On countless bike rides with John Reynolds and Bob Miller I heard their mantra that "speed on the downhill run is my friend" – and of course, they practice what they preach! They chant it as they look with wildest abandon – and I with purest foreboding -- over a dangling precipice to a narrow, snaking dirt trail that descends at an 80 degree angle with a 90 degree rock and dirt wall on one side and a terrorizing abyss, on the other.

I scorned their wisdom until that day on the Bolinas Ridge Trail riding down into the great meadow. The image of Anthony Quinn as Zorba the Greek danced before me like a grizzled angel, arms raised singing, "With a little madness you can cut the rope and be free!" I released the brakes, shifted down, peddled up and flew through the air, soaring from moguls, across crevasses, and skillfully around prairie pies and potholes. It was transcendent…Totally Cosmic – in the best high camp Marin sense!  My bike and I were ONE! We were ONE with all of Creation!

Last week, after 7 months of always challenging and always fun singing lessons, my beloved teacher, Sheliah Glover, patiently weary, I assumed, of my self-protective, make-no-errors, take-no-prisoners guardedly soft singing, told me to close my eyes, put some air behind the words, and sing the song I knew by heart – sing it like I believed it. Her challenge was 10 clicks more threatening than the Reynolds/Miller mantra!

This time the image of the heavenly host all rolled into the angelic voice of  [WPC Director of Youth Ministry] Bethany Nelson replaced the grizzled Quinn. Bethany's singing transports my soul because she believes and lives what she sings. Suddenly she vanished from before my closed eyes when Sheliah sounded the introductory notes. Out of nowhere I had plenty of air to put behind the words, and I sang the song whose words I completely believe! Sheliah was cheering and planting invisible but very tangible gold stars on my forehead, and I, astonished, speechless, and cosmically radiant was again ONE, one with the music, ONE with God!

Just as I do not ride down every mountainside with liquid abandon, my singing is not ready for prime time. I really wanted to sing with the group this morning, but that will come with practice and the confidence of knowing I can put air behind the words because my heart is in the music and the music is in my soul.

The longest, most demanding, and frequently traveled path in my life, and perhaps in yours as well, is the gnarly trail from my head to my heart. As the Israelites, sitting beside the waters of Babylon wondering how they could sing the Lords song in an alien land, relative to riding my bike, my head held my heart in exile to those fearsome, lingering warnings, "be careful, slow down, don't get hurt!" And, relative to singing, my voice and I were captive in an alien land of ignorance, shame, and fear.

Beyond their pure roles, my biking and singing are metaphors for faith and being: release the brakes, trust; and take the risk, the ride, sing the song. Put some air behind it, because when you feel it you can sing it; when you believe it you can live it!

Faith, like singing, is an experience that fills and lifts our lives one dimension more. Though words, structure, and propositions are clearly important at some level, the soulful life of the spirit is less about getting every word "right" (whatever that is) and holding onto creeds that we proclaim to be "true" (whatever that means). It was essential that I struggled with and learned musical notes, got the rhythm, and really "heard" the song, but I did not find the air or sing the song until I let go of those things and opened my heart to the experience of the words and music.

It is the same with our experience of God and Divine love. Yes, it truly helps to know the story and the history, the dreams and tales, but ultimately, our union with God is infinitely more important than the truths we think we can assert, and our experience of God is far greater than the reduction of the Divine to mere statements, creeds, and propositions.

My experiences of spiritual exile, like the Israelites sitting beside the waters of Babylon, have to do with things like fear, shame, transitory ignorance, and the cautionary warnings, whose distant origins are long lost but that resound from the endless looping tape in my mind.

The alien land can be the one where our wholeness is diminished, our being is unsatisfied, our union with God goes unpracticed, and our calling to BE love is unfilled.

It is incredibly hard if not impossible to sing the Lord's song in lands that are dominated by creed and confession, argumentation and proposition, triumphalism and absolutism.

Things and circumstances in life drive us into exile in the foreign lands of pain, loss, grief, struggle, illness, uncertainty, transition, and confusion. And once again we sit by the waters of our exile wondering how we can sing the Lord's song.

Perhaps there is something going on in your spiritual journey, or a yearning to end an exile, or something happening in your life that is keeping your song in bondage, that has your soul and your life in exile. Perhaps there is a longing in you to set your song free, to feel it and sing it, to believe it and live it.
 

MEDITATION EXERCISE:

• Sit quietly with yourself, breathing gently…
• Sense where you feel exiled -- from God, from others, or your most authentic self.
• Invite the Spirit to meet you at the intersection of your exile and your longing….

• Sense the roiling of waters of your Babylon – your exile….
• Picture the Spirit transforming roiling waters into still waters beside the green pasture of union with God….

• Picture yourself in the presence of God singing the Lord's song once again; picture yourself singing your own special song once again!