It's Just a Bus Ride

There are things I have hated to admit over time. One: I battle envy on a fairly regular basis. Two: I really like control. The first one has seen enough ink. The second one has some energy to it today.

Over the course of the past several months (a year already... how time flies), our church has been taking a good hard look at ourselves and at our community to see where we need to invest in our growth and in the shalom of the Glen Lake area. And so we saw in ourselves a need to grow in the areas of spiritual formation/disciplines (who doesn't?) and that our community was one where isolation was becoming more of a "thing." Isolation is a regular experience for people living in the most beautiful place in America. What a good way to encourage spiritual discipline than to commit ourselves to ending isolation? Spiritual disciplines, after all, open ourselves to God and neighbor, effectively ending isolation from both.

Then it got personal. I committed myself to understanding public transit in a rural community. Whereas I would think that I would embrace public transportation in an urban area, I tend to think of my car as a survival skill in Glen Arbor. My inner dread increased as I began to think about the things I would need to cope with in order to make the bus part of my life.

I am a couple miles from the nearest bus stop.

The bus only comes a couple times a day.

The places I need to go can be a mile or two from the bus stop.

I have to be prompt and carry cash (even exact change!).

Confession: I feel entitled. I feel entitled to my car. I feel entitled to my schedule. I feel entitled to do what I want when I want. The rural public transportation system defies my entitlement.

Entitlement is a dirty word nowadays, particularly in a time of sequestration. Entitlement has gone from a feeling to a code word for government subsidy. Nobody wants to admit to feeling "entitled." So allow me to say it again, allow me to bring that demon out of the shadow and into the light, where it belongs.

I feel entitled to controlling my own life.

I wish the bus system was the only place this entitlement shows up. But it isn't. My entitlement shows up in how I respond to interruptions. My entitlement shows up when I work really hard and it doesn't go according to plan. My entitlement shows up in how I expect the social systems of the world to work for me all the time, even when I hear my neighbors and friends lament how the systems seem to be arrayed against them. And so I show up with a degree of entitlement. And I don't like it. I like to think of myself as a justice-minded, shalomy type of pastor. And still, I sit in my office grumbling over the fact that my bus stop is a one mile walk from the my target.

Richard Foster would not list "bus riding" as part of the new edition of "Celebration of Discipline," but that's just what it will be for me as I seek to make the bus part of my life. It's a chance to challenge my own model of how the world "should be" and embrace the way God would have it be. It may be just a bus ride, but for me, it's a prayer.