Thoughts on the eve of my mikveh —

Every year for the last several years, I've taken a long ride out into the countryside on Christmas day.   December 25th has long been bittersweet for me, a disconcerting and complex dissonance between the apparent joy of the entire world—Christian or not-- and the painful sadness deep in my own heart.   So, as is my custom, I sort out complexity by disappearing on my bike for a few hours, seeking solace in the wind and the drifting of my thoughts.  

It is always a little surreal, pedaling past deserted parking lots and businesses closed for the holiday as I head out of town and into the countryside.   The roads typically have very little traffic.   Stretches of time slip by when I have the entire world to myself, and I always struggle with whether or not I find this enjoyable. There is something remarkable about leaving for a ride at noon and watching the pale, weak, deep-winter sun track across the horizon in the span of three short hours.   By the time I typically return, darkness approaches.   The ride centers me, reminds me that G-d is bigger than ‘Hannukwanzmas,' that artificial but generally sincere holiday season we've created to justify celebrating the simple faith that light will continue to burn even at the point of darkest darkness.

Yet today was December 24th, not the 25th, and here I was on my bike and heading north into the farmlands outside of Coburg where I often make my pilgrimage when I need to seek connection with G-d.     This wasn't the plan.   Looking out the window earlier that morning, I frowned.   It didn't make sense to go out today.   I had just run 9 miles on hard, cold concrete the day before and slept very poorly that night.   I hadn't eaten well.   I was fighting a cold.   Today needed to be a day of rest, yet the pull to be ‘out there' that compelled me was beyond a simple desire to ride my bike.   It was, forgive me, almost like a calling.

I wrestled for a while, trying to bridge the gap between logic and intuition.   Finally, I decided to compromise and simply head out on Faith for a short ride just to loosen my legs and get some fresh air.   Faith, by the way, is the name for my long mileage racing bike (her sisters are called Storm and Jazz).   I filled one water bottle and didn't bother with a snack… I wouldn't be gone that long.   I didn't even bother to put a rear fender on the bike because the sun was out and I'd be right back.

Once I got on my bike, a feeling of peace and clarity settled over me, and my legs were surprisingly springy.   I decided to head north, past Coburg.   “Just a short spin,” I thought, “I'll head back at the first cut off.”   As I pedaled through the small town of Coburg, I took in all the Christmas decorations adorning the antique shops, the mom and pop delis, the town square.   Alone with my thoughts, I allowed myself to appreciate this so human need to bring light into the world when the darkness peaks.   A touch of sadness enveloped me, and I enjoyed having the privacy to honor it.    I continued on, leaving Coburg behind me.

Once I got out into the open farmland, a tingle of excitement coursed through my body as I recognized a familiar sensation.   I was close to entering that transcendent space that I've encountered so many times before on my bike.   This was my annual Christmas Day ride; I knew that now.   There would be no ride tomorrow; I knew that, too.   But why?   Why now?   Why a day early and so completely unexpected?   The road before me opened up, stretching to the horizon, nestling myself and miles of flat farmland neatly between the Coburg Hills to my right and the distant Coastal range to my left.

“Why do you go out there?” a cycling friend once asked me, “It's flat and boring.   No hills and just a bunch of sheep and cows.”  

I had been on this road so many times I barely needed to see it to navigate.   I've pedaled almost everywhere within 100 miles of Eugene and Corvallis, prowling the roads winding through the woods and haunting the hills in search of the essence I recognize as G-d, as ‘Yah'… the breath of life.   I've had some amazing experiences: riding behind three deer down Bear Creek road, watching an adolescent cougar prowl the hillside beside me as I streaked down Fox Hollow.   Yet nowhere have I had more awe-inspiring experiences than on this ‘flat and boring' stretch of road.   Two summers ago, a red tailed hawk flew down eye level to me, so close I could easily reach out and touch him if I dared.   He looked me right in the eye, and then stayed with me in that same proximity for over half a mile, two minutes of sheer heart-stopping magic.   When I remember that encounter, I still forget to breathe.  

So, it was Christmas Eve, my Mikveh Eve, and I found myself on that same stretch of road.   My legs moved of their own accord, given the energy to propel themselves by something outside of my meager human experience.   Thoughts drifted in and out of my mind, but I cannot say I was present to bear witness to them.   I was outside of my body, connected to the energy around me, and that energy told me to keep going past the first cut off.

So I did.

The second cut off approached, and something pulled me further still.   I passed it without a glance.   I had turned my body over to Something Else and I felt absolutely certain that Something Else was trying to show me something.   But what?

