Rear View Mirror

​On Monday I installed a rear view mirror on the left handlebar of my bicycle. I have been wanting to do it for awhile, as I have had more than a few instances of vehicles coming up behind me and either scaring me to death or creating an unsafe riding situation on the road. And, since it rained us out of the garden for a spell, doing the installation on a bonus day off just made sense.

The instructions and the installation itself were fairly straightforward. The adjustment? Well, that’s where things got a little hinky. The instructions said that to adjust the mirror and then lock it down in the proper position, I should take an easy neighborhood ride and adjust for optimal viewing as needed. So that’s exactly what I did. I took a bike ride in my neighborhood. As I rode, I did precisely as instructed. I checked the view in my new mirror, concentrating on getting the angle just right so that I could see what was coming up on my left at any given moment. 

I kept riding and kept fiddling–constantly looking behind me. Which was precisely the problem, I think. Because the more I looked back, the less I looked at what was coming up in front of me. And the less I looked at what was coming up in front of me, the more opportunities arose for a mishap or a complete disaster. While I managed to avoid disaster, the mishaps ensued. In all of my fiddling I narrowly missed the side mirror of a parked car on a nearby street, and I ended up riding over a series of potholes in the road that were simply too late to maneuver around.

As I have thought about the mishaps, I am mindful of how often I do something similar in my own life. I focus on some mistake I made in the past, or how something terrible happened in the past, and before I know it, my eyes are so fixated on what happened before, that I miss what is happening now. Right in front of me. I am so worried about a mistake I made that I’m still kicking myself for that I miss the adjustments that could be made right here and now to avoid repeating the mistake again. Or I spend so much time looking back at how wonderful things used to be before a heartbreaking event happened that I miss all the wonderful happening here and now. Maybe you can relate?

I heard once that God’s name is not “I WAS,” so we needn’t look back with longing or regret. And God’s name is not “I WILL BE,” so we needn’t look forward with fear or anxious energy. God’s name is “I AM,” so our task–every day–is always the same:  To look where we are right now and be as present and open to it as we can be, trusting that God IS here with us. That’s sewn up a little too neatly for me, but it makes sense and has always stuck with me. At any given moment I AM is right in front of us, not in the rear view. Whether we notice that Presence is largely dependent on where we’re looking.

It’s important to glance back from time to time, I think. To see how far we’ve come. To look at all of the days we thought we wouldn’t make it through and did. To remember someone who was there with us but isn’t here with us now. To orient ourselves to our surroundings. But remember, it’s the glances that are beneficial, not so much the gazes. 

There is a great big world unfolding right in front of us, friends, and we get SUCH a better view of that world and all of the creatures in it in each moment…not in some small rear view mirror looking back over our shoulder. Join me in taking it in this week, won’t you?

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa

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