What a 850-Mile Bike Trip Taught me about Hope

by Erin Carey

Note: if you are a woman around ages 22-30, wanting to do something intentionally hopeful with your coming year, apply today for the 2025-2026 cohort of the Benedictine Peacemakers Monastic Immersion - applications due by the end of February!

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This summer I rode my bike for 850 miles from Windsor to Montreal in Canada (which you can read more about in the Winter 2024 Mount Magazine here). The journey was loosely planned when I pedaled away on the first day of the ride. I generally knew where I was headed each day but didn’t book campsites or AirBnB’s too far in advance in case something happened and I couldn’t make it. There ended up being many days where I’d be alone in my tent wondering where I’d be lying my head down the next night.

Exhausted from biking, my problem solving skills were slowed, but my stubborn insistence on planning fought against this. I would lie awake in my fatigue and worry, trying to figure out a plan. Often this process led to more anxiety, less sleep, more options, and still no decisions.

However, without fail, I’d wake up in the morning able to look at the options with fresh eyes (after a cup of coffee) and could easily make the decision that would work for me in that moment. It was never one of the 39.5 worry-filled options my anxious brain tried to cobble together in the night.

Living in the hope that ‘future me’ would figure out a solution was not only a confidence issue, but according to Thomas Keating, a humility issue as well. In his book Divine Therapy & Addition: Centering Prayer and the Twelve Steps, Keating describes humility as “a constant and permanent disposition that puts one in tune with the universe and with whatever is happening in the present moment… Humility is very close to trust, or the virtue of hope. You might say that the whole journey might be summed up as humble hope.”

When I lived at the Mount, a sister often quoted to me, “Present Moment, Wonderful Moment” in response to a worry or anxiety that I would share with her. To be honest (sorry, sister), I didn’t fully grasp the concept at the time. After my bike trip, I think I have more clarity on her meaning. Over the course of the trip I became aware of many of the choices that pull me out of the present moment: choosing worry over hope, secrecy over vulnerability, constant productivity over balance, or hoarding over nonattachment. When I reject the reality of the present moment, I find I am left without trust that things could ever get better. Humility is the trust that if I set down the habits, choices, and patterns of thinking that pull me from the present moment, I will find the peace and inner freedom of the present moment, even if it is a difficult one.

This new year’s resolution will not be about where I’m going–the miles biked, the books completed, the trips taken. It’s about humbly greeting where I am right now, in the present moment.

Here is my favorite poem to greet the present moment, from a favorite author, Pádraig Ó Tuama

Neither I nor the poets I love have found the keys to the kingdom of prayer and we cannot force God to stumble over us where we sit. But I know that it's a good idea to sit anyway. So every morning, I kneel, waiting, making friends with the habit of listening, hoping that I'm being listened to. There, I greet God in my own disorder. I say hello to my chaos, my unmade decisions, my unmade bed, my desire and my trouble. I say hello to distraction and privilege, I greet the day and I greet my beloved and bewildering Jesus. I recognise and greet my burdens, my luck, my controlled and uncontrollable story. I greet my untold stories, my unfolding story, my unloved body, my own body. I greet the things I think will happen and I say hello to everything I do not know about the day. I greet my own small world and I hope that I can meet the bigger world that day. I greet my story and hope that I can forget my story during the day, and hope that I can hear some stories, and greet some surprising stories during the long day ahead. I greet God, and I greet the God who is more God than the God I greet.

Hello to you all, I say, as the sun rises above the chimneys of North Belfast.

Hello.

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Erin Carey is a friend of the Erie Benedictines ever since living at the monastery through the Benedictine Women’s Service Corps in 2016-2017. She brings a Benedictine heart to her community development work as the Executive Director of Groundwork Erie, an organization committed to climate justice with a focus on youth empowerment. She is a graduate of the College of Saint Benedict.