Incarnate Man: Reflections on a Road Trip

Having grown up in Illinois, and now living in Virginia, I often have an opportunity to undergo long drives. And, having married a woman from Michigan, I find that at every major holiday, and at various other less notable times throughout the year, I am given the chance of spending 9-13 hours in a car traveling as fast as the fastest land mammal. Indeed, with such large amounts of time, I am often forced into amateur philosophy sessions that may or may not contribute to the common good. They at least contribute to my sanity, which in itself may or may not contribute to the common good.

Either way, on one such recent road trip, I found my attention captivated by the many signs of man's rational, and often irrational, nature. Passing mile after mile of fenced in fields, lamp posts, signs - it finally occurred to me that someone had to put them all there. For some reason, the mere permanence and repetition of a thing seems to make us think it to be like a tree: a rooted growing organism that at one point before we were born was given being by a natural process. Thus, I found it required a concerted and conscious effort to remember that all the small trappings found along the side of a modern interstate are indeed made by man, not by the hand of God.

However, once the concerted effort was made, I came to a startling realization: every interstate is a rapid succession of untold tales of glory or shame, heroism or villainy, virtue or vice, and we will only hear these tales at the end of time, when all is revealed. Indeed, this realization came to me from bits of St. Thomas that I still remember from a college ethics class. In that class, I read how St. Thomas determines that every action done by a man is either morally good or morally bad. Now, this is not to say that every human action in general is either morally good or bad. Indeed, such mundane actions as brushing one's teeth are neutral in and of themselves. But these neutral actions do take on a moral dimension when performed by an individual man. So, while brushing teeth may be generally neutral, when Mark brushes his teeth because he is excessively concerned with his appearance, his brushing takes on a moral dimension - namely a bad one.

Since each of these lamps along the side of the road are the results of an individual human action, then, it is implied that each lamp is the result of a morally good or morally bad action. Behind each lamp lies a human story as interesting and complex as our very own. Each lamp represents a moment in someone's life when they had the opportunity through their work to either come closer to, or move away from, God. Thus, each lamp, as I see them for just a fleeting second before they pass by, represents a human action that resounds throughout all eternity. Was the man who constructed this one a good or bad man? Did he work solely to indulge in pleasure, or was he laboring so as to raise his children? Even though I hardly notice them, each lamp is a hint at the eternal value of a human action.

Thus, I-70 is not simply a road, it is a theatrical cycle playing out the mysteries of humanity in a language I cannot understand. Unfortunately, being of an Augustinian bent, such reflections can sometimes be overwhelming. Since man has been tainted by original sin, many of his actions are sinful and, thus many of these lamps would have to be monuments to man's continuing rebellion against a God that loves him.

Passing through a city, though, I see two things along the side of the road that set my mind more at easy, and bring my reflections to an end. First, the road reveals neighborhoods with houses. Each neighborhood invokes images of communities based on charity. Perhaps these neighborhoods are not such communities, but good communities do exist, and they are images of the City of God that that same Augustine who wrote about original sin described so beautifully. Each house in these neighborhoods reminds me of the beauty of family life that those walls have seen. Yes, these homes and neighborhoods have seen sin, but they have also seen many Christmases and Easters. All of this reminds me that though man is capable of great evil in this life, he is also capable of great good.

Finally, the road reveals a graveyard, and I am reminded that this life will one day end for each man, and a new life will begin. His actions in this life will determine how that new life is spent, but in the midst of the graveyard there is a cross. Though man will die, though he is sinful, there is still mercy and love. And I pray for mercy for all those who rest in that graveyard along I-70. I wonder if any of them built the lamp posts along the road.