Blessing for Bicycle Riders

On June 1, CATS is sponsoring a Blessings for Bicycle Riders event at the 10:30 service. Bicycle riders and their allies will bring their helmets to receive blessings and prayers for safety. The event is CCC’s contribution to City-wide Bike Week sponsored by HUB, a non-profit organization dedicated to bicycle transportation.

It's probably clear that urban bicycle riders could use a prayer or two for safety.

It's probably also clear that cycling is a health-enhancing act of stewardship. HUB points out that bicycles do not use fossil fuels and do not contribute to air pollution. Bicycle riders do not create commuter congestion and do not add to traffic noise. Whether commuting, running errands, or simply adventuring, bicycle riders enjoy an easily accessible, low-impact activity that builds fitness, reduces stress, elevates mood, and improves mental clarity.

But what does the bicycle have to do with spirit? Here, HUB does not comment, so cyclists in our midst will offer a few paragraphs about cycling and spirit in the Chronicle each week until the June 01 event.

In my own experience of cycling and spirit, evening rides are a portal through the neighbourhood into the numinous. Raindrops wink from hosta and hellebore; spruce and sequoia sweep the sky. I stop for moms, dads, and babies, for downy fluffball goslings, then pedal on, under blue clouds, beneath blue mountains, along blue seas, further, into the mystic blue.

The air the air the air enlivens heart and lungs and corpuscles. The air renews spirit; the air invites the day’s review; the air allows focus on what is life giving and what is not; the air shows where and how to proceed more fully alive.

The bicycle. “Tool for conviviality,” avenue to spirit. Bless the bicycle.

Submitted by Lin Langley on behalf of CATS