ebike

i call it the 'anti-hog'

it's everything that a hog isn't.

small, clean, quiet, green, cheap, slow...

everything a hog isn't.

still, no one said it was meant to be anything else.

why is it that we are so good at comparing things and people to other things and other people, rather than simply gauging their worth (if that's what we need to do) by identifying why that person or thing was called into being and then attending to its 'effectiveness' according to that calling.

we don't like doing that.

we don't like doing that with an ebike because we have bought someone's rant that anything with two wheels should be a hog or a crotch rocket. it's more fun to just compare the ebike to the touring bike or the cafe racer or the speedster and laugh because it just doesn't measure up. it's comforting, somehow, to find someone or something that seems even more poorly equipped for life in this intimidating world than we are.

the insecure bully within us all...

weird.

see, i think the ebike is uniquely equipped for life in today's world for exactly the same reasons that we laugh at it. it is small, clean, quiet, green, cheap, slow... everything a hog isn't.

it is so small and clean that i can park it inside the lobby of the church if the rain clouds are starting to appear on the horizon. very convenient. it is virtually silent because it is battery operated, and as such is environmentally responsible, not contributing to global warming or the depletion of nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels. this has the added bonus of being really cheap to operate. it is emotionally satisfying for one who hates spending money on consumables to silently coast by gas stations with petrol pumping people topping up their tanks with something that they're just going to burn up... my cash can go into things and people that are going to be around for awhile.

a surprise has come, however, in seeing being slow as an asset. although it is still much faster than walking or even cycling, the pace of the ebike is relaxed. riding it is stress free. put the iPod on 'shuffle' and see how many songs you can fit in before you get to your destination. no point in road raging it up when you can only go a maximum of 37km/h on a straight stretch. you just leave earlier and enjoy the ride... and it's surprising how often, like the tortoise in that old children's story, you find yourself peacefully weaving through the parked cars past the vehicles qeued at lights during rush hour, engines running, clocks ticking, going nowhere.

nope. the ebike was never meant to be a hog. its strengths exist in direct contrast to those of a really great motorcycle- it's just that nobody but ebike riders are even aware of them.

i wish that i had understood this simple joie de vivre much earlier in life. i could have been enjoying inner peace, rather than trying to be someone or something i wasn't.

see, i have spent most of my life comparing myself to others, coveting their strengths rather than celebrating my own. for some reason, i was always ready to believe that, whereas what others could do was essential, the areas that i excelled were merely ornamentation.

in an informal show of hands during a talk i was giving recently, i discovered that there were many like me who, in a lifelong quest for legitimacy, had wasted time, energy and emotion trying to somehow measure up to standards that were not reasonable or God honouring.

God honouring?

what does any of this have to do with God?

God has called each of us into existence and has equipped us with some basic gear. beyond this, however, we have each been entrusted with some special equipment and programming that is essential to the realization of the bigger actualization dream: God's desired picture of the world- the restoration of Shalom. burned into our DNA is arguably our place in the cosmos and to turn away from this in order to try to be like someone else is to say, in effect, that God doesn't know squat about anything that's really important. hardly God honouring.

God makes a tree and is glorified when that tree grows and bears delicious apples for kids to eat while they sit up in its branches reading books, dreaming dreams or stealing kisses. unlike tolkien's ents, real trees don't have any thinking, decisions or active involvement. they just are what they have been created to be and in so being, bring honour and glory to the creator.

so what is a man to be?