Action 2: Walk, carpool, bike, or bus it.

Like most Americans, I’m addicted to my car. I admit it: there are times when I actually get into my car and drive one block to the grocery store. I am not proud of that, but sometimes, if I have some heavy items on my list—milk, OJ, kitty litter-- I use that to justify my own laziness. It is so easy just to drive everywhere.

So.  Walk, carpool, bike, or bus it. Why is this an action item for the second day in Lent? The easy answer is that it’s better for the environment. Green is good. Saving energy is better for all of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heard that song before, and I know it’s true. But how does this make me a better person?

I remember when I was a kid and walked to school (and yes, it was one mile to school and one mile back, uphill both ways) and on those back and forths,  I did a lot of …nothing. I daydreamed. I looked at the sky. I looked at everything around me. I NOTICED things. The color of the hill at the foot of my street when the sun hit it in mid-afternoon, the sound and the scent of rain on the sidewalk. I made up songs. I made up stories. I thought. I imagined. I grew my brain.

When the walks to school gave way to bus rides, I still had lots of down time, punctuated of course by finding a seat on the bus, or being the object of a little old lady’s polite conversation—but essentially time of my own, all in my head, unclaimed by anyone but me.

There isn’t much down time anymore for any of us. Perhaps that is the growth opportunity we’re pursuing here.  Not energy conservation, not exercise, but  rediscovering space-- to think, to dream, to puzzle through all our questions, to take the time to slow down, step out of our fast-paced cars, and actually live in the world rather than in our little mobile capsules. To be still, and to know there is a God.  

[Tomorrow's Action 3: Don't turn on the car radio.]