On the Road Again; No, Really!

 I had to laugh when I re-read my last blog title: On the Road Again. Oh how rosy everything seemed in January, 2020; how proscribed the future was:   I would train for the demanding Kumano Kodo pilgrimage in Japan and I would walk that in April. The rest of the year I would be either on the treadmill at the gym or hiking in the glorious environs of Colorado Springs.

Such optimism! Such benignly arrogant belief that 2020 would be an equal partner in meeting the goals I had set for myself!

I know I'm not alone in this.

And then COVID-19 --barely a whisper when I wrote my last post--began a full-throated operatic acciaccato, the discordant, broken notes clanging into March, disrupting whatever harmonious convergence of events I had imagined.

And for some reason, although I have been pretty much at home since mid-March, I was too discombobulated to continue writing in my blog. To be sure, I often thought of writing here, sharing pandemic stories of grit and determination, epiphanies that I only received because I was home, on lockdown. I would rehearse these blog entries in my mind; they just never made it onto the silver screen.

I kept pretending I would write "tomorrow," that I was too busy to write, but in reality what was happening is that I was overwhelmed by thought of putting words to paper; to write about the pandemic seemed to be like shooting at a moving target. Each day there was something more dire to focus on than the day before: escalating numbers of people sick or dying from COVID, new atrocities from the person who sits in the Oval Office, outrageous claims by questionable experts. So I didn't write anything.

And the impact of that, my ten faithful readers, is that I have not been in conversation with you; what's been missing this entire time is a sense of connection with you and a level of integrity regarding my commitment to my blog.

And so I come back to these pages, creating for my life and my blog the possibility of being a consistent, powerful, authentic voice as we deepen our lived experience in the midst of this pandemic.

And, again, I have to laugh at the title of my last blog post: On the Road Again. That was eerily prophetic.

Beginning in just a few weeks, I will be on the road again, doing SUV RVing as I travel around the country, delivering my Sunday messages and participating in all my weekly meetings from different locales. I hope to widen the horizon of All Souls, remind us of our interconnectedness to all living beings, celebrate the oneness of everything of which we are a part.

I preached about this new venture on September 6, 2020. You can listen to my sermon here.

I may have lost my voice in the cacophonous notes of the pandemic, but I have found it again, and will create, in these pages, a dramma giocoso, a serious opera with jokes!

And so soon I will set off, not on a walking pilgrimage in a far distant land, but in my 2017 Jeep Cherokee, with my 20 month old Golden Doodle, Rubi, and (soon) my cat, Wham!; a car camino, if you will.

I hope you will join me on this journey. I promise I won't use any more opera terminology! Buen Camino!