Learning - by Doing - by Sitting

Summer was kind to me.  With lots of changes in the NLSW, getting licensed as a pastor, and a baby (any day now!) to cap it all off - it held my attention well enough.  Still, the biggest surprise of summer happened to be an extra vertebrae that ironically frustrated my efforts to fully enjoy the aforementioned summer season.

Discovering that spare bone back there (pun intended), my mind became alerted to the gentle ache - that while not terrible threw my mental fortitude for a loop.  It's taken about 2 months to heal physically, and get over it mentally.  Along the way I've had a few new experiences - "rights of passage" if you will.

The strange; at the end of a ride, pulling onto my sidewalk passing a haggard, shirtless guy who called out even as he recoiled to one side, "Can I have your bike?"  I surprised even myself with the speed of my reaction - thoughtless, instinctual: "No!"

The universal; walking back in cleats after a flat when I forgot a spare, getting rescued from miles of cleat-walking, spending an hour trying to fix my first flat, and that first ride back out on a tube I changed myself.  Freedom.

The terrifying; a "Hells Angels" kind of guy on a polished hog made a last minute left in front of me.  He wasn't looking.  I was resting my neck for a split second - staring at my spinning ankles - and when I looked up it was almost too late.  My tires squeaked, leaving rubber on the road.  It was much closer than I ever want to experience again; inches.  

Although I might call it adventure, Jo wouldn't be happy to hear about my afternoon 'endo' at 30mph.

Of course, if you're not a rider yourself, these things aren't half as interesting as they are to me.  What I discovered  this summer was an underlying fear, an insecurity.  "What if I'm doomed to life on the couch?  What if despite a fortitude for fitness, I'm unable, and slowly degenerate into neglect and apathy?"  This battle has been as much mental as it has been flesh and blood.

Getting back into some speed work last week, thinking over how well I'd recovered, the verse in 2 Corinthians came to mind: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"  As things do while riding - it began to just run through my mind over and over, until I added my own piece to the finish - "the new has come in me."

That 'newness' is more encompassing than any of us fully realize, not limited to our physical bodies or occasional circumstances, but the depths of soul and spirit, joints and marrow.  Thanks God.  My summer journey of bike and bone, mind and spirit helped me remember anew; "I will not fear, He holds it all."

European Rhythms

After a long, 2 month summer break from leading worship, I was ready to get back into it.

I lead worship for a men's prayer meeting, that creatively enough goes by the same name, "Men's Prayer."  I took over for Ross Parsley in January of 2010 as he prepared to plant his church that fall, and have been doing it ever since.  I have to be there at 6am each Thursday for sound check and a 6:30 start time, and since I live about 30minutes from the church, I get up at about 4:45 on Thursday's.

After the service, I head to Chick-Fil-A with the band; a tradition we've carried on together since very early on.  Some days we talk about the set, the service, or ways to dig deeper into what we do each week with the men of New Life.  Other days the conversation diverges to work situations, avant-garde chiptune concerts, and the varied perplexities of life from just as varied generational perspectives.

Usually, but not as regularly as I'd like, I head to Starbucks right afterward.  I arrive at about 8:23 each week, and have discovered the beauty of routine.  Specifically, I've seen the same elderly couple at this specific Starbucks whenever I come - for at least the last year.

There's something mysterious and beautiful about them; him with his hard-of-hearing loud-talking, her with her too-strong-for-public perfume - and the both of them with thick Jersey accents that endear them almost immediately.  And there's something about their routine, a rhythm that every Thursday helps me feel I've been transported to a side-street bistro somewhere in Italy, and that time itself has somehow been made to wait for the day to really begin.

I look forward to this moment, coffee in hand, like an "after worship dessert" every week.

I think it's the rhythm of it.  The respiration, the sipping of the hot coffee, the morning sun, the familiar faces all help me pause and reset - just in time for the weekend as fate would have it.  These moments help me remain, and become, the person I want to be: someone centered by a routine and not bound to it.  A person who can "lean back in the saddle" of life, and take a look at the scenery as it goes by.

I've grown to cherish my early, sleepless Thursday mornings.  Time with God, the men of New Life, and an hour of solitude with my coffee has helped shape my vocational ministry in a should-have-seen-it-coming-but-didn't kind of way.  For that, I'm thankful.