…or how I received an automatic transmission from God
By Roger Mock
I bought a new car a few days ago (new for me, anyway). We’d been limping along with the old one for quite awhile and it was clearly time. When I drove the old blue Saturn to the dealer to trade it in for the almost new Corolla, it felt very bittersweet and it kind of surprised me. I didn’t think I had any particular attachment to the Saturn, but now it felt a lot like saying goodbye to an old friend. I parked it at the dealer and decided to sit there in the driver’s seat for a few moments and get into some gratitude.
I thanked it for being there for me and my family for close to ten years; for faithfully getting us where we needed to go and for being a really dependable car when it came right down to it. I’d never really done this before – talked to an inanimate object like it was, well, an old horse. But lately I’ve been playing with this idea that everything we can see and experience in this world is in its essence a divine idea, is some part of God. And if you start buying into the idea that God is All-That-Is, that there is nothing apart from God, that all of creation is God in expression, then where else can that lead but to a guy in a Toyota parking lot talking to his old car like it was Roy Rogers saying goodbye to Trigger? (Actually Roy couldn’t quite bear to lose Trigger. He had him stuffed and dried.)
Then I got to saddle up the new car and say thanks to it for showing up at just the right time and to just kind of mindfully be aware of this new way that God/the Universe is providing for me (and for throwing in cool, unexpected surprises like a sun roof!). Remembering the mindfulness practice I’ve learned from retreats with John Welshons (thank you, John, if you’re reading this), I paused to think of all those involved in manifesting this automobile – the designers and the production workers; those who transported it to Albany, the sales people and the previous owner who took good care of it and put so few miles on it. And then I gratefully turned the key and took my first drive.
This really represented a shift for me… <rim shot>. Well, actually, it didn’t, since this is the first car with an automatic transmission I’ve owned in years. No, but it really did. I’ll bet a lot of you reading this have been talking to the objects in your life for a long time, and in a nice way, even! I’m finally catching on. It’s definitely a practice I would recommend, especially when no one is looking. It just feels so good to be grateful.
So, it’s Thanksgiving time. All of our Unity services this Sunday will focus on gratitude, including our multi-faith service when we will give thanks in at least four languages. And I want to say before closing just how grateful I am to Rev. Jim and the Unity Board of Trustees for making a commitment to this service and allowing it to happen every week, and to Mark, Pete and Sarah – our Sunday evening music team for their awesome musicality and for their willingness to be true ministers of prayer, and for the many of you who join us on Sunday nights and have become a real bhakti community – who gather and sing and pray from a place of true devotion. Thank you thank you thank you!
Namaste …and Giddyup,
Roger