EVER BEEN TO EVART?

I think they spell it, EEE-vart.  Evart is one of those towns you imagine well before landing on its main street.  In our case, Evart was a relief for two frozen, numbed bike guys.  The morning had passed in 41 degree chills that reduced my feet to two stumps of numbness.  I sometimes encourage the troops by making up lyrics--helps take our minds off the cold and hill climbs.  But with a name like EEE-vart, your lyrical options are limited.  Best I could come up with was the marine melody that the sargeant sings to frightened recruits as they march in formation . . .

We are going to EEE-vart

Don't eat beans or you will ________.

Anyway, we weren't expecting much from Evart--we'd been through hundreds of small towns before.  But no sooner had we coasted down a slight hill and into the main drag  when two smiling gals, a kid brother, a sad-looking dog, a tall man in a bright yellow shirt and disarming smile, and a confused guy wearing "Mexico" on his shirt accosted us in the street.  The cheerleader types flashed cardboard placards that read, "STOP AND SAVE" and "CASH MOB."  An I-Phone hooked to an amplifier boomed out Beetles tunes.  The Mexican guy did nothing just swayed, his eyes closed.

The mob befriended us, stuck fake gangsta dollars in our hands and said we could use the money if we ate at the diner they stood in front of.  So we did.  I have never seen a diner so filled with human bodies.  Apparently, this hodgepodge team had worked their PR magic on the whole town of Evart.  We finally managed to grab two stools at the counter.

I'm finishing up my reuben on rye when Mr. Yellow strides in with his clipboard.  What's this all  about?  I asked him.  "We love our town--so we encourage people to discover it.  Each week we do something special with one of the businesses in town.  We want folks to get excited about our town and invest in it.  Our whole community participates in one way or another and everybody wins."  Clearly, the guy was electric with energy and enthusiasm for his little town.   And when he learned that we were headed further east, he pointed us to the Rail-to-Trails bike path that was right behind the diner and promised that it would take us nearly all the way to our day's destination.  Then he shot me an infectious grin. "We're a great town; and we're doing our boy scout duty of telling others about it!"

Couldn't help but but overhear another Evart that happens under our noses every weekend. I wonder what would happen if we were as passionate and excited about worship as EEE-var-ites are of their little town.  Sometimes I've observed folks attending worship as if they were doing their religious duty.  As if God should be pleased because they had suffered through another dull service.  Annie Dilliard once said something to the effect that if we really became aware of the powerful, even dangerous presence of the God we worship in such a ho hum way each week, we'd install seatbelts in the pews.

So this Sunday pull an EEE-vaarts.  Put your big hitter greeters out there in their cut-offs jiving to jazzed up Amazing Grace while flashing cardboard signs that say, "WHOA!  YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT'S HAPPENING INSIDE!  and "OUR GOD ROCKS!"  Then have the ushers doing their own polka jig of joy as they welcomed confused, stunned, estranged people into their worship service.

Now that would be worship worth checking out.

MEAN ORNERY COFFEE GANG MEMBERS OF SOMERSET

When you're on the road as a two-wheeler, two gas pumps with an attached junk food store are your friends.  So at 6:20 am this morning we wheeled into one of those places and ran right smack dab into an infiltration of the Mean, Ornery Coffee Gang Members of Somerset.  

Apparently, Hell's Angels hadn't been through Somerset in two decades and cyclists were rare as hen's teeth.  So when we walked in the store, the first of the MOCGMOS (Mean Ornery Coffee Gang Members of Somerset) eyeballed us silently from head to toe from the safety of his side of the room.

Amazing how a couple of gulps of bitter coffee can warm the cockles of one's heart.  Soon we were able to engage Rich the Basher (real name withheld to protect his family from his orneriness) in pleasant conversation--he's an immigrant from Minneapolis and spent his life bossing people around in a warehouse.  (Didn't dare ask him what mysterious illegal contraband he was loading on to the trucks.)

Soon three more members of the MOCGMOS barged in.  Big dudes, tough and meanlike.  So they all faced one side of the narrow wall and Rick and I on the other.  Showdown at the OK Corral and Super Mart.

What could have turned into an ugly gang fight between cheesehead and Vike fans, instead turned out to be a bunch of good ole boys and two cyclo-tourists.   We laughed and teased and made fun of each other and asked directions and got good travel advice plus hot coffee and some warm local hospitality.  How good is that?

