Sabbatical Fruits "The Eyes of the Amish Children"

Well, I have not been to work in 8 weeks and I begin again the day after tomorrow.  I am getting some solitude these next couple of days to reflect back on what I saw and heard from God and his world.

First of all I have recovered physically and emotionally.  If anything I have over recovered!  I have so much margin right now I am afraid that I will begin to overdo it immediately.  Thankfully I have people around me that will help me to manage my pace.

I began the trip putting a lot of pressure on myself to "really hear something" from God.  Now I am on the closing days and I wonder what I heard.  I will blog about the trip and try to capture some of the things that came to me and the places in which they came.  

I have a problem with pace.  I am a hurryaholic, workaholic, get it doneaholic, be productiveaholic.  (get the picture)  I place most of my value on what I can get done.  A good day is a day of accomplishment.  I also feel that a lot of people around me value me for what I can do...this may simply be a projection, but if it is it is a projection a lot of us share.  

My pace and the slowing of it seemed to be the overarching theme of my time away from work responsibility.  It began when my trip began and I broke down for the first time.  God forced his pace into my trip in a way that helped me to see that even at rest my pace is just plain silly.

I began the sabbatical with flight from Oakland to Milwaukee to pick up a motorcycle.  It wasn't just a motorcycle it was a Harley. It wasn't just a Harley it was a 25 year old Harley.  It was made the same year I was married, we were both celebrating our 25th anniversary.  So we had our party on Saturday night and on Tuesday morning I flew out to celebrate with the new, old 1985 Harley-Davidson FXRT Sport Glide.

Let's just say that my marriage is in much better shape than this bike was.  Interestingly it looked great on the outside but was in serious trouble on the inside. (This could be a lesson but it seems too simple to really be a sabbatical lesson...let's look for something more complex.)

I broke down the first time in Batavia NY after just re-entering the US at the Toronto-Buffalo border. I had gone from WI up the the U.P. of MI and then into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie...I love the U.P.  I 'm not sure why I could have spent more time there but I was in a hurry to get someplace to do something that I no longer remember.   I had been making great time on my first few days and then my drive belt came apart and my pullies were bad and "the parts were not available today"...you get the picture.

I met three motorcycle tow truck drivers on the trip, this first one was a lovely man who helped me load the bike and then acted as a chauffeur taking me to my hotel and picking me up the next day.  

I sat and I walked and I wondered what would happen, I didn't really get it then.  I thought that I did, in fact, I said that I did, but I didn't.  I was proud of the fact that I told the parts person at Stan's Harley Davidson, "what I need to do I can do sitting here on the lawn just as well as sitting on a motorcycle."  She marveled at my Zen like state of peace...I marveled at my ability to bull shit myself so well that I made it sound like the truth.  

I have to say that I was more patient than I would have been years ago...I was trying to see and hear and stay in the moment, I think that was a good way to begin the trip.  It also began a co-dependent relationship with this Harley...she cost me a lot of money but she really NEEDED me...

I left Stan's Harley Davidson $1,000.00 lighter and I sent an angry email to Don, the guy that I bought the bike from.  What a telling reaction.  You can tell a lot about yourself from your reaction. Lao Tsu calls it your Wu Wei, your first response which reveals your heart.   I was working on a great resentment towards him...this is another tell tale sign that you are not who you think you may be.  Don said that he didn't have any money to help with the bill, I wondered what he had done with the 6K that I had just given him.  I reacted and resented and as a Monk or Mystic, I wasn't doing well.  Of course I felt fairly justified talking about Don with myself behind his back and in my heart. 

After two days in Batavia I limped to my parents house in the mountains just outside of State College PA.  I was welcomed and fed very well.  The first night in the second floor bedroom I heard a sound that I had heard hundreds of times before but this time I heard God's voice in the sound.  "this is a good sign" I thought to myself. "There are a lot of people counting on me getting something important on this trip." 

The sound was the simply passing of a horse and buggy outside of my window, I was sleeping in Amish country.  The horse went cloppity clop, cloppity clop and the buggy followed along making a metal wheels on the black top kind of sound along with some squeaks and moans from leaf springs and old wood.  When I heard that sound I heard the sound of a healthy pace of life.  It somehow synched up with my heart and that night in my parents spare bedroom I heard a pace of life that had long been forgotten. It reached out for  me like an old lover might, reminding me of what we once had but had now lost.  I didn't really know it at the time but this slowing would be my undoing. 

For the next few days I watched them, the Amish, they went slowly.  Not only didn't they hurry, they couldn't hurry.  I wondered how I could live at this pace when everyone around me was living at breakneck speed living "real" lives with "real" jobs.  There wasn't anyone else I knew on an 8 week sabbatical this summer.

How could I allow my heart to beat loudly enough so that I would hear it every moment like I heard the buggy that night...and every other night that I stayed in Belleville?  funny, I really only noticed that sound at night or early in the morning when I got up to watch the sun rise.  the rest of the day the buggy sounds were drowned out by weed whackers and diesel trucks and radios and  cell phones and texting.  The sound was still there, it was just covered up.

I began to realize along the trip that uncovering is an important concept.  Uncovering, chipping away the calcified sediments that we allow to mute our real selves.  It seems we are born real and by the time we are self aware we have lost sight of who we really are.

I saw a mysterious thing in the eyes of small Amish children peering out out of the backs of these buggies as I went by them on the motorcycle.  I waved and they waved back.  They marveled at me and I marveled at them.  I don't think that I fully understood it at the time but I longed for what they had, an intangible feeling of awe and carelessness as to place or pace.  It was as if they were being carried away to a place that I longed to be imprisoned.  I didn't know how to get there and they didn't even know they were going.