“A Bicyclist’s Guide to the Galaxy”
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
October 1, 2006
READINGS
The first reading is from the African American spiritual that is based on text from the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament:
Ezekiel saw a wheel, way up in the middle of the air.
Ezekiel saw a wheel way in the middle of the air.
Little wheel run by faith, big wheel run by the grace of God.
Ezekiel saw a wheel way in the middle of the air.
The second reading is from a piece entitled, “Life Cycle,” by bicycling essayist Geoff Maxted:
The truth is out there on shifting single-track deep in green forests; on shardy granite tracks across our remaining primordial places and on the rural lanes and byways waiting patiently to be discovered. Trail biking isn't just the preserve of lycra-clad youth like some sort of anti-culture; it's something the whole family can enjoy for little expense. We may be seduced by shiny, fully sprung aluminum harlots beckoning to us from bike shop windows, but the fact is there's nothing inherently wrong with a triangular steel bike frame and a rigid fork.
Biking is about seeing the world from a different perspective; an escape from grey government and boring business; from the shop floor and the high rise. It's about pitting yourself against yourself and winning; forgetting, for a while, the hassles of modern life. Bills are for tomorrow. If you're not already addicted it may be, that after the first few turns of the cranks, you will hear the call and, converted, at the end of your ride the sound you'll hear is your own elemental heart applauding.
SERMON
Now I know a lot of modern day Bible interpreters would have you believe that those wheels Ezekiel saw were the rotors of some kind of extra-terrestrial flying machinery. Anthropologist Erik von Daniken would surely try to convince you of that. I for one would offer a different possibility for your consideration. I suspect that the prophet Ezekiel saw a vision, thousands of years into the future, of a bicycle. Maybe a penny-farthing with the big wheel in front and the little one in back, like in the early days of biking, or maybe just a regular two-wheeler like we have now. It’s not an impossible thought that Ezekiel envisioned a bike. Biking does require a penchant for faith and it relies on a good deal of grace.
Just a small caveat before proceeding… What this sermon is not about is the value of bicycling in order to promote more responsible modes of transportation, nor the community building as well as the community transformation that can come about as a result of reliance on bicycles for transportation. Our member, Jerry Fried, provided a lay led summer service a couple of years ago on that topic, “Building Community through Cycling.” I recently had the opportunity to read it. He did a great job and I quite agree with everything he said. Our world would indeed be better off in so many ways, and communities would be enriched in so many ways, if in fact we were to become a nation of cyclists. I don’t need to repeat what Jerry said in that sermon but I hope we can make it available on our website so that if you missed it, you can still get a chance to read it. (Click here to read the sermon>>)
My hope for this morning is perhaps to provide a prequel to Jerry’s sermon. A biking culture would be a great thing to live in, but I suspect it’s not something likely to happen unless folks find their personal interests met by biking as well. So I’ll hope to share three things about this theme of bicycling with you this morning. First, by way of introduction, is a sketch of my own bike-odyssey in the hope that it might bring your own to mind. Or, if you don’t have a history of biking to help you to recognize the enormity of its absence in your life and encourage you perhaps to pedal your way into a new life experience. Second, stemming from the first, will be the exploration of bicycling as a metaphor for LIFE – a tall order, but not overly so. And finally, growing out of the second, a look at what such a metaphor might mean if we’re willing to live with the guidance it offers.
I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I learned to ride a bike; five or six. It was in the basement of our house, while my mom was doing laundry. With 10 kids, she did a lot of that. When I’d steadied the two-wheeler, she dutifully put down her iron and applauded. I was pleased for the attention but even more pleased for the feeling of self-propelled mobility. I didn’t think of it in those terms at that time, but that was the heart of it. If I kept pedaling and kept my balance, I could keep right on going. It was and remains amazing!
Our family had a collection of mostly old bikes that we just kept fixing and re-fixing. One Christmas when I was about 10, there was a shiny red Schwinn Spitfire standing under the tree. It didn’t have hand brakes or any speeds, but it was brand new. And it wasn’t exactly mine; it was for both me and my brother. We learned a lot about the struggles of sharing through the joint ownership of that bike.
I remember one time, it must have been around seventh grade. My best friend, Johnny Kinser (someone I still visit at least once a year) and I were out for a joyride. I had the Spitfire and John had his upscale Schwinn with its hand brakes and three speeds. For some reason that day, we decided to swap bikes for a while. We ended up riding around behind the local T.B. Sanatorium and up onto their truck loading dock. As we neared the end of the ramp and the fast approaching four foot drop, John kept squeezing my handlebar grips like crazy and yelling, “I can’t make it stop!” It wasn’t a pretty landing; Ezekiel could have seen the wheels, way in the middle of the air. By a couple of days later, John was as good as new, and Spitfire came through with hardly a scratch.
