personal and theological reflections after a minor bike wreck

19 November 2024 - 7 minutes read - 1308 words - kudos:

After six years and over 6,000 miles¹ of bike commuting without any real incident², I took a corner too fast this morning, hydroplaned, and slid a few feet on the road before picking myself up to get back to the sidewalk and out of the way of the cars whose path I was blocking. It wasn’t a huge wreck: I didn’t hit my head, my bike seems to be fine³, and three scrapes (one bigger than others) and some torn-up clothes are the worst of the damage. I rode back home, cancelled class, cleaned myself up, and am figuring out how to adjust my work day.⁴

Despite being pretty-much-fine, though, I’m giving myself permission to be a little spooked this morning. Just last night, I’d bookmarked an article from the local paper about a driver hitting and killing a bicyclist⁵, and while this wreck was my own dumb fault rather than any driver’s, it was another reminder that for anyone—but especially a bike commuter—any day could be the day that your luck runs out. It’s not terribly original of me to say, but yeah, this is the kind of morning that invites you to put things into perspective a bit.

On the ride home, my thoughts went to a lot of places. Hey, maybe it’s time to recommit to that mental health counselor’s advice to spend my bike rides being present rather than listening to audiobooks and podcasts during my commute⁶. A bit more mindfulness could have prevented this wreck; more importantly, since the next one might be a driver’s fault rather than my own, a bit more mindfulness could help me best appreciate that time I have before my luck runs out, whenever and wherever that is.

I don’t know if it’s morbid to talk about “luck running out,” even euphemistically, but I’ve wrestled with a lot of existential dread over the past several years (some was keeping me up just last night!), and it’s been that idea of mindfulness and making the most of the present that’s been my most constant buoy when things get bad. It’s filtered into my theological thinking, too, as I’ve worked on rethinking God less as a personal being and more as the majesty and beauty of existence and as I’ve tried to abandon a false god of wanting—or even being able to—control what’s happening in the world around me. It’s not just that the wreck is putting things into perspective, it’s that it’s hitting on themes that have been on my mind for a long time and that I want to do better at living up to.

Of all the things going through my mind today, though, it’s a sermon from the Book of Mormon that seems to be sticking most. In Mosiah 1:52-54 (LDS 2:20-21), the character King Benjamin warns his people that:

if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole souls have power to possess to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that you should rejoice, and has granted that you should live in peace one with another; if you should serve him who has created you from the beginning and is preserving you from day to day by lending you breath, that you may live and move and do according to your own will, and is even supporting you from one moment to another; if you should serve him with all your whole soul, yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

I have mixed feelings about this passage. As noted earlier, I don’t necessarily believe in a personal God who is the agent behind creation, and even on days when I do, I put a lot of emphasis on grace and don’t love the idea of being “unprofitable servants” to God.

Yet, there’s still a reading of this passage that I think sums up nicely by belief in a non-theist God and in why I want to pursue this mindfulness as part of my spiritual and religious practice. Whether it’s a personal God or not, I’m not responsible for my own creation, I’m dependent on things well beyond my control just to be able to breathe, and (to paraphrase Benjamin later on), I have nothing to boast of. As I’ve written before (in distinctly less theological tones), my professional successes have only been possible because of other’s kindness, not any meritocratic inevitability.

Accepting that my existence and my life are not a function of how great I am but rather some incomprehensible grace on the part of God or the universe helps me not get too full of myself. It reminds me that I ought to enjoy what I have instead of trying to optimize or maximize it. It reminds me that getting to campus a minute or two earlier by taking that corner at that speed may not be necessary—and could save me the trouble of a bike wreck. It reminds me that a bit more time with my kid is probably more valuable than cranking out another paper for the ol’ academic CV.

It also reminds me of another part of Benjamin’s sermon, that if I am dependent on the grace of God (or the universe or whatever) for all that I am and are, I have no right to withhold that grace from others. I worry that things are going to be rough over the next few years, but I also know that I’m going to have things better than a lot of others. I also appreciate in Benjamin’s sermon (or at least my reading of it) that there’s no need to singlehandedly change the world—we can’t even claim credit for breathing, so I shouldn’t get too high of an expectation for how much of a difference I can make even when I’m doing my best. That’s not to say that I should take the next four years lightly, but it is an invitation to give up some control over that as well, to just give grace when I have received grace.

I’ll probably forget all of this within a few days as my elbow scabs over, deadlines approach, and I get annoyed by family members. I hope, though, that writing it down will help me remember the wreck and what it’s teaching me this morning about my own theology.

I hit 6,000 miles on my ebike’s odometer a couple of weeks ago. A small amount of that mileage is from pleasure rides, but I also did two years’ worth of bike commutes before buying my ebike without keeping track of total mileage, and I still use that bike for the occasional commute, still without keeping track of mileage. So, I’m confident it’s above 6,000 miles, but I couldn’t tell you how much by. ↩︎
There are always incidents, even if they aren’t “real.” Without any real effort, I can think of two cars and at least one bus that have almost hit me. There are also a couple of winters where I’ve slipped on ice and bruised my ego. What I mean here is that until today, I’ve never been hurt—just had close calls and minor slips. ↩︎
i’m probably still taking it into the shop today because I’m a terrible bike mechanic and I want to make sure that my primary commuting vehicle is okay. ↩︎
Besides, of course, blogging instead of being in class and probably taking some time off to get a real bike mechanic to give my ride a once-over. ↩︎
Naturally, of course, the paper downplays this with a passive-voiced headline. ↩︎
I feel particularly sheepish about today’s listen, because even though Naomi Alderman’s The Future is amazing, one of its throughlines is a critique of a need for control, security, and productivity; “mindfulness” doesn’t come up explicitly in the book, but it’s something I’ve been mentally penciling in the margins. ↩︎

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