"Are we there yet?" A ubiquitous question on a road trip. We have been the parent telling the bored child that we have not yet arrived. We may remember being the cooped up, restless child who longs to get out of the car at our destination.

When I was a young child, we drove to Nova Scotia every summer to see my mother's parents and siblings. It was such a long drive that there was no point asking if we were there yet. It seemed we would never arrive. Driving more often from Kitchener to see my father's father in Oakville, I got to know the landmarks and could tell myself how much of the journey we had accomplished, how close to arriving we were. But even if I did not ask, "Are we there yet?" those drives were all about the destination.

A road trip has multiple purposes. We want to get away from home for a while. We get feeling cooped up, restless, caught in the same old, same old. There is a reason to leave.

There is a destination, a place or person we want to get to. Sometimes the reason to arrive is urgent, and we take the quickest route, hardly noticing what we pass by. We plan around traffic we can predict, chafe at construction, think of nothing but getting to the destination.

Sometimes we are able to plan the journey in a way that makes travelling enjoyable as well. We plan a journey with scenery we can appreciate, stops along the way that we can enjoy. We make the journey count.

Last week, reading the story of the end of the life of Moses on the edge of the promised land, I stopped to think about the three parts of the journey he led: leaving, arriving and travelling.

The reason to leave was clear: the oppression that the people were experiencing as slaves: daily hardship; threats to their lives and the lives of their children.  

The leaving was dramatic. Pharaoh did not want to give up this chunk of his workforce. Plagues descended, and finally, the last was too harsh, too costly. Pharaoh let them leave. The people hurried away, taking only what they could grab, knowing Pharaoh might change his mind. As he did. The final moment of leaving had the Red Sea open for them and crash down on Pharaoh's army.

From the beginning, the destination was clear. Moses and the Israelites were going back to the land that God promised first to Abraham and Sarah, and then to each generation of their descendants.

But in between leaving and arriving, a journey shaped them.

On the first part of the journey the people learned to trust God to lead them with pillars of cloud and fire, to feed them with manna, to give them water in the barren places. Their covenant relationship was renewed.

Then, they were given the law. Not just the ten commandments, but a series of instructions to shape all of life. They began to learn to live these instructions which would form their identity and that of their descendants.

At the end of the journey, Moses stood overlooking the promised land, studying the place the people would enter and live, but he did not cross over. He died in the wilderness. It has always felt sad to me that the one who made leaving and travelling possible did not get to arrive.

But this week, I came across a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. that echoes Moses' experience: “I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know, that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

When King spoke those words, he and others had shaped a movement, set a goal and a destination, and were moving their country, reluctantly, toward that destination. They knew they were on a long journey with a destination guiding them.

I feel sad hearing that quotation in the current context. Black people, indigenous people, people of colour have not yet arrived in the promised land. Our societies have lingered quite near to Egypt despite the promise, the hard work, the dream.

But the dream remains. There have been landmark accomplishments that mark progress toward the dream. And the journey toward the promise continues.

Leaving is important--it identifies what we need to change. Arriving is good--change for the better transforms lives. But in between leaving and arriving is the journey where we learn to live the change. The way we travel shapes our lives and the dream. Every step of the journey matters.  

Cathy Hird lives in the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway