I heard Ann Bancroft, Arctic explorer and educator, being interviewed on the radio today. After the introduction that included her many accomplishments,the host asked her what she was doing these days. Her reply? "I’m between expeditions right now. Not, "I am not doing anything." or "I don’t know what’s next for me." but "I’m between expeditions right now." What a wonderful answer!

Hearing her words I wondered what might happen if we treated all those times when we don’t know what the next step will be for us as simply a time ‘between expeditions.’ When we are between expeditions, it is easier to be creative in our thought process. We use our imaginations and live by our dreams. We make our questions big and bold in the asking. We spend time mulling over the possibilities rather than limiting the next step with practicalities. We rely on the Spirit’s movement to nudge us, to breathe life into the small spaces of our plans. We consult maps and look at all the outlying areas in addition to the well defined, clear and familiar roadways.

Are you between expeditions right now? Sometimes this in-between time is a situation not of our own choosing. It does not feel like a gift or luxury but a sentence to be lived out. Through illness, life changes, job loss, grief, depression, we can find ourselves in the land of in-between. Other times we have intentionally chosen to leave one place and have no idea where the road will take us. Whatever has led to where we are, I believe there is gift in thinking of the present moment as ripe with possibility.

In the Book of Exodus, the people are always on one expedition or another. From slavery to freedom, despair to hope, from faithfulness to disobedience, on the one hand believing God is with them and the next moment that they have been abandoned completely.Their wilderness is both actual landscape and spiritual desolation. But as Moses led them from one expedition to the next, "God went in from of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people."

I believe it is the same with us….the Holy travels with us even when we are between expeditions.