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WORK TITLE: Holy Spokes
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1978
WEBSITE: https://reveverett.com/
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.faithandleadership.com/people-news/writers/laura-everett * http://www.eerdmans.com/Authors/Default.aspx?AuthorId=35007
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1978, in NJ; married; spouse’s name Abbi.
EDUCATION:Brown University, graduate; Harvard Divinity School, graduate.
ADDRESS
CAREER
United Church of Christ, pastor; Massachusetts Council of Churches, associate director, executive director; Duke Divinity, Leadership Education, advisory council.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Laura Everett is a Boston, Massachusetts-based ordained minister and bicycle enthusiast. She is a pastor in the United Church of Christ, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, and member of the advisory council of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. Born in New Jersey in 1978, Everett holds degrees from Brown University and the Harvard Divinity School. She also advocates for ending the racism that divides America and hinders spiritual growth.
Combining her passions for preaching and bicycle riding, Everett published Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels in 2017. A self-proclaimed urbanite and “bicycle evangelist, happy to give you my testimonial about the good life that’s possible when you give yourself to movement on two wheels,” she noted on her Laura Everett Website. After her car died, she decided to ditch driving through the congested streets of Boston altogether and began commuting to work on her bike. Her conversion to urban cycling changed her life, her physique, her wallet, and her environment. Her book explores the history of cycling, riding with a friend to create community, adjusting to life’s rhythms, loving thy neighbor, a survey of greater Boston, and ties to urban spirituality.
Utilizing motifs of chains and tires to describe aspects of her spiritual journey, the book’s twelve chapters are labeled as bicycle parts, with information on habit (wheels), pacing (gears), and limitations (brakes). “While the metaphors are often predictable, their delivery is fresh and delightful,” according to a Publishers Weekly contributor, who added that the book provides enough spiritual message without being overly religious. Everett also describes an accident she had on her bike and how it taught her about discipline, adjustment, adaptation, and challenges to our physical and spiritual well-being. “Holy Spokes is a refreshing blend of history, personal anecdotes, and encouragement toward exercise both physical and spiritual,” said Foreword Reviews writer Rebecca Foster.
As drivers and cyclists don’t always get along sharing the road, Melanie Springer Mock said on the Evangelicals for Social Action Website: “Riding a bike changes one’s relationship to the road, for sure. Laura Everett does an excellent job of exploring this relationship in her engaging memoir.” Mock added: “Everett explores what might be termed a spirituality of cycling, considering the ways biking has transformed her relationship not only to the road, but also to her neighbors, to the different communities in Boston, to her vocation, and to God.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 13, 2017, review of Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels, p. 69.
ONLINE
Evangelicals for Social Action, http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/ (June 26, 2017), Melanie Springer Mock, review of Holy Spokes.
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (November 16, 2017), Rebecca Foster, review of Holy Spokes.
Laura Everett Website, https://reveverett.com (November 1, 2017), author profile.
Laura Everett
Laura Everett is a dedicated urbanist, a pastor in the United Church of Christ, and a four-season bicycle commuter in her adopted city of Boston. She serves as the executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches.
Laura Everett
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MASSACHUSETTS COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
Laura Everett is the executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. Everett, an ordained UCC minister, previously served as associate director of the council. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Divinity School. She serves on the advisory council of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
Meet Me
winter-biking-photo-by-lee-toma
This is how we roll in Boston. All four seasons.
Meet me in the street. Meet me on online. Meet me at church. Meet me in Boston or abroad or somewhere in-between.
I move in-between. I think that’s the most interesting space, the space where we stretch and learn. Many of us live in-between. Maybe the in-between is a bit awkward, but it’s real.
I’m not one thing, and I suspect, neither are you. I move in-between my work as a pastor, an unabashed urbanist, and a bicycle evangelist.
laura-abbi-044
Where else do you put the slick clergy license place when you don’t have a car? (photo by Leise Jones)
The official version is something like this: first time author of “Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels,” out in April 2017 with Eerdman’s Publishing, ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ; Executive Director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches; itinerant preacher; alumna of Brown University and Harvard Div.; Advisor at Leadership Education at Duke Div. New Jersey by birth, Massachusetts by choice.
The other version is more like this: I’m an spiritual magpie, gathering bits of twine and twig from many traditions. I’m a bicycle evangelist, happy to give you my testimonial about the good life that’s possible when you give yourself to movement on two wheels. I’m a dedicated urbanist, convinced that cities form us in ways that challenge us to live tight with a whole lot of different folks. I’m crafty and I get around, most contented at my sewing machine. I’m building a silkscreen studio in my basement. I like thinking big about how we build vibrant institutions that hold tradition and cultivate innovation. I aim for attraction not persuasion. I believe the work of this moment is to upend the racism that has divided this nation and the Church. I’m convinced that if we’re all not free, it isn’t the gospel truth.
