This is what Saturday mornings are all about. The parishioners of St. Margaret Mary’s put out a great breakfast spread of quiches and fruit and we literally rolled out of bed and ate, cleaned up, and got ready for our charter bus to Ouray due in at 9am. I feel great, especially with a day off today to be spent in the mountains. They day is gorgeous, I am so psyched to be in Colorado. A cattle drive on Route 106 delays us a few minutes as old bearded cowboys on horseback and young Mexican cowpokes heard big beefy steeds every which way. We drive alongside wandering creeks and past log cabins and real Colorady ranch mountain houses, fields of valley grass and grazing horses, past irrigation channels, mounds of pines and aspens smooshed together, pines like little porcupine pricks, San Juan N.F. Snow-dipped peaks and mountain lakes, little hidden cabins in groves of aspens, views down to green swiss valley below, yellow and violet flicker flowers in the meadows, impressionist dots. It is post-card Colorado. Color-coated colony of tents outside Telluride (“To Hell You Ride,” old hideout for bandits who knew scaredy-cat cops wouldn’t follow them into these daunting mountains) pitched for an annual weekend blue-grass festival. We’re heading to Ouray to avoid the traffic in Telluride (has also been said that without disc-brakes you’re a goner bombing down the mountains in this area on a bike—but always remember J.K’s Dharma revelation, “You can’t fall off a mountain!”).

Lyle story (at breakfast): “In Phoenix back in the 1970’s I had a Ponderosa peach tree that produced the best peaches in all of Arizona. I also had pomegranate and other fruit trees, which I let people pick, but this peach tree was like the Tree of Good and Evil—no one was allowed to eat its forbidden fruit. One day I saw one of the Vietnamese immigrant boys from down the street in my yard picking some of those big Ponderosa peaches. Back then I was training for the Ironman, so I chased this boy down and finally caught him (a friend of mine said I should carry business cards with me to hand out in situations like this that say “You’ve been caught by the Ironman!”) and took him back to his house because I wanted to talk to his parents and tell them that he’s welcome to my fruit but he needs to ask. And I guess it was one of the sisters just kept bowing and repeating “We are immigrants, please don’t go to the police. We are immigrants, please don’t go to the police.” And I said, “I just want to talk to your parents.” And anyway, I finally told them to just ask when they wanted to pick from the trees and the next thing I know there are people lined up every Saturday outside my door asking for fruit!”

Jennifer and I spend the afternoon in Ouray walking around town and talking about faith, the Church, various inter-personal tensions on the trip. More and more I am convinced that biking is the least of our difficulties out here. People are messy, whether back in ole Jerusalem or here in Ouray, CO, 2003. Sarah and I get decked out in old west digs and get our picture taken at an ole timey photo shoot. The woman who owns the shop shows Sarah the big old wooden frame camera and how it works. We talk with her about the Brake the Cycle tour and what we’re out on the road for and she is genuinely interested in what we are doing. It seems we have been generating a lot of positive interests from business owners along the way. Big props to Dr. Kiviok Hight in Cortez for the free chiropractic adjustments. I’ve never had my neck cracked so good!

It was Kevin’s 20th birthday last night and we celebrated in style at the Main St. Brewery in Cortez. He is a good innocent kid who loves God and loves ESPN Sports Center and loves to run. Tonight he treats me to a cappuccino, the doll. He has really grown on me over the course of the trip.

Saturday night Mass at St. Joseph’s. I contemplate the message of the Christ, what did he really come here to tell us? It gets so lost in the mix I have a hard time understanding how good things in our world can become so warped by nothing more than humanity’s inherent tendency to complicate and mess things up. “Jesus must be rolling in his grave!” as Bart Simpson once said so eloquently. Reading a pamphlet at St. Margaret’s waiting for our bus this morning titled “From Contraception to Columbine,” I was filled with the anxious familiar fear that maybe I am not on the right path, that I’m doing it all wrong…or not doing it right enough. These issues, I don’t know where I stand, but a lot of the time I feel like I’m toeing the line between being ‘safe’ in the church and joining rebel forces on the skirts calling for revolution. Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov: "I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom.” In many ways being a Catholic and a member of the Church makes the moral decision-making process easier because it’s spelled out for you in the encyclicals, the catechism, and Church teaching. But Jesus never makes things easy for us. Luke 18:18—the rich ruler who has kept the Commandments since childhood, but goes away sad when Jesus informs him of what he lacks; he still clings to his life and his goods and cannot bring himself to sacrifice all for the Kingdom, to go the whole way and “sell everything and give to it to the poor.”

