Abundant Life

"[Jesus said] I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

John 10:10

On my dad's 30 year-old Fuji--my bike is in the mail--and thinking about abundant life. Moreover, I'm thinking of devouring the quick lines of the road under my own effort, the wheels quickly lapping up the distance between places through my powerful, wind-whipped sense of empowerment; how, at the moment, a sleeping bag and a book of poetry seem all that I need for life. Free. On the road. Like the person who has just been established as a kung fu master.

When I used to crisscross the Jacksonville bridges as an intern for the Film and Television Office, I remember stopping at a downtown red light and feeling as if infinity was found in a combination of those straight roads and that which was underneath my seat. It was a precipice, a Forrest Gump moment, right before he started running across the country, touching an ocean, and, because he could, running right back to the other coast.

Yet those days were on a mountain bike, which may feel abundant in the amount of things one can jump over, how the shocks take the abuse of constant leaping off curbs and going places that would make the Fuji cry tears of degreaser and lubricant. I have no regrets, but I wonder, in those days, if I ever felt the draw to live life more abundantly and shut it out because of my obligations to get to work on time or this or that. Did I want to ride off into the sunset? Why didn't I?


Training, I miss DC. Jacksonville doesn't have the hills, the grandiose architecture and numerous points of interest punctuating the ride, the convenient bike lanes in every direction, the roads through Rock Creek Park closed on weekends to cyclists and joggers. Conversely, the bus drivers here haven't almost killed me yet--which is a good thing, because one knocked me off my bike once in DC--and here people are much more likely to talk to you on the side of the road, cyclists waving a kind hand, and, if they're dismounted from their bike, they are usually jovial and up for a conversation.

So what is abundant life? You know, the precipice moment where you feel not only on top of the world, but as if you have your whole life in front of you?

Too often I cop out and make abundant life something to do with one's setting. Indeed, in some places, DC for instance, life is almost spoon-fed to you, the diversity obvious, the bike lanes safe and convenient, the people all walking to work at a distance one could reach out and touch them; yet that isn't yourself coming to the precipice, it is outward stimuli continually keeping you on your toes. When I came to DC, weighed down by the defeat of a terrible economy, being turned away by publishers, etc. I needed that stimuli, and so do most of us, I think, for a time, if only to get us out of our own heads and move us toward peace with our brothers and sisters of disparate backgrounds and upbringings.

But honestly I think abundant life, and all of the empowerment that comes with it, is a function of stewardship. Of tending a garden. Of getting exercise. Of pausing the movie and taking a friend's call, surprised by how difficult and purposeful that action. Moreover, this is a stewardship of our own selves, of what God has given us in the beginning and as we've grown: our passions, our interests, our relationships... Abundant life for me is busting my butt to write my play and seeing it finally performed. It's caring for a piece of machinery so that I can use it to cycle through the thick Florida air. It's--heck, why not--it's not dating for a while, then meeting someone interesting, and they say yes. And I can't even imagine what Andy and Tawny have to say about this, staring into the eyes of their sleeping child, she who looks like both of them, learning all she knows about love from the two people so gently rocking her back to sleep.