"Lessons from the Road:
Part III"
A sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
October 4, 2009
READINGS:
The ancient reading for this morning is Chapter One or the
"Tao te Ching, by Lao Tzu and translated by Charles Muller:
The Way that can be followed is not the eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth,
While naming is the origin of the myriad things.
Therefore, [being] without desire, you see the mystery.
Ever desiring, you see the manifestations.
These two are the same-
When they appear they are named differently.
This sameness is the mystery,
Mystery within mystery;
The door to all marvels.
The modern reading is from John Steinbeck's chronicle, "Travels
with Charley."
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me,
I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.
When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle
age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my
fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the
job. Noth-ing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle
still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The
sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod
hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth
and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under
the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words,
once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incur-able. I set
this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
SERMON:
For those of you who may not have been with us back in July when
I delivered the first two installments of, "Lessons from the
Road," I'll take just a minute to bring you up to date. I set
out at that time to share some of the lessons and metaphors that
I'd experienced along a 3,030-mile bicycle journey that I took this
past spring as part of my sabbatical leave. Two riding companions,
Kriss Wells and Bill Slezak, accompanied me. We pedaled up and down
mountains, across rivers, deserts, prairies and farmlands, going
coast-to-coast through 13 states from the California Pacific shore
to the Atlantic coast of Delaware. Along the way there were so many
things and experiences that we came upon. Some of those experiences
leapt out at us with immediate meaning, and others of them were
more discreet. As I started taking a closer look at a number of
these "lessons," I found them to be loaded with what I
thought might provide some good sermon material and food for thought.
In July my goal was to do a sermon allowing me to share some of
these gleanings. I discovered that by the time I stood here in the
pulpit that first week, I had to confess to coming up with a bit
more material than I'd anticipated. I announced that I was changing
my title from, "Lessons from the Road," to, "Lessons
from the Road: Part I." I promised that I would deliver the
remainder on the following Sunday. But the same thing happened the
next week. "Lessons…Part II," became, "Lessons…Part
II of III. And so I didn't quite get finished this summer.
So let me begin by saying this morning that I'll be sticking to
my guns, which is a peculiar metaphor in itself. With only the slightest
equivocation, it is my intention that, even though I surely will
not get anywhere close to finishing these lessons today, this will
be the last of this sermon series. This doesn't mean that I won't
be slipping more stories from my biking adventure into other sermons
from time to time. It just means that I reckon it's time to be…
moving on. I would also want to let you know that, after much encouragement
from many of you, I am working on a book. "Lessons from the
Road: Moving on," is a project in which I will do my best to
purge myself of every last possibility I can think of in scripting
these lessons.
All of this, the trip and the many lessons experienced while on
it, is based on what, for me, was an adventure of a lifetime. The
thing is that the adventure journey is a metaphor for life. In a
short and intense span of time the wanderer experiences countless
occurrences, opportunities and challenges that are something of
a microcosm of the larger journey that is life. Homer tells of Odysseus'
ever-interrupted journey. Dante scours the far regions of hell.
Beowulf battles men and monsters of the deep. Henry David Thoreau
travels throughout the transcendent universe going no further than
the environs of Walden Pond. Jack Kerouac finds himself amid his
own antics against an American backdrop. William Least Heat Moon
finds himself amid a world fused of nature and spirit. John Steinbeck
discovers America and himself in his travels with a dog named Charley.
And Charlie Ortman pedals his way towards connection and meaning
while biking across the USA.
Very often on our trip we'd start riding for the day or start up
again after a rest break by mounting our bikes and shouting out
a kind of charge. That way we stood a better chance of all being
mindfully and safely in sync with one another as we set out. So,
one of us would trumpet our departure by hollering something encouraging
like, "We're rolling," or, "Head'em up and move'em
out," or, "Moving on," or something like that. "Moving
on," seems like a good beginning and ending for many experiences
in life. And so I use it here as a repeated segue.
