Fellowship of parked cars

After Mass one morning this spring, all of the parishioners were given a gift that I know we would never see in the US.

This rubber mat is meant to be placed on the dashboard of your car to display your mobile phone number. That way if you are parked in someone else's reserved parking spot (like in an apartment building garage, as has often happened to us on weekends) or have someone parked in, the other driver (or even the traffic police!) can phone you to move your car.

After I shared a picture of this on facebook, I went around my neighborhood photographing a few other examples to show how prevalent they were. These are so common that there are companies that manufacture them and customize them, like the present we received at Mass.

What particularly amazes me about these dashboard signs is that they are an appeal to other drivers and traffic police for mercy. Our experience with cars in motion has been quite the opposite. Driving itself seems to be a confrontational act. Blaring horns, tailgating, flashing high beams behind other cars, passing on the berm, making right turns or exits from the left lane in front of the cars in the right---these are all routine traffic behaviors we have seen in Beijing. The threat of actual road rage violence still lingers; I still catch glimpses of baseball bats in trunks of local Didi cars. Is it possible that as we park our cars and leave them, everything changes? Are we entering into a new social contract, one that asks strangers for the courtesy of a phone call, not a tow truck or parking ticket or a dented hood? No longer adversaries on the highway, have we joined a fellowship of parked cars?

A bonus of this mat is that it is a little POD. Not only does it bear an image of our church, cross and all, but it also has this message, "与主同行一路平安 Yǔ zhǔ tóngxíng yīlù píng'ān." With the Lord a safe journey.

I wonder if it will help the the visibility of Catholics here. Displaying this dashboard sign is a statement: this is where I belong, and this is what I believe. But most of all,  please please please call me to move my car.