ROAD TRIP
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Where You Stand is Holy Ground.
This was the small sign I noticed when I happened to glance to my right while waiting at a stop light in front of a Congregationalist church the other day. At almost the same time I happened to be listening to a book called, US, by Terrence Real about releasing our individualism so that we can live in better union.
Worshipping our own ground so we can make better connections with other peoples’ place on the earth is its own road trip.
The idea that we make our individual minds open enough to welcome others in can be surprising connections gained when we let go of our need to be right and make others wrong out of the way. Not as easy as it sounds when the emotional trips of winding thoughts to prove our own points kick in.
There are the physical trips of curving roads and the emotional twists of a roving mind. Those thoughts that go uphill and downhill taking curves at 100 miles an hour can make for a thrilling yet dangerous excursion.
Ruminating about the past and fretting about the future can feel like I am lost on a lightless road in a strange territory with no cell phone. But then the google map of my brain interrupts with precision to make a welcomed course correction back to my garden for a deep whiff of honeysuckle and roses and I am home again. Here. Now. Now Here and Nowhere- together at last.
Gratitude, nature and the travel of a deep breath is the compass that brings me back.
This brings me back to the reminder that the best trip is not the one you head out with — that detailed, researched for months, itinerary in hand, but instead stuck behind an older couple out on their own road trip looking at the scenery as they drive twenty miles an hour on a winding one lane road with no chance of being able to pass them.
So the need to move past them or slow down becomes your decision at that very moment. Your choice to be frustrated as you tap your impatient fingers on the steering wheel, while you flash your lights so they move over so you can get to where you are headed while your entitled impatience screams quietly at the nerve of them…
