Against the wind

"The wind blows wherever it pleases, you hear it's sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." - Jesus

So, in the last couple months I gained about 8 of the 20 pounds I lost during the last year and half. I think it's due to the fact that I've been running sporadically, and eating not so sporadically. I ran today though... a good long run. It was a bit breezey at times.. The interesting thing about running against the wind on a hot day is that it hinders and helps your progress. On the one hand it blows me back, which requires more exertion to continue the pace I want to keep. But on the other hand, the breeze cools me off on a hot day lowering my body temperature and thereby providing me with more stamina to continue running. In the end I prefer the breeze. It's a refreshing reminder of the wind of God's Spirit. Once it wafts your way, your road gets rougher, but your run gets sweeter.

the call

i missed our good friday service last night. i had too much grading to do... still do. but i hate missing good friday. i feel like easter is cheapened without comemorating Jesus' death first. it's as if you went to a carnival and were handed a huge teddy bear without knocking down the milk jugs first. i mean sure, it's a nice teddy bear and all, but still, it will probably just sit on my shelf with the rest of the teddy bears (that is if i collected teddy bears... which i don't, really!). i remember when i registered to run a half marathon. they gave me my packet of info, which included a shirt, the week before the race. it was a cool shirt, but it was just that.... a shirt. after i ran the race, however, it took on special meaning, and i wore it with pride, with dignity (and i wore it often; too often... in fact, i think my wife threw it out due the wear i put on it).

so goes the life of christians, i think. we lose our sense of awe for the granduer of the easter message if we don't daily carry the cross of good friday. what does that mean? i think it means choosing god's way instead of ours even when it's hard, even when it's burdensome. resurrection and restoration entered our world 2000 years ago, and the baton has been passed on to his Church. a new age has begun, and new age still awaits. but the Church like Jesus, will only usher in this newness through obedience and suffering. it's the call of the christian.

on the wagon and in the flow

i think i'm back on the wagon again. so far, i ran twice this week. not very far nor very fast, but nonetheless, i was pounding the pavement, which is what really matters. it couldn't have been a nicer day for it. the air was crisp with a slight chill in the breeze, and nary a cloud wandered wanton on the blue canopy above. i ran out to the tree covered trails where the shade abounds and a creek cuts smoothly through, sidewinding by with such languor that it lured me in with effortless ease. i stepped off the trail and sat by the flowing water for quite a while. it's a piece (albeit a very small piece) of old florida out there -before the bulldozers and development; prior to the boom, the bubble and the pop; shaded from the shady commissioners, mayors, realtors and developers who make deals to increase construction and destroy another habitat, another slice of sanity in the midst of this crazy world. but the water flows nonetheless. forest debris, sand, and pebbles are all carried along by the small currents that show up at times as liquid lines, shadows from the sun revealing the delicate dance of an ineffable, inexorable essence...

i ran back home and resolved to continue running.

birds and bandwagons

i haven't run in a week. i don't know why; it simply seems that i've fallen off the wagon for a bit. perhaps i will tomorrow, but i really don't feel so inclined at this point. sometimes i think i'd rather walk. i mean i get the sense that i may be missing something by jogging past it all so quickly (quickly may be a bit of an exaggeration).

i went for a walk the other day after hearing the firetrucks pass our home, and i made a discovery that i may not have made otherwise. i walked down to where i heard all the commotion. there was a fire at a condo down the road from us, but that seemed to me rather incidental. the fireman said it was a relatively small fire so i turned around to walk back home. on my way back, i made the real discovery. i noticed a mockingbird swooping down to peck at another bird that seemed to be grounded on the concrete below. i almost kept going, but i felt compelled to check it out. a little bird, a cedar waxwing crescent, had apparently been knocked out of the sky by the mocking bird and suffered some injury that prevented it from flight. i guess the bully bird wasn't content with his victory, but rather continued harrassing the little one as it struggled to regain footing. i got very close to the crescent yet he didn't fly away. so i reached down, picked him up and walked the rest of the way back with him. when i got to the house, i found a shoebox, put holes in it, and made him a little home and some sunflower seeds for dinner. my daughter and her cousin were thrilled to have our guest.

yesterday it looked as though he was getting better. he seemed perkier and ready to try out his wings. so we gave him the opportunity out front, but he couldn't do it. he hopped and fluttered but only mangaged to make it a couple feet in the air. my wife located the small wound on the inside portion of his left wing. we decided then that we would take him the next day to the "bird lady", a local woman who specializes in helping injured birds. but when i checked on him this morning, he was dead.

given my intro, perhaps you were expecting a happier ending to this story. but regardless of how it ended, the truth is, had i been running, i would have missed the opportunity to even attempt to rescue the bird. not all rescue attempts succeed, but i think most of them are worth trying.
i'm still not convinced to hang up my running shoes, but slowing down a bit is probably a good idea.

perfection, agility and humility

perfection: the highest degree of proficiency, skill or excellence

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." -Jesus

I remember when I first realized that I was a half-way decent runner. It was during a health class in community college where the instructor required us to run a 1.5 miler. I smoked everyone; even the black guy. A woman in the class told me afterwards that I should run in real races.

The next test was flexibility. We had to twist ourselves around and push a little widget as far as we could across some sort of measuring device. It looked to me like many of the students were cheating by using their wrists or the momentum of their twist to push it further. When it was my turn, I refused to stoop to such levels... but somewhere down inside I also knew I had to make up for my terrific run. So I did horribly on the flexibility test. When the instructor asked if I wanted to do it again, as she did with everyone, I declined. For some reason, I didn't want to shine too brightly. And so my failure here would bring equilibrium to reality and leave me in the lackluster state I was before. With this perspective, perfection was not an option, and the only remedy was self inflicted humility.

