Running Into Myself

John "The Penguin" Bingham describes allowing running to change him into the person he wants to be, one step at a time. He calls this "running into myself".

I have seen this in my own life over the last 16 months since I started running in June 2008. My running shoes are now somewhat sacred to me, and I wear them only for running -- nothing else. When I lace them on, and head out the door, each kick-off is a step behind me and each new foot-plant is a new me, becoming. I've lost over 50 lbs, and my resting heart rate has gone from the high 70s to the mid- to high-40s. I just feel better. But more than that I feel more...

...myself.

I have to acknowledge that a part of it is the weight loss. When I look at my picture from 7th grade, I see a normal-weight kid who is happy and healthy and looking forward to life ahead. My 8th grade school picture is a photo of a pudgy kid*. I've spent most of my life looking into the mirror at the man who grew up from that pudgy, patently nonathletic, insecure kid from 8th grade. Now when I look into the mirror I see the man who grew up from the 7th grade kid.

Another nod to The Penguin: I'm an "adult onset athlete" and it feels good to be healthy. A friend (who will remain un-named -- but I've known him since 7th grade and looked up to him as an athletic person) recently said something like "I hope when I'm your age I'm that healthy. Wait...I am your age!"

That felt good, but wasn't as meaningful as it would have been 2 years ago. The 8th-grade pudgy kid in me would have given his left arm to hear someone say that. The 7th-grader in me today, though -- not so insecure -- laughed and acknowledged it, but moved on...and THAT felt good. Does that make sense?

So running has given me the benefit of becoming more the person I want to be. But insecurities and faults and flaws still live deep in me. Running is only one way to change me. There are others. Some of these can be pretty scary, but becoming a runner has given me the confidence to face new challenges more hopefully.

One other way to become more myself is to spend time alone in a small space -- where every time I turn around I (quite literally) keep "running into" my "self".

It was for this express purpose I recently went to a place in the Silver Falls area called CRC. I stayed in a tiny A-frame building called the "Prayer Hut".I took my bible and my journal and a couple books that have been helpful recently in digging into the depths of my self -- maybe that sounds narcissistic, but here's a story:

When I was a kid sometimes my dad would drive me places. I'd turn on the radio and he would turn it off. I'd turn it back on and he'd turn it back off. This would repeat a few times and finally he'd tell me to leave it off and then say something like:

"What's the matter?
Are you afraid of your own thoughts?"

And, well...I guess yeah I was, and still am sometimes. I look in the mirror and while the body is that of the grown-up 7th-grader still sometimes in the corner of my eye I see the lost-ness of the 8th-grader peering through and I wonder what it is like to be whole. Mark twain once said

"The worst kind of loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself"

So once in awhile I think it is important for me to turn off my cell phone, leave my laptop at home, and just get away from it all to be alone And. Just.

Be

With my self.

So recently I spent 3-4 days reading and writing in my journal and praying and really connecting with God on a deep deep level.

I sensed
The Maker of the Universe
look at me and smile
in simple unbridled
filial
and fraternal
and friendly
affection
and a sense of
life-purpose
and positive destiny

And you know what I re-learned? Far more than any person's complimentary remark, that love of God burning deep in my heart -- this is what makes my day.

On a bad day this is what lets me know everything will be OK. And this is what, on a good day, makes everything seem brighter and clearer and more alive.

Now I'm home again and re-plugged in. Life and work and community all go on and challenges and stresses have a way of rebuilding themselves. I can't live as a hermit, and so I run. When I run, I sometimes catch a glimpse of that love in my heart.

Some days running is just habit. Other days it is an exercise in self-denial. But on other days, it's like Eric Liddell says in Chariots of Fire: "When I run I sense God's pleasure".

To celebrate one year of running, in June 2008 I ran a half-marathon. It was preceded by 14 weeks of training, which was brutal but fulfilling -- and made the race itself less brutal and more fulfilling -- exhilarating, even. My goal is to run the Portland Marathon in October 2010. After that maybe someday I'll run a longer distance. It is symbolic of my race through life. Life is not a sprint. Things, like becoming myself, take time -- likely, the whole rest of my life.

So I run. As a Nike ad puts it, I run not because I am in a hurry, or because someone is chasing me.

I run just because.

I'm running a half-marathon in mid-January and my 14 weeks of training begins this Monday. I can't wait to get out on the roads at 5:30am, before the sunrise. Just God, and me, and my shoes hitting the pavement;

pickin' 'em up & puttin' 'em down.

