Eulogy for a Bike
October 24, 2008 at 10:22 pm | In Peter Ilgenfritz | 4 Comments
Three weeks ago, on a rainy Wednesday evening, I drove home and into the garage and saw that it was gone. There, against the wall, where I always kept it, my bike was gone.
It wasn’t just any bike. It was my bike. My twenty-eight year old, rusted, dented bike. The bike that my Dad and friends thought I should have traded in years ago. But I just couldn’t part with it. It wasn’t just any bike.
This was the bike I bought after graduating from high school for my summer job leading middle school kids on bike trips through Nova Scotia and New England. This was the bike I rode in a “Century” bike race. (Actually we rode 120 miles. We found out at the 100 mile mark and 20 miles from home that they had marked the route wrong!) This was the bike that I rode through the streets of New Haven and hills of upstate New York. The bike that I rode on the lakeshore of Chicago and that took me now each day to work. This was the bike that I had taken apart and put together again and again. The bike I yelled at when I got yet another flat tire. This was not just any bike. It was my friend. It’s funny to say that, but true. We had gone through a lot of living together. Here, on this old bike, I’d found a lot of pure joy that I didn’t find in any other way.
On the bike were a set of thirty-two year old ripped and faded orange panniers. I had just finished 10th grade when I got them on my first bike trip with Student Hostelling Program. Eight of us and our leader spent that summer biking for three weeks through New England with these very panniers. (These were the days before anyone wore bike helmets but this safety conscious program had us all wear plastic Canadian hockey helmets that we decorated with magic markers. Yes, we got quite the reactions on the road.) The panniers had been on my bike ever since that trip and I had taken them in many times to get stitched up. “Are you sure?”, the guy in the shoe repair store would always ask. “Yes, I’m sure”, I said, “I got them in 10th grade” (as if that explained
something). That trip made a real difference to me. It may have been the first time I was part of a group. A little group of friends I really liked and with whom we did something challenging and sweaty and wet and hard together. A trip and a group that connected me to something that I love and something important about myself. I still don’t know all that it is: The outdoors? Biking? Being with friends? I’m not completely sure. But something I carried with me in those old panniers.
So, yes, a lot of memory on that old bike. A lot of stories packed away in those torn, faded panniers. No one would have known. How could they? What the things we carry really mean.
Funny thing. Whoever took my bike took my helmet with my reflector vest and biking gloves in it and placed it on the ground. Like they knew that I was going to need this stuff when I got a new bike again.
The police who came that night were so kind. I surprised myself by putting up signs offering a generous reward. I left messages at a bunch of used bike shops on the chance that someone had sold it that day and I offered to buy it back. I was sort of hopeful that I might see my bike again. I didn’t.
I took the bus to work the next day. Told my colleagues what had happened. They too were very kind. David said, “Would you like to borrow my bike? I bought it at the Superfluity sale a year and a half ago and have rarely ridden it. It sits in my storage unit taking up room.” “Sure”, I said, “I’d be glad to have a look at it.”
We left right then for his house, and pulled out of his storage unit a several year old Schwinn hybrid. It was just my size and in great shape. When we got back to church David said, “I’ve been thinking. Why don’t I give you the bike and you have Tim and me over for supper sometime?” I was so moved. What a gift. What a gift. I said “Yes” and took my new bike home that night on the bus.
The next day, I rode into work. I’ve told friends it is like having a new car. In fact, I have told many people that it feels like I have a Cadillac. Such a smooth ride. So fast. So fun. I love sitting up like this – shifters at my finger tips. I zoom down the street pretending I am a Seattle cop on patrol. That afternoon I buy a large pair of plastic panniers.
We’ve been bonding – this new bike and I. I have purely delighted in it. I ride singing down the street. The gears jump and I yell. The brakes catch and I squawk. We are getting to know each other.
How is it that some of these precious things in our lives carry such importance? It feels silly to cry over them when they are lost, and yet we do. For these precious things are not just an assembly of metal, plastic and rubber but a holder of memory. A connecting point to all that has been and a starting point for all we hope may be.
Days full of memory. Days full of grief. Days full of this amazing gift of surprise. Of being gifted, and generously, by a friend with the exact thing that we needed right now: this new thing, a new bike, a container for all life’s memory and joy.
