Paving the Road to Salvation

The first year, it said "Booty Shakin' Contest Friday!" The second year, it said, "Wet T-Shirt Contest!" This year, it said "Badonkadonks Wanted!"

If you drive up, then take a right, then after a while, take a left, then drive deep into the tree-shadowed countryside, you find this place that, uh, "celebrates" the body. The existence of said place became known to us because we were seeking holiness. No, really, we were seeking holiness, and that was one of the things we found on tries one, two and three.

But before I get too far into bad analogies I could pull from the sign on a rural entertainment shack...

The destination was a retreat which ended about 8 months of Bible study and discussion. The first year, we studied the Bible in its entirety. The second year, I studied the writings of many Christians thinkers, scholars and theologians, while my wife taught a section of the class we took the first year. This year, we studied the Jewish prophets and the letters of and attributed to Saint Paul. The retreat is a simple over-night at a wonderful center run by our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers.

To reach this place, one may either take the highway north, then join into a succession of five, four, then two lane roads, before finally venturing off on packed dirt and gravel; or, one can be more adventurous and take the back roads all the way. I've done different versions of the first method the first two years, and the last method this year.

The highway is what it is: speedy, easy, not terribly challenging or direct. It takes more miles, but less effort, and that probably suits most people pretty well. It can even be taken, using juncture after juncture, to a spot that necessitates very little driving of secondary and dirt roads. Of course, there's not much to see if you go that way, and when something goes wrong on a highway, it goes wrong as fast as you're traveling, usually leaving you crawling bumper to bumper, with nothing to see but fellow frustrated travelers.

If you opt to travel part way by highway, you get a pretty quick jump on things, provided there is no construction, no accidents, no backups. Eventually, though, you find yourself on a large road that is five lanes, then four with "Michigan left" turn openings in a center berm. It's a fast road, with a few lights. It leads past a road called "Hill Top," which used to be the home of a wonderful man and his family. That man ran a center for the homeless, helped many a down-and-out fellow try to get on his feet, and was also a rousing success of a person who spared no expense on his friends and family. His house was on a lake, and he frequently entertained, sometimes in a style that would have made Jay Gatsby envious. A few years ago this man was torn from us by a sudden and aggressive cancer. He left a wife and child who had to part with the house on the lake, not to mention all those more important things. Clearly he was God's servant. He managed to be a success, to serve others, to celebrate life to the fullest. And he's still gone. No matter how easy that first part of the drive is, you still have to pass Hill Top and the lake.

There is another way to go. You take the roads out of town, heading north, north east. It's two lanes almost all the way. You pass farms, riding stables, beautiful mansions, broken down shacks. There are three story houses with private lakes, and at least one house with chickens and an old school bus in the yard. There are small country groceries at four-way stops, there are restored historic districts with new bars and restaurants a stone's throw away for the affluent folks doing all that restoring. There is also a Dairy Queen. Taking this road, you still have to pass Hill Top, but you see a lot more. People in other cars, people's houses, people at golf and on horse back. You see mansions, and simple houses, and a little poverty. You see a lot of nature, and all the ways man interacts with it. Having taken this route, and finding ourselves returning by it, we decided that Dairy Queen was in order. That is, we thought it was, not realizing that a couple of name-changing roads, a detour, and a wrong turn later, we would be lost in the country side, not on our way to Dairy Queen at all.

The road to salvation is tricky, so this time we cheated. My wife and I offered a ride to a priest. Oh, we love her company, and have greatly enjoyed her leading our Bible study this year. She and I share the hobby of woodworking, and she is good conversation on many subjects. But, let's face it, if you're on your way to find salvation, it never hurts to carry along a priest. "Don't worry about it," she said when we got lost, "I don't have any where else to be."

Ah, that's why you take a good priest along, isn't it? Where else did I have to be? No where but cruising the road to salvation with my wife and one of God's servants. So we got lost on the road. Salvation is one of those destinations where you can get lost on the road and still end up where you're going. God's cool like that.

We traveled up and down a country road called "Buno," eventually finding the paved two lane we needed to head home. No Dairy Queen, but we did see a lot.

Today, I retraced that path, this time, to meet up with my father (uh, my human, genetic, race-car-loving father). I shot pictures out on the the race course while he and his fellow volunteer workers made sure things went safely and fairly. On the way home, I retraced our steps of a couple of weeks before, and guess what I found? Our little jaunt down Buno Road had led us out just about a long block, no more than a quarter mile, from the Dairy Queen. Had we turned the other way, we'd have been snacking on Blizzards and Sundays. Instead, we had somehow managed to drive miles in a truly circuitous path, only to just miss our cold treats.

Sometimes the road to salvation is like that too, I guess. You get there, but some confusion or poor planning on your part means you miss out on life's Dairy Queens.

Do I really need to analyze what it means that there is a bar on the road, deep into the trip, almost near the end in fact, that tempts travelers with booty shakin', wet t-shirts and round back sides? It's buried deep in there, back off the main roads, where none of your friends would see you should you choose to shake, or maybe check out a badonkadonk or two.

We've all heard that aphorism about what paves the road to hell. Now I know some of what makes up the sights, sounds and smells of the road to salvation.