Smart Car - A Car Teaches the Reality of Abundance

A Smart Car Called Carlysle

Back in the late 80’s, when my eyes initially saw that car, it was not love at first sight—it was quite the opposite. I was taken aback, in fact, angry. “Oh, no!” I told my brother. “You got me a Cadillac? I’m not going to drive it. You can just take it back.”

I leaned against the garage wall, trembling. Sure, Roland had spent many hours on that Florida day crawling with humidity doing what I’d asked him to do: select my future car at a regional automobile auction. But he’d picked the wrong car. A Cadillac just wasn’t for me!

“But listen!” he pleaded. “This car is like Mama’s old Cadillac. It’s even gray, like hers. Sure, it’s shorter, but definitely easier to handle. Lots of inside toys. What’s your problem? You wanted a stable, dependable car.” He looked at me incredulously.

He was right—I did want a dependable car. I was single. No road problems please. So, what exactly was my gripe? Why was I resisting this silver-colored Cadillac my brother had so thoughtfully picked out?

The best explanation I could come up with was that for me, owning a Cadillac would be wrong. Too posh!

Roland’s eyes turned and he backed away.

I rolled my eyes upward: “Talk to me, Mom. Help me! Am I just being stubborn?” Perhaps stubbornness could be explained by my old nun psyche—the sixteen convent years. Was I still holding to a monastic ideal? Or feeling that biblical rebuke—“Woe to you rich! It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for you to enter heaven.”

Having inheritance money was embarrassing, set me apart. I had fought it, but sure did want it. I kept the news of the inheritance to myself somehow. Now—a Cadillac? How could I ever hide that? I envied my brother. He loved the money coming to him.

“My God,” he shouted. “Why can’t you enjoy this Cadillac like Mama enjoyed hers?”

He had me there. After Dad died, Mama was a bird out of a cage flying high after a forty year pinned down marriage. She amazed the entire community with her ability to enjoy the money that, until my father’s death, had been largely inaccessible. Unlike me, she had immediately felt at ease with the affluent lifestyle. Her first spending spree was a top-of-the-line Cadillac. When I protested her showing off , she laughingly reminded me of her long years in domestic servitude: “Honey, I’m living for today, and the hell with tomorrow. I deserve this car!”

Falling through heaven’s clouds, straight from her hands. I caught the car’s shiny keys. There was no doubt! I heard her familiar laugh again: “Sweetheart, say thank you and drive the damn car!”

I gave my Cadillac a trial run but on hidden highways. I guided the wheel as my spirit struggled with old stereotypes that I had formerly and so easily thrown at the world. God and money don’t mix. Nuns have chosen the better way. The religious life is the highest calling.

“Oh, shut up!” I told myself. “You’re not going back to the convent.”

Crazy behaviors followed. If I drove to meet friends, I'd hide the Cadillac. In the grocery store, when a bag boy asked, “What’s the make of your car?” my lips simply couldn’t form the word. “The gray one in the second parking lane.” I set my jaw and stared straight ahead. At night, I fell to my knees. I need a friend, God. Maybe I need a kick you-know-where. My priest friend spoke and I listened at last: “Grow up! Drive your car, and don’t forget your thank you.”

I named him Carlysle. I began to examine everything about him—his colorful digital dashboard displayed heaps of information: gas mileage, moment-by-moment average outside temperatures. All I had to do was tap some buttons.

One day, I kid you not, as we buzzed past rows of Florida pines: Carlysle delivered his own pent up feelings: “Okay! I’m a Cadillac, but I’m your friend. Stop judging me by a name. Check my record. I never run out of gas, never have a flat tire or transmission problems. And I always give you a quick pickup.” I drove on in silence, furiously eating the Oreo cookies nestled close beside me. What are you saying God? Show me this moment’s truth.

And so it was a sweet surrender. Carlysle suffered no more hiding or parking in the boondocks. I made peace with him. Or so I thought. It took Jim, a man who had been homeless for a year, to erase more stereotyping from my psyche's deeper layers.

A close friend had introduced us. It wasn’t love at first sight But I found I had more in common with this uncommon man than I had thought possible. His graduate degrees, his Catholicism, his love of music and poetry birthed a new understanding of who and what we could be together. Jim and I agreed to another rendezvous, at which I realized that my Cadillac separated me even more than his homelessness. I apologized to Carlysle, but decided to hide him and walk to our meeting place.

"Where's your car?” Jim asked.

"I thought we could walk," I lied, amazed at my being able to hold such a straight face. Sounds of street and sidewalk traffic failed to hamper the deep silence we discovered in each other. There was little talking. I found myself ready to pitch a tent and live on the street with him.

After our picnic, he collected our stuff and queried, "You must have your car somewhere." His smile was warm, healing, and I was struck, as we strolled back under a beaming Florida sun, by another singular moment of truth—a moment of grace. Jim playfully strutted and saluted Carlysle. “Nice car you’ve got there! Why did you park so far away?”

Yes, it took me a while to get it, to accept a most basic religious teaching: our state in life, and the way others see us, never defines us. In a sense, Jim held up a mirror to my prejudice—much like my Carlysle. I guess we’re always learning more about our hidden prejudices.

I am convinced that Carlysle fostered our relationship. We made him drive us out to Colorado’s Pike’s Peak, hauling a weighty pop-up tent along the steep and difficult road. Then on a off road, a dirt track up to Christ of the Desert Monastery. Carlysle nearly died on that trip, and Jim and I entered a fierce argument over lugging that pop-up tent—we weren’t even married yet!

He had insisted: “Come on, he’s a Cadillac! He can carry that trailer up a mountainside.”

I screamed back: “You don't get it! Carlysle’s not a two-ton truck!” At one point, I got out of the car, onto that sandy road, vowing I would go no farther. And we didn't.

Standing awhile outside, I declare I heard Carlysle whisper in my heart: “If you two can make it through this bumpy trip, you’ll make it to the altar!” In that lonely place, something gave way inside me. The stream near where we had stopped, mercifully washed away the rage of the moment. Between nature and Carlysle, things cooled off. Jim and I managed to mend the hurt and, in the process, discovered the incredible destiny of things.

I came to wonder if Carlysle’s subsequent breakdown was a type of sacrifice, lugging us forward to a wedding -- our own. And the gift of what’s been a decade of joyful partnership. As for Carlysle himself, sadly the trip to the mountains had left him with a cracked block It was time to say good-bye. I clutched his wheel as I steered him to his final parking lot. I reached to finger his electronic controls, his faded blue dashboard. I read the odometer. Carlysle had carried me over 150,000 miles. He had carried me past biases and stereotypes around wealth, lifting me right out of my tight concerns about “what people will think”—to see the bigger place of God’s abundance. Furthermore, he tutored me that beloved possessions slip in and out of our world. In loving them and letting them go, we experience the rich-sad tastes of life, the unavoidable price for soulful living. Truly, Carlysle was a smart car. I turned away. I don't think he cried. But I did—a lot!

By Adele Azar-Rucquoi