Interlude: Meditation of the Week at interluderetreat.com

After 34 years, the road bike’s wheels had finished their cycle. No more pumping of tires or rider’s lungs. It was time to move on. The vehicle was spent.

Our bodies do this. We get them brand new. We have to learn how they work. We fall down and get scraped up. They give us a certain experience. We grow old and the body no longer serves. Finally, we are spent and it is time to let go. The rider no longer animates the body. Some think that’s it. Ride over. Some think the rider goes someplace else, heaven or hell, but they no longer ride. Some think the rider gets a new bike and the wheels keep turning.

If we survive death, like a rider whose bike has been retired, wouldn’t we want to come back? The road still beckons. New bodies are available just as new bikes are.

When you get a new bike, you might find that technology has moved on. Shifting is easier. Frames are lighter. Bikes have shocks. It is possible to have more than ten gears. You don’t have to work so hard to get where you are going. Our ancestors were born into bodies that had to work really hard just to survive. Information was hard to come by. Spirituality was constrained by rigid hierarchies. If their souls were hanging around for eternity, wouldn’t they think, “Let me take another try at that incarnation thing. There are new experiences to be had.”

There is another way of looking at this. Maybe the ride is the thing. Maybe it’s not about the bike or the rider. Maybe the important thing is the riding. Somebody makes a bicycle. It might sit in the bike shop for years and nobody buys it. It is just a hunk of metal and rubber without a rider. But it wasn’t made for any particular rider. Anybody can take it from the shop and anybody who does can take it anywhere they please. When they are done with it and the riding stops. That’s it.

Maybe our bodies come into being and we are born and we live. We are a bunch of protoplasm with potential. Living happens when bodies are born, like riding happens when bike and rider come together. Without the bike there is no rider. And maybe, as some believe, without the body there is no consciousness. The important thing then would be to live well.

Like a bike whose tires have gone flat, sometimes a metaphor can only be pushed so far. We should let this one go. But first:

May your shifting be smooth, your tires well inflated, and may your wheels keep turning.

Bicycle Reflections

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