Pagan Values Blogging Month: The Bicycle
A bicycle isn't a Pagan value, you say? Not a value at all, you say? Clearly, you've never seen me on a bicycle.
I learned how to ride a bike at age 30. Coincidentally, at that time, I was in therapy learning to deal with anxiety and depression issues. My bicycle-riding came to be an outward manifestation of the internal progress I made in therapy. My first solo ride was from my house to my therapist's office - less than a mile but, for me, the conquering of what had once seemed an unconquerable challenge.
At my appointment, I blithered on about how amazing cycling was, and what wonders it was working for me. With her startling gift for summarizing in ten words or fewer what I'd needed two minutes to convey, my therapist said, "You find it rejuvenating on every level, including the spiritual."
And so, without meaning to, she pointed me at a path that has become the next evolution in my spiritual practice: The Congregation of the Two Wheels.
Embracing my identity as a non-deistic Pagan required much shifting of perspectives. In some ways, trying to connect with deity was easier. Nature is never going to send me on a quest or demand a burnt offering, but at least I knew where to find Shapshu. Figuring out how to pray to the whole of the Cosmos is much trickier.
But when I get on that bicycle, I am praying. My heart speeds up, my senses sharpen. I am both deeply present to my immediate reality and profoundly aware of my connection to All That Is - the bicycle beneath my hands and feet and ass, the road beneath my tires, the crazed squirrels darting across that road, the trees those squirrels run up, the sky that arches above those trees, and always the air, the constant breath, the wind I smith around myself with every pedal stroke. The sensation is similar to what I have in ecstatic Reclaiming rituals.
One oft-repeated theme at Paganicon this year was, if you'll pardon the cliche, walking our talk. How do we who claim to follow Earth-based paths enact our values in everyday life? My prime answer to that is my bicycle.
I'm far from perfect. Too often, I let the siren calls of Speed and Convenience lure me into the car. But during what passes for clement weather in Minnesota, I put between 25 and 50 miles on my bicycle most weeks. I don't do much "just for kicks" recreational riding, so that's 25-50 miles per week that I would otherwise have put on my car. That adds up in so many ways, of which reductions in emissions and fuel consumption are merely the most obvious. I love the Earth best by treading lightly upon it.
There is also the question of the body. My body is a sacred machine, and I have become fascinated by its processes. Through exercise and healthy eating, I can make it a highly efficient vehicle for doing what it wants to do (and what I want it to do). So offer me a chance to tune that machine - in a way that feels like flying - hells, yeah, I'm all over that. And don't forget the endorphins and serotonin that biking pumps into my system at an often dizzying level. Ask Leora the Sane sometime about my "bike smile". Biking just makes me feel good; it is one of the "acts of pleasure" that us Pagany sorts are always on about.
Recently, I discovered Bicycling Meditations, a brilliant assemblage of pages for folks who integrate cycling and spirituality. It is a site for the contemplation of the bicycle as a spiritual tool - and instrument of reverence and joy. My spiritual beliefs or practices haven't changed since I learned to ride; I haven't become a different sort of Pagan since - or because - I became a transportation cycling zealot. In fact, I'd wager that Paganism was part of the cause of my intense love of cycling, as I started to realize the spiritual possibilities of my new endeavor.
I don't worship bicycles. And I do know that "bicycle" isn't a value. And yet, for me, it is so intimately entwined with the values I hold dear as a Pagan that it has become more than merely representative of those values; it has transformed, as snow slowly transforms into glacier, to become a value in and of itself.
It rejuvenates on every level, including the spiritual.
Especially the spiritual.