Take this path? (Richard Bott CC-by/nc/sa 2.0)
In some ways, it’s a fool’s game. What is, is. We can’t go back. There aren’t any “do overs.” Just the ever-present now. And yet…
Although there have been good and bad times in my life, times I would love to revisit (more as a tourist than a player), I really don’t think I’d want to lose who I am, and who is in my life now. My partner. Our daughter. Being in BC. All of the experiences of being a minister in The United Church of Canada, here, in St. Marys, in Iroquois Falls, in Kirkland Lake. The relationships and friendships.
Even more than revisiting some of those times, what I would truly love is the chance to meet the ‘me’s who would have grown out of other decisions. The Richards who chose to walk other roads.
I wish I could have the chance to listen to what they learned and to see how this choice made that difference.
In the last little while, I’ve been reconnecting with people from different times in my life. My highschool daze, my university years, my time as a newly forming minister. In the process of feeling out the possibilities of friendship again, I’ve found myself in conversations that call for remembrance and repentance, and – perhaps – for reconciliation.
Even if these moments of reconnection do not grow into renewed friendship, the ability to repent – and the ability to release both my own Self and the Other – is well worth looking back on the path I’ve taken.
