The Inn at the End of the Universe

This week I’m Teaching a Modular at Briercrest College, and staying for free at the Pilgrim Inn, in Caronport.  Tonight, I arrived from a dinner in Moose Jaw to a dark hotel, courtesy to a power outage of all Caronport.  I used the emergency lights to find my Room, went into the darkness and pulled open the curtains to let the full moon light my room up.

This is my life right now, I thought.  Living in Hotels.

I left the crushing summer I had, to return to Canada, end of August, to a time of waiting, and eventually an end of a visa, which forced me to return to USA, where I went to spend November and most of December with my Pops in Fontana, CA and work on my MFA.  I didn’t really know more than one or two people down there, and didn’t see them.

Half of December I spent in Hawaii with my Mom at her place, then back to Fontana, two days later Utah, two days later Moose Jaw, and now the Pilgrim Inn.

Good thing my laptop’s battery was charged.

I don’t feel too horrible, but the thought crosses my mind that I am completely alone, but not utterly alone.

  I have friends I get to visit, talk to on skype, girls who react well to me, want me for a while in many ways, I get to be loved by some of the most amazing people ever. I’m not utterly alone.

But I don’t have a place to call home, I’m living as a wanderer, with my roots yanked up from the soil I wanted to plant them into in Moose Jaw by the loss of my Visa, and now I’ve only a couple days to decide what move to make yet. I’m so tired of making moves.  I’m tired of being ripped from my community.  I travel alone, and I return to my room at the Inn alone. My friends can’t share that constant presence humans were designed for, girls don’t stay or are knocking on the wrong door with me. Anywhere I go I will be only visiting, and here, in my home of the past ten years, I’m forced to only visit.

I’m tired of moving, I thought the end of college would end that too, I want to settle down and build into something that really matters: a community: a family of my own.

I’m not complaining, but need to express my weariness and, like Abraham before me, look up at the stars and wonder if I trust myself that God has called me to follow him into the Promised Land.

Not sure how much I believe in the Promise Land anymore. Travel has a way of chipping away at it.

Can I be allowed to return to my apartment in the Upper Room and take a rest for a while, and catch my breath?

There is only peace in us where there is peace between us and heaven, and when there is peace between us and heaven, we have peace abundant in all calamity.

Is the peace I’ve had in college and Moose Jaw shown now to not be the peace of God, but of people?  Was it never God’s peace that held up my head, but rather the security of a community?

There is a peace I got when I left Moose Jaw for Fontana in November, or maybe that was the awesome freedom of giving up.  

I’m at The Inn on the End of the Universe, trying to figure out what giving up, being a wanderer, and peace, all really mean. 

I’m sorry God that I don’t expect anything from you.

I argue with myself and fall asleep in the darkness.

Now, in the morning, I press on and get on with asking myself what we’ll do today.