Blog day 1 friday august 18

Blog day 1 friday august 18

Ontario Part One

Toronto to Sault Ste Marie

You know, I've always wanted to do a big roadtrip. I read Don Miller and his roadtrip book, and it is just so glorified. Leaving everything that ties you down. Going to a new place that will, again in time, tie you down. But it is the space between, the roadtrip, where you are free. Free of responsibility, the chores of routine, monotony and boredom, predictability. You know, the pain of life.

Saying goodbye proved to be a lot of work. People were coming around the clock, bringing gifts and words of encouragement. It is a testament to the strength of God's community that He built around us - one that we sometimes didn't appreciate. I am emotionless when I say goodbye. No tears, no pain in the heart. It is just business, nothing personal. Goodbye. I do love you and it has nothing to do with the emotion I feel when leaving you. It is just time to go, time to create a new community with a new group of people. This is planet earth outside of God's rule. A place of goodbyes, of seperation. But we belong to something much larger.

The vehicle and the trailer worked beautifully. What an amazing machine that Jeep is. It didn't even show signs of tiredness. It took the punishment I gave it - Toronto to Sault Ste Marie non-stop, and didn't even protest.

The tie-downs my Dad and I did have worked beatifully, thus far, and nothing in the trailer has shaken loose or wrecked itself. Here are the specks on our trip.

Trip time: 10.5 hours, with stops
Gas used: approx. $220
Route: Barrie, Parry Sound, Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie.

The trip up was fairly peaceful, nothing uneventful happened. Plenty, however, happened in my thoughts. There was the usual traffic in Barrie, that loosened off the farther up we went. We entered the Muskoka region, and with it a flood of memories of my past three years as a youth pastor. Most of my most significant events happened in the context of Muskoka. Muskoka is a youth pastor's best friend. Goodbye. Past that was Parry Sound, and with that the memory of our High School snow camps - by far the most meaningful events ever. Beyond that, the memories stop, for that is where my life as I have known it stops. I have never been beyond. Until today.

You can notice the change in landscape when leaving Southern Ontario, especially in a vehicle that you can't go above 100km/h in. When the landscape changes, you truly realize how huge Southern Ontario really is, all on it's own. It is a world onto itself, with a look onto itself, and it is chalk full of people. It is a busy, bustling place, full of large cities, towns strung in between like pearls on a string. It has rolling hills, lush fields, streams and ponds. It really reminds one of the scenes of the Shire, in the Lord of the Rings. But Northern Ontario is an entirely different thing. The landscapes get much more wild, pine and granite jagging the horizon, swamps and ponds, rivers and lakes, all leaving you with the sense that if you were to venture into them, you might never find your way out again. The vehicles change from Honda Civics, to Ford Trucks, as a rule, and the people change from hard-nosed, pushy drivers, to light-hearted, talkative wanderers. I truly am in a different world.

Which is something I usually would barely notice, except that this time I have with me, in the passenger seat of the vehicle, the most precious thing I have ever owned (not that I own her). She sits there like a jewel, curled up and sleeping, like the inner core of a precious rock, and her presence here on this trip changes everything for me. I've been on roadtrips before, but always alone, and out there, amidst the strangness, all I have to worry about is me. And I don't usually worry much about me, because I have nearly died so many times now, I really don't try much anymore to stay alive. I just live on borrowed time. But with her here, it is different. My male instincts sharpen and focus. Protect, watch over, be careful. She is little - and pretty. One example is when we pulled into a rest area to gas up, eat up, and basically walk around. It was somewhere in between Sudbury and the Sault, and this truck pulls in with a trailer loaded two stories high with scrap metal. Out from the truck piles five or six of the mangiest, roughest looking group of guys I have never seen. It was like Toronto's Crack shelter on a road-trip. And I noticed the look in a few of their eyes, a look that always reminds me of a past life: The look of a sinister, thinking predator. Someone used to violence and fighting. Glancing around, taking stock of the situation, they finally notice my nice Jeep and full trailer (probably took note that we were uprooted and moving). Then they noticed my little blonde wife. Fortunately, I had sunglasses on, and I was able to stare back, expressionless, communicating strength without the need for confrontation. People hate staring at someone with Sunglasses on. Melissa shuddered and made a comment about one of them.

It was the feeling of having to protect that has changed a lot for me on this trip. All of my decisions are tainted with that motive: where we stay, where we stop, and where we eat. I must protect her. I have no problem giving my life to save her. I just have to make sure that it will do the job.

Spiritually, the journey has begun for me too. Gone, at least for the moment, is that place associated with busyness, Southern Ontario, that community of enormity, and me sitting near the top of it to receive all the phone calls, emails, and attention of others. I know that many people sit at home alone, with no phone ringing and no one coming over. Is it so wrong that I desire a little of that? I am peopled-out right to my inner core. When I turned on my phone last night, 10 hours away from Toronto, in order to check the time, I had 6 new voicemail messages. I won't check any of them until Vancouver. I'm leaving. Like Augustine, stuck preaching in the church in Hippo, all the while longing for the Monastary back on his parent's property, to pray and meditate, I long for it. Away from the busyness, from the hustle of life, I want to finally find God again. The North of Ontario wrapped around me like a blanket. Quiet and alone, my thoughts had space to turn to God. My heart, once again, began to fill with hope. He has a new place for me. And I am going there. Sault Ste. Marie to Thundar Bay, here I come.