Moving on…
I spoke in one of the earlier segments about going to Greensburg,
Kansas. We happened to be there on the second anniversary of a tornado
that struck and leveled the town, killing 12 of its residents. The
local John Deere farm equipment dealership was destroyed by that
storm. By the time of our arrival, they had rebuilt, bigger and
better than ever. They were celebrating their Grand Opening in conjunction
with the anniversary of the cyclone. Maybe as many as 1,500 people
from Greensburg and the outlying areas, if an outlying area can
have outlying areas, 1,500 had answered the invitation to come and
celebrate the recovery and the opening over a barbecue lunch with
entertainment.
Everyone was invited. "You all are invited, too," we
were assured by folks in town. "Go on out there and have yourselves
some lunch," they said. "You'll meet lots of nice folks
out there, too." And sure enough we did meet several pleasant
Kansans. In fact, I was introduced to Mrs. Kelly Estes, the wife
of the couple that owned the dealership. Mrs. Estes assured me that
we were indeed welcome and that she was only too pleased that we
could see for ourselves Greensburg at its best. She encouraged us
to eat our fill, "…and then some!"
The lines to the several dozen tables serving the down-home and
delicious cooking were formidable but they moved along at a good
pace. The time spent on line provided a great opportunity to visit
with a good many people along the way. Kriss had wandered off, on
his own, for a while. Bill and I (both off-the-chart extroverts
on the Myers/Briggs Personality Scale) had a great time meeting
and chatting with people as we snaked our way with and through the
masses of those gathered.
I mentioned in my earlier segment on Greensburg that we sort of
stuck out of the crowd, rather considerably, in our biking outfits,
complete with what appeared to be our sprayed-on Lycra biking shorts.
No one seemed to think of us as strange, though. At least they did
a good job of not appearing like they thought of us as strange.
I'm somewhat chagrinned that, at least in my head, I couldn't help
but noticing several dozen folks there, scattered through the crowd,
who had a very Amish-like appearance. One of those couples was just
in front of us in the food line.
They were Kent and Ann Brewbaker. Kent wore a straw hat and trousers
held up by suspenders. The sleeves of his broad cloth shirt were
rolled up; he sported a clean upper lip and a long beard that was
allowed to grow only from the under regions of his square chin.
Ann wore a long cotton dress with her hair done up in a bun that
was covered by a white lace cap that tied under her chin. She wore
the ultimate in sensible walking shoes, which laced up over the
tops of her ankles and were constructed of sturdy black leather.
I don't know about you, but I have to admit to always having had
a little discomfort around folks who looked like Kent and Ann. I
have found them to be a bit standoffish, which I suspect now has
been my own projection. But that's been fine by me, because I've
never really known what I might say to start a conversation. They
tend to be on the very conservative end of the religious spectrum
and I... well, I not. But the thing is, now I suspect I've passed
up many wonderful oportunities.
Turns out, Kent and Ann were not Amish anyway. They were members
of the Ana Baptist Church of the German Brethren. They didn't live
in Greensburg but about 25 miles away in the town of Sawyer. They
had a big farm and did a lot of business with the Estes's John Deere
Dealership. And they didn't come to town in a horse and carriage,
but drove a Ford pickup, their usual mode of transportation.
Kent had a particularly peculiar sense of humor, much like my own.
And so the four of us quite enjoyed our visit on the way to the
serving tables. There was a lot of joking around and a whole lot
of laughter. I have to wonder though, if the Brewbakers had to dispel
reservations and biases about us because of our appearance, too.
No matter, we quickly became good friends as can only happen when
people meet on the road. There, you make friends fast or not at
all.
By the time we got served and our plates were loaded, we'd somehow
managed to go in a different direction from the Brewbakers. When
Bill and I found a place to sit we, couldn't find Kent and Ann.
About an hour later though, they found us. They were getting ready
to leave and wanted to say goodbye. (Maybe our attire did make it
easier to pick us out in the crowd??!!) We'd talked a bit about
our bike trip in the earlier conversation, but the Brewbakers wanted
to know more about it.
