On shifting lanes and holding on

I went home this weekend for the first time since I moved to Minneapolis last month.  Obviously, the main reason was to see friends and be with my family, but on my drive home I was struck with another craving that I had seemed to have been pushing down.

While what follows may seem off topic, I promise that A) it isn't and B) I'm going somewhere:

If you've never driven through the Great State of Wisconsin you need too.  If you have driven through Wisconsin but never at dusk, you need to do that too.  I left the Cities at about 4:00 on Friday night.  The air was about 90 degrees with what was probably 99% humidity, and I hit traffic leaving town.  It looked like it would be the worst drive in the history of the world, and as the ETA on my GPS climbed steadily while I was stuck on 94-E, I must say that I started to get a little antsy.  But after I crossed the border and headed southeast through the hills and fields of Wisconsin, everything changed.

I had finally left the "cabin traffic" of people heading north for the weekend for a getaway and had the road mostly to myself.  I was out of the city, so I rolled down the windows, opened the moonroof, cranked the music, and just absorbed the world around me.  The sun began to fall and the wheat glowed amber.  The hills were covered in long shadows, and the road slipped and snaked for miles ahead of me.  The wind blew warm in my face and for a beautiful few hours I was completely alone and completely in touch with the entire world.  It was in this moment, and here's where we connect back to the cliffhanger off paragraph 1, that I realized I missed going to church.  Albert Einstein once said, "My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the universe," meaning that the universe was designed so perfectly that there was no way that it could exist without an almighty power.  I had a similar experience on Friday, and I realized that I needed religious experiences in my life.  While adjusting to a new community and a new life, it had been easy to let slip for four weeks, but with the trip home I would be able to return and I was ecstatic.

My boy Al either praying or simply contemplating why he didn't do something more fun with his life than practice physics

The weekend came and went and Sunday morning rolled around and we went to church, where one of the readings was from the book of Wisdom, and went like this: 

Because God did not make death

nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.

For he fashioned all things that they might have being,

and the creatures of the world are wholesome;

There is not a destructive drug among them

nor any domain of Hades on earth,

For righteousness is undying^.

 

While I very much may be wrong in this interpretation, I heard this as telling me that even though things suck sometimes, they are not the work of God, and dammit if He isn't trying his hardest to try to swing the world in my favor.  He built the world to be good and it's not going to go down the tubes on his watch. 

So swing forward 3 hours and I'm back in the car headed north, back through beautiful Wisconsin, and I'm cranking New Radicals (who is, without a doubt, the best band to produce only one album ever) on the CD player in Mom's minivan (and no, it doesn't get any cooler than that).  New Radicals most popular, and second best song, is You Get What You Give, and while I've listened to it probably over 100 times, I've never really paid much attention to the lyrics.  Gregg Alexander starts out singing about the young and carefree life, but then hits us with, "but when the night is falling / and you cannot find a light. / If you feel your dream is dying / hold tight."  Fairly standard "don't give up" advice, right?  But it delves deeper.  He comes back with: 

God's flying in for your trial.
This whole damn world can fall apart,
You'll be okay, follow your heart.

You're in harm's way.
I'm right behind.

Pretty similar to the reading from Wisdom, right?

Always take advice from dudes in sweet pink hats

I could be the only one, in which case just stop reading, but it seems like all too often the whole damn world does fall apart, or at least it seems like that.  I get flustered and stressed and worried and I hole up and try to protect myself from the terrible things that will happen next.

But they never actually come.

And in these past three days I've been reminded of that once again.  The Earth is not a cold dead place, and in fact, it's quite the opposite.  Whenever something goes wrong, there's always something there that helps me to bounce back.  Sure, there's a hell of a lot of bad stuff going on out there, but that doesn't mean that it's going to ruin things for me.  If I hold on to what I value, if I don't give up, if I'm me, the goodness of the world will take care of me.  Things will shift from bumper to bumper city traffic to a beautiful drive through the countryside at dusk, and even though it doesn't mean that the ETA moves back to where it was and the bad things never happened, it doesn't mean that it's not an incredible experience.