I’m a talent scout for the holy.
I’m trying to learn how to lead. I’m trying to learn how to pace.
Thanks for joining me on this ride.
~ Laura
Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels
Publishers Weekly. 264.7 (Feb. 13, 2017): p69.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Listen
Full Text:
Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels
Laura Everett. Eerdmans, $22.99 (192) ISBN 978-0-8028-7373-6
Get out from behind the wheel and saddle up behind a handlebar for a whole new spin on spirituality, encourages Everett, a minister in the United Church of Christ and executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. When a car breakdown left Everett stranded, she followed the counsel of her Bible study group to replace it with a bike. Thus began a new relationship with greater Boston and a new way of living out a spiritual life. Bike parts structure the book's chapters as Everett pairs each with qualities such as habit (wheels), pacing (gears), and limitations (brakes) for contemplation on matters of a spiritual nature. While the metaphors are often predictable, their delivery is fresh and delightful, and the effect is ecumenical enough to suit even the most "spiritual but not religious" reader. With a window into cycling culture, Everett never loses her focus on her belief that commuting by bicycle can be a cosmic and soul-enriching good. (Apr.)
HOLY SPOKES
THE SEARCH FOR URBAN SPIRITUALITY ON TWO WHEELS
Laura Everett
Eerdmans (Apr 22, 2017)
Hardcover $22.99 (192pp)
978-0-8028-7373-6
Everett extracts spiritual lessons from cycling, about loving one’s neighbor and adjusting to life’s rhythms.
Laura Everett’s Holy Spokes is a refreshing blend of history, personal anecdotes, and encouragement toward exercise both physical and spiritual.
For Everett, a United Church of Christ minister and the executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, “the metaphor of the road is thick with possibilities.” Cycling is not just for commuting; it connects her with the city and hones her faith, too.
Everett hasn’t always been a bicycle nut. In fact, she only started cycling because her car broke down; some church friends offered to build her a bike from secondhand parts. As time passed, she grew to appreciate the manifold spiritual benefits of cycling: it forces her to slow down, experience the weather, truly see her neighbors, and acknowledge her vulnerability.
The book takes a long view of cycling and cities. Everett marvels that an 1880s technology is still in use, yet identifies traces of gender discrimination: women’s bike frames were designed such that they wouldn’t have to open their legs wide in a dress.
Meanwhile, riding through disparate areas of Boston spotlights its venerable history, but also its patches of deprivation. And cycling itself isn’t without risk, of course, as evidenced by the white-painted “Ghost Bike” memorials she dedicates.
Paul Soupiset’s sketches—of a Boston map, a diagram of bike parts, and recurring motifs of chains and tires—enhance the text, as do frequent epigraphs from writings by and about Brother Lawrence.
Each chapter adopts the name of a bike part and lends it a symbolic function: the saddle represents endurance, brakes stand for limitations, and so on. That thematic approach introduces a touch of repetition, but provides a logical framework.
While not a straightforward memoir, the book gives moving glimpses into its author’s life, such as her decision to marry Abbi, one of the friends who persuaded her to begin cycling. To paraphrase Lance Armstrong, though, it’s not all about the bike. Cycling enthusiasts may get the most out of this, but Everett extracts spiritual lessons applicable to anyone seeking to love their neighbor and adapt to life’s rhythms of joy and suffering.
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster
May/June 2017
A Spirituality of Cycling: Review of “Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels”
JUNE 26, 2017
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Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels by Laura Everett / Eerdmans Publishing
By Melanie Springer Mock
My husband bought me a new road bike for Mother’s Day last year. I’d been asking for one and he finally relented, though he knew purchasing a bike for me meant introducing all kinds of new ways he could worry about me, especially as the country roads around our small town are sometimes unkind to cyclists.
Assurances that I would always be cautious have only partially alleviated his concerns, and probably for good reason. Being on a lightweight road bike frame has made me feel more vulnerable in traffic than I ever have in my 20-some years of running on the very same roads. Cars seem to fly by at a faster rate and brush by more closely; hazards on the road seem more vivid and more dangerous; bridges seem higher, my place along their rails more precarious.
Riding a bike changes one’s relationship to the road, for sure.
