We All Swim in God’s Love: Except Maybe Not That Guy

I had somebody pass me on the right the other morning on a two lane city road about 100 feet before a four-way stop sign. They squealed around me, careening through the row of parallel parking spots at the side of the street, took a quick right turn at the stop sign (before it was their turn, of course), beating out a car that was carefully waiting like normal drivers do, and zoomed off for the day, never to be seen again.

I don’t think I was driving that slowly up the street, the one that goes past the old theatre, just around the corner from the library and post office. I certainly wasn’t going slow enough to justify that kind of maneuver on a cloudy early morning, the streets still wet and covered with leaves from last weekend’s Stormageddon.

(The storm Sunday night brought record rain to Sacramento, the most they’d ever received in one day. It brought inches of rain to our little town, too.)

Well.

The nerve of it! It poked my ego, flared up my sense of right and wrong, started me down a bitter trail of thoughts about the driver in the bright blue sports car, though it wasn’t a cool sports car. More of a wannabe one, I scoffed to myself, probably a Kia or Hyundai that was trying too hard.

He (surely the driver was a he!) was a jerk. Probably an anti-vaxer whose other vehicle is a big truck with obnoxious flags waving in the back, a card carrying supporter of my least favorite president.

The tricky truth is that this stream of vitriol didn’t serve me.  Because here’s the reality that I so easily forget: I too can be an obnoxious, hurried driver. Just the other morning, in fact! It was the day of my son’s PSAT exam, and we were toodling down the freeway to his school, having a marvelous time, running  a little late, but nothing too terrible, when he checked the email from the counselors about the test, just to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, and suddenly realized that the test’s check in time started promptly at  7:30 am. And it was already 7:40 am, and we were nowhere near the school. I looked at him, looked at the speedometer, and floored it, going just about as fast as a 2005 Toyota Corolla can go. It’s possible that I made my son a little nervous, I was driving so aggressively. I passed car after car, and then when we got off the freeway and hit the customary traffic log jam, I tailgated and said not so nice things about the cautious drivers in front of us.

(In case you are wondering, we were incredibly late that morning. But he was still allowed to take the test, so there was a lot of driving angst for nothing, which is generally how things go.  I stress  and worry and behave a little yuckily, and then in the end everything turns out fine in spite of me).

All of us have occasionally done obnoxious, stupid things behind the wheel. (Also, unfortunately? Not behind the wheel.) God doesn’t seem to hold it against us, so why do I hold it against others, especially mere days after I behaved so poorly on the road myself?

God’s love surrounds and holds, even when we are being stinky and selfish and stupid. It surrounded me as I was racing down the freeway, and it surrounded the harried, hurried driver of the bright blue car. All of us swim in God’s love, just like that little fish in the Anthony DeMello story. (Read it here: the Little Fish ) We live in the ocean of God’s love, but most of the time we forget and think that we are just surrounded by plain, boring, uninteresting water.

What if I changed my story?

Instead of fixating on the wrong that was done to me by fast Bluey, what if I pictured him swimming in that sea of God’s love beside me? Instead of spewing out judgment, what if I sent out compassion and grace? Maybe a prayer for his safety and the safety of everyone on the road with him? What if a compassionate wind could ride with him, carry him, soften the edges of whatever grief or anger he is carrying?

That reaction feels better. I’ll try to remember it next time, to drop into it, to breathe it in and out. It sets me free to hold him in love. Maybe, somehow, it finds him and sets him free, too.