The Church of the Open Road

I telephoned a man I had met back in Independence, Texas. Terry Cooper had become a good friend over the course of a month. Half brother, half counselor, he was a solid Christian, but decidedly not a holy roller. He already knew a good part of my spiritual dilemma. He drove 10 hours in my direction and we camped for a couple of days in the woods outside Raton.

“Did you ever hear the story of the woman at the well?” he asked.

I had, but I hadn’t really — not truly, not carefully — and it was there, under a new series of stars, that I began to realize that I wasn’t really on the “road to nowhere” at all. The woman at the well, he told me, leaves behind her jar of water when she discovers something greater to live for.

“You’re a storyteller,” he said. “And you’re a listener. The God you want will be in the people you meet on the road. Not in a building.”

I figured he was right — the God I needed became articulate in the stories that people wanted, and needed, to tell me as I rode through their lives.

Later, Terry drove me, my bike and my broken wheel over the Raton Pass into Colorado. In the town of Trinidad I found a shop called the Bike Doctor. The owners, the McGuire family, invited me to stay for a little while. They would teach me, they said, to build wheels.

Circles within circles. Stories within stories.

Six months later, I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in California with the understanding that faith begins with the inclination to listen. The world was the story of everyone else. For me, it was only just beginning.

Colum McCann is the author, most recently, of the novel “Twist.”

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