On the Road to Reconnecting

Our 2020 calendar included five out-of-state road trips, all cancelled with the onset of COVID- 19. During the winter of 2021 – 2022, seeing the growing percentage of the population achieving a level of immunity due either to vaccination or infection, reading about declining rates of hospitalizations and death, and trusting that the trajectory of the disease would continue in the right direction, Judy and I planned 2022 as the year of the road trip. We have six road trips on the calendar between the beginning of June and the middle of October, everything from an “over-nighter” in southern Wisconsin to a sixteen day “southwestern tour” including Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.

Yes, road trips have a lot to do with owning a Mazda Miata. We have loved and driven these little two-seat roadsters since 1999. There is nothing like the experience of the open road in an open car. But this year’s roads trips are about more than the Miata. The 2020 road trips are about reconnecting with people from whom we have been separated by disease, distance, and the simple busy-ness of our lives. The trips to Pennsylvania allow us to attend our great nephew’s confirmation and my mother’s 90th birthday celebration. The trip to Michigan allowed us to finally meet a friend’s “new” husband. COVID-19 had prevented me from traveling to Michigan to preside at their wedding in 2020. The trip to the Southwest allows us to spend time with a niece we haven’t seen since her father’s death seven years ago and to see for the first time in more than a decade, my “ecclesiastical daughter,” a member of my first parish who I supported in her journey toward rostered ministry and sponsored at her ordination. The Miata Club tour we lead brought together people who had not been together on an overnight multi- day tour since 2019.

It is not easy to reconnect by road trip. There were routes to plan. There were planned visits that had to be rescheduled. There was a search for housing and hotel rooms to be reserved. There’s laundry to do and luggage to pack. Newspapers to cancel and mail to be held. Afterward there are the credit card bills to pay. Reconnection involves work, but the reward of seeing, hugging, talking face-to-face with those most important to those far overshadows any cost.

The St. Luke’s Strategic Plan, developed through the congregational interviews conducted by the Vision Team, focuses on what was heard as a primary concern of our parishioners, creating opportunity to reconnect. The Strategic Plan will call us to do some things differently. It will challenge us to make new commitments. It will ask us to be patient as we test out new ideas. As much as we have said we want to reconnect, it will not always be easier. But the reward of finding ourselves more deeply invested in one another and in the mission of St. Luke’s will overshadow the times of testing, discomfort, and discovery necessary in making the trip.

Pastor John E. Schumacher, BCC