On the Run

Sunday 5:46 a.m. Shepherdsville, KY

“BWAA BWAA BWAA The National Weather Service has issued a severe weather alert.”

My eyes popped open and I scrabbled for my phone. Torrential rains. 60 mph winds. Flooding. Lightning. Right where I was, due in about 20 minutes.

I threw on some shoes and sweat pants and flew into action. The wind was already howling, the skies black.

I was in an RV park under heavy tree cover, prime for broken limbs. The entry to the park crossed through a gulley over a low bridge, barely above creek level.

Running around outside as rain began to hammer down, I turned off the gas, unscrewed the water hose and unplugged Gladis. Put the heavy things in the sink and tub, started her up, and fled, heart pounding.

I checked the storm path and headed in the opposite direction. Pedal to the metal.

There were some pretty good winds and the dark clouds stayed right on our tail, but Gladis and I skeedaddled to safety.

That’s too much excitement for before 6 a.m.

Every Day I’m Waffling

At about 6:30, we got to a Waffle House and I put on street clothes – I was still in my PJs – and got me a mound of fluffy hash browns and a fairly bad waffle while I listened to an 80ish man tell me about his college golf tournament days when he got to play in California.

My waitress, Kelly, was just a delight – loud and funny and exceptionally competent. I also heard her whisper to a co-worker about how her husband wanted something specific for Father’s Day that she didn’t have the money for. I left her $40 on a $10.87 bill and watched her mouth open and close in shock for a couple minutes, then break into a grin.

Getting the Spirit

She didn’t know I had just come through Louisville and had made a quick stop at Fourth and Walnut (now Fourth and Muhammad Ali), site of Thomas Merton’s spiritual revelation:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .

“This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

I just wanted to share the spirit of that in a small way, in the dark, on a Sunday morning rain in Kentucky.