My childhood didn’t occur in an era when parents drove kids around to different events. We walked or rode bikes if we were going to get anywhere. Biking was way faster than walking. It was a no-brainer until I got to high school and it wasn’t so cool to use a bike. Even then though, I still used mine a fair amount.
Years passed and I moved away. I was a young man of 22 living in Chicago . Some of my friends got new bikes and that seemed like a great idea. I got my first new bike that I owned all by myself. It was a 10-speed Italian racing bike, a Fiorelli. It was beautiful – yellow with kind of orange/red trim and handlebar tape. It was sleek and lightweight, and I loved it. Mostly, I loved riding on the lakefront, but I used it for my regular transportation much of the time, too. There was just a feeling of well-being when I rode my bike, pedaling along, slicing through the breeze, weaving in and out, and responding to variations in the world around me.
When I went through a divorce a couple years later, I’m not saying I was totally sane, but what sanity I did maintain, I suspect was largely the result of the oneness I experienced while biking. Body and spirit united in the task of getting me from one place to another, from one space of low spirit to another space where my spirit could be raised up. Lots of days, I’d ride 30, 40 or 50 miles along the lake. A few times, I’d take off out of the city, riding as far as a hundred miles in a day. Little wheel run by faith and the big wheel run by the grace of God. It was very healing.
When I left Chicago , my Fiorelli came with me, of course. We lived in several places together. Sometimes our relationship was quite close; other times less so. The next major stretch of biking for me came years later when we were living in Davenport , Iowa . By that time Judy and I had met, were married and had three children. There were great bike paths in Davenport , all along the edge of the Mississippi River and through town along one of the river’s winding tributaries. I would often bike 12 to 15 miles in the morning before the kids got up. I loved going really fast. I loved the motion, the exercise, and the focus – all of it. The Fiorelli had a baby seat over the back wheel in those days; matching yellow, of course. When I’d ride later in the day, it would be with one of the kids in the seat. They loved it, too. At least they let me think that they did.
When we left Davenport , it was to live in Massachusetts for my first settled ministry. I was able to bike some, but quite a bit less. The Fiorelli kind of gave up the ghost while we were there. Twenty-three years wasn’t a bad life for it, though. It had kept the faith and had helped me to keep mine.
By the time we arrived in Montclair , I was back to riding on an old clunker we’d picked up along the way. My first couple of times out I thought for sure I was going to die; quite a bit of traffic here and very little space for bicycles. Since I wasn’t yet ready for that final bike ride in the sky, where Ezekiel saw his wheels no doubt, I decided this would not be a good place for me to ride. So, I didn’t. Eleven years later though, just this past spring, my body began to ache for something it had been missing for far too long.
I called Michael McTigue. Many of you know Michael. He’s a member of the congregation, a former Board member. Bicycling has long been one of Michael’s loves and these days he mostly can be found behind the counter of his very own bicycle shop over in Tenafly , NJ . So I called and asked Michael about a decent used bike. “How about a new one,” he said. “It won’t cost much more than what you thought you’d spend on a good used one. I think I’ve got just the one for you.”
“Okay,” I said, and he did. My first ride on my new Trek 7.2 and I was in love with bike riding all over again. That old feeling came right back. It was the feeling of self-propelled mobility, of liberation and exhilaration, of being enveloped in the salubrious air – even while slicing cleanly through it, of hard effort redeemed through miles traversed, of being in tune and in balance, of being at one in body and spirit, one with the world – even the galaxy, if not the entire universe. It washed over me like being re-baptized. I was born again.
Two weeks later, Judy, who has never really been a serious biker in her life, agreed to get a new bike, too. (Michael took great care of both of us, by the way, and he’s willing to deliver to the Montclair area!) Judy started off a little slowly at first, but now it’s often a struggle to keep up with her. She loves it as much as I do. What more could I ask?
I don’t know how many hundreds of miles we’ve ridden together or on our own in the short time since then. We’ve biked all over New Jersey . We strapped our bikes to the back of our car in August and traveled out on a southern route and then back on a northern one between here and the Mississippi River . Our first stop was in Pennsylvania , where we rode along a mountain trail with a couple of dozen 70 and 80 year olds that we met there. And then we went on to bike with family and some very dear friends (including my old friend John Kinser) along rivers, lakes and woods throughout the Midwest . It has been the most invigorating thing we have done in a very long time.
I’m not suggesting that everyone should be a bicyclist, just that I fancy myself to be one. I would suggest that it’s almost always a good idea to have some kind of pleasurable activity that recreates us. And when we find one that does, we’ve probably identified some kind of operational metaphor that connects us, on some deeper level to life.
