I heard an incredible story this week. A week ago a friend missed a bell choir rehearsal. It is very unusual of this person, who is good ringer and who enjoys the ensemble. When he returned to our group he told us his story. On the day when the snow fell a couple of weeks ago, our friend, who is an avid bicyclist, got ready to go to work. It was snowing, but he is used to commuting with his bicycle every day, rain or shine. However on this day the snow was too deep. There was already more than a foot of snow on the streets outside his door and it was still snowing hard. He decided it wasn’t a day for riding a bike, so he put his bike away and started to trudge to the bus stop. Shortly afterward he found himself lying on the ground in the midst of a lot of tree branches and leaves and snow. He pulled himself up and his head began to ache and his vision was a bit blurry. Worried, he tried to figure out what had happened. Soon a few other people gathered. An ambulance arrived. He was transported to the emergency room at the hospital. As he had been walking the snow load on a tree near the sidewalk became too heavy for the tree and it had split, sending a giant branch to the ground striking our friend on its way down. He was knocked down and he received a concussion.

After being examined at the emergency room, the doctor informed him that he had suffered a concussion, but fortunately his injury was slight and he would soon recover. The doctor advised him to take the rest of the day off but that he could return to work the next day. Then the doctor inquired about how he came to be under a tree while wearing a bicycle helmet. Our friend realized that because he wears a bike helmet nearly every day when traveling to work, he neglected to take his off when he decided to walk to the bus stop. The doctor commented that the helmet likely saved his life.

The event was frightening, but the result was good. Our friend has recovered from the concussion and survived an event that seemed to be pretty random. And he has this great story to tell.

My sister is visiting us this week. She had a week of vacation from work and she thought that it would be good to get away from home for a little while. We really enjoy being together and always have lots to talk about. We have had a wonderful time and I got to tell her the story of my friend and the falling tree branch. She has told me about a lot of her adventures, including some stories about her work.

I accused her of taking a busman’s holiday. It sort of seemed like that as she drives a city bus in Portland, Oregon, for her regular work. The first day of her vacation, she got in her car and drove for four hours to get to our house. I realize that busman is an antiquated term, and doesn’t quite fit because she is not a man. Bus driver’s holiday might seem like a better term, but the term with which I am familiar is busman’s holiday. It refers to someone who spends a vacation doing what they do in their usual job. So a busman who takes a driving trip for vacation continues to drive each day and from that kind of practice came the term busman’s holiday.

I sort of understand the concept because when i worked as a pastor, sometimes my vacation activities closely resembled my active working activities. I might spend part of a vacation facilitating family gatherings, a practice not dissimilar from facilitating small group meetings in the church. I officiated at weddings and a couple of baptisms while I was technically on vacation. I often would monitor and respond to email even when I was out of the office for vacation. The line between working and not working is often a bit vague for a pastor. Often I would be thinking about a coming sermon even when I was not officially on duty.

I’m glad my sister didn’t decide to avoid driving all together during her vacation. And it reminded me of the freedom we have at this phase of our lives to travel. It isn’t hard for us to get in our car and go to visit family members who live a ways away from us. This will not always be the case. The time will come when we will need to give up driving. As we age, some of things that we used to go must come to an end. In a couple of decades it is likely that neither I nor my sister will be driving cars any longer. That means that we will either have to do all of our visiting by using computer video conferencing, or that we will be dependent on others to drive us so that we can get together. There will be challenges to growing older. But for now we have good health and are able to get together. While we enjoy talking on the phone and sending text messages to one another, but it isn’t the same as being together in the same room, sharing meals around the table, telling stories and discussing whatever events come to our minds.

Whether or not we like it, change will come. Often it isn’t as dramatic as a branch falling from a tree stressed by heavy snow load. Many changes are more slow and subtle. I seem to get stiff more easily than used to be the case. I tire a bit more easily. I need to work a bit harder to maintain sufficient focus to keep from forgetting something important. From time to time, it takes me a bit longer to get where I am going because I make a wrong turn.

And, being retired means that there are some routines that I observe every day, including not going to work. I guess that when you’re retired, you are always on a busman’s holiday.