c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

INDIANAPOLIS _ Today is the day. Like any “the day,” this cresting wave began far out to sea and only now washes over our feet.

Everything of value in my father’s house has been labeled: some for his new home at a retirement center, and the rest divided among the three children and bound for North Carolina, Seattle and 11 blocks away.

I feel a sense of loss as I wake up for the last time under a parental roof. My father’s sense of loss is greater than mine. The honeymoon that he and my late mother began 61 years ago May 4 takes yet another turn, receding farther from the dreams of war-torn 1943.

In a surprising display of efficiency, the telephone company has already shut down an account that began 54 years ago, when a young couple and two young children moved into the Humboldt Exchange. None of us has memorized the new number.

Now comes a final breakfast at the familiar table, bound soon for Seattle. Then take down Dad’s computer and wait for the moving crew. Then make sure the new apartment is set up and homey. Then find jackets for dinner in the retirement center’s handsome dining room.

Then another moving crew, this one interstate, then departures, then on to the next phases of our lives, furnished now with beloved treasures from a happy family home.

Years ago, Dave Miller and I wrote a column in our high school’s daily newspaper. We called it “From Now ‘Til Then.” I had no idea life would have so many “Thens,” so many moving vans.

I wonder if these “Thens” shape my perceptions of God. To my parents’ less mobile generation, Jesus might seem the settled master of a settled world. Hence their patience with church, their comfort with traditions, their resistance to change.

In my world of moving vans and new telephone numbers, the Gospel sounds different. I hear the pioneer in Jesus, the restless wanderer, the itinerant rabbi, the teacher who challenged and then moved on to avoid being captured prematurely. I hear stories of transformation, new creation.

When Jesus saw the Last Supper ending and his betrayer Judas Iscariot departing, he said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified.” Earlier generations heard the messianic title Jesus was giving himself _ the Book of Daniel’s apocalyptic image of imminent victory. Or they heard the “glory,” and believed in Jesus as supreme and themselves as chosen to share his glory. A few understood that “glorified” meant “crucified.”

What I hear, after a lifetime of moves, is the word “Now.” Jesus was changing course. They were breaking camp in their long wilderness wandering. A wave that began far out to sea was starting to crest and soon would wash everything away.

One division among Christians _ maybe the ground of all our sensible divisions, as opposed to nonsensical bigotry and fear _ has to do with that wave. Did it crest once, changing the shore and giving humanity a new coastline to inhabit? Or did the wave that crested two thousand years ago in Jerusalem signal a new storm, bringing many waves, many days of new creation, continually changing the coastline with power on the surface and a sobering undertow, never allowing us just to stand and admire the water?

Is “Now” ever settled and permanent, a fixed point by which we can steer? Or, as I believe, is “Now” just a prelude to “Then,” the last place I was but not the next?

I don’t presume to say I am right and others wrong. We all need to back off on the collision course of competing right-opinions. If we see God differently, it isn’t because some are wrong and others right, but because waves, storms and shifting sands make the seacoast ever-new.

But I do realize that I write these words under my dad’s roof, I will send them from my sister’s house, and I will read them 650 miles away. My father will read them at a table he built, but in a new home.

The words will find us. So, I believe, will God.

DEA/JL END RNS