Sometimes We Need to Put Life In the Rear-View Mirror and GO!

"Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long, If you're goin' my way, I wanna drive it all night long." --Tom Cochrane

 It’s my favorite view I enjoy while driving in my car, on a day like today, when I leave for a week’s long road trip and my first extended vacation since last summer.  It’s not the view ahead, through the car’s windshield, billowing white clouds in a bright blue summer sky, though that is beautiful. It’s not the view out my side window either, as I watch the whir of highway signs and mile markers fly by so fast, in a flash, though such a view reminds me I am absolutely on my way. And it’s the not the view inside my car: a Vanilla Zero Coke can in the cup holder and a half-eaten bag of Cheddar Cheese Pretzel Combos on the passenger seat while my phone plays the latest best seller by Stephen King on the sound system. That tells me I am truly turned on for fun and turned off for work.  Those are all great vacation visions and yet….

It is the view out my car’s rear-view mirror, that brings the most joy to my heart, the most sighs of relief to my soul and the most smiles to my face. I just love to put things in the rear-view mirror and then get away. Leave behind a busy life in favor of a leisure life, if only for a handful of days every August. 

Especially in 2022, such escapes are filled with grace we so much need.

These days the work we each do often feels heavier somehow, with more at stake and more demands to be met and more new ways to adapt to the rapidly changing world we all live in. It all feels so intense sometimes. Like no matter what we do to earn a paycheck—teach kids, fight fires, crunch numbers, heal bodies, build houses, care for souls, sling hash or ring up groceries—it’s just harder to carry out and to carry on our labors.

I mean are we in COVID now or out of COVID now or waiting for the next COVID?! Now?! How much do I have to pay for a gallon of gas or a pound of steak or my Milky Way candy bar?! The government came how close to being overthrown on January 6^th?!  And now we’re facing monkeypox?! WHAT THE HECK IS MONKEYPOX!!!!! (Actually, I don’t want to know.)

Thus, the need for all of us on a regular basis to get away, take a look in the rear-view mirror and then watch fade into the distance, whatever it is that weighs heavily on our hearts. Work. Family. Health. Country. Relationships. Faith. Kids. We all get wrapped up in this beautiful and broken thing called “normal” life and so all of us need this gift of a rear-view mirror, both real and metaphorical. To leave behind, if only for a little bit of time, that which we need to let go of.

That’s what time off is for: to go away. That’s what a vacation is for: to vacate the present.  That’s what recreation is for: to re-create our lives for the better, and right now. Yes, even God rested on the seventh day of doing all the work of creation. God put the Divine feet up and sat back in a hammock hanging from two trees in the Garden of Eden and then God looked up at all that God had created and just chilled out. Thought (well actually said, according to the Bible), “Hey! This is very good!”

But first God had to stop. Put the work of Creation in the rear-view mirror and get a new perspective on life through a sabbath day and time.

This commitment to go away from work, and go towards a restful place, is not always easy.  We may be tempted to think, “If I go away, everything will fall apart!” or “How can they carry on without me?”  Reality check: no one is irreplaceable. No one, especially for a short time. We may be reluctant to look in the rear-view mirror because of some misplaced need to maintain a so-called Protestant work ethic. You know, the belief that how hard we work determines our worth as human beings and maybe even our worth in the eyes of God.

Take it from me, one who actually works within that religious tradition. All work and no play instead absolutely makes Jack (or in my case John) a very dull boy. A sad boy. And an exhausted boy too. Who would want to worship a God who judged us according to how many hours we worked or how much money we made or how “successful” the world said we are? Who wants this epitaph on their tombstone: “I wish I had worked more!”

So, here’s my unsolicited August advice. Take one last summer chance to get away from it all.  Hop in whatever mode of transport you like best, that can get you from here to there, and then just go. Take one last look in the rear-view mirror, and let daily life fade away into the distance, mile by mile. September and the labors of the day (and post-Labor Day) will be here soon enough.

See yah!

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.