It has been a practice of mine for some time to read the bumper stickers of the cars I encounter on the freeway and then to imagine the lives of the person who placed something of such permanence on their car. Since the ‘placer’ can’t actually see the message, it has always been clear to me that, while making a statement, their message carries an evangelistic bent. Its’ message is meant to influence others, bring them into the fold of a certain way of thinking or being. Specifically, the person who finds themselves following the message for a time. With the kind of stop and start traffic we are experiencing these days in the Twin Cities, with all the road construction that is both east and west and north and south, these bumper sticker messages can have a long time to work their magic.

The fact is I hadn’t seen any new rear-reading messages for some time. Until Thursday when I spent nearly twenty minutes following, stop and start, a car that had these words displayed proudly on their backside: ‘Positive Is How I Live’. My initial reaction was to smile broadly. What a wonderful thing to be sending these words into the Universe! As leader and follower inched along the freeway, dodging orange and neon yellow clad workers, I wondered if the person in the car in front of me was more patient than I. Were they taking advantage of our slow pace to listen to pleasant music or a book on tape, all the while not giving a hoot about the possibility of being late? Or, even better, had they left at an even earlier hour planning for how the ride would go? Were they, in fact, remaining positive?

Following this message for as long as I did caused me to think about the act, and the art, of being positive and its cousin, being negative. I like to believe that I live my life someplace in the middle. But I do notice how easy it is in our culture to always go to the negative. We are bombarded daily with negative advertisements. So many statements made by politicians and preachers, newscasters and plain, regular people are placed in the negative. The rash of reality television is often astounding to me and almost all of it is negative in nature.

I think of the truly positive people I am blessed to know, those people who have the gift of being fully present as they speak and listen. Their positive energy and equally positive words have a healing effect and always leave me feeling as if I have been renewed. The words they choose are often filled with possibility and hope which can be contagious. It is something I aspire to.

Positive is how I live. I would like to get up every morning and, despite the circumstances, choose this as my mantra for the day. Instead of succumbing to the steady stream of negative energy housed in words, I would like to be flinging the healing balm of negative’s opposite into the world. How about you? Would you also like to carry the message ‘positive is how I live’ to anyone who will experience it?

Perhaps we might hold a revival. Perhaps we might pitch our tent in the open field and call out all the positive messages we can. People might show up. We could sing songs together, nice, beautiful songs. Songs that would make us laugh and harmonize. We’d spend time telling stories and listening to one another as if we had the power to change the world. And who knows? We just might.

In the meantime, out on the congested freeways there is at least one person who is declaring their statement of faith in a 4 x 12 inch rectangle. This person shared their gospel with me. And now I am sharing it with you. Like all good messages, it is up to us what we do with it.