Road Construction: a Shadowland Dispatch

The power company is burying our town’s powerlines. This is great! It will help minimize potential fire starts from downed powerlines. But the only way for the power company to bury our town’s powerlines is to first tear up the roads. Because that’s where the new lines go, under the roads!

This was not clear to me at the beginning of the process.

I understand now, though.

The main road in and out of our town has been a gravelly disaster for a few weeks now. Of course, it’s only half of the road that’s a mess. I confess that a few of us have taken to driving on the wrong side when we are coming home at the end of the day, which is probably not such a good idea.

I knew about the road construction and the one-lane road out of town the other day when I was heading to my weekly Centering Prayer gathering. I left in plenty of time. Maybe I would even arrive a few minutes early! I asked the nice road construction sign holder at the end of my street if he knew what was going on further up the road, on the section between my house and the freeway. He said it might be better to take the long way around.

I thought about it, but decided that my usual route would be OK, since it was early in the morning.

He was right. I was wrong.

I was stopped a little ways up the road, where I sat for at least twenty minutes, maybe more. By the time we were finally on our way again, there was a line of traffic behind me, reaching halfway down the hill, possibly the biggest backup in our town’s history. I was ten minutes late for prayer.

Since I was on my way to Centering Prayer, you would hope that I would have handled this delay well. Because my friends wouldn’t mind much if I came in late; it happens to all of us sometimes. And the whole point of my morning was contemplative prayer and peace!

I did not handle the delay well.

I was not like the lady in the car in front of me, who chatted with the “Stop” sign holder. They had the nicest conversation! She even gave the lady who was holding the sign a pear, probably organic and from her garden. That driver was not concerned at all with how much time it was taking. The two of them smiled and laughed.

I watched them smile and laugh. This irritated me even more.

If I had not been taken over by my shadow in those minutes, I might have been more like the lady in the car in front of me. She was an example of what grace could look like in a traffic tie up. She was relaxed. She asked questions. I bet she learned something about the worker who was standing on the side of the road, holding the “Stop” sign. How was it for her to be here for hours every day in the sun? What was her story?

I could at least have turned on my audiobook.

But no. I just got mad. It was all about me.

I try to remember the “Welcoming Prayer,” popularized by Father Thomas Keating: “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” it reads. “I welcome everything that comes to me today, because I know it’s for my healing.”

All of it.

Every pothole, every road delay, every troubling interaction, every fear that pops up unexpectedly: They show me where I need healing. Another of my wise friends reminds me not to judge those troubled areas in myself, which is a good reminder, because I felt pretty lousy after I finally made it to prayer that morning. My friend says that my work is not to change those parts of myself, but to notice them and be present them.

Yes. And even to welcome them.