Cycling: A Year Later

A year after my bike trip many have asked if I'm still riding.  Actually, that's not true.  Very few people have asked me if I'm still riding, but I have asked myself if I'm still riding many times.  Obviously I should know whether I am riding or not but honestly, even when I am riding, it is difficult to say whether I am indeed riding or not.

The problem that I have is that before and during my bike trip I had a purpose to keep riding.  After my bike trip I had a purpose: to not let myself forget what I had just done.  But once the calendar turned to 2012 I've struggled with motivation to continue hopping on Cato.  Part of that struggle has been the strange weather in the Northeast throughout the spring.  Whenever I thought that the warm weather was around to stay, the temperature would suddenly drop twenty or thirty degrees.  Since I am so dead-set against exposing myself to cold weather it is hard for me to get into a rhythm when the weather plays such nasty tricks with me.  Mainly, though, the problem is that I simply cannot remind myself of any of the reasons why I made riding my bike such a big part of my life in the past year and a half.  First it was for exercise that my bad knee could handle, then it was to save the environment, then it was an odd but meaningful way to raise awareness for the fight against human trafficking.  None of which seem to pop into my head anymore.  So I still ride my bike because it would seem strange not to, but now it also seems strange riding because I don't know why I'm doing it.

To some it might seem like the latter source of motivation is the only one relevant to this blog.  I disagree.  There are a few core things that I learned on my bike trip, but one of them is that the way we live our life day to day can have a great effect on slavery.  The obvious example is if we wear jewelry with diamonds in them without knowing whether the diamonds were mined with fair wages and agreeable working conditions or from slaves.  But our 'slavery footprint' as I'm now calling it is similar to our carbon footprint: small life habits can add or subtract a serious amount to our carbon footprint or our slavery footprint.  Where do your clothes come from, where does your food come from, where does the gas that you put in your car come from, and on and on; how much you consume various things will affect the growth or reduction of certain industries in a simple supply and demand formula.  Like with cows or chickens or any animal whose meat we eat that aren't treated well, if you buy meat from companies that add to the problem then you suggest to the market that more poorly treated animals need to be farmed.  Farming itself is a slave issue.  Indeed, a huge number of things are slave issues, and thus we must be careful.

My point is that whether I am riding my bike focused on fighting human trafficking or on saving the environment, or on saving my knee, the fact that I am riding my bike is a positive.  If I am riding my bike then I am not driving a car or using electricity and then not in any way promoting slavery in our world.

Now I am without motivation to continue riding my bike, though I do still ride it.  What is the problem there?  The problem is one that many pastors and priests of churches encounter at some point in their ministry: burn-out.  Pastors aren't the only ones who experience occupational burn-out but I do think the pastor form of burn-out is the most devastating and noticeable kind because all of God's kingdom and His call for us is called into question.  It can be a very dangerous time for pastors.  Similarly I think it's a dangerous time for me and just one example of what can happen when we try too hard to be mission-oriented.  Oftentimes we find some good that needs to be done in the world and think we need to do something about it all the time.  But we have to pace ourselves, mix in some peace and joy, and do only what we can.  Otherwise we will be left in the burning burnt-out desert that I find myself in now.

Part of pacing ourselves, too, is knowing our role.  In the Church we talk about the Body of Christ and I think it's a valid metaphor for non-believers concerned about social justice as well.  Each one of us has special gifts and interests.  We have to rely on each other, knowing that when we use our gifts to address our interests that other folk in the body will use their gifts to address their interests.  The hand cannot do the stomach's job.  Some jobs are more glamorous than others, sure, but all missions are equally important.  Don't work yourself out trying to do too much, other members of the body will do the rest.  I am beyond proud of myself and glad that I did what I did, and proud of all of you who helped me raise money for Polaris Project, but I put so much emphasis on myself that I am now struggling to recover.  So don't be like me and lose motivation to do something that you love.

Hometown Prophet

A couple of weeks ago I came home from seminary and immediately jumped into helping my father win an a town election.  He won the race for selectman and everyone is happy.

Much of the work that goes into helping with a town election for grunts like me entails holding signs.  On the day of the election I found myself holding a sign (or two) for ten hours.  At one point that meant standing next to a fine gentleman that I like quite a bit, though until then I hadn't much opportunity to talk to him during the past few years of knowing him.  Most of the time we were telling stories, long stories: apparently he and my father are the kings of telling long stories.

I don't usually tell long stories.  I just have a lot of stories that I tell in quick fashion.  One of the stories I told that day was how I had bicycled across the country to fight human trafficking.  He responded as most people do, "Wow, are you serious?!"  And then a few seconds later, "That's so disturbing.  I don't know why anyone would use someone like that.  Hopefully our government can step into other countries and stop it."  I was proud of him until that last sentence.

What surprises me about the interaction is how little some people know about domestic human trafficking even in my hometown.  Lack of awareness is an on-going issue that I've written about, and to some extent I think it's the major issue when it comes to trying to fight the evil, but since I decided to go on my bike trip I have not spent much time at home.  Now that I have it's rather upsetting that people that I know and have known for a long time, people that I respect, and people that I thought would have read the article about my bike trip in our town newspaper and that I thought were following this blog, continue to have little idea about just how serious human trafficking is in our world today.  Yes, I am glad that this man showed more concern about those held in slavery than most people that I talk to do, but I still think even the most concern does little good when it is directed internationally and is totally ignorant of how serious it is around our homes.

Granted, I can't expect everyone that I come across to be up to speed on the issue nor can I expect them to have followed my trip with ever-attentive eyes.  In a lot of ways it's good because, I mean, that's my mission: to make others aware.  I'd be silly to think that a few months, even an impressive few months, would fulfill my mission.  Still, I'm beginning to understand what people like Jesus and Mohammed knew, that prophets are very rarely accepted in their hometown.  Part of that is because people know me for who I am with all of my deficiencies and I can't simply be that great guy who biked across the country.  But a lot of that is because, knowing me, hometown folk believe that "this guy" can't have much to say that they don't already know.

I don't mean to say that I'm a prophet.  I simply mean that the experience I have had at home so far reminds me of how much harder a person with a universal mission must work in their hometown.  It's a good thing that I've always wanted to make Hudson, MA a great place--perhaps, through many, many years of hard toil, Hudson can become a model for the fight against slavery.