In praise of bad drivers
Sunrise tinges the chill day’s cirrus indigo. Exhaust spins from cars speeding in morning rush hour. I’m on my way somewhere to do something and I must be on time. The traffic light blinks green and I begin turning right onto the interstate ramp, but–suddenly–punch the brake. An oncoming car careens left through a red light and cuts me off. If I had insisted on having the right of way, we would have collided. Though I want to fire a fist of contempt at the driver, I hear Margery Kempe whispering in my ear.
Though the church has never formally recognized Margery’s sainthood, this 14th-century English mystic embodies all the holy strangeness of the New Testament Greek word haigos: different, set apart. An illiterate, failed brewer, Margery’s eccentric expressions of love for God alienated her even from many of her Christian contemporaries. Known for hysterical fits of tears in sacred places, Margery tended to disrupt everyone around her, including church services, pilgrimages, priests, and even her own husband, whom she convinced to keep a chaste marriage bed. Some feared her odd revelations and pious outbursts would lead people astray–and tried her, unsuccessfully, for heresy multiple times.
Over 650 years after her birth, Margery continues to beautifully upset her readers through her spiritual autobiography The Book of Margery Kempe. Though some of her spiritual practices remain questionable (like her insistence on wearing white), her unusual ardour for God unsettles and evokes the believer’s calling to something beyond mere humanhood: holiness. This story in particular comes to mind when I encounter drivers like the one who nearly t-boned my car:
One time a silly man, who was quite indifferent to his reputation, purposefully poured a bowl of slops down upon my head as I was walking along the street below him. I was not upset in the least but said to him, “God made you a good and holy man.” And I went on my way, thanking God for the accident; such is my way of accepting many similar things that happened to me all the time.
Though impatient drivers (and heaven knows I am one of them!) are not intentionally malicious, their actions can ignite indignation much like the man dumping slops on Margery’s unsuspecting head. But rather than hurl the expected expletives at her attacker, Margery as usual upsets the status quo, but through calm rather than hysterics. Though the slime shocked and stunk, though she likely attracted the stares (and ridicule?) of passersby, though someone would have to lug well-water to her home, handwash her soiled (and perhaps indelibly stained) dress with homemade soap, and wait hours for it to air dry, Margery responds to this sinister interruption with acceptance.
It is only natural to shirk annoyances, but to embrace them is saintly. Though such attacks happened to her on a regular basis, Margery made a practice of accepting them. This disinterestedness is a distinctive marker of the mystics, from Meister Eckhart to St. John of the Cross, who were perhaps inspired by Scriptures like “Give thanks in all circumstances,” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) and “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,” (James 1:2). For these set-apart ones, all desire is subsumed into one great, consuming passion: attending and submitting to the will of God. And if it is God’s will to meet a reckless driver or a spiteful man pouring sludge on one’s head, so be it, whispers Margery. There are gifts hidden here. Though likely she mourned the inner darkness instigating such a gesture, she trusted in God’s power to redeem.
Not only did Margery accept the attack, she gave thanks for it. Margery took the dark matter of human evil and spun it into prayer, another’s malice opening a door to intimacy with God. I wonder what she would have expressed gratitude for: thank You for humbling my pride. Thank You for reminding me of the precarity of my life. Thank You for showing me how little I control the world. Thank You for revealing my keen need for You. Thank You for the gift of showing Your love to a fellow human being who has forgotten his belovedness. In an irksome circumstance, Margery uttered prayers of gratitude instead of complaint.
Like Christ, Margery practiced, however imperfectly, returning evil with good. Perhaps she was thinking of the Sermon on the Mount as the putrid contents of the bowl soaked through her veil and slipped cold down her spine: “Everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire,” (Matthew 5: 22). Flinging a rhaka at the speeding driver who ran a red light is very human, but not holy. I’m reminded of St. Paul' s challenge to the Corinthians: “For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (I Cor. 3:3b, emphasis mine). Instead of bludgeoning a fellow human being (harried and trying to survive in a frenetic world as we all are) to death with the name rhaka, “worthless, empty, good for nothing,” Margery’s preternatural words speak life.
Though Margery does describe the man as “silly” and “indifferent,” out loud she reminds him of his essential calling as a human being: You were made in the imago dei, created for good works. Like Margery, this man with devious intentions was made for sainthood, for a loving intimacy with God. It is easy to think of the driver who nearly caused an accident as not really human. The person whipped past in a blur, our paths never likely to cross again in the midsize capitol city where I live. Even among those whose lives more closely intertwine with mine, I easily forget that the people who annoy me are fearfully and wonderfully made, made for goodness beyond fathoming. And that it is part of my call to remind these souls of their sacred origins in God’s breath. Could it be that many of those who do wrong simply need reminders of their belovedness?
If I didn’t curse the dangerous driver despite the anger surging in my veins, if I didn’t mutter dark words under my breath, if I didn’t wish the person harm, if–instead–I whispered a brief prayer over this human being made in God’s image, I thank in part the discomfiting, the God-besotted Margery Kempe.
Elise Tegegne’s book In Praise of Houseflies: Meditations on the Gifts in Everyday Quandaries is now available at Calla Press. In it, she reflects on the redemptive glimmers in ordinary challenges, from canceled flights to insomnia.
