Biking along a spiritual path

A few friends know that I am mentally gearing up to take my recumbent trike to the meetinghouse sometime this biking season.

A trike like this is fun to ride, but recumbent bikes and trikes are known to be more difficult to get up a hill, in part because you can't stand on the pedals and use your body weight to keep up your momentum. Add to that the weight of the trike (about 35 pounds, a few more pounds than a conventional bike) and the fact that, when going up an incline, the rider's own body weight is "dragging" at the back of the trike, while the rider's legs are doing an awful lot of work to "pull" the rider and machine up the hill.

On top of that, the four miles of primary roads to the meetinghouse are hilly and therefore daunting to a recumbent trike rider like me.

Nevertheless, because I enjoy the trike so much and am slowly working my up to one-way trips of three or more miles (did I mention that I was a novice biker who has poor lower body strength? Three miles is currently considered a long trip for me...), I have been intentional when I drive to meeting to look for alternate roads that might somehow magically get around those hills.

After about a month of "paying attention," I think I finally hit on a route, and I decided to test drive it by car the other day on the way to Meeting for Worship. My plan was to pay careful attention both to general dips and inclines in the road as well as the turn of the odometer on the dash.

As I turned off the main road and made the first significant detour away from a major hill, I saw a ways down the road that there was a recumbent bike farther along, maybe three blocks ahead of me. As I approached the next turn off, the biker signaled a left turn, which is where I was headed, too.

It was only one or two more blocks before I'd be turning right, and the biker was going at a good clip, so I didn't rush to pass in such a short distance. Then the biker signaled a right turn also, turning just in front of me as I reached the same intersection.

I wondered if this person was headed to Quaker meeting.

In fact, he was.

In fact, he was one of a number of Friends in meeting who rides a recumbent bicycle.

In fact, as the biker took his right turn, I realized it was none other than Paul L.

I grinned: I felt like I received confirmation that this indeed would be an adequate biking route to meeting, especially for recumbent riders.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

During Meeting for Worship, I reflected on the turns I had taken this morning and the joy I felt at seeing Paul. It was as if he had been companioning me all along, even though I had yet to push myself and bike to the meetinghouse on my own.

I also considered how, so often we take our usual path to addressing concerns that arise for ourselves, and we so often take our usual problem-solving path in addressing difficulties during meetings for worship with attention to business.

It's easy to see the hills and climbs we have before us: the budget needs to be funded; the capital improvements needed on the building--and paid for; the children's need for a decent First Day School curriculum.

It's easy to consider options we typically draw on, like asking Friends to donate a bit extra this year, or hiring staff to address a long-term need, or asking for Friends to volunteer during some drawn out process where greater attention by the meeting is called for.

But if we are spiritually mature enough, we might be willing to explore new paths that would address the concern while also circumnavigating the obstacles we know are there. If we are spiritually disciplined enough, we might be willing to wait on the Lord until we have that familiar felt sense that indicates there may be a third way opening.

And maybe, just maybe, we will discover that others have traveled along the same path ahead of us and therefore might help guide us and shepherd us along, affirm the direction we are headed, pointing out the killer hills to avoid as well as where there are flats and easier stretches on the path, where we might be able to enjoy coasting, at least for a time...

Blessings,
Liz