The Exhilaration of Acceleration

Good judgment comes from experience. And experience? That comes from poor judgment – Anonymous

I needed to head over the river to take care of some business in Burlington (a town just north of us). I was on the on-ramp approaching the bridge and noted traffic on the main road was moving at about the speed limit (also known as a crawl), so I hit the accelerator so I could merge onto the bridge traffic ahead of the slow-pokes – er, uh, other cars.

I put the pedal to the metal, as the old saying goes, and my trusty steed took off like a wild stallion from the gates at Hialeah. She didn’t just take off; she tore off like a hound after a hare. The pedal stuck to the floor and wouldn’t spring back! I gave it a tap to unstick it (as happens every so often – the linkage can sometimes get a little kink in it and needs help returning to its normal position), but it was jammed against the floorboards and wouldn’t spring back.

Fortunately, traffic was light, so I pushed the brake hard enough to prevent my jump to light speed, and as soon as I crested the top of the span I slipped the gear shift from drive into neutral and coasted down to the end of the bridge, rolled my way into a (mostly empty) parking lot, and finally came to a controlled stop in a wide-open parking space. While firmly pressing on the brake, I slipped the transmission from neutral into park.

All this time the engine continued roaring with a high RPM, but before I turned it off, I reached down and discovered the floor-mat had crept up and caused the pedal to jam, so once I pulled it back, the accelerator sprung back to its normal position, and all was well with the world once again.

Life is like that. Things are going along smoothly, and then a crisis arises and we need to deal with it quickly. I have found in my life that a crisis is, as often as not, a product of my own creation. If I had accelerated normally onto the bridge, I would likely have had no trouble with the gas pedal. It was my overblown sense of entitlement (to jump to the front of the pack) that hurled me into the problem that needed solving.

I’m pretty sure this problem of ego has been with us a long time. When Adam and Eve stomped on the accelerator roaring their way to equality with the Divine they discovered Eden didn’t have seat belts, and they found themselves ejected from the Garden of Eatin’.

As some may know, we have embarked on a forty day season called Lent which, for many Christians, is a season of fasting (or abstinence) self-examination, and discipline. While that sounds all glum and dour, it is actually just a time of looking at one’s life, relationship with God and others, and discerning what could be done to remove or reduce some of those character defects that afflict each of us. It’s not a matter of earning our way into God’s good graces, by the way, but of knowing our tendency is to set the bar far too low, and of God’s belief that we can do better.

When I was a child, I had a child’s artistic talents. Out of love, my artwork was posted on the refrigerator for everyone to see and behold, even though it was obvious my stick figures would never make it into the Louvre. My skills today are still those of a five year old and, frankly, they never make it onto the refrigerator anymore.

I suspect that many people rest on their spiritual laurels, not out of a sense of evil or even of laziness, but simply because we get busy with life and don’t put much thought into the matter. Lent invites us to come back to the drawing board, to pick up the colored pencils, charcoals, paints, or whatever medium we’ve been blessed with, and light the passions afresh.

However one practices their faith, I hope each will take some time to reflect on their lives and see if there isn’t space for improvement in this, our valley. Keep on trucking with exhilarating joy (but first, you'd better fix the mat).