A useful metaphor is one that not only serves its deeper meaning, it also serves well on its face. Biking does serve well simply as biking. It is a wholesome recreation, a fitness plan for body and spirit. It builds communities and it promotes a healthier environment.
I wonder if you’ve been drawing out elements of this bicycling metaphor, as I’ve been telling my story. Or maybe you’ve been plugging in pieces of your own stories, biking or otherwise, in an exploration of your own life’s trail. Since we’ve begun with biking though, and since it is such a useful metaphor, I’ll continue to draw on it as a metaphorical guide to the galaxy, or maybe more appropriately to life.
There are some givens to biking, just as there are in life. For example, we don’t ordinarily begin biking by simply having a bike appear out of nowhere, or creating it ourselves. Bikes are very often provided for us by others, initially most often as gifts. We might buy our own later on, but usually not the first one. Life is also a gift that’s given to us. It’s nothing we’ve earned; it was simply provided at our start. Later on we may have to do a lot in order to build the life we want. But even then, we’re always building upon that first gift, and then on top of what others have provided for us – along the way.
Biking is something that is sometimes done alone, sometimes with family, sometimes with friends or larger communities, sometimes even with total strangers. These are all different ways of biking and we learn different things about ourselves in each of these contexts. And we can always learn different ways, perhaps better ways, of being in all those situations so that biking can be better, safer, more enjoyable, and even more rewarding. Life provides us with no fewer possibilities, if anything, even more.
Biking is done at a myriad of speeds – a downhill, full tilt boogey; an uphill, hard push, crawl; the steady drive of an even plateau. Each has its own flavor of elation, its own set of demanding challenges, dangers, pitfalls, and joys. There are in our lives days that move so quickly that we have to hold on for dear life, challenges so severe that we struggle to just put one foot in front of the other, periods of flat continuity that seem like unending endurance marathons. Did I mention danger? And did I mention joy? What is life if we take no risks? And what is life if it provides no joy?
Biking, possibly more than any other quality, is about balance. It doesn’t matter if it’s fast or slow, if it’s all by yourself or in a great crowd. If you cannot maintain your balance you quickly become a menace to yourself and everyone around. How is balance maintained? Only by moving. One cannot bicycle standing still, and we have to move of our own volition. As much as we might want it to, life cannot leave us standing still, either We grow up, grow older, major life events occur – failures and successes, losses and gains – and we must learn to move through them all, if we are going to maintain our balance, if we’re going to stay in the game. Sometimes our bicycles get pretty wobbly; sometimes we fall or crash. And maybe, it takes us a while to get up and moving once again. But to be moving, to get back in balance, is to get back into life.
I mentioned that one of my experiences in biking is the sensation of unity between body and spirit. That’s a very difficult experience to describe but it has to do with a combination created by movement through space, by exertion of physical strength and mental agility, by breathing in and out, and by being so totally in the world. It all culminates in a feeling of unity that begins from some place inside, and then extends out into the world, and then comes back inside again. Of course this doesn’t happen fully every time I ride, but often. Perhaps that’s how the metaphor begins to guide us in the direction of right living and right relationship, through movement, physical and mental exertion, breathing in and out, and being directly in touch with the world and those who are in it. We are reminded to be mindful, to pay attention to what is inside, and to give service, striving to help bring the world around us into balance, as well. That does sound like a life of spiritual focus and discipline.
As Geoff Maxted wrote, “Biking is about seeing the world from a different perspective… It's about pitting yourself against yourself and winning…” Life, well lived, is always about seeing life from a fresh perspective. Life well lived is about positioning ourselves for ourselves and for those around us, and winning.
There is a quote that I was unable to find for this morning that basically says that each day when we get up we need to choose between being blessed by the richness of the world or committed once again to the struggle of making it a more just and loving place for everyone. I’m not so sure that we need to choose between them. Biking is a struggle and a blessing at the same time. There’s no reason why life should be any different. If we are both moving and in balance, we are in the struggles and in the blessings of either bicycling or tending to life. It’s the same.
And so in closing, I offer these words of poet Alvin Fine that I think apply well both to the adventure of cycling and to the journey of life.
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
But life is a journey,
A going --- a growing
From stage to stage.
From Childhood to maturity
And youth to age.
From innocence to awareness
And ignorance to knowing;
From foolishness to discretion
And then perhaps to wisdom.
From weakness to strength
Or strength to weakness---
And, often back again.
From health to sickness
And back we pray, to health again.
From offense to forgiveness,
From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude,
From pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding---
From fear to faith.
From defeat to defeat to defeat---
Until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey,
stage by stage
A sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning
And death a destination
But life is a journey,
A sacred pilgrimage
Made stage by stage---
From birth to death
To life Everlasting.
Remember, Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air! Tell me, what do you see?
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