October 9, 2009
The Second Half
Lost and found
BY DEACON JIM AND ANN CAVERA
Our daughter Katie is a musician and has been working with a production based on the life of the 1930s jazz singer Josephine Baker. When we found out her show would be in a town near Newark, N.J., we bought tickets, booked a flight and rented a car. It all seemed so simple. When she was in high school, we followed her to Mater Dei band competitions. It just seems natural to travel to see her perform, regardless of the distance. The show was wonderful and well worth the trip. Last week we wrote about attending Mass in New Jersey the morning after we saw the show. We also had other adventures that weekend. In fact, attempting to drive on the New Jersey turnpike provided us with more than enough excitement for a second column.
It all happened because driving in the small town where we live is very, very simple. Down two blocks from our house takes us to Main Street. If we drive a mile either way, we are outside the city limits. The grocery store, church, library, pharmacy, hospital and recreation center are all within an area of two square miles. We always know exactly where we are going and anything we need is less than five minutes away.
Though we had not a clue about how to get where we were going in New Jersey, we put our faith in the GPS we had rented with our car and a Google map we had printed before we left home. Programming the GPS proved to be more than we could manage. That left us with a map that said nothing about how to get across six lanes of speeding traffic when the exit we wanted was on the left instead of the right. Not only was the traffic overwhelming, we had trouble figuring out how to drive our rental car. As we gently explained to family and friends later, the New Jersey drivers honked their horns, waved and shouted “words of encouragement” in our direction.
By the time we were ready to return to the airport the next day, we had figured out how to program the GPS. We trusted it completely and felt confident we would arrive safely in time for our flight. The GPS actually took us directly to a dead end street in a very rough Newark neighborhood. With the grace of a couple of good Samaritans along the way, by the end of the day we were safe in our own beds, vowing to think twice before we leave the comfort of our small Midwest town again.
As for the GPS? We knew far too little about the technology we had trusted with our lives in unknown territory. That doesn’t seem so strange when we look around us. People everywhere seem to be putting their faith in all sorts of things that may actually lead to dead end streets. God Provides Security. That’s the only GPS we can fully trust. Anything else can put us in jeopardy on some of life’s most dangerous highways.
Deacon Jim and Ann Cavera are former residents of Evansville; their award-winning column is a regular feature of the Message. Contact them at www.catholicseniorspirit.com.