That We May Always Be Together.

As the calendar on my desktop changes from 27 to 28, it is now two months to the day when my plane will take off enroute for Uganda. Time moves in strange patterns these days: seeming to take long, halting pauses, hesitant to move forward, and then, suddenly, and usually when I least wish it, sprinting ahead as if eternity itself could be overcome. I flip through photos from the last year, plan road trips to visit college friends, and get up in the morning to go to work. I cook supper for people I love, shoot some basketball with my brother, and chat on skype with friends who live too far away. And over it all, beginning to make it's presence known like a storm cloud on the horizon, lies the fact of my impending departure.

.

Whether we mean it to or not, perhaps often without our even realising it, this one fact--that in two months, I will pack my bags, check into security at the airport, and not be present in this place for the next three years--has already begun to colour so many relationships and interactions. This is natural, I know, and it affects the way I relate to people I care for as much as how they relate to me right now: but it is also difficult and at times, deeply frustrating. I want to live my life fully in the present, to be wholly present with those I am with at this moment in this place. But I find it difficult to do so: in part because there are so many people I love deeply scattered around this globe, and also, because it is once again almost time to start the process of saying "goodbye," "I'll keep in touch," and "until we meet again."

.

I dislike goodbyes. I am not fond of transitions: of pulling up roots and starting anew. I know it will be difficult and painful, though many joys and much growth surely await me on the other side of it. I know that relationships will inevitably change, often in unexpected ways: there will be friends who surprise me by keeping in touch, and others who fade into the background of my life until we once again manage to meet face to face; there will be successes and failures, graduations, birthdays, weddings, births, and deaths--some of which I will attend and celebrate with friends, others which I will learn of from afar and often after they have passed. Just as there are now days when I wish more than anything to be with my friends and family in Bukoto, the coming years will certainly bring times when I wish I could teleport back to the US for a few hours or days. But through it all, so many of these relationships will endure, nurtured by the bonds of love and friendship and trust that have been built up over the course of so many experiences and moments, of tears and laughter shared, of stories lived together. That is the hope which sustains me as my mind begins to anticipate the changes of the next few months.

.

These days, when I think of "goodbye," I recall a passage from a book I read part of during the summer after I graduated from Messiah. I copied many parts of it into a journal I was writing at the time, but this particular part comes to mind again and again whenever I think about transitioning from one place of love to another. It describes the parting of two men who share a deep friendship.

.

"Grandfather stayed with the little tribe for a few more weeks and then finally one day he was gone before the camp awoke. Parrot understood, like Grandfather, that this was the right way to part. Nothing left to be said, no goodbyes, but just the deep sense of knowing they would always be together. Still, there was a tremendous sadness and sense of loss that they would both suffer." --from Grandfather, by Tom Brown

.

I don't have any plans to slip away to Uganda in the silence of night without bidding farewell to my dear friends and family here. But, it is my hope that even when separated by great distance, we might continue to live in the connectedness that comes from our "deep sense of knowing" that we are always together.