"If I was going to Dublin, I wouldn't start from here.", goes the punchline to a joke about tourists in Ireland trying to get back to Dublin's fair city. Kansas City isn't the place most would start on a journey to Dublin - some might say, a journey to anywhere. But Kansas City was the final USA city that Juli, Ashlyn (aged 8 months), and I spent a few days in, 12 years ago, before embarking on the journey of lifetime. On June 23, 2010, we touched down in Dublin, having begun our initial flight in KC. Exactly 7 years ago today, we touched down at Kansas City International Airport having arrived back in the US from our 5 years abroad.
Our adventures in life don't always begin where we think they should, nor do they always end quite how we might expect. In his poem, Little Gidding, TS Eliot writes:
"If you came this way, taking the route you would be likely to take from the place you would be likely to come from...If you came this way, taking any route, starting from anywhere, at any time or at any season, it would always be the same: you would have to put off sense and notion. You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity or carry report. You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid."
I've done a lot of reflection over the past 12 years. Reflection on our 5 years in Ireland. Reflection on the time I spent as an associate minister in Burleson, TX. Reflection on our 2 and 1/2 years in Colorado. Reflection on the 6 months spent in Kansas City. Reflection on my 8 years prior to Ireland in Austin, TX. Reflection on my entire life. With all the reflection - reflection on the good, the terrible, the exhilarating, the disappointing, and the unexpected. More than anything, I'm left with gratitude. And that gratitude drives me to kneel where prayer has been valid.
The great philosopher poet Dan Wilson once said, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." He was riffing on TS Eliot who, also in Little Gidding penned:
"What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
Now that I'm in my mid 40s, I've contemplated having a mid-life crisis, but since none of us really know the mid-point of our lives, I've decided to give the crisis a pass. Middles are hard to discern, but beginnings and endings are where the meaning lives. In fact, through the gospel, life is a series of new beginnings, implying that it is also a series of endings.
So, whether we are at the beginning, the end, or unknowingly, in the middle of something - anything - we have to decide how we will proceed, or even if we will proceed. I choose to keep exploring. Of course, you know where this is going. I turn it over to Thomas Stearns Eliot again:
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
I began this blog in Dublin and I end it in Kansas City (or Shawnee to be more precise). But this end is also a beginning. I've now begun a new blog at The Big Narrative where I hope you will join me in exploring the grand story of the Bible. - Shay
