The days since I first learned how to drive a car seem like centuries ago. Back in the day we teenagers took "Driver's Ed" at school after hours, and a good deal of that training time was spent watching monochrome movies left over from the 1950s, often depicting horrific car crashes and carnage on the highways. The strategy was apparently to frighten us into being safe behind the wheel. Since nobody wore seatbelts back then, perhaps it wasn't an entirely bad idea.

The voice over the film clips imparted sage bits of driving wisdom from the narrator. The one I always remember was the rule that one should always "aim high in steering." That meant that a good driver should not pay attention to what was five feet in front of the car, but instead should focus on what was 50 or 100 feet ahead. That seemed wise to me. Today we have electronic voices inside the car telling us how to navigate the next ten feet: "Turn left!".  

I think that contrast may be a good metaphor for thinking about the world we suddenly now inhabit. Many of us are accustomed to "aiming high" in thinking about the unfolding of our life plans, how our careers and families will unfold, how the world will develop and change, how the Church will evolve, and how the big picture will take shape. But for the past few months the big picture has been thoroughly obscured and disfigured. The trajectories that we always assumed would be in place—our educational opportunities, our jobs, our retirements, our common worship, our exposure to health risks, our safety from violence—have all suddenly been altered. And that is very disquieting. For a while we are being forced to live in a much more moment-to-moment situation, or to say it another way, "aiming low" in steering. Grand plans have to give way to more immediate judgments for now. 

For as disruptive as that can be, there can be a grace in it. If we can't necessarily know what is going to happen next week or next year, we can make decisions about what it is we need to be doing now, today. That's not a surrender to blind fate. It's a thoughtful response to the knowledge that we have presently, and it is a trust in the abiding guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us through the next turn in the maze. (For people of faith, trust is always harder than gut determination). It is also a corrective to our sometimes inflated assumptions about how much control we ever actually have over the conditions of our common life. To be made to recognize that is a blessing, not a threat, even though it's uncomfortable. That's why it's good to pray daily, and not just when we are up against a frustrated imagination about how things will all turn out.

A renewed summons to prayer can never be a bad thing.