Book Review: “Miracle Motors—A Pert Near True Story"

Some people go to the woods or the mountains to encounter the Divine. They seek the quiet to listen for the “still, small voice.” Peggy Senger Morrison, though, has some of her best conversations with God while driving a Kawasaki motorcycle named Rosie. She writes about them and other adventures in her new book, Miracle Motors - A Pert Near True Story.

This is a story of an unmediated relationship with God, writes Peggy, a Quaker preacher, teacher, and trauma healer. She’s also a storyteller who took some cues from a Cowboy Poet who spoke in Quaker meeting from time to time.

When he spoke, he stuck to the point and spoke what God put on his heart, and then sat down. He did tell stories—good ones. One time, after meeting, I asked him if the rather fantastical story he had told was true. His answer was, “Pert near.” I laughed and asked him to explain...

“Pert near true is a story that has so much truth to it, that it doesn’t really matter whether it happened or not.”

The Cowboy Poet’s philosophy helped Peggy see the “Quaker thing about truthfulness” in a new way, and …solved so many problems for her as a storyteller.

Miracle Motors started as a motorcycle travelogue nearly fifteen years ago; now it’s a collection of stories loaded with truth.  Peggy writes: It may be disguised as a memoir, but it is really a post-modern narrative theology. It is everything that I know by direct experience with God.  It has more in common with the journals of the first Quakers and the confessions of old Catholics than it does with the systematic theologies of modern scholars. It also has more motorcycles.

You feel like you’re winding along highways and back roads in Oregon and California with Peggy (and Rosie) as she unfolds story after story of her childhood in Chicago, earning a degree in counseling with a minor in pastoral ministry, her trip to a Holiness Women’s Clergy convention in Texas, and her early years as a Quaker minister. Peggy also writes plenty about Quakerism, the Bible, Jesus, and how all of these inform her actions.

But while Peggy is a preacher, I never felt “preached at.” Rather, her stories—like this one about her conversation with a truck-driver—made me think, and smile.

“So, watcha do when you aren’t ridin?”

“I’m a Quaker preacher.” This always stops them for a moment…

“So, what are y’all about?”

“Oh, you know, the standard Jesus stuff—being good to folks even when they aren’t good to you, taking care of the poor, keeping it simple, telling it like it is, not letting anything get between you and God.”

“Hunh.”

That has to be one of the most succinct descriptions of the Quaker testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, and equality.

Peggy’s adventures on the open road are rich in metaphors for life’s unexpected turns. One of those for her came with her first meeting of an African Quaker named David Niyonzima, a trauma healer in the Central African nation of Burundi.

While we were talking, I had a bit of a God moment, a clear but quiet voice ringing up from down inside me someplace… Quakers call this voice The Present Christ. It’s okay with me if you think we are delusional.  So the Voice said, “Do whatever this man asks of you.”

What David asked of Peggy was to teach him about trauma healing… and ultimately to travel to Burundi to help with his work there to train others in this approach. In 2003, Peggy left for the first of three trips to Central Africa, and the second half of the book includes stories of her experiences there.  More than a few involve motorcycles.

It will be no surprise to readers that Peggy returned from Africa, with, as she says, fresh eyes.

I came back with a passion for healing and for finding ways of escape through the barriers, obstacle courses, and mine fields that we use to keep people apart.

Those fresh eyes looked deeply at the schisms within Quakerism and the vision she and her partner, Alivia, shared for this faith:  something truly Quaker, and truly inclusive, and deeply Christ-centered. An oasis community where people could rest and recharge for whatever good work they did the rest of the time. Maybe even a church, not one that existed for its own sake, but one whose only purpose was to make some room for Mercy and Goodness.”

The closing chapters of Peggy’s memoir wind back and forth between another trip to Africa in 2010 and bike rides in the Western U.S., including a few stories about Freedom Friends Church that she and Alivia started in Salem, OR. Peggy finds parallels between group motorcycle rides and pastoral leadership.

Quaker pastors tend to ride sweep. The group itself sets the pace, the pastor watches and listens, to lend aid to anyone who falls or breaks down. A pastor should carry a tool kit.

Whether you’re a Quaker in the unprogrammed or the pastoral tradition, or someone seeking in other ways, Peggy’s “pert near true” stories will take you along on her spiritual journey. They’re also good ones to keep in your spiritual tool kit.