Where does that put us with the poor? It is good to give from our excess, to “live simply so that others may simply live.” But it is no virtue. I can give a Powerbar to one of the riders if I had a big lunch or if I have a few extras in my back pocket. But to give my last Powerbar when I am starving in the middle of the desert, to give my last sip of water to someone else when I am dying of thirst…that’s the eye of the needle. I can appease my conscious by giving when it is convenient for me so that maybe I won’t have to give it up when I really need it. But that’s cutting deals with God, and Jesus doesn’t bargain…he wants the whole shebang. With love, with charity…with our whole life. What a paradox…the most selfless man who ever lived is also the most selfish.

Christ was thanked only once in the entire Gospel for a work he performed (the Samaritan leper in Lk. 17:11-19), while all others...curing the blind, healing the sick, even raising the dead...were received with astonishment, but no thanks. Is not Christ in the poor? If Christ teaches us in parables to grow closer to Him and to the will of the Father by the call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him (Mk. 9:34), is it surprising that Christ should teach us those very same lessons in humility through the poor that we serve?

Jesus says, "Who among you would say to your servant coming in from the fields after plowing or tending sheep: 'Come at once and sit down at my table'? No, you tell him: 'Prepare my dinner. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink; you can eat and drink afterwards.' Do you thank this servant for doing what doing what you commanded? So for you. When you have done all that you have been told to do, you must say: 'We are no more than servants; we have only done our duty.'” (Lk 17:7-10).

“If you love those who love you, what is special about that? Do not even tax collectors do as much? And if you are friendly only to your friends, what is so exceptional about that? Do not even the pagans do as much?” (Mt. 6:46-48)

“When you give something to the poor, do not have it trumpeted before you, as do those who want to be seen in the synagogues and in the streets in order to be praised by the people. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. If you give something to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your gift remains really secret. Your Father who sees what is kept secret, will reward you.” (Mt. 6:2-4)

Do not do good things for others to see. But do not even do good things while allowing yourself to see that you are doing it; for the ego is the greatest opponent to the true humility which Christ taught us. For you will say, in your heart: 'See what good works I do. I am good and worthy in God's sight.' Our motives for service become corrupted by serving not Christ in the poor, but by serving our own selfish egos. And the meaning of the great lessons in humility Christ attempts to teach us through the poor are lost. So approach the feet of the poor with a feeling of unworthiness, for truly if Christ is in them, we are not worthy even to loosen their sandal strap.

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My conversation with Jennifer this afternoon about judgment and how much of that comes from Christians who should know better runs through my head. "This is why, I tell you, her sins, her many sins are forgiven, because of her great love. But the one who is forgiven little, has little love." (Lk. 7:47) On my knees I talk into the hands covering my face, knowing that He hears me. It’s at times like this when I am most confused by the world around me, all the ‘issues,’ and the swirling grey space that I am most intimate with my God. He tells me how it is with wordless words. He knows my track record, my dirty scoop and all that I’ve done; still, he cups my head in his hands, touches my cheek with his calloused fingers, strokes my hair. He lets me lay down and rest for the moment, plays blind to my sins; tells me how much he loves those sad little sheep who keep crashing into barbed wire fences, how much it breaks his heart when they bleat so helpless all cut up and stuck and tangled, but understands it’s not easy being a shepherd, that heartache and loss are part of the job description. I tell him it’s not so easy being a sheep either. He smiles a smile of knowing. He doesn’t say a word.

Rob Marco
Philadelphia, PA