Running into myself.~ Keith

* Sometimes I wonder "What happened to me between 7th and 8th grade?" I have some answers on that one, but that's another story, and really just for me and my journal. But here is a song that struck me today, and the overall message is right in line with how I feel inside when I wonder that wonder, and also right in line with why I run:

The Love That you Give
by Jeff Searles

These days I find myself
Wanting something that I lost
A long long time ago
Ghost of a memory that haunts me
The way that it was
A long long time ago

The Love that You give
Is the Love that I need
The Love that You give
Is the Love that I need

Lately I feel so empty
Trying so hard to fill up
Something inside of me
But I always miss the mark
And end up breaking apart
Something inside of me

And the Love that You give
Is the Love that I need
The Love that You give
Is the Love that I need
The Love that You give
Is the Love that I need

Dedications

That's me. I'm the blurry guy in the orange shirt and bright-yellow hat in the left-edge of the picture. I'm finishing my final kick in my first ever 5k race.

I've been running for about a year now, and tomorrow I'm running my first ever half-marathon. 13.1 miles. They say the 13 miles are easy -- it's the 0.1 that's the killer. I started running partly to get in shape, partly as an exercise in self-denial, but mainly I did it for me. I've done so many things for other people -- and I'm not talking altruism, I'm talking people-pleasing for wrong reasons: trying to earn the approval of others. But running? I started that for *me* -- as a way to love and take care of myself.

Following tradition, at tomorrow's race I'm dedicating my miles:

Mile 0 --> 1: Me for getting there in the first place
Mile 1 --> 2: My wife Cathy for supporting me
Mile 2 --> 3: My friend Tom Bartel for inspiring me
Mile 3 --> 4: My Dad
Mile 4 --> 5: My Mom
Mile 5 --> 6: My sister Bobbi
Mile 6 --> 7: My sister JoAnn
Mile 7 --> 8: My sister Marilyn
Mile 8 --> 9: My sister Leslie
Mile 9 --> 10: Me for getting there!
Mile 10 --> 11: My friend Tom for inspiring me!!
Mile 11 --> 12: Cathy for supporting me!!!
Mile 12 --> 13: Me for getting there!!!!
and that last little bit from 13 --> 13.1: My final kick is for God who has created me and is giving me the ability to continue "running into myself"!

~ Keith

Am I Acceptable to God?

I found this excellent post over on Inward/Outward. It re-centered me again to what is important. I think part of what I like most about it is that there are no "do it this way instead" prescriptions -- it is more stream of consciousness.

~ Keith

Effortlessly

Sister Hazel is one of my favorite bands. Their album Chasing Daylight is classic. And this song is just about my favorite of all right now. It is where I'm at in life and loving it.

Effortlessly

I won't be so hard on me today
I start to take myself so seriously
Shouldn't be so hard just to be effortlessly
It shouldn't be so hard to keep it together
It shouldn't be so hard to say the right things to you
It shouldn't be so hard just to be effortlessly

Weightless worries fall away
Wasted pools of energy
I want to know I want to breathe

Effortlessly - just be
I want to be effortlessly
I want to be

It shouldn't be so hard to be inspired
It shouldn't be so hard just to write this song
It shouldn't be so hard to be wrong or to agree
It shouldn't be so hard to change the world
It shouldn't be so hard just to change your mind
It shouldn't be so hard just to be effortlessly

Weightless worries fall away
Wasted pools of energy
I want to know I want to breathe

Effortlessly - just be
I want to be effortlessly
I want to be

I won't be so hard on me today
I start to take myself so seriously
Shouldn't be so hard just to be effortlessly

Effortlessly
I want to know
I want to breathe
I want to simplify my needs
I want to live inside this moment
And just be effortlessly
Just be
I wanna be effortlessly
I want to be

~ Keith

Say Yes

Hat tip to Jen Lemen

~ Keith

The Story Within the Story

I am reposting this from Inward/Outward:

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By David Wade

I no longer open my quarterly 401K reports. So much of my account’s value has been lost that if I were closer to retirement age the prospect of my working at McDonald’s into my 70’s would be unavoidable.

