Them that drives the bus...

Mr. Woods was my bus driver all through elementary school. Living out in the country, transportation by bus was required. Parents did not drive children to school. Most families only had one car anyway. The sight of the big yellow bus coming round the curve on a frosty winter morning was a welcome sight. As he opened the folding door, Mr. Woods always smiled and had a kind word. The little bus family was as familiar to me as my own birth family.
The bus took the same route five days a week, driving over a dirt road until it turned onto the highway that headed towards town. My sister and I were the last ones on in the mornings and the last ones off in the afternoon. It was a forty five minute commute, plenty of time to laugh and chatter for country children whose main social connections were school and church. The bus carried first graders through twelfth graders. Our school was full service, start to finish, so our busses carried a wide range of ages and stages.
Charlotte always saved me a seat. The boys sat in the back so they could be a little rowdy without upsetting Mr. Woods. In the spring and summer, the windows were let down and the smells of the Bland’s dairy, the wild rose blooming, the sharp acrid asphalt, the wet rain soaked earth flowed over us in gentle blessing.
I love Russell Siler-Jones and his way with words. In a conversation about life he said, “Them that drives the bus has got to pay for the gas.”That stuck with me this week and I have been chewing on it every day. As memories of my past history as a bus rider remind me, a bus is a community experience not a solo ride. “Them that drives the bus...” I have been riding a church bus now for twelve years. During that time I have had my seat saved for worship and communion, laughed and chattered with friends who were family, taught little children Bible stories, cooked countless pot luck dishes, sung, sewed and sighed my way through life surrounded by my church bus family. And now the bus is stopping to let me get off. The route the church bus is taking no longer runs by my house. As I leave the church bus, I am tired and weary, sad and anxious, worried a little about being stranded far from home. I am also relieved and ready to rest. I will be paying for a different kind of gas for my bus for a little while.
For the past month I have been reading and re-reading “Leaving Church, a Memoir of Faith” by Barbara Brown Taylor. Her words have comforted me as I have walked into the wilderness. She tells the story of being asked “What is saving your life now?”and incorporating that question into her spiritual discipline. Now that I am leaving my church home, I am claiming that question for myself and will begin to name my salvations.
All of you who receive my writing and respond are a part of my salvation. Your thoughtful responses, your words of wisdom, your affirmation of my words, your challenging of my thinking push me to deeper levels of knowing and I am grateful Some days I sit at the computer overwhelmed by the Presence that connects us one to another. I give thanks for our brother Jesus who showed us how to love. That was and is and always will be a part of my salvation. A phrase from the book of Jude... Our common salvation... reminds me that though we may ride different busses, we are all headed home to God. It is well with my soul.