Thursday, February 19, 2015
The Road to Sacredness
…and in the wilderness, where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as one carries a child, all the way that you traveled until you reached this place. Deuteronomy 1:31
Sometimes it’s not the words spoken that make a conversation sacred so much as the context in which the conversation takes place, or the fact that it’s taking place at all. When Israeli and Palestinian leaders sit at the same table and engage in conversations about peace in good faith, the fact that they’re meeting at once makes their conversation sacred, even if their impasse cannot be bridged.
Many parents of teens and young adults share the experience of having their best conversations with their children when alone together in a car. No one can walk away or claim they have something else to do, and while electronic devices can be a distraction, in my experience, they’re less of a factor than one might expect, which I think reflects the need our children have to connect with us, as well as ours to connect with them.
In the past year, my now 20 year old daughter and I have driven together from Framingham to Miami and back, Framingham to Greensboro, North Carolina and back, round-trip to New Jersey, and from Pennsylvania to Framingham. In total, this adds up to 16 days of car time, driving 6-8 hours on many of those days. These trips have included visits with relatives and overnight stays with people I became friends with in college, high school, and even elementary school, giving her a window into my past. They included visits with a relative in the final stages of her life, and the long drive home following her memorial service.
Certainly, all those days together were not spent in deep conversation about matters of major importance, but significant conversations centering around decisions Nina was in the midst of making about the direction of her life emerged from time to time along with all sorts of other talk, whether logistical, silly, or casual. Not a small part of our conversations were sharing our thoughts and reactions to radio podcasts which Nina had downloaded prior to our trips, were of mutual interest, and which provided a non-threatening context in which we could relate to each other by relating to something outside of ourselves. For me, all of it was sacred.
Just as significant as our talking, though, were the spaces between the talk. Easy silences are, perhaps, the greatest marker of intimacy; the understanding that just being together is more important than filling up all of the spaces with words. Just as meaningful conversation requires attentive listening as well as thoughtful speaking, meaningful relationship requires the ability to sometimes sit together in silence, and for that to be enough. Though in many ways I hate long drives, find them exhausting and stressful, productive of environmental guilt, and, at times, the cause of fear for my life, I wouldn’t trade this sacred time with Nina for anything.
Transporting God, help us appreciate the sacred in the everyday, to be grateful for time spent with loved ones, whether talking about the big questions, just shooting the breeze or sitting in unhurried silence. And when world leaders can’t see eye to eye, please send them on a long drive together.
Willie Sordillo