For years my bikes have brought me such comfort. I’ve been reflecting on why. The first – not a bi – but a tricycle. Three of them gifts. Two tandem bikes. Some of them e-bikes. All with bells. One with a hooter, too. All lie behind this blog’s name: ‘wind in my wheels’ (link) – a comforting and rejuvenating sound I hear, awake and asleep.
And here lies answer in part to my musings. The sound of the wind in my wheels, no matter the particular machine, equates to An Abiding Hum, something like the Universal ‘Om,’ something like the ‘cantus firmus’ Michael Mayne wrote of in his ‘The Enduring Melody’ (link). Something governing, something steadying, at the heart of spinning planets, spinning earth, and the spinning consciousness and conversation of our always-thus-far fractious humankind. It’s a quiet hum, yet it can be heard above and beneath the louder, demanding noises of our ego-fuelled obsessions, our wants and ever-talkative monkey-minds – our human existence.
At many times and in many places the wind in my wheels has led, and still leads me into the Psalmist’s ‘pastures green’ and to the ‘quiet waters by.’ The hum recalls me to the spaces of gratitude and acceptance, to the reckoning with failures and successes – and to some appreciation of the purpose in our lives of both; to the places of quiet growth, the places where one can think upon the miracles of life on earth. The places where one gains perspective. I learned today that Mount Everest grows in height by millimetres every year due to tectonic plate disturbances. Mountains and humans – perhaps all things – ‘grow’ because the ground is forever shifting beneath our feet!
And the thing about being out alone on a bike, about the unselfconscious ‘good morning’ to birds and cows, horses and sheep, about the hum, about the ‘Om,’ about the ‘wind in my wheels’ – is the comforting reminder that something ‘Other’ than us ensures the balancing, the Abiding Hum, a sustaining, in joy and sadness, in sickness and in health, in life and death, in every sense, in this world and in all worlds. And for those who don’t ride bikes: no problem. All you need is to deliberately sit or stand or lie down somewhere quiet for a while. Soon you may hear the ‘cantus firmus’ and – should you be hearing it for the first time, no worries. After the first hearing this is a sound, this is a prayer, this is a steadying, this is a song you may come to hear again and again.
Wind in my wheels. An abiding – a persistent – Hum …
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