Laura Everett does an excellent job of exploring this relationship in her engaging memoir, Holy Spokes: The Search for Urban Spirituality on Two Wheels. Using her day-to-day life as a cyclist in Boston as her narrative frame, Everett explores what might be termed a spirituality of cycling, considering the ways biking has transformed her relationship not only to the road, but also to her neighbors, to the different communities in Boston, to her vocation, and to God.
Holy Spokes is divided into twelve chapters, each of which examines one component of a complete bicycle: its frame, wheels, gears, brakes, etc. While this approach might seem artificial or forced, Everett seamlessly uses her contemplation of a bike’s necessary parts as a jumping-off point to considering aspects of her spiritual journey.
Everett seamlessly uses her contemplation of a bike’s necessary parts as a jumping-off point to considering aspects of her spiritual journey.
In the chapter on handlebars, for example, Everett describes the many kinds of handlebars and their usefulness for different environments, explaining how the flat bars of a mountain bike are distinct from the drop handlebars of a road bike, and why a bike messenger, weaving through inner city traffic, might prefer narrow flat bars to avoid getting hooked by passing cars.
Yet the chapter is so much more than an instructional guide to bike handlebars. In discussing the ways a bike’s steering system is adjusted for different environments, Everett also explores her own necessary adaptations in her life, in small and big ways, including the adaptations she makes following a bike accident, when she is hit by a car. (I will not be sharing that chapter with my husband, for sure!)
Everett’s frenetic charge through life is slowed by her injuries, as is her method of commuting. Necessary adjustments to her way of life following her accident allow her to see the ways adaptation is an important discipline, and she concludes that we all must meet the challenge in our spiritual lives to adjust when previous spiritual practices no longer work for us.
Similar adjustments are made to her cycling, and a new kind of handlebar—one that puts far less pressure on her back, injured in the accident—allows her to commute via bike once again. In ways big and small, Everett concludes, adaptation breathes new life into not only our practical, but also our spiritual, journeys.
Turning often to Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, Everett finds religious instruction in the seemingly quotidian acts of each day. She notes that Brother Lawrence suggested we “think often” of God during the flotsam of each day, “in the daytime, at night, in all your occupations, in your exercises, and even during your time of amusement. God is always near you and with you.” For Everett, this thinking occurs while riding her bike; and thus, she says, cycling has made her “more faithful.”
Although biking provides Everett with exercise, her commitment to cycling is a lifestyle, too. She no longer owns a motor vehicle, and this intentional choice has also changed the way Everett relates to the communities she serves. Driving a car not only provides protection from the elements, but also allows us to move through neighborhoods essentially unaware of the people who dwell there; commuting by bike changes this dynamic. In one instance, Everett rides through a pool of blood left on the bike path and sees a child standing beside the path, crying and being comforted. She rides by without stopping, but her tires bear the stain of that event for a long time afterward, serving as a stark reminder of the ways our lives are intertwined, even with strangers whose stories we do not know, and will perhaps never know.
Our lives are intertwined, even with strangers whose stories we do not know.
Like Brother Lawrence, working in the Carmelite kitchen, Everett’s cycling seems like an extension of her ministry, so much so that her current bike (she has owned several) is labeled the ClergyBike. Although Everett serves a United Church of Christ congregation, her vocation takes her away from the church, too, where on a bike she is “visible and recognizable out on the road,” rather than cloistered in a building, where she feels her reach would be far less extensive.
Everett’s book is strongest when she narrates the human interactions she has, tying her own particular bike culture to our universal humanity and allowing us to connect with her experience whether we ride a bike to commute, only to exercise, or not at all. Although she cautions against believing that Bostonians’ experience of their city is a monolith, given socioeconomic difference, her book is tied together by our shared sense of life, of grief and joy, darkness and light.
At times Everett geeks out about cycling, and while I found this information about biking’s history and culture interesting, readers who are entirely outside cycling culture might not be as interested. And still, Everett always re-centers our perspective through another fascinating observation of her life on the road, one that shows so clearly the ways we are called to our own spiritual disciplines—no matter whether they be like Brother Lawrence, working in a kitchen; or like Everett, riding through Boston; or like me, just learning how to clip my shoes into bike pedals, and hoping not to fall.
In this I am especially grateful for Everett’s work. I probably won’t ever be a biking commuter—I’m too intimidated by riding in Oregon’s ever-present rain. Still, Holy Spokes challenges me to converse with God in my own day-to-day practices, to find joy in what I do, and to pay attention to the pathway I’m on, both literally and figuratively.
Melanie Springer Mock is a Professor of English at George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon. She is also the author or co-author of four books including, most recently, If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for You to Be (Chalice Press, 2015); a fifth book is forthcoming from Herald Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Nation, Christianity Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Mennonite World Review, among other places.