The Long and Winding Road Ahead

Dear Long Road Ahead,

In my 7th grade talent show at McAlister Middle School, I took first prize for my rendition of “The Long and Winding Road,” by the Beatles. I mean, I hate to brag, but I was gooooood.

I have a low singing voice, and the song hit my register just right. So did the theme, for even as a younger person, I thought really… long… and hard… about… everything. First-place in the talent show was a rare case where my brooding side served me well. Usually, it was overshadowed by my over-the-top optimistic, positive side that mostly wore people out.

I am no longer singing love songs to long, winding roads. I want them to bring me back to normalcy, then leave me the hell alone. Is that so wrong?

I was kind of hoping, Long Road Ahead (LRA), that I was finished with you. I was very much ready to declare post-Covid victory. As for racial reckoning, I thought we were getting some important things out in the open, talking more freely about how our future needs to account for and depart from the sinful patterns of our past. As for politics, I thought maybe — maybe — those who had been snowed would have thawed out. And I thought that being back together in-person would cause us to remember why we ever wanted to be part of a community in the first place.

I was right… and yet so wrong. Here are some findings from the first four weeks back at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, my ministry setting, as to where we are on you, LRA.

1. We are elated to be back together again; that is simply true, and no one can take that away from me, from us.
2. We’re having to remember and relearn some of the more mundane dimensions of a community that gathers in-person: a line at the restroom, competition for use of spaces on an active campus, viruses other than Covid that still borrow our cells for replication and transportation.
3. We’re reminded daily that you, LRA, are everywhere. Our community is connected to dozens of others dealing with the same reentry challenges we are. Our partner churches aren’t totally sure that children *will* return with the fall’s programs. Our chaplaincy peers were featured in national news for their essential work as Covid death-doulas, but now their budgets are cut, and then cut again. Conflicts and controversies swell across institutions — from families to bodies politic — as we emerge from years of distancing.

LRA, you’re ubiquitous. We think the long roads are the exceptions, and the destinations are the rule, but ultimately we spend much of our lives drifting from place to place. Monarch butterflies travel from one hemisphere to another when they migrate, and those who start versus those who finish the journey are separated by four generations. The ancestral people of Israel, whom Christians call their forebears, wandered in exodus, and then exile, and then diaspora.

So why do I have such a hard time accepting you, let alone embracing you, LRA?

Because we might talk the talk, “Getting there is half the fun!” “Life’s a journey!” “Jesus is the way.” When we’d much prefer to be there, end the journey, and have Jesus hang out with us in the arrivals lounge, toasting each other’s fortitude at the bar.

I have written, and will keep on writing, that we are all in the midst of an in-between time. We cannot rush to the future, because it isn’t ready for us yet. And we can’t fall back onto old ways, because they weren’t sufficient before, and now — sadly — we know that. We can no longer make excuses, accepting the harm they might cause.

In her book The Pain Chronicles, Melanie Thernstrom writes a history of pain, which she interweaves with her own experience of a chronic shoulder pain condition that nearly stole her joy, creativity, and productivity. One of the discoveries she makes in her study of pain that changes her own perspective is the idea that pain need not be eradicated. She could get from a pain self-assessment of 9 to 3 and declare victory; that was enough. The beauty of improvement was also a revelation, as previous to this learning, she’d thought, “Zero pain or bust.”

Earlier this week, President Joe Biden answered a reporter’s question about whether Covid is “over” with an affirmative answer. Backlash fromhis characterization was swift and brutal. It’s not over for those with Long Covid! It’s not over for the immuno-compromised! Perhaps he would have been wise to say we’ve gone from 9 to 3 on the public health anxiety-ometer, even though that’s not what we want to hear.

LRA, we probably better learn to live on you and with you. Leaders prefer to picture themselves at your end point, as their constituents don’t like the truth that there’s no end to you in-sight. Perhaps leaders and their followers alike need to stop characterizing “getting to the end of the road” as “success.” All communities’ leaders really can offer, after all, is a companion for the journey.

Sick of you, but still singing,

Sarah