Moto Meditations
"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." - Frank Lloyd Wright
Have we insulated ourselves from nature so much with our modern conveniences that we have even forgotten our own true nature?
Statistics show that rainfall will reduce voter turnout, the most precious gift we have in our culture. God forbid that we should get wet or get outside of our technologically produced 72-degree bubble. Nature is not our enemy. It may be the only way we can find a connection to God, whatever we perceive God to be.
Robert Pirsig introduced me to the joy of nature in 1975 when his landmark book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published. When I read this passage in the first chapter of the book, I knew this was what I had to do.
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
Since then, I’ve logged over 150,000 miles on a motorcycle in the rain, cold, intense heat, and even snow. Fortunately, I’ve never touched that concrete whizzing by under my feet. It’s been wonderful. I feel alive on a motorcycle. Maybe I connect with God more on a motorcycle than in a church.
In a recent Atlantic article, This is No Way to Be Human, by Alan Lightman, he refers to research by social psychologists Stephan Mayer and Cindy McPherson Frantz, at Oberlin College, who developed something called the “connectedness to nature scale” (CNS), a set of statements that could be used to determine a person’s degree of affinity for nature. After answering “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “neutral,” “agree,” or “strongly agree” to each statement, each participant would have an overall score computed. Some of the statements of the CNS test are:
I often feel a sense of oneness with the natural world around me.
I think of the natural world as a community to which I belong.
When I think of my life, I imagine myself to be part of a larger cyclical process of living.
I feel as though I belong to the Earth as equally as it belongs to me.
I feel that all inhabitants of Earth, human and nonhuman, share a common “life force.”
What’s your CNS score? After my recent experience at the Modern Elder Academy with Father Richard Rohr, I think I scored higher on this scale than I would have scored before. I didn’t think much about God or talk much about God before meeting Father Richard Rohr and reading his books.
If you’re looking for God, open your door, go outside, dance in the rain with a child, or maybe even ride a motorcycle. It’s a lot like going to church without the air conditioning.
P.S. I have a YouTube channel called MotoMeditations, Stuff I Think About While I’m Riding. Check it out.