Despite all of the news coverage on the financial crisis, I feel a vital interpretive element has been missed. It has to do with the story within the story. It is often the story within a story that reveals a deeper truth about the whole. The overweening hubris of our nation’s top financial corporations, exemplified by the millions of dollars of bonuses issued with bail-out money, along with the other accustomed accouterments of the privileged, should really come as no surprise. History is papered with the overblown egos and Marie Antoinette-styled sensitivities of the rich.

Yet we are America. Our founding was driven, in part, by a reaction against European “blue-bloodedness.” George Washington was “first among equals.” This land is your land, this land is my land. Yet during the recent Presidential campaign, “socialist” was an epithet used to eviscerate any populist economic sentiment––mostly by people, aside from the unbelievably cynical news hounds who threw the term meatily to the masses, who have no idea what the term really implies. And while the lifestyles of the sharks of Wall Street are protected, labor unions are vilified and disempowered in the name of financial stability.

Who’s to blame? Who can be held to account for sleeping at the switch while our nation was plundered by robber barons?

We are. The church. We’ve failed our nation.

For the last 40 years, the American church has been dancing to the drum of political power. Paranoid and pliable, it has promoted the issues its masters have required. And in doing so, lost its prophetic vision—sold for a few seats at the table of kings. And to echo the words of Psalm 2, the powerful now just laugh at us for being so gullible. What a bunch of rubes! Get them to focus solely on abortion and homosexuality. Make these their major issues, get their leaders all lathered up, marching and praying, hateful and fearful. And we’ll plunder the coffers of the American Dream. We will run this nation any way we please––secular, misogynistic, violent, imperial. And the impotent Church will beg for scraps from our tables, grateful to receive a White House Christmas card.

We’re all to blame. Left and Right. We’ve all been caught up in the game. We’ve made clowns out of servants like Jeremiah Wright. Where was the Left to come to his defense? Silent. Where was the progressive church when Prop 8 was on the ballot in California? Defending Rick Warren’s right to deliver an over-eager Inaugural prayer. Politeness replacing prophecy. Political correctness replacing holy zeal. The Left has as much to answer for as the Right.

This is the story within the story––the news that’s not being reported. And thank goodness! How much more discredited does the church need to become? As a pastor, I say let it go all the way down. Megachurch marketing, Focus on the Family, prayer cabals at the White House and the Pentagon, the Rapture industry, let it all go.

And let’s start anew. Let’s find our voice again. With no strings attached. Let’s minister to the newly disenfranchised, the despondent, the truly left-behind. Let’s be the church in the street, on the assembly line, in the food stamp line. Let’s call new generations, young and old, to a transformational journey. Let’s abandon a false dream, and find the one nestled in God’s heart.

David Wade writes from his home in Virginia Beach, where he facilitates The Welcome Table on Saturday evenings at 6 in the chapel on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan College. He says, “We’re just a tiny piece, but, together, maybe we can find this new dream.” If you’re ever in the area, join them in the search.

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What do you think?

~ Keith

True Discipline

I just finished week 1 of a 14 week training program preparing me to run the Helvetia Half-Marathon on June 13. It was cold & windy -- drizzly. Today I felt faster, but also felt I was running harder -- maybe it was more difficult to slow down due to the wind and drizzle? Plus, this current week has been 30 min workouts (2 running, 2 cycling). Today was my "endurance" run of only 2 miles. Yet when I think back to a year ago, the idea of running 2 miles at all was out of my imagination, let alone running it @ a <9:30 pace! Was I running too hard? Maybe.

A book I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed is The Zen of Running by Fred Rohe. It is (c) 1972 and very hippie trippie -- but I liked it. A lot! Fred says:

your creation of you
as a runner
will be more pleasurable
as you progress
by running less

the key to the "progress by less" method
is always to do
less than you think you can.

if you think you can gallop right away
just take a walk.

thinking you can run around the block,
just run down to the corner.

you have the rest of your life
to progress into long distance running.
why strain, make pain?
why not lope along,
free and easy,
doing it like a dance?
when you start doing it
you'll see that running
is naturally hard enough
all by itself
without you creating
additional hardship for yourself.

This got me thinking about following my training program. I know I can run farther than 2 miles. But today I disciplined myself to only run 2 miles.

I used to think discipline was hard; doing something difficult because it is the right thing to do. But now I see true discipline is even harder; doing less because it is the right thing to do.Week 1 of 14 down. 13 to go -- one more week for every mile I'll run on June 13th.

~ Keith