Walk Each Other Home
How often in the last week have you heard this, “We are living in crazy times.” I guess we are. I have lived and worked in some crazy places during crazy times, perhaps not exactly like these times but crazy enough for sure. I had three and half years of going in and out of Afghanistan and not once did I get on that airplane out of Kabul and not say, “Well, it looks like I survived another one.” I survived being Guatemala doing teacher development during the height of their civil war, or in Liberia during a post conflict era and my work there in education. Not Afghanistan, but still both very dangerous places. I seem to keep, “coming home.”
When I was a teenager, back in the days of sock hops and ten cent cokes, I would take a girl to the dance and invariably do what my mom told me to do, “Ask her if you could walk her home.” Innocent and polite, I would walk the girl home. Maybe that is our prime directive now in these crazy times, “to walk each other home.” Not all the way ‘home’ yet (let’s hope not), but a few steps closer to home? Maybe we could group together in four or five family groupings to share in child care and family support activities. Maybe we could look out for the family in the community that would be affected severely by these crazy times, and surprise them with our time and resources. I think that we have opportunities here to walk along with each other, to walk each other further along the road to home.
What I have learned is to do what a University of Calgary colleague used to remind me, “to worry in order.” Being anxious has never served me well in my other work anyway. It has never brought me peace or any real solutions to problems, ways to address issues or answers to real questions. It has never led to me stepping out into new possibilities, new futures. Prayer however has helped, as doing life together with my life group friends and feasting on their encouragement (that one is for you Laura Harvey).
In the meantime, let’s agree together to worry in order, pray as if it all depends on God, walk with each other as if it all depends on us, and look for those unique new possibilities for good that this crazy time is going to give us.
Respectfully
Bernie Potvin, MSCS Principal