I remember a field, deep and verdant green, dotted with sheep watching me curiously as I glided past them.   The Coburg Hills beside me sported a dusting of snow that glittered in the waning rays of sun.   Dark clouds lined the sky to the south, where, eventually, I must return.   I paid little attention to the darkness behind me, however.   For now, all that mattered was the wind and my breath, and the merging of the two.

My thoughts drifted again, and I tuned in to catch them.   I've read that the sound produced when one tries to say the name of G-d is the sound of exhalation.   I thought about the birth of my son, Gabriel, and how infants are born with lungs that have never expanded in respiration.   When my son took his first trembling, painstaking breath, his lungs expanded, creating a negative thoracic pressure and launching an awesome chain of cardiopulmonary events that allowed him to breathe as an independent creature.

Inhale.   We take in the oxygen that enables our frail human bodies to function.   As an athlete, my capacity for achievement is determined largely by what I can physically assert with only limited amounts of oxygen.   Exhale—We remove the by-products of oxygenation.   The taking in of oxygen is only the first step.   In the liminal space between inhale and exhale, vast chemical and cellular reactions are taking place to utilize the oxygen.   These processes produce byproducts that must be expelled.    If my body doesn't efficiently remove these waste products, my performance suffers.    The act of exhalation completes the act of respiration.   There is no inhalation met without exhalation.   There cannot be.  

If, to say the name of G-d, one must exhale, then surely to inhale is to take in the Source of that name.   To inhale, for me, is to take in the presence of G-d and to exhale is to confirm my independence.   It is proof to me that I am both a creature of G-d and a creature of my own physicality.   Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.    Rabbi Abraham Heschel once suggested that neither G-d nor man exist in complete independence, but rather that both exist as critical components of the other and meet somewhere in the middle through the deeds of man (mitzvot)-- the inhale, the exhale and the critical junction in between when life affirms itself.

Suddenly, without warning, I felt myself pulled back into my body and out of my reverie.   I slowed my speed and coasted into the parking lot of the only building in sight, a tiny Mennonite church about 30 miles north of my home.    My body ached, and I felt a pang of hunger.    I recognized that my moment of connection was over, that I had seen whatever it was I needed to see, and that I must return.   Looking south, I smiled grimly. Sheets of rain fell across the horizon, and I would be heading directly into the downpour.   No sense in dawdling; I turned and headed down the road that would carry me home.

Dark clouds towered in front of me, and the wind began to pick up, driving straight into me.   Sheets of rain fell a mile or two ahead of me, obscuring the landscape in a shroud of mystery.   Buttes that had been the source of my amazement earlier now were invisible.   Had I not just seen them, I'd have no idea they even existed.

I wondered again about why my Christmas Day ride was a day early, and wondered what exactly I was supposed to have seen on this ride.   I knew that the pieces had been handed to me, and that now it was my task to unravel the mystery.   I thought again of my mikveh the next day, and my Hebrew name, “Ari,” which means ‘lion' or ‘brave', or ‘fearless.'   I'm not particularly brave or fearless; I name my fears and bring them with me.   My demons and I chat often.    We play chess.    I usually win, because, like all fears, they are predictable and quit playing once the game becomes difficult.

I remembered that Karrie chose the name “Ahavyah” because she wanted something to express her love for the mystery of G-d.   As the rain finally reached me, cloaking my surroundings in clouded mist, I recognized that love in my own fashion.   For every moment of connection and illumination I make, there is one met with frustration or confusion.   My return trip would not be filled with sunlit fields, snow capped hills and bodiless epiphanies; it would be filled with cold rain, sleet, heavy wind and the very real fight of my body to struggle home.   Inhale.   Exhale.

My body was physically unprepared for a ride over thirty miles, and my ride today would well exceed fifty.   I had not dressed for freezing rain; I was losing sensation in my hands and feet.   I was hungry; I had not brought provisions.   I was cold.   I was wet.    Usually when I am caught in similar conditions miles from home, I grow irritated, annoyed and curse each pedal stroke.   Somehow, today was different, and I have no explanation other than the simple fact that today was supposed to be different.   The cold, the wet, the hunger:   none of it mattered because a bizarre sense of certainty calmed me.   The simple truth was that, no matter what, I was going home.

Yes, it would take a while to get there.   Yes, I was going to suffer for the next 20ish miles; I might even get a flat and have to fix it with numb hands and a broken pump, but I would get home.   And when I got there, maybe the house would be full of the sounds of my wife and son, or maybe it would be empty, full of the promise of those sounds in the very near future.   Either way, when I finally got there, I knew I would draw a deep breath and sigh in relief.

As the sleet began to sting my skin raw, I understood why my annual December 25th ride arrived one day early.   Now I knew what it was that I needed to know on the eve of my Mikveh:   I was going home.  

But in order to exhale, I first had to inhale.