We told them about our daily rituals and distances, about our route,
and about Toni's Kitchen and raising money and awareness regarding
hunger. They asked where we were hoping to get by the end of that
day's ride. The conversation was about the kinds of things you'd
talk about with friends. Then a big flow of people came through
and Kent and Ann sort of got washed away by the current. "Goodbye,
God bless…" they hollered as they disappeared into the
crowd.
"Great people," Bill said.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Great people, I liked them a
lot."
Later that afternoon, about three hours and 32 miles down the road,
we were nearing the town of Pratt, which was our destination for
the day. As we went through the crossroads just before town, there
was a pickup truck pulled over to the side of the road, with the
driver honking and waving at us. Sure enough, it was Kent and Ann
Brewbaker. Somehow they figured out where we'd be and how long it
would take us to get there. "We just wanted to make a little
contribution to that soup kitchen," Kent said, slipping me
a couple of $20 bills.
"And we want to invite you to join us at a community potluck
dinner tonight in Sawyer," Ann said. "It's potluck, but
we'll be bringing plenty enough to cover for all of us. It's only
10 miles straight south of Pratt. It's at the firehouse starting
at 6:30. You can drive your RV down. Sure hope you can join us."
By 6:30 we'd shaved, showered and shined ourselves up, and we were
walking into the firehouse in Sawyer, Kansas. We were there for
the community potluck dinner to raise funds for a new truck for
the volunteer fire department. About half of the folks there were
from the Ana Baptist Church of the German Brethren; the other half
was not. We were friends of the Brewbakers, so we got to sit with
the Ana Baptist crowd. We ate and talked and laughed a lot. Theological
discourse was quite unnecessary. By the way, the food was about
as good as it gets. So was the experience with our new friends.
Charlotte Bronte wrote: "Prejudices, it is well known, are
most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never
been loosed or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as
weeds among rocks."
I'm not saying that I would be as good of friends with all members
of the Ana Baptist Church of the German Brethren as I became with
the Brewbakers. Then again, I couldn't say that I wouldn't be. In
relation to Charlotte Bronte's thought about the need for education
to eradicate prejudice, I don't think there's any education quite
as profound as experience, and no better classroom than a table
spread with good food and surrounded by good folks. That is to say,
we learn about people by being with them, by being in relationship
with them.
Moving on…
Cell phones don't work with the greatest consistency across much
of the breadth of this country. There were lots of places where
I got no service at all. But I would always get messages eventually,
even if I couldn't speak directly to someone trying to reach me.
Sometimes this made things cumbersome, but then I'd remember that
it wasn't so many years ago there were no cell phones at all. Things
change, but some things don't.
I got a message one morning that had come in the night before.
Judy Tomlinson had phoned to say that Nancy Knoerzer was dying.
They didn't think she would live another 24 hours.
Nancy had been the president of this congregation when I arrived
14 ½ years ago. She had led the congregation through a very
difficult interim ministry and she was not all that sure whether
or not she was going to just turn this place, her place, over to
this new minister coming down from Massachusetts. It really was
her place. Nancy's parents were members of this congregation. She
had been a part of it and it had been a part of her for four score
years, to borrow a phrase from history. And Nancy was the congregation's
historian.
She and I struggled mightily that first year. By the end of it
though, our mutual love for this community had transformed our personal
relationship into one of great love and trust for each other. Over
the years that relationship grew - through good times and bad, as
they say. I visited her many times in the hospital in the weeks
preceding my bike trip, a trip that she encouraged me to take. On
those visits we laughed and cried, talked and sang together.
Now I was close to 2,000 miles away and Nancy was back home dying.
I made an early morning call to the house. Stacey, her nurse manager
whom I knew well, answered. "The girls have gone to Chris'
to get a little rest," she said. "Nancy's had a really
rough night, Charlie, and it seems like she just can't let go."
Stacey and I talked for a bit and then I said, "Tell her that
I love her and that I'm praying she'll be able to go easily."
