In a moment of quiet after what seems like (and perhaps in fact has been) months of noise and business, working and missioning and examming and travelling and greenbelting, I’m listening to music, reflecting, relaxing… and feeling a strange sense of nervousness. More than nervousness, fear. For I’m aware that I’m on the brink of yet more change and challenge. Lots of things in life seem to be in upheaval, to be uncertain.
One of the concepts which was focussed on at Greenbelt this year was living in the ‘long now’. My understanding of this is that it’s not living for the moment- but it’s not living in the past, either. It’s about knowing that now is all we have- but trying to look at ‘now’ in a bigger sense. Accepting that we must live now, do what we can now, even if we don’t know or won’t see results. About not demanding immediacy, trying to take a ‘God’s eye view’, to whatever extent such a view is possible. Moses never set foot in the promised land- but still he continued. Maybe our generation won’t see peace in that land- but still we must work for it tirelessly. Just because things don’t happen as we want them to instantly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, shouldn’t give the best, should put things off til later, later, later.
So what is MY story in the long now? It’s a story touched by the people of the Holy Land and of Scotland, a story drawn to church, drawn back again and again to a sense of call. It’s a story tinged by sadness, and painted in laughter. It’s a story whose ending is yet unknown- but in this now, with which I have been given, I must give everything I can to do what I must. Change is part of the now, hard though that is to deal with. Change, shift, perhaps even breaking. But in the long now there will be healing, too. And discovery, and transformation. And even if I only look upon the promised land, that ought to be enough.
