Jumping on Mushrooms

You may be interested to know I've made the transition. Before I admit this, I must apologize to winter runners everywhere, especially the treadmillers who I've judged in past years. But I look outside, see the grey skies and rain, hop in the car and drive to the gym for the daily run. And guess what? I thoroughly enjoy it. I've found that I enjoy the people by whom I'm surrounded in the gym. I run, they pass by, I smile, they smile, and then I feel like Mario must feel after he jumps on a mushroom.

The Staccato-Style Undertone

Anna was impressed that I learned all 20 names in 45 minutes.  What she failed to realize:  I already knew the students. Eric’s the curious one, always asking her questions; there are two April’s, one silly one and one serious; Doug is more interested in Parkour and runs to stay in shape; Bailey has a stress fracture, but should be healthy again for track season; Mark is running his first 5k this season; and the list continues.

She told me their stories before practice that day. When she’s passionate about something, her voice crescendos. Sometimes I look over my shoulder for the band director. He must be around somewhere, raising his arms as she bounces from student to student, quick, staccato style, a half-laugh brimming over and spilling out in her voice.  

She cares…and because she cares, I care. 

So I tap her on the shoulder, “Hey Anna, where’s Shawn, the show-tune singer? And the silly April? I haven’t seen the silly April.”  She laughs and introduces me to Andrew (if you tell him to “get that guy”, he’ll “get that guy!”).

Sometimes, I imagine God talking about His people the same way Anna talks about her cross-country team. “Ella’s hair is straight, except for the piece she spins around her finger while reading; Jared makes Ali laugh when he himself laughs maniacally; Elizabeth adopts children with severe disabilities, sometimes with only a few years to live; Brad’s life is a soundtrack. He makes up a song for everything he does!” And His list continues, an eternal crescendo. 

The other day I attended one of Anna's team's cross-country meets. One of the boys was running his first 5k that day. This particular student attends every practice, grasps for the coaches' advice, and supports his teammates even when not running himself. 

While watching the meet, I grew a little confused. The first guy finished the race, grabbed some water and then ran off, faster than he'd been running during the race. The second and third guys finished the race, grabbed water, and sprinted back onto the course. Again, faster than they'd been racing. The fourth guy finished and vanished back onto the course. 

After their 5k's, they'd all gone back to cheer for their teammate, the one who was running his first full race.

I know, I know...races are metaphors for life. Authors use this constantly...but I can't help but think that most people (myself included), when finished with some great feat or difficult trial, sit on a bench, drink gatorade and watch as others struggle towards the line.     

And then the decrescendo, a few minor chords, the Director's hands move a little slower, smoother. His eyes close as he ushers in waves of music and dissonance. Listening to this part of the piece may prove difficult. 

Sometimes Ella plays a victim of circumstances just to get attention. Jared lies to his family so they think he's okay. Elizabeth talks before thinking, hurting others in the process. Some days Brad's soundtrack ends. He refuses to get out of bed. 

Yet all the while, under the dissonance lies the staccato-style undertone. It begins at a barely audible volume.

And Brad begins to sing about repotting rosemary.

There's a twinkle in the Director's eye.

 He cares, and because He cares…   **

  “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations…

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal…

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

*Names changed throughout (well, except one for which permission was given)

** Disclaimer!!! The implication is “I care.” I often don’t care, but should. He’s still molding this clay. 

Eloping: The Clinical Term

I’ve often mentioned my work in past posts. We recently welcomed a new resident to the house, which, if I’m doing my addition correctly means we now have three residents. Unlike my good friends, Lacey and Bill, the newest man, let’s call him Jonah, can walk. Actually, he has no trouble walking at all. Sometimes he walks when we’d prefer he not… like at 11:00pm when the rest of the world is sleeping.

Jonah grows quite anxious when he can’t control his surroundings. Often the word, “no” sets him off. If you say, “no” to him, he’ll start to nod quickly and say “yes” over and over again. He communicates in sign language and short phrases, so his hands vent his frustration, he starts to pace, and he sweats so much that his hair drips. Eventually, he backs away and marches out the door.  Previously, this has upset me. I’ve been clueless as to how to convince him to return home. Recently, though, I had a breakthrough. 

The other day I went out for a run.  I’ve been known to run everywhere, at all hours of the night. If I’m on vacation, I explore new terrain. If it’s 2:00am and I can’t sleep, I strap on the shoes, figuring that no one else will be out…because wandering the streets at that time would be stupid.

Jonah left the house around 9:30pm yesterday. I grabbed my phone and followed him out, angry. After awhile, the anger subsided and boredom set in. I have no patience for boredom. If you flip through the gospels, you won’t find Jesus bored… quiet, yes, alone, yes, but bored? No. So I wandered over to Jonah and began to talk. He told me to go, then turned his back to me. I walked around to face him. He turned his back. I walked around him again, still talking. He laid down in the parking lot and rested his head on a curb.  I sat on the curb.  He covered his eyes with his hands so I couldn’t see him. I asked him if he was trying to get a tan.

Jesus love is perfect. There’s no way to express this without sounding cliché, so I won’t try. According to C.S. Lewis, “Hell is when the Lord gives us exactly what we want.” Naturally, I don’t want what the Lord wants for me. He makes a request, and I sit on the curb, demanding freedom to do as I please.

