Windshield Time

​I had a rare in-person meeting up in Beemerville the other day and really enjoyed the drive over there. It’s the thing I actually enjoy probably most about off-site meetings or presbytery meetings, driving out here to the church, or anything that takes me out of town. I love driving around the area and seeing New Jersey. COVID has seriously put a damper on my local travel, but I love it just the same. 
 
I love the windshield time. It’s good solitude (a spiritual practice we’ll talk more about during Lent). It’s good God-time.
 
Especially in the fall, of course. What’s not to love about that?
 
2-3 years ago, I drove over to Torrington, Connecticut where my mom’s side of the family settled when they first came over to the USA from Italy in the early 20th Century. I’d never been there, and I was hoping to see some remnant of the 13-room house my great-grandfather built by hand. I drove over just hoping that there was something of it left to see. 
 
I called my mom’s cousin who still lives in the area for directions. By the time we actually hooked up, it didn’t matter anyway because there’s nothing left of the property. It was a 150-acre apple farm between Litchfield and Torrington back in the day that has now been sub-divided into rural housing additions, and it’s all long gone.
 
Our family sold the property late in the 1940’s after my great-grandfather died anyway. But the local paper ran a feature on the house and the farm and all the sculptures that he built to decorate the property. He was quite an artist, but even that feature article ran in a Sunday magazine section of the paper in the early 50’s.
 
Anyway, I should have made that trip 25 years ago when we lived over in Westchester County, New York. Back then, there was still stuff to see! Nowadays, forget about it.
But it really didn’t matter to me because, believe it or not, I made the whole drive over there on Route 202. The entire way from Morristown to Torrington. It took like 4.5 hours!
Stoplights. Town centers in every borough and village on the way. Small-town traffic.
 
Lovely little towns, but I know that probably sounds brutal!
 
Now I’ll probably never do it again, but it was great--once. Rural New Jersey, rural New York, the Bear Mountain Bridge across the Hudson (near where we used to live), and rural Connecticut are awesome! Worth every minute. The return trip on I-84 took half the time. Nevertheless…
 
I loved the windshield time. The solitude. The God-time.
 
I pray you have the time occasionally to find some of that, too. Maybe it’s not windshield time. Maybe it’s just sitting in your favorite chair watching the snow fall or falling asleep with your book.
 
It’s all good. Solitude. God-time is good-time!
 
Don’t forget to turn the phone off.
 
Grace and Peace,
Scott