This weekend we celebrate Father’s Day. If truth be told, Father’s day is for me a day of reflections. Some of that is about my own father, who died when I was only 22. Some of the reflections are about the people who have been models of fatherhood for me in my journey through life. But mostly, it is a time when I sit back and reflect on my children, and admire the people they have become in their lives. And enjoy being their Dad.
It is also a day filled with particular memories. For example, I remember walking on a beach on Prince Edward Island, early one summer morning in 1989. I had my son Luke, who was just a few months old, wrapped up in my sweater and held in my arms, and as we walked, the gentle rocking of my steps lulled him off to sleep. The morning stillness was carried on the ocean breezes, punctuated by the calls of birds and the song of surf on sand. My baby son was sleeping safe in my arms, and I was enjoying an exquisite experience of fatherhood, making a memory that I cherish to this day.
I remember looking out over the water and feeling drawn to look up. I saw that the moon was still in the sky, and I realised that the tide I had been pondering at the ocean’s edge was but the water being attracted by, drawn up to, the moon. It was for me, a profound insight. Not about how the moon actually caused the tide … I knew that already. Rather, the insight for me was that in order to understand what was happening with the water, I needed to look beyond the water.
Life is like that. In order to understand what is happening, we need to look beyond. In order to understand life, we need to look beyond life. It has been a central core of my way of seeing life, ever since.
Our readings today touch on this theme. Our first reading from the book of Job gives us the dialogue that God has with Job, one in which we are reminded that God is God. And we are not. Our vision is limited. Our knowledge is incomplete. The disciples in our Gospel today were so immersed in their present moment, that they forgot just who they were there with. Jesus had already manifested signs of an incredible power beyond their understanding. Yet, in the midst of the storm, they forgot all of that, and their fears entrapped them into a small and limited worldview.
How often our fears entrap us into a small and limited worldview. We have been travelling through an unprecedented time in our civilization. A pandemic storm, as it were. Perhaps our journey over these past 15 months has been less like sailing on rough waters, and more like travelling through a long, dark tunnel. For all of us, it has been an anxious time, surrounded by uncertainty and ambiguity. It has also been a time of fear, fear for our future, fear for our children. A fear that so easily can entrap us into a small and limited worldview. And now, finally, we are seeing some light at the end of this tunnel. Vaccines available and effective. The ability to adapt those vaccines to deal with mutations. This is all good.
But there is another way to look at tunnels. And that is as a metaphor for our journey through life. So the light at the end of the tunnel is not just a ‘calming of the pandemic seas’. It is even more than that.For me, as I journey through this tunnel of life, the light at the end of my tunnel is God. Or more specifically, it is the entry into a new form of existence with God. What we perhaps might call “Heaven”. Each of us have a concept of what that is – a personal concept of what heaven is like. Our image of the afterlife (hopefully!) brings us comfort and a sense that our life is so very much more than this mere flesh and blood experience. It reminds us, like the tides at PEI, that to understand what was happening with the water, I needed to look beyond the water. In order to understand life, we need to look beyond life.
It is why we are people of faith. It is why we are Christians. It is why we are Catholic. Because we believe that these present times and our present physicality are not the be-all and end-all of existence. That there is a spiritual dimension to our life that transcends the here-and-now. And ultimately- this entry into a new form of life, a spiritual form, is the light at the end of the tunnel called life.
Do I fear illness and death? A little bit. That’s normal. That’s human. But I don’t live in fear of it. I don’t let that fear get in the way of living my life, with all of its joys and sorrows, good times, tough times, times of tears and times of laughs. The joy of being a father. The experience of the love of family, the affection of friends. Of seeing the mystery of creation slowly and teasingly reveal itself to me. To have walked the seashore holding my child in my arms and saying thanks to God. To have sat on the top of a mountain in the Rockies, praying the psalms and saying thanks to God. To have lived a life that I know is like a tunnel – with the walls and boundaries of space and time blocking my sense of what lies beyond. To not let my fears entrap me into a small and limited worldview.
I don’t fear the tunnel of life. I have lived, and hope to live the rest of my life looking in awe at those tunnel walls, To lean close to them to listen to their story. To look intently on those walls as they reveal their beauty, their complexity, their mystery. To happily bounce off those walls from time to time and giggle like a child. Perhaps even to leave some graffiti on those walls for those travelling behind to read on their way past.And all the while, to try to remember that the light at the end of the tunnel of my life opens onto a vista that I can scarcely imagine.
So, is there a light at the end of my tunnel? Oh yes, indeed there is. But what is even more important, what is even more exciting, what is even more profound, is what lays beyond the light.