Yesterday was essentially a driving day.\u00a0 My route would have taken me East of Albuquerque, over the Sandia Mountains.\u00a0 However, once again, temperature played a role, and I had to rethink my way to Midland.\u00a0 So, instead, I took IH 25 to Socorro, going South instead of East, and from there, on beautiful 380 towards Roswell.\u00a0 Beautiful landscape over all, and the fact that I was not totally freezing, just partially, did a lot for my mood.\u00a0 I had a couple of good encounters in Carrizozo, where I stopped for lunch, and spent some time with fellow riders, who were headed to Taos, talking about the Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery issue.
\nFor the most it was a day of riding.\u00a0 I was very happy when I arrived at our friend Sherry’s house.\u00a0 She provided a wonderful meal, and we spent quite a bit of time talking about both the complexities of human trafficking under the law, its implementation, and how, in the end, is the making a difference at the individual level where we can see some of our work.\u00a0 However, we also talked about God’s call for stewardship of our lives, and our world, and how we need to honor the gifts that we are given, and act when we see injustice.\u00a0 Some will be called to act at a local level, and some at the systemic level.\u00a0 Some will be called to act in one area, and some in another.\u00a0 Nonetheless, we cannot remain silent in the face of injustice.
\nToday has been quite different.\u00a0 While yesterday called for a 460 mile stretch of road, today I had planned to only ride about 140.\u00a0 However, instead of going East and closer to home, I went West, to Balmorhea State Park.\u00a0 The whole idea was to not spend the whole day in the saddle, but\u00a0 rather to arrive early, and spend the day in reading and meditation, as well as prayer.\u00a0 I made it to the park by about 1:30.\u00a0 I took the back roads to get here, and had lunch in the town of Balmoreah.\u00a0 Believe it or not, this has been the first meal with tortillas I have had in the last two weeks.\u00a0 Since the weather is supposed to remain nice, this meaning no lower that 52 tonight, I decided to do the last tent stint of the trip.
\nAfter setting camp up, I spent a great deal of time reading another Chapter of The Just Church.\u00a0 Today’s reading spoke a lot to me because the author shares how, even though he is a pastor, he has reached many a breaking point when facing injustice.\u00a0 In the end, he has had to put all of his faith in God, trusting that He does actually care about all victims of injustice.\u00a0 Something very similar has been brewing within me.\u00a0 Even though I had been putting a lot of effort in becoming involved in the battle against human trafficking, and have become very familiar with specific cases, and with demographics, that paint a horrific picture about the suffering that modern day slavery brings to millions of people, it was the massacre at Sandy Hook which started in me an erosion of faith, and a systemic questioning.\u00a0 At the same time, the flame that has burned to intensely inside of me has lost some of its fire.\u00a0 I realize now that in many ways I have not lost faith in God, I am losing faith in humanity.<\/p>\n
This is where the turning point arrives then.\u00a0 As I was finishing my reading tonight, I have realized that I was also coasting in my own actions.\u00a0 I found a set of practices that I felt was keeping me engaged in the process, week in-week out, year in-year out.\u00a0 I see now that I need to revise my own engagement, and continue to move forward, exercising the stewardship of the gifts I have been given.\u00a0 The challenge ahead: to draw on a new plan.\u00a0 Just like every day of this ride I was forced to revise my plans due to changing circumstances, in my engagement in the battle against modern day slavery, I need to constantly revise my course of action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday was essentially a driving day.\u00a0 My route would have taken me East of Albuquerque, over the Sandia Mountains.\u00a0 However, once again, temperature played a role, and I had to rethink my way to Midland.\u00a0 So, instead, I took IH 25 to Socorro, going South instead of East, and from there, on beautiful 380 towards… Read More »The final stretch – almost<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2o6Hc-h2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1057,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jaderiderjourneys.com\/2endslavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}