I got off the phone and immediately thought, "Why didn't I
tell her myself?" Through the morning I found myself pedaling
along and singing "For the Beauty of the Earth," Nancy's
all-time favorite hymn.
When we broke for lunch, I called the house again. I expected to
hear that she had died sometime in the morning. "She's still
here," Nancy's oldest daughter, Lee told me. "She just
won't let go, Charlie." We talked for a while more and then
I asked Lee to put the phone to Nancy's ear so that I could speak
to her. I've been in this business long enough to know that, even
in a deep coma, sometimes people hear what's said to them. Lee said
she would.
I was given a dispensation, a second chance to say goodbye, myself.
Lee put the phone to her mother's ear and I spoke to Nancy for a
couple of minutes. I said all of the things I would hope to say
to this octogenarian whom I loved and admired and who had lived
such a noble life filled with integrity.
It wasn't until a day later that I learned Nancy had died about
ten minutes after our phone call.
We live in an incredible age of technology that can sometimes be
such a blessing. I was more than halfway across the country and
yet had been given the gift of being present at the bedside of a
dying loved one here in Montclair. Through the miracle of technology,
I was actually able to be in two places at once, pedaling down the
road through terrain I'd never encountered before, as well as rooted
to a person and a set of ideals that have been a part of my life
for a very long time.
Relationships. That's how we know who we are. That's how others
know us. It doesn't happen in a vacuum or isolation. It's always
in relationships… with people, with ideas and values, with
our planet.
Maya Angelou wrote these words that I shared at Nancy's memorial
service in June after my return home:
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always irregularly:
Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never to be the same,
whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be better.
For they existed.
Moving on…
Near the final days of our trip, we rode across a rustic old bridge
in West Virginia,. We'd been pedaling through some very lush and
at times challenging hills when we came upon this crude but sturdy
plank overpass. It reached from the top of one side of a cavernous
ravine, way out through space, to a ledge on the opposite side.
"You know," I said to Kriss as we rode across it, "sometimes
bridges, even really bumpy ones, are a godsend. They save one hell
of a lot of pedaling and time and blood, sweat and tears."
I couldn't help but to share my profound gratitude for the bridge
out loud.
A few minutes later, Kriss said, "Were you really talking
about that bridge back there, or are you speaking in metaphors again?"
"Well," I said. "It really was a bumpy, rough bridge.
And did you see how far down that ravine went!? It would've taken
forever to ride all the way to the bottom and then have to pedal
back out! I was talking about that bridge." A minute later
though, I had to add, "But I suppose it's that way with plenty
of other things, too. Lots of times it seems like, even though it
may be difficult and not easily seen, there's a route for getting
where we want to go, for achieving what we hope to achieve. And
then sometimes a different, maybe a more direct path for getting
there appears. It might be a bit rougher in the transition, but
it might offer a better chance of getting us where we want to be."
I thought of a time when I'd lost a job, only to have it replaced
with a far better one. I thought of a marriage I was in as a young
man, a marriage that had painfully ended only to leave open the
possibility of a far more fulfilling relationship and a healthier
marriage down the road. "I guess it could go either way,"
I finally said to Kriss. "I was talking about that bridge,
but I guess it's a metaphor, too." I suppose good metaphors
should have their basis in real experience.
When Kriss asked me about bridge and metaphors, something clicked,
sometimes things do. Clouds will part and you can see things that
are often obscured by the shadows that so often form the borders
of our perception. His question helped me to appreciate that nearly
everything we had seen, done and experienced along our 3,000-mile
trek had deeper meaning than what might have met the eye. It seemed
that everything we had encountered had implications for other areas
of our lives. So much of it merited our attention and consideration.
The thoughts I've expressed in this sermon series represent a small
sampling of the gleanings that are the fruits of the time that you
provided for me, through my sabbatical leave. I have shared them
with you as a way of saying thank you. My hope is that they might
have meaning for you, too. Or better yet, they might help you to
be more in touch with some of your own experiences, observations
and lessons along the road you travel. The truth is that all of
us are al-ways… moving on.
|
