On Tuesday this week, I rode my bike the five miles from home to the bus without stopping, never once taking my feet off the pedals to touch the ground.

This is a thing.

My route takes me through 27 sets of traffic lights at junctions and six more sets at pedestrian crossings.  There are long straights, where I can see five lights ahead, and turns where the lights catch you unawares.

To get through them all cleanly requires me to adjust my pace, sometimes almost grinding to a halt to wait on a red, then sprinting till my lungs burst to catch a green. But to carry on to the end, to make the journey without putting a foot down, is completely exhilarating.

The nonstop ride can really only be done in the quiet early morning. It’s not a sensible thing to attempt in busy traffic. It needs focus and concentration and no trucks. In the evening, it’s wiser not to try.

Now, two years ago today, my dad died; and in those two years, these years of relentless strangeness and separation that we have all shared, I have carried on. It has felt as if I have always been moving, and yet the roads have not been quiet.

I reckon it’s a long time since any of us has been on a quiet road.

So, this long negotiation with grief has been undertaken in heavy traffic, almost grinding to a halt, intermittently sprinting, worrying that if I put my foot down, I might never get going again; and all with no traffic lights to make me stop.

But sometimes, I think, when the traffic is heavy, we must be made to stop.

Jesus once said, “Come to me, and I will give you rest”.  It’s interesting that he starts not with the gift but the invitation.  If I want to rest, I have to decide to go and find rest.

The nonstop cycling thing, the clear green run, is a beautiful rarity. Extraordinarily, I did it again on Wednesday. Mind you, I wouldn’t want to do it every day. It’s exhausting.  Sometimes, you need to stop, to rest your legs or to rest your heart.

So, later today I’ll see my Mum and my brother, and we’ll rest together and think of Dad.

And then the weekend will be here.  And I hope I’ll rest some more.

The image at the top is a ‘Do Not Walk’ viking on a traffic sign in Århus, Denmark