On the Road Again – Or, at Least, the Bike Path

It is part of my new “get fit” routine. Biking the Cape Cod Canal bike trail. It has been tough going, but I seem have worked up to ten-mile sessions, which on a fat tire bike gives me a good workout, even with its fifteen gears.

It may be making me physically fit, or fitter, though I think the jury is still out on that. Weight loss, maybe a bit; cardiovascular health, how do you tell?; lower body strength, maybe yes.

But what this new fitness regime has done for me is to make me more mentally and spiritually alive, of that I have no doubt. Mentally, I know a good ride clears out the cobwebs in a remarkable effective fashion. Maybe it is the ever-changing views along the twisting canal, the light off the water, the wind rippling the surface, the nods to roller-bladers and walkers and fishermen with their coolers and rods and bikes outfitted with white fishing rod holders banded to the rear fender. Maybe it is the concentration required to keep on pumping into a strong headwind. Maybe it is just being away from church and family responsibilities for a set period. All I know is that I come back physically exhausted, but mentally refreshed.

But what has been surprising to me has been how these rides have fed my spirit. I have an IPod, so slip the tiny earplugs in, select from one of my custom playlists (New Wave, Alternative Rock, Bruce, Lyle, Rachmaninoff or Beethoven), set my front wheel towards Bourne, and soon find a different kind of spiritual renewal. My mind wanders where it will, my legs pump to the beat, my lungs fill with air and then release it only to begin the cycle again, the sun shines and the wind blows and a sense of peace comes,

something that might even be characterized as prayer,

if only we could let go of rigid ideas of what form prayer must take to be prayer.

Spinning My Wheels

            Lately I have been spending a good deal of time spinning my wheels.

            Literally. Perhaps it is because I have been sensing the approach of middle age (pause here for a chuckle at my expense), or because I have been taking more seriously the groans emitted from the bathroom scale of late, or because I have finally been convinced that it is a good thing to do, but, whatever the reason, I have started up a new exercise regime. And with the weather being so brutal out of doors, and thus keeping me off my bike, I have taken to the indoor world of “spinning.”

            “Spinning” has nothing to do with Sleeping Beauty and spindles – spinning is step aerobics on wheels, it is a bunch of folk chained to stationary bikes in an overheated room for an hour, pedaling away while a perky trainer with thighs like Lance Armstrong and a voice of a Marine yells out instructions like “Pedal harder!” and “60 seconds in the standing position”, and, “Move it, you maggots!” (well, maybe not that one).  We don’t get anywhere, being on a stationary bike….

            I sometimes think that’s why God gave us Easter. In a recent comic in the Globe, there is a picture of an angel standing on a cloud looking down at earth, with the caption being, “The world and the way it would be if the master of the universe was my mother”. And then there is a voice coming from the cloud saying, “Don’t make me come down there!”

            Well, that is actually what did happen. Because we were so busy spinning our wheels, trying like the dickens to get to God but for all our efforts getting only in our way, God did come down there. And while that made a lot us mad enough to run God out of town and hang God on a tree, God was not done, and God was not going to let human sin and death stand in the way.

           

            Hence, Easter, hence, resurrection, hence a chance to get off the stationary bike and saddle up a tandem where we are all in backseats and Jesus is in the driver’s seat and together there is no mountain we cannot climb, no task we cannot take on, no “thing” to fear.

            Onward, or, as they say in the Tour de France, “Allez!”