Mudd - Bicycling Home: My Journey to find God

Bicycling Home

My Journey to Find God

Virginia Mudd

2014 by Virginia Mudd

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mudd, Virginia, 1949-

Bicycling home : my journey to find God / by Virginia Mudd.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-86534-997-1 (softcover : alk. paper)

1. Mudd, Virginia, 1949- 2. Christian biography--United States. I. Title.

BR1725.M73A3 2014

277.3082092--dc23

[B]

2014016479

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Dedication

To Thomas Merton

To the journey Home

To the One I love

Preface

M y journey to find God is an adventure story, a mystery story, and a love story. Growing up in Southern California in a relatively unreligious family, this story is never one I would have imagined for myself. But it unfolded mysteriously, step by step, teaching me to trust and say yes to what life and God call me to.

I had no intention of writing a book based on the volumes of letters and journals that chronicled the ten years of my inner and outer journey to discover myself and to find God. But just as my call to find God came to me unbidden, so did the urge to write this book, an urge so persistent and increasingly strong that I came to feel it was Gods ideasomething I had to do.

Thirty-four years after my journey to find God began, I finally said yes and committed myself to the new journey of retracing the path that took me to my goal in order to offer the story to others. In spite of my willingness, it was, and still is, difficult to share such a personal story. My intimate experiences of God and Christpoured out in the pages of my private journalswere meant for me and God alone, to understand and to track what was happening to me. However, by now I know better than to say no to God, no matter how uncomfortable or vulnerable an assignment might feel.

While my particular spiritual journey turned out to be most intimately connected with Christ and Christianity, I have come to consider myself a spiritually independent Christian. I know there are many routes to ones spiritual home, and I have always been inspired and guided by the wisdom teachings of other spiritual traditions. And Ive found the experiences of mystics of old and of modern times to be enlightening and uplifting. Id always thought mystics were unusual or especially gifted people. But spiritual teacher Tessa Bielecki says: A mystic is not a special kind of person, but everyone is, or ought to be, a special kind of mystic. Mysticism is loving, experiential awareness of Godas natural to us as breathing. And Matthew Fox says: Deep down, each one of us is a mystic. Many of us experience a deep connection with this awareness of something greater than ourselves, whether we call it God, Source, Love, Allah, Great Spirit, Tao, Indwelling Presence, the Universe, Reality, Life, or something else. The truth of this common mysticism, and the loving, creative power it taps into and releases into the world, is what I hope to convey and encourage through telling my story.

Thomas Merton, much-revered author, mystic, and my greatest teacher, writes: If we experience God in contemplation, we experience Him not for ourselves alone but also for others. And so I share this story I have been blessed to live. I hope that what I learned and experienced during those ten years of struggle and joy in my search for God may help make the world a more compassionate, just, peaceful, and joyful place. May you be inspired and encouraged to take and trust your own inner journey home to wholeness, inner peace, and happiness.

My Worst Fear

H ey, you lost your wallet!

I was pedaling at a ponderously slow pace up a long grade on my fully loaded touring bicycle. My thirty pounds of gear felt more like thirty baby elephants. I had just passed a man standing by an old beige pickup truck parked at the side of this quiet, rural road. His dark hair scrambled around unshaven, fleshy cheeks and sloppy mustache; his belly bulged over his pants. Id caught a waft of beer as I passed.

Heyyour wallet! he called out again.

Shit! My heart lurched and I felt suddenly chilled on this warm day. It was May 7, 1984, my first day on the road. I was not even fifty miles into the 1,500-mile solo bike trip I was taking from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area to the home of my heart, the Grand Teton Mountains in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It had already been an awful morning. Id said a wrenching and tearful goodbye to my beloved Paul when he dropped me off on a country road a few miles north of Davis, California.

Setting out for the Tetons

Ill see you in Wyoming, Love, hed called after me as I turned over the first pedal strokes of my journey. Paul and I had agreed he would drive my camper truck, Sparky, to Wyoming to meet me, and we would drive back to the Bay Area together. Id taken a quick last look as I rolled away. Paul was standing next to Sparky. His maroon sweater blended beautifully with the trucks new paint joba royal blue body with yellow and orange stripes wrapped around it. The black shape of an eagle was painted on the hoodthe shadow of that great bird I imagined flying over the truck for guidance and protection. A hot air balloon was painted on the drivers door. What adventures would I have before I would see those special parts of my life again?

Maybe that lingering image of what I was leaving behind had been slowing me down. I probably hadnt exceeded ten miles per hour all morningI wanted to be doing at least twelveand on this grade it was more like five. Id put in enough miles on long bike journeys to know that bike touring could be hard, even with a congenial companion. But this time I was traveling on my own, already feeling lonely and miserable. And now had I managed to lose the one absolutely crucial possession, other than my bike, that I needed to complete my journey?

... lost your wallet . The guys voice echoed in my head. By some odd circumstance the purse must have slipped out of my handlebar pack and fallen on the road. I couldnt go on without it. I turned my cumbersome load slowly around and headed back downhill. I was fifty feet away from the pickup, closing the gap quickly, when I thought to look in my pack. Squeezing the brake lever to slow my descent and steering unsteadily with my right hand, I fumbled with the zipper on the handlebar bag. As I glided steadily closer and closer, I suddenly saw with relief, and horror, that my purse was still snug inside. Id been tricked. How could I have been so nave, so stupid? I could now see that the guys fly was open, his intent frighteningly obvious. How could I get my bike turned around and up the grade fast enough to avoid being grabbed? I felt like I was rolling towards an inevitable fate.