Hoffmann Every time I put my four-year-old daughter Genevieve to bed, she asks for a Jupiter story. I can’t recall how it started, but a year or two ago, I began making up stories for her about her adventures on Jupiter (Yes, I know, Jupiter doesn’t have a solid surface or breathable air. It’s a story for a kid!). Every night, a spaceship lands in our backyard, waking Genevieve from her sleep. She jumps out of bed, peaks under the curtains, and sees the spaceship doors opening to reveal a friendly creature of some description that invites her to fly with it to Jupiter to attend a party. Naturally, Genevieve is always excited to go. After the countdown, the blast-off, and the speeding through the galaxy, they arrive on Jupiter, landing in a meadow with green, green grass and yellow flowers. Then, Genevieve’s companion leads her on a long journey to get to the party. The long journey is a deliberate feature, repeated identically each night. They walk down from the meadow, along the beach, up the path alongside the river, over the bridge, around the lake, through the desert, and so on. The very specific path through the landscape is there for a reason – to bore the poor girl to sleep! But it never works. She always makes it to the party, and even stays awake for the return journey through the Jupiter countryside and the flight home. Having a plan, having a routine, having a map of the directions we expect to go in is important. Usually, they aren’t there to put us asleep, but oddly enough, they do have the effect of calming us, or settling us down. We need to have a reasonable expectation of what comes next in life. We need, in order to have some peace of mind, to be able to imagine that on the weekend we’ll be visiting a friend, seeing a movie, or going to choir rehearsal. One of the reasons the COVID restrictions have been so difficult is because they have impacted on our ability to traverse our social geography. We’ve been kept, somewhat, from stepping out on those familiar journeys that keep us grounded and our anxieties at bay. But it hasn’t been, nor does it need to be, seen negatively in every instance. A shake-up, leading to the mark-ups on the map, can be a good thing. When Jesus of Nazareth began preaching his message, he called people to follow him, to stop doing what they were doing, living the way they were living, and follow on his path. But it wasn’t always a particularly comfortable path to walk on and the map didn’t show a straight line from current-location-point-A to a destination-point-B. Following Jesus would mean loving your enemies and praying for those who curse you. It would mean detours down steep and shadowy valleys as well up to bright shining mountaintops. But most of all, the path that Jesus led his disciples on, was one that was radically different from the standard, sometimes cosy, generally accepted way of doing things. It was, in every respect, a new way of walking on the human journey. Which might have something to do with the fact that early Christians, as is mentioned in the Book of Acts, referred to themselves as followers of The Way. Whether we are mapping out our physical movements for 2021, limited as they will probably be, or if we’re considering the path of our spiritual life, there is one thing in particular that might give us hope for the journey. Interpersonal interactions – expressions of human connection – even if they sometimes need to be virtual, make the destination somewhat irrelevant. The journey itself, even if it is embarked upon on a treadmill, so to speak, is where fulfilment is to be found. As I mentioned, early Christians called themselves followers of The Way. But the interesting thing about that is that The Way is a person. Jesus said, “I am the Way the Truth and the Life.” Whatever stories we tell ourselves, whatever paths we feel we the need to follow to keep ourselves sane, they finally only make sense in the sharing of them. No one can be an island. And in the Christian tradition, it is Jesus who is rises up, fills the watery gaps and forms continents of the many human islands, bringing us together with the divine and with each other. Whenever I finish telling my daughter, Genevieve a Jupiter story, she inevitably asks for another one, and if I’m in a good mood, I oblige. But I’ve been around her long enough to realise that it’s not really that she wants another story, it’s just that she doesn’t want me to leave until she’s fast asleep. Travellers need companions. In the Christian tradition, Jesus leads the way of companionship and is the chief loving companion. Where are you finding companionship and connection for your journey? •