October 20, 2008 at 2:55 pm | In Jim White | Leave a Comment
The Most Dangerous Fundamentalism
A Piece Submitted to The Thoughtful Christian
by
James W. White
Minister Emeritus, First Congregational United Church of Christ
Chairperson, Board of Directors, Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission
There is a religion in America/of America which is fundamentalist, evangelical, and armed. I argue that it needs to be separated from the state for the good of the state, other religions, and the world.
I am talking about what sociologist Robert Bellah names “the civil religion” and historian Sidney Mead dubs “the religion of the Republic.” It is the religion of the nation-state. The giants of the Enlightenment (Rosseau, Locke, Mill, Jefferson, and Madison) gave it to us. In the 21st century, it has gone totally awry.* It has led us into the worst international catastrophe of American history. Let me explain this pernicious religion.
Question: What is the primary reason we invaded Iraq?
Answer: The national religion of America.
There are three spurious justifications for the war in Iraq: (1) Saddam Hussein had WMDs, (2) Saddam was an unparalleled dangerous dictator, and (3) Saddam with Osama bin Laden was behind September 11, 2001. All those are untrue and were known to be untrue in 2003 when the war began. Put them aside. There are, however, five plausible drivers-to-war suggested by thoughtful analysts. I list them in ascending order of importance:
1. Psychological-familial issues of George W. Bush.
2. Oil, the desire to secure and control the world’s third largest reserve.
3. Reinvigorating the military-industrial complex of the United States.
4. Geo-political push to establish an American presence in the Middle East.
5. Israel and the American Israeli Lobby’s foreign policy goals.
All of these interrelate. They are held together by the prime driver: America’s Religion.
As to WHAT IS THIS RELIGION…please note that the United States Constitution declared there would be “no establishment of religion” in this country. So the religion of the denominations (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) was cut off from the state. Still the religious nature of social collectivities, especially that of the nation- state came into being. (See Emile Durkheim for theory here.) In this country our basic religious credo was laid out in the Declaration of Independence proclaiming that “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The later three became America’s Holy Trinity trumpeted now for over 200 years. Every President in his inaugural speech has always spoken of a Creator, Author of Liberty or God. Basically, most (perhaps 95%) of our citizens believe with Ben Franklin that (1) there is a God, (2) we are called to be moral, and (3) we are eternally accountable. People in churches may believe more, but most hold to such broad ideas. We may recite the “Shema” at a Shabbat service AND, next afternoon, get chocked up at a football game singing the Star Spangled Banner. We can and do belong to both a denominational religion and the state.
This religion of the Republic has had a two-pronged history: an EXEMPLAR self-understanding and a LIBERATOR self-understanding. The former suggests we might be a “city set on a hill” inviting others to emulate our values; the latter suggests that we have a mission to the world to intentionally “extend the blessings of liberty.” John Quincy Adams took the former tack saying, “America does not go abroad seeking monsters to destroy[!],” while Thomas Paine held that “We have it in our power to begin the world anew.” During the last two centuries these sides have struggled for ascendancy, the later usually prevailing.
Within the last decade a group of true believers (read: fundamentalists) in the liberator self-understanding came to political power with the current administration. They are unipolarists or neoconservatives. For the most part, they have no personal or denominational religion. Among their foremost spokespersons (read: preachers) are Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. They were eager (read: evangelical) in their belief that democracy could be spread. They chose Iraq as the country in which to launch a great experiment in regime change toward “freedom and democracy” (our mantra), believing that change there would precipitate regional transformation. After September 11 they got their wished-for “Pearl Harbor” to garner public support behind their planned invasion of Iraq.
It was this ideology (read: religion) more than Israel’s string-pulling, geo-political positioning, industrial-militarism, desire for oil, or the president’s psychoses which drove this nation to war.
What I urge us to do is (1) recognize this national religion that lives among us (necessarily so), (2) understand that its liberator side has been taken over by radical, fundamentalist, evangelical, and armed—incredibly well armed!–believers, and (3) take needed steps to separate out this religion. The civil religion has become vicious. It is time to expunge it from the body politic.
Thoughtful-Acting Christians can help with the exorcism.
James W. White
April 25, 2008
*For a full treatment of this topic, please see my paper, “Benjamin Franklin’s Publicke Religion Gone Awry,” presented at the American Academy of Religion Regional Meeting in Denver, March 28, 2008. It may be found on-line at www: ppjpc.org.
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