So remember, just because they're big and look ornery and nasty doesn't necessarily mean they dislike you.  Sure, they may think you're strange, not-one-of-the-gang, and look questionable in spandex and bright colors, but deep down they may be only a coffee gulp away from making a new friend. They just need a little help from you.

How many times have we pre-judged people based on body language, bib overalls, smell, or blank stares to our smile?  Instead, engage others.  Bless them.  And in blessing get ready to be blessed by God through new friends.

Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors

Open hearts, open minds, open doors are nearly akin to those red-lettered sayings of Jesus in our Methodist psyche.  We can rattle off that line faster than our email address.  And for good reason.  If we really mean what we're mouthing, then we're saying a heap.  We're saying that we are generous with our wallets, welcomes, and heart-felt worship.  We are also saying that our minds are open--we can multitask viewpoints, even opinions that don't jibe with ours.  And for two guys pedaling their brains out, open doors means, well, open doors, open church libraries, open accomodations.

Rick and I have put the open doors part to the test.  True, there have been a few OHOMOD churches that have kept the door closed (We're not set up for that  . . . or you can't stay in our church, we might be liable if something happens . . . or no one is around to unlock the door), but for the most part we have been overwhelmingly surprised by all of the open doors that have been opened to us.

Why sure, you and Rick come on over to our church.  In fact, be our guests and enjoy our pig roast on Saturday night.  So when we pulled up to Main Street UMC in North Branch after a terrible, horrible, no good, bad day of flat tires, 50 degree chill, and baptism by sprinkle, splash, and soak from day-long rain, Pastor Phil welcomed us and personally gave us the grand tour of the church.  We have a shower in the women's restroom, he whispered.  So after everyone leaves, have at it. 

And when the hog roast preliminaries began, we felt so welcomed, Rick and I jumped right in and became certified pork pullers, teasing the roasted meat off the bone.  And so the evening went -- eating pulled pork and being welcomed and blessed.

The entire congregation lived and exuded generosity in welcoming the community to their roast.  Way beyond what I'd experienced in other churches.  What's their secret, I wondered.  We're learning to be generous with our lives--that means our building, our wealth, and our time, Pastor Phil responded.  Not bad.

Open hearts, open minds, open doors.

Sacraments of the Holy Bike Journey

As we continue on our P2A Tour, we are entrenched behind handlebars with thigh muscles pumping 25-30 revolutions a minute for six to seven hours a day.   Isn't that boring?  Well, sometimes it is.  Long hours in slo-mo can be boring no matter how gorgeous the scenery.  So what to do during the monotony?

Here's what I do every day as I pedal down the road.  I hold three objects--a key, a piece of water buffalo's horn from South Africa, and my rearview mirror.  As I caress the water buffalo's horn between thumb and index finger, I pray for our mission team--ten teens and adults who will soon fly 11,000 from family and home and help build a house for a family that, as I write, live in squalor and call a corrugated tin shanty with no toilet or running water or furniture the only home they've known.

The key hangs around my neck in a necklace.  Dixie wears the rest of the necklace--a heart with a key-sized hole in it.  So I pray for the one wearing the other part, for Dixie, then for my entire famly.

And my bike mirror.   Sometimes my riding partner, Rick, comes into view.  Sometimes I see people on cell phones, trucks on a mission to drop off their goods.  So I pray for safety and no mistakes.  That Rick and I will be kept safe on the road for another day.

What objects might compel you to pray?  Maybe some of the most common things in your life--a picture, a cufflink, or polished stone may become the very sacrament that will bring you to another place for others.

Heroes of the Plains

In the course of a day we may meet and speak with fifty folks--farmers, table servers, donkey peddlers, gas attendants, tattoo artists, or unassuming passersby ("Where in the heck is Washington Street?").   But of the hundreds of folks we've been honored to meet, there is one subset of people that rise like cream to the top of the milk (an archaic agricultural image).  They are my heroes of the plains.  They are the pastors.

Pastors were among the first to follow homesteaders into the dry, waterless lands of eastern Montana and western North Dakota.  They prayed with families in need, shared their food, blessed and spoke hope into bereaving families saying goodbye to yet another family member who had succumbed to small pox or the flu.  They did their best at preaching even while trying to tease their own acreage into crops.

