The name for this blog originated in my recent rediscovery of bicycling. As a pastor, my life is dedicated to the well-being of the church and its members. In pastoring, there is always more to be done than can ever get done, and to attend to one thing is necessarily to neglect something else. At least that is how it feels often enough. Not that this is particularly profound, but I’ve discovered that I neither know everything nor have the ability to be everywhere at once. Yes, I’m not God!
While I have never suffered from this delusion, consciously anyway, my actions at times belie this claim. Sometimes, I behave as though I really do believe I can know and do everything. The result, inevitably, is that I wear myself thin, physically and emotionally. A former pastor of our congregation was fond of saying, “Cemeteries are full of indispensable people.” Or to put it in the words of my doctor, “Tobias, you’ve got to do something about your health!” That caused me to think: If my life really is ‘dedicated to the well-being of the church and its members,’ then shouldn’t that include my own well-being? Pastor, shepherd thyself!
Not to go into too much detail, the results of my last physical revealed that my vitamin D level was so low that a gland called the parathyroid, responsible for the body’s calcium absorption, was doing a poor job of it. In short, my bones, according to a bone density scan, were looking like those of Sally Fields before she discovered Boniva. Low Vitamin D was a diagnosis I liked better than the one tested for first, namely a tumor on the parathyroid. I felt grateful to have escaped the specter of surgery. What I needed, beyond a Vitamin D supplement, was exercise and more exposure to sunlight.
Whatever exercise I chose, then, would have to be outdoors. Since jogging, for several reasons, was not an option, I began to walk. Walking, at least the way I practiced it for awhile, was difficult to integrate into my ‘perhaps not always needing but sometimes in fact having-to-be-everywhere-at-once’ profession. Therefore, my wife decided I needed a bicycle. Rather than make yet one more appointment, with myself, namely to exercise, I should integrate exercise into my day. And so she dragged me into a bike shop.
There, I asked about all kinds of bicycles other than the touring-type with ramshorn handlebars I used to ride back in my college days. I especially asked the shop owner about recumbent bicycles (the kind you ride in a seated position). After trying several of them, as well as the nerves of the store owner’s son, who got one after another of them down from the ceiling so I could try them out and, after I found them wanting, had to hang them all back up again, the owner asked me why I felt the need to try out recumbents. I told him I was too old for the kind of bicycle I used to ride, pointing to one on the showroom floor to indicate the kind I meant. Then he asked, “When was the last time you actually rode one of these?”
“About twenty years ago,” I answered.
“Well, then you’ve really got no idea what you’re talking about!” he responded.
He asked me what kind of riding I would be doing. “Mostly, I’ll be riding around town,” I said, “from my house to the office, to hospitals, and nursing homes, that sort of thing.” With that, he selected a bike, a hybrid, a compromise between the ruggedness of a mountain bike and the handling of a touring bike. He adjusted the seat for me, and told me to go for a spin. As I pedaled out across the parking lot, I became quickly convinced of my total ignorance – I was in love!
Since then, I not only ride around town, using my bike instead of the car whenever the weather, the distance, and time permits, but also on longer stretches, so far from Topeka to Alma, to Council Grove, to Lecompton, to Lake Perry, and who knows where all I’ll be headed in the weeks, months, and years ahead (if I’m lucky and don’t get run over by a semi). I have started dreaming about tackling even bigger distances, about someday going God alone knows where or how far away.
By cycling, I’ve grown muscle and lost weight; I feel generally healthier than I have felt in a decade and better equipped to deal with life’s inevitable stressors. By cycling, I spend more time with my family, every member of which, it seems, has caught the cycling bug in one form or another. My wife and I take our bicycles shopping or just ride recreationally together. The kids often join me in the evenings for a ride on a local trail, sometimes even on longer excursions. By cycling, I’ve discovered that when I get somewhere, I have not only physically arrived but mentally, too.
By cycling, life has somehow become richer. It is not only a great means of physical but also of spiritual regeneration and renewal. Riding my bicycle, especially on longer rides in the country, has become a means of prayer and contemplation. When I ride, I focus on the rhythm of my pedaling, as well as on the rhythm of my breathing, I arrive at a balance. And when that happens, everything around me, I discover, begins to enter into my awareness with an intensity I have not known before, and certainly not with this kind of regularity; everything looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels differently, is somehow connected with me rather than just being ‘out there.’ It is as if the body, exerted in this way, sets the mind free to receive rather than constantly to distinguish, analyze, and categorize. One’s perception of a self distinguished from everything else begins to give way to a sense of one’s being a part of everything around. The world, it seems, just gives itself to you, the more open to it you become – at least that is how it feels to me. By cycling, I have discovered a way of appreciating much I have either ignored or taken wholly for granted in the past.
The purpose of this blog, then, is to write about my rides, about what is happening around me as well as in me while I’m cycling. It is a journal about my journeys, about what I am discovering by cycling – landscapes, people, birds and animals, plants and flowers, things that happen along the way, thoughts that arise, things I remember, in fact – it’s about whatever. Consider it the ramblings of a velocipedal land rover. Its purpose is not to teach or preach as much as it is to share the things I experience from a more personal perspective.
I do not believe in rigidly separating my work from my life. I think that establishing rigid boundaries in the sense of “this is who I am when I am a pastor,” as opposed to “this is who I am allowed to be when I am not pastoring,” is more often than not a form of self-protection or -insulation, whether it be from a congregation’s sometimes excessive demands or from caring too much for the people one serves. Either way, it prevents the holistic call to ministry, to which one cannot do justice by hiding oneself behind the guise of a misunderstood professionalism. Ministry is something that must be embraced wholeheartedly. Pastoral ministry is risky; being a minister involves a willingness to be vulnerable. By blogging, I also hope to cultivate a more personal form of written communication.
This makes sense to me because the people I serve are also the people who serve me in so many ways, often beyond their knowing. They share their lives with me and regularly express their care for me. By blogging about cycling, I want to be present to them, as well as to acknowledge that they are present to me, even when I am physically absent. By expressing these things, I am not trying to respond to some extant criticism about how I spend my days off or even about my having any days off at all. (There are, to be sure, congregations whose members begrudge their pastors any life beyond the church’s walls and activities.) The congregation I serve and care for also serves and cares for me. By blogging, I am celebrating the experience of being a pastor and of being a part of this church community, of First Congregational Church. In that celebration, I am also affirming the miracle of life, the miracle of the resurrected body of Christ.
Of course, just because I enjoy cycling and am writing about it, doesn’t mean that anyone is obligated to read what I produce! But if someone, regularly or occasionally, wants to know what it is I do and think about when I’m not “on the job,” will discover why, for me, there is no such thing as being “off the job.” I truly love the people I am privileged to serve and the things that I am privileged to do for and with them. To me, they are never absent. By cycling, my “time off” is not time spent happily away from them but rather a time to pray, to give myself over to a sense of gratitude and praise, not least for the gift of our community. Caring for the church and its members (including me) is all part of one whole. By cycling, I contemplate, opening myself to receive the many gifts of life I so often overlook. Cycling, for me, is a form of giving thanks and praise.
By blogging, I’m inviting you to ride with me on a journey, and journeys – no matter what sort they are – always lead to the heart of God.
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