How Hands on the Wheel Have Helped Me Go Deeper
Every day is chock full. The dog gets us up before dawn. My son would sleep all morning if I didn’t start my campaign, taking over where the snooze button gave up. On a promising day I can find my to-do list and tick a few things off. On many other days, that list has a way of getting itself buried. I think sometimes that I must have hidden it when the rest of me wasn’t looking.
Like a lot of us, especially in these wired times, I am restless. I know that sitting still, praying, and meditating are food for my soul. I believe that there is a still, small voice that will talk to me if I will only listen. I am working on the listening, and I have my good moments. On especially good days, I manage a brief meditation or a quick pre-dinner prayer at home.
One thing I do manage most of the time: I keep both hands on the wheel as I drive into work. This means that I can take a breath and stop doing things for 15 minutes. My right hand does have a habit of reaching for the radio dial. But I have learned to ask that hand to wait, or at least turn off the news after that one riveting news story wraps up. Because my traveling “tin can” — a Subaru wagon as old as my teenager that long ago lost its air conditioning– is where I pray.
Often my prayers are out loud — I bat concerns and ideas around with God, ask questions. (I assume the folks whizzing by me think I’m conversing via hands-free phone speaker.) I pray for a good workday, and to be a better person. For my family, my neighbors, sometimes strangers. For inner peace and world peace, for understanding. To be open. To live in tune with true priorities. I do my best to mention the sick and suffering. I am pretty sure I am forgetting someone, so I pray for that anonymous person, too, figuring that God remembers. Sometimes I even remember that I need to listen, not just talk. And sometimes I burst out in a little song of gratitude, a remembered Thanksgiving hymn from childhood.
I got some oversized balloons and drove them over to Mom’s place on her birthday, with a quick prayer that she would have a good day at the nursing home. They were so big that, although they whipped around in the highway speed-induced wind, they had no way of escaping out the car windows. I think my prayers are like those balloons. When I drive I imagine them floating around me, although some, by now, have gently settled on the carpet or the back seat. They are as large as my heart. They are buoyant and ever present, reminding me of those good, heartfelt attempts to sort it all out and connect with something deeper.
It’s going to be hard to put the Subaru to pasture, when its time comes. Then again, I’ll have a new car with lots of room inside.