The other end of the spectrum, of course, would have been to milk my achievement on the track for all it was worth in a narcissistic tirade. Although, more socially acceptable, my response was proably no more healthy. I would have responded well had I done my best yet not let it go to my head. Yet how to attain such balance is the question. Perhaps balance is indicative of wholeness which may be a better goal to strive for than "the highest degree of excellence". It's also probably closer to what Jesus meant in the quote above. "Teleios" is the Greek word used by the New Testament writer here, which carries connotations of completeness, wholeness, maturity. It seems to me then that striving for perfection has at least two possible paths: 1) competition to be the best 2) a healthy and humble walk between extremes.

rotties and reveries

So I’m running and I hear a dog bark. My first instinct? Look around. Look for water, a climbable tree, a fence, a ditch, a heavy branch, an abandoned bike, an open car door, a knife, a gun, or a vortex of some sort. Sounds extreme, I know. But I have my reasons, largely stemming from being mauled by 2 hell hounds (aka rottweilers) 7 years ago while jogging. It was probably my only real near death experience. I mean I’ve had close calls while driving and other minor sh#t like that, but these beasts tore me to the ground. I was expecting my throat to be ripped open any second, and I literally thought to myself, “This is a horrible way to die.” But somehow I survived (divine intervention, I’m convinced) with only about 9 bites to the major defense areas (arms, legs, buttocks). Nonetheless, seven years later, the sound of a bigger dog barking sends my mind into a state of alertness as I weigh out my options to avoid another such encounter. But…then there’s the side of me when I’m running with my extendable steel baton that desires another chance at fight or flight, hoping this time, with the odds evened out a bit, that I would choose the former. I fantasize while running sometimes about beating the hell out of a pit bull or a rotty (I hate that word – it makes them sound so cuddly). I come running to the rescue of a child or elderly victim. One of the beasts attaches itself to my arm while I break the jaw of the other. The pain only spurs on my anger as I leap into the lake and drown the animal in full view of its redneck owner who comes out to see what’s going on. Seeing one of his dogs with a split open head and the other one floating in the water incites him to come after me in a blind rage. But my fist meets his face before he can even step into the water. A nerdowell is down for the count and his bastard pit bulls will never menace the free world again…. Okay, okay, I’m going a little far with this fantasy. Maybe instead of “prometheus spark” this blog should be dubbed “Walter Mitty’s Musings.” But perhaps fantasy can be helpful when dealing with posttraumatic stress. After all, with such fantasies we recreate the situation but with a positive end. But then again, I don’t know… maybe it’s unhealthy. Maybe someone can help me out with this.

When Falling Feels Good

After crashing into the concrete during my jog this evening and feeling rather rejuvinated as a result, I decided to come up with this list. Take "falling" literally or figuratively; I think it works either way.

Falling feels good when:

1) You're able to get back up immediately and keep running
2) You realize someone saw you fall, get up immediately, and keep running
3) There is no shame involved
4) It breaks up the monotony
5) (Along similar lines as number 4) It macerates the mundane
6) Your face is not involved in the stopping of the toppling
7) You learn something from your fall
8) You don't learn something from your fall
9) The sting of the gravel in your scrape reminds you to keep up the pace because you lost time
10) Let's be honest... Falling feels good when it's not concrete that's underneath you

Via Media

I ran this evening. 5 miles. In the cold. In a ditch. Well, sort of in a ditch. I bought some new trail shoes recently, and so I try to run off road whenever possible. There was a significant section of my run today where I ran in a very shallow grassy drainage area. It made the run more difficult, but it also made it much more interesting, and, in fact, I think the challenge seemed to make it go by faster. To the right of me was a very busy road filled with oncoming traffic. To the left of me was an empty paved biking/runninng/walking trail. And there I was in between them, dodging trees and culverts, running up one side for a minute then down into to the middle flat where the grass would sink a bit more than the higher ground. It was a good time... very rewarding.

Often the "middle way" has mistakenly been seen as the easy way, or the way of one who won't choose a side. But I think the middle way, like my run today, is actually the harder route, and, in fact, the more truthful one. How so? Well, the one who runs the ditch acknowledges the terrain and accounts for it accordingly. This one must see and experience the changing world around him and be ready to identify and coherently communicate truth and goodness in the midst of it.
This via media mindset calls a spade a spade regardless of what side of the table it's dealt from. This is not neutrality, it's truth-ality. To avoid partisanship - in politics, theology, family relations, etc - one must be dedicated to the truth. And this is what ditch running is all about.

Now, we're not talking about the supercilious scientist who thinks the only way to acquire truth is by way of empirical methodology. Nor are we referring to the Pentecostal pastor who says you have to believe because "I said it." (Both of these men, or types of men, have a lot in common actually). No... ditch running requires more than that. It demands an epistemology with more breadth than either of these perspectives. The existential, the situational, and the normative all come to bear for the one who dedicates himself to the pursuit of truth and goodness.

As a result, the paved path is eliminated as an option. While it may be the easier route, the one we're used to, perhaps the perspective we've grown up with and have more inclination toward, its answers are grounded in a system that refuses to acknowledge the complexities of life and truth. Simply said, there is no gray area for those who run this path. It's all black and white. But the road can't be an option either. Those who run it refuse to acknowledge that the road they're on will lead to death. They're skeptical about the oncoming traffic and downright disgusted by those who walk the paved path. Everything is gray for them.

The ditch runner, on the other hand, runs the path of most resistance and takes flack from both sides for not joining them on the pavement or asphalt. Tension is not easy, but it reveals truth which is ultimately more rewarding than the alternatives. I say run the ditch… but be sure you have some good trail shoes!