So Rick and I have have an up close and personal encounter with these pioneer-spirited pastor types.  And with every pastor or leader I've met, I have asked them the  same question:  "How can I pray for you?  What one thing do you want me to pray for you as we depart?"   Pastor Dave spoke most eloquently for his prairie colleagues:  "Pray that we will be able to lead our congregations back out into mission . . . that they will be the church outside the church in our communities."

So pray for these brave soldiers, these prairie hopegivers, these stand-in-the-gap folks who have followed Jesus down, not up, the ladder in order to minister to the remnant of folks who still eke out a living on the plains.

Hi, I'm Bruce and I'm Walking Across America

I-94 is the last place you'd want to take a stroll on a Saturday afternoon.  The Peterbilts, RVs, and harried vacationers zoom past creating back drafts and decibels of noise and exhaust pollution.  Yet Saturday afternoon on I-94 somewhere between Sterling and Steele,  Bruce showed up.  At first neither Rick nor I could make heads or tails of the movement five hundred yards in front of us.  Broken-down Harley biker?  Someone in need?   To our astonishment, it was Bruce pushing a jerryrigged cart he called "Sam."

Bruce walks.  A lot.  Started walking in 2010 when his world suddenly unraveled--his company folded, his wife, brother, and mother all died.  In just twenty-four months he lost everything.  So he began to walk.  Did I mentiion that Bruce is 79 years old?  There are lots of kinds of walks--walks in the park, cake walks, walk the dog walks and then there is the Bruce-Walk.  He has walked from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles to Key West then north along the Atlantic Coast and west to Chicago and when we ran into him, Bruce was walking--pushing Sam--diagonally across the nation back home.

Though he carries deep pain and sadness, he also told me that he was sick and tired of being sick and tired.  "So many of my friends have retired and just sit around waiting for the memorial service to happen.  Not me.  I want to walk till I drop.  I want to stay active and in motion until my last breath."

I listened to Bruce's rather complicated philosophy about lymph nodes and movement, and avoiding cancer, but I had to admire a 79 year old guy still walking for what he believed in.  How much passion do you have?  How much passion do I have about anything in life that would cause me to inconvenience myself to that degree if called on to show it?

So Brucey, you keep on walking and find what you're really looking for.  Tom, you keep on biking and find what you're really looking for.  And you--don't ever give up your passion and vision just because it's difficult.

A Well Near the Hebron Cafe

The last fourteen miles had seemed like a dream--moving along at 14 to 20 mph.   Pretty heady when you're loaded to the gills and been pedaling for over forty miles.  We curved off I-94 and down a two-mile runway that opened to an isolated town called Hebron.   Rick and I surveyed the land for two things--a diner and a cool, avant garde, wifi-accessible espresso bar.  We settled for one out of two and sat down for lunch.

That's when Mark, the local crazy guy on a bike blindsided us with a shower of excitement and childlike wonder at our machines.  He looked a little goofy and clownish and drooled some when he talked too fast.  And he had the world's largest tooth gap framed by fangs on either side.  He proudy showcased his own version of a recumbent--a homemade tadpole trike.  "I'm an engineer, and I have my own shop around back.  I got French-made bikes and Schwinns and old vintage bikes."

Our food had arrived so we applauded and praised Mark's cool trike then went back into the diner.  But he wasn't done.  Like a faithful dog, Mark waited outside until we came out.  And then he began talking non-stop.   "Yeah, I moved here from Mott in January and so I have this bike shop."

What bothered me about Mark was that there had been no mention of family or friends in his life.  So I took a risk.  "Hey, Mark, do you have a family nearby?"  Mark squinnied his face into serious wrinkles.  "My mom died in January.  Me and her was really close.  And she was dead in three days.  We ran a thrift shop together and then she died."

The pastor in me took over and I probed a bit more and offered my condolences.  I thought he was going to cry and sob right there in front of the diner.  I could only listen and speak a bit of hope into Mark.  But I did connect Mark with the pastor in whose church we were staying in.

I think a lot of folks look at the Marks of this world as being a nusiance, too much to be bothered with.   Or maybe off-putting because of their appearance.  Not always, but sometimes it takes a simple gift of an ear to listen, and then to offer a short prayer on their behalf.

May God gift you with a toothy, energetic, even eccentric soul that you can begin to see through Jesus eyes and heaven's love, a human being who has value and worth though mixed with pain.