Jonah spread his arms out on the cement as if to make a snow angel. He nodded his head and began to smile. “Jonah, this is your problem! This is why you’re so white! You do all your tanning at night when the sun is down. If you want to get tan, you need to lay out during the day!” He stayed still. After a few moments he smiled again and nodded his head, “Yea, me.”

Fortunately for most of us, the Lord is patient, and persistent. We can run from Him time and time again, and He waits. We probably do things that make just about as much sense as tanning at night. We loaf around and waste time, and then we run further.

After awhile, my tone grew more serious, “Jonah, are we friends?”  He sat up, looked at me, and nodded. Then he stood up and walked back to the house. I watched him walking from the curb. I’m constantly running from Jesus’ love… and His love is perfect. How much more would Jonah run from my completely flawed attempt at love?    

So after work, I strap on my shoes and head out to run. He asks me to love people, especially the people that I myself would prefer not to love. Then He waits for my response. 

The Ultra

There’s a specific group of runners who come together every so often. They’re an unassuming group, humble in their simplicity. Looking at them from the outside, one may notice that they look a little out of sorts—hair a little too long, beat-up clothes, often in barefoot shoes or sandals—other than this they look pretty normal. Most carry water bottles in both hands and stash bananas in their fanny packs. They don’t carry Ipods or cell phones, and they’re not connected to heart rate monitors or GPS units. The sun begins to rise as the runners take off.

These runners don’t surge to the front of the pack. The trail forces them to run single file, which is preferable so as not to start too quickly and die later. We run, 75 of us, silently. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is stimulation enough without speech. Besides, we’ll need a laugh later this afternoon— to remind us that we love what we’re doing. So we run, hopping over stones, weaving around trees, climbing up boulders. They hike quickly up steep inclines, again, one at a time, and begin to run as they hit the top. One man stops to pull an older one up the face of a large boulder. It’s his dad’s birthday. His dad died last year and he’s hoping to run strong for his mom. Two ladies stop to take off their shoes and shake the sand out of their socks. One smiles as I continue the run, “Hey, don’t be shy to stop and admire at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. This race is one of the beautiful ones…and we have thirty more miles to worry about speed.”  One of the fellas wearing sandals stubs his toes. He rubs dirt in the wound to clot the blood and continues on. Later, a 65-year-old lady will dig a band-aid and some disinfectant out of her fanny pack, which he takes with repetitive thanks.

Every five to seven miles we stop to refuel, volunteers and family members hand out water, granola bars, and chocolate milk.  While refueling, the runners stretch and delve into the lives of the others. Small talk seems trivial after traversing 20 miles together. These runners often ask the questions with no clear explanations…mostly “why” questions. One man designs office furniture. He’d like to run a vegan restaurant one day. A couple of old ladies, maybe 75, both lost their husbands last year. Running together carried them through. I told them that I’m not a birder, but I’ve been searching for this bird, the Hermit Thrush, all summer, simply because Walt Whitman used it in, “When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Whitman requests the Hermit sing for him as he can’t summon the words. It reminds me of Luke 19:40 when Jesus speaks of the disciples, “I tell you, if they keep quiet the stones will cry out.” Sometimes, knowing that God, if He wanted, could easily override my stumbling words and actions with His creation allows a greater freedom to live for Him without the fear of bringing Him humiliation. So I like to listen for this ever-elusive bird, Whitman’s chosen speaker—the one that he asks to cover his bumbling’s.

As we near the end of the run, the sun has risen and begun to set again over the surrounding lakes. We’re sheltered by the small Michigan mountains, nothing compared to most mountain ranges, but they’re our own little challenge, and the peaks have served to take our breath away more than a few times. The runners pour each other water and un-stash the remaining bananas, splitting the leftovers with runner opposite. Then, after the race, they slip into their cars, and set off in different directions, wishing one another good health, and hoping to meet again, sometime in the future when they reappear in some other woodsy area to, once again, traverse the landscape, quietly, one-by-one.

5:30am actually exists?!

     It's 5:30am on Saturday morning. I'm awake, voluntarily, and awaiting the start of my first ultramarathon.  I signed up for the 50-miler, though the website now claims it's actually 51-- apparently after 26.2 miles, a little extra mileage doesn't really matter-- but you'd better not short us Mister (49...ppph)!

   So, how does one prepare for a 50- miler? According to my research, you run 4 to 8 miles Tuesday through Thursday of most weeks. You take Friday off. Saturday you run 3-5 hours. Sunday you run 2-3 hours. Monday off. This will keep you fresh while still mocking the amount of time you'll be on your feet during the ultra.

  Now you're asking how I trained? I ran 6-15 miles most days, 0 miles some days, and threw in the occasional 25-30 miler, while quoting Pilgrims Progress when ascending the Hill of Difficulty and searching the trails for the ever-elusive Hermit Thrush mentioned in Walt Whitman's When Lilac's Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. The bird lives just north of my home in the summer, where I often run the trails and listen for it's haunting melody.

More on that tonight or tomorrow morning. I've got to run! Literally! And when I say literally, