Gate to Gate

“We will arrive in two hours, ten minutes, gate to gate,” chimed the flight attendant. In such time I would reach my destination in Denver, my new job, my new home. I realized with her words that the only other time I’ve flown one-way to my new home occurred back in July 2007 when I joined African Children’s Choir.  I have driven to every other new home I’ve ever had. Whether it was to college in Spokane, Zion National Park for a summer job, or just down the street to a new apartment, my journey has been a gradual move from one place to another. With these trips I often spent hours jamming to music and cruising through the nation’s diverse landscape. Those hours also gave me the luxury of great thinking time and a gradual shift into what would be a very different life.  This gate-to-gate transition, however, felt anything but gradual.

Life in general is very much like a gate-to-gate move. Out one slimy gate only to reach the pearly one somewhere on the time continuum.  Along the way we embrace, sometimes with boredom, the routines such as brushing our teeth, waking up for work, or smiling for pictures just as a flight attendant services on-flight beverages.  We meet a variety of people along the way, those who inspire us in conversation, simply want to yak our ear off, or glide on by in their parallel universe, ear buds in.  At moments (some longer than others) we endure turbulence or joyfully embrace the highlights along the way. With this new perspective, the trip I took this afternoon was a blip on the timeline, and yet the tears wanting to pop through their gates tell me otherwise. The expanse of my current gate-to-gate just doesn’t seem to be the right timing.

Throughout my life I’ve wanted weeks to speed toward Friday or days to slow down to a crawl. When I think about my vocation or God given purpose, I’m filled with urgency.  Tomorrow I will begin an internship that forces people to respond to an unexpected shift in their gate-to-gate journey. As a chaplain in a community hospital, I suspect to encounter people dealing with some very similar emotions and questions that I face during my two-hour flight.  At times the quick change of bodily and emotional wellness will be completely debilitating. In other circumstances, patients will have had time to get use to the idea of their illness and the consequences.

When I began this post, I didn’t quite get the significance of the gate-to-gate journey. I thought I was simply taking advantage of time-efficient machines and choosing to courageously leap from one life to another. Now I realize that this quick trip forced me to think differently about transitions, life experiences, and perspectives of our time on earth. I had tapped the reflective resources of the 13-hour drive routine to the next home.  Likewise, my emotional and experiential capacity to engage in my new destination will benefit from my quick airplane transition.

Over the next several days and weeks, I hope to share more reflections about life’s gate-to-gate experiences.  Not only does this allow me to engage with my present moments, but also I find it a special and helpful way to stay to connected to those far from my new home.  My days may become routine in my eyes, but hopefully I can continue to tap into reflective resources along the way.