Miracle Motors is available through independent booksellers or online at unction.org.

Design Flaws

No flaws in the design of these mini-irises

On a recent New Yorker podcast, writer Tony Earley read and discussed Robert Maxwell's short story, "Love."  It’s not what you think. Well, the story is about love, the love of a young boy for his fifth-grade teacher. Even more, it’s about death, but as Earley said when talking about the story, “Who would read something with the title ‘Death’?”

At the end of the conversation, Earley, the author of the personal essay collection Somehow Form a Family, added his own commentary about death.

“I see death as a design flaw,” he said.  “And I want to write a letter to someone about that.”

When Earley figures out who the letter should go to, I’d like to report a few other design flaws. On my list of flaws I’d add infections like meningitis that nearly killed a 21-year-old and left him facing months of rehab.

Birth control that fails for a single woman and physiology that doesn’t work for a couple wanting a baby.

Surges of electricity after a power outage that spark fire and burn a house and all of its contents to the ground.

Hurricanes that wash away homes and schools anywhere, but especially those that repeatedly devastate the poorest parts of Central America.

War.

Poverty.

Guns.

You likely have a few you’d add to the list, too.

When I was growing up, I was taught that God knew best.  That when horrible things happen—like illness, shootings, hurricanes, fire—these were all part of God’s plan.

I don’t believe that way any more. Now, I think God views these as flaws, too, and would like nothing better than some fixes. 

Living Below the Line

 "Poverty is the worst form of violence"   ~ Gandhi

Have you ever wondered what it's like to live on $1.50 a day? That question was in the message line of a recent e-mail from a friend. There I found a link to a poverty awareness project called Live Below the Line.

From May 7-11, CARE, a humanitarian organization working to end global poverty, is partnering with Live Below the Line – a campaign to change the way people in the U.S. think about extreme poverty. Live Below the Line is an initiative of the Global Poverty Project started in 2009 in Australia. It’s an education and campaigning organization whose mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action against extreme poverty.

The campaign’s strategy is to give a glimpse into the lives of the 1.4 billion people who live in extreme poverty by challenging individuals to live on $1.50 a day for food and drink for five days. The challenge is set at $1.50 a day because this is the current equivalent of the World Bank’s International Extreme Poverty Line. And for people who live in extreme poverty, that $1.50 has to cover far more than food and drink. That’s the U.S. equivalent of the money they have daily to pay for everything – health care, housing, transportation, clothing, education and more.

I won’t be accepting the Live Below the Line challenge the first week of May, but I’m aware of the power of such efforts. The stories and statistics on the websites of participating organizations are sobering. They’re far from my reality, so different from the abundance and comfort of my life. I’ve carried the images in my mind ever since receiving my friend’s e-mail, and they’ve reminded me of other times I’ve had heightened awareness of the violence of poverty.  

One memory is from my first trip to Nicaragua, chaperoning a group of high school students on a service/learning trip.  One day as we dug a hole for an incinerator at a medical clinic, an airplane flew overhead. The Nicaraguan man we were working with looked up at the plane and asked, “How much did it cost you to fly here?” We told him our tickets were about $600 each.

“That’s how much I make in a year,” he said, simply.

That evening, I listened to the students debrief their day. I knew how hard they all had worked to raise money for their trip expenses and what a stretch it was for many of their families to cover the costs.  Until then, none of them saw themselves as wealthy. Discovering that their plane tickets alone would use up an entire year of income for a man they’d worked with all day was a powerful economics lesson.

I don’t have to go to Nicaragua to find poverty, though. Even in my prosperous county, it’s evident that many here struggle financially. Paper grocery bags line the hall outside my school nurse office. During the week, staff fill them with boxes of dry cereal, canned soup, and pasta. On Friday, kids on the free lunch program cart the bags home to avoid hunger on the weekend. Many gardeners in my community participate in a  “Grow-a-Row” program to share produce with people in need, and many others depend on the local food bank and fresh food pantry to feed their families.  

For me, the Live Below the Line awareness campaign is a signal to discern anew what more I might do toward ending poverty. One Quaker organization doing good work to alleviate poverty in India, Kenya, and Sierra Leone is Right Sharing of World Resources. I’m grateful to those who are called to this work and remain open to ways I might serve.