And so we begin again and again and then five times on Sundays. Always renewing ourselves to our cause, to our focus, to being in love. Like those little corrections we make constantly as brand new drivers. We become more aware... more *aware* (Wake up!) with every time our heart beats. More aware the nearer we come to returning to God’s arms. The closer to death, the more awake. The mortal shell like sleep. Making love like waking briefly. Praying like spending a full moment aware between dreams.
“The moon's a fingernail and slowly sinking.
Another day begins and now I'm thinking:
That this indifference was my invention,
when everything I did sought your attention.”
Sleeping through mortal life (to one day awaken on celestial shores), we are, of course, so constantly tested. The idea is to hurt and grow and learn and bleed and fail and fail again more horribly, and devastate one another, and lift someone else’s heart to ecstasy by saying “I will. I do. Forever.” when inside us fear sinks steel teeth into our marrow and tries to shake out our soul. The idea is to live. Even sleeping. To live. Reset the clock to zero, lover. Start again. Right now. I still love you. Fancy that, Wings ;) Fancy that. We can begin anew and so many people will come with us. We lose nothing important.
“You could say I lost my faith in science and progress...
Lost my belief in the holy church...
You could say I lost my sense of direction...
Could say all of this and worse but
If I ever lose my faith in you?
There'd be nothing left for me to do.
Nothing left to lose.”
We are constantly tested. Who sends these tests? Not really God. He’s so seriously *not* kickin’ back somewhere soft and cool and cozy and thinking, “Guess I’ll slam it to Eliza Jean today...” We’re tested by *life,* by *living,* by walking in the world. Boots on the pavement, baby, and we’re tested. We’re faced with choices – large and small... and larger – that often wind up having more weight, more consequences, and just more dang trouble attached in a zipped folder than we could ever have anticipated or guessed when someone asked us, “Do you want fries with that?”
The trouble, of course -- right? – is that our choices (our general failures of judgment and so-not-fate) affect not just our own lives (where it’s easy to shoulder mistakes and be proud little martyrs) but the lives of *others,* where it is far harder to face our short comings and own up to the truth. The enabling that occurs when people love us is pretty addictive. All those juicy, “It’s okay”s and “I’m just glad...”s pretty much wash away our responsibility... unless we take a deep breath and wake up for a moment.
I suppose this is the difference I see, more often than not, in the people I surround myself with. I chose to keep a circle of lucid dreamers near me. The ones that aren’t afraid to feel ashamed, embarrassed, and ultra-freaking-responsible. Because a few dozen little inconveniences piled upon another person can drown them just as easily as one devastating blow. When I fail, I fix it. But more than that. When I fail, I tell everyone *how* I will fix it. My failure is my responsibility.
A friend rolled her car the other day. Well, technically, it wasn’t *her* car. Oops. But everyone is just happy she’s all right. And, *dang,* so am I. Because more people lose their lives to single-car rollover incidents than any other type of accident after head-on collusion. I woke up this morning feeling (first) glad that she was still in my life because she’s a grrl like I like ‘em (which are rare), and (second) wondering what the heck she was going to do to make this okay with her roommate (whose car it was). I forgot for a moment who that roomie was (a mutual friend) because it wasn’t important. What was important was that my grrl would do right... do Right... like a good NTC grrl would do. Go over-board to shoulder this, even when those shoulders might still be shaking from adrenaline and thankfulness.
I know she will. Why? Because I feel *connected* to her. And no one I feel connected to abdicates responsibility. As if. Like...
“God? Yeah. Christ here. You know what? I’m thinking maybe no. Maybe I won’t go through with this whole cross thing, you know? So. Chill. I’m just gonna ascend. Check ya soon, Big Guy.”
Blasphemous? You obviously have never trashed your best friend’s wheels. It can feel like carrying a cross. And if it doesn’t? How about you go take a few No Doz and *wake up* (refer above).
Until you’ve made a colossal mistake with long-reaching, rippling, killer consequences (accidentally, like over-compensating on a twisty road at 5 or 10 miles over the speed limit... or with a lack of control, like hitting your teenage son... or even purposefully, like telling off your boss) you will never know how easy it is to accept all the platitudes of “okay”s and shrink away from “I’m so freaking sorry...” without tack-ons like, “But I didn’t mean it.” Responsibility is a great big word for a reason.
Factoring salvation and single-car rollovers in nondenominational individuals and American light vehicles (non-SUV):
Propensity volume determination for rollover considers X (speed), Y (plane/horizontal angle), Z (plane condition), A (counter force: external), B (counter force: internal), C (mechanical malfunction) with decreasing effect ratios from the extreme former (X) to the extreme latter (C). Likewise, redemptive probability involves Q (socio-economic status), R (race/region), S (parental example), E (peer environment), F (intrinsic responsibilities), and G (extrinsic responsibilities).
This is why the NHTSA Static Stability Factor rating system sucks. And why until you do it, you can’t rate it. Evaluating rollover propensity is the same thing as evaluating grace under fire. Until the bullets fly, you don’t know squat about yourself. You have to have that dynamic maneuver, in-action testing procedures going on. Because you know what? You can roll a car going 35 mph on a -270 degree left turn followed by a simple overcorrection of 540 degrees to right. That’s as little as a one quarter over-turn from the horizontal axis. That’s it.
In other words? It’s really easy to screw up.
Not so easy to survive it gracefully. Ethically. Morally. Especially when you don’t have a built-in Sunday morning community to turn to. You stand *alone*... ah... but not alone, right, baby? Never alone.
“What is the force that binds the stars?
I wore this mask to hide my scars.
What is the power that pulls the tide?
I never could find a place to hide.
”What moves the Earth around the sun?
What could I do but run and run and run?
Afraid to love, afraid to fail...
A mast without a sail.”
It is recognized by the authors (Richardson, Rechnitzer, Grzebieta and Hoareau) that an advanced methodology for estimating vehicle rollover propensity is needed. A criterion relating both handling and Stability Factor is proposed as opposed to the prior methodology which examines Stability Factor only. Though there is sufficient evidence to support the contention that Stability Factor and the rate of real world rollovers is linked, it is the contention of the authors that the noise (scatter or X factor) within the Stability Factor data is due to vehicle handling by the *individual driver.* This new methodology allows the combination of the Stability Factor and handling characteristic of the driver to predict the probability of rollover and fatality for a single-vehicle rollover.
Following me, baby? It all comes down to *you.* How do you handle your life? Waking. Sleeping. Crying. Loving. It ain’t about the random acts of the universe. It is about walking like Christ walked. Responsibly. Utterly. Especially when it’s hard. And most especially when everyone just wants to cuddle you. Stand up and be the individual driver in your life. You have all you need in the palm of your hand. What? Nothing there? Look again. That weight like a smooth stone? That’s Christ.
“You are my compass star.
You are my measure.
You are my pirate's map.
My buried treasure.”
NHTSA advises drivers to reduce the risk of rollover by: Avoiding speeding. (For a vehicle to produce a rollover or spinout maneuver it must be travelling at least 10 mph above the posted speed limit on the given road formation. See above for all factors.) Avoid panicked steering. (Driving directly off the road has a .018% probability of causing a fatality, whereas rollover annual fatality rates are 2,000 fatalities for every 70,000 rollover incidents.) A skidding car decelerates at 10 mph per second of a skid. A spinning or rolling car decelerates at 20 mph per second of a spin or roll.
Moral of the story? Slowing ourselves down will save our lives. Not just on the road, of course. Everywhere. Working hard can be done slowly. Heck, darling, pretty much *everything* is better done slowly.
And when you all roll your eyes heavenward because you know I zip along those midnight highways... just remember... compared to the cosmos? Compared to the speed of light? I’m a drifting mote. A very responsible drifting mote. And I’m a mote floating on, technically, my own bike *wicked grin*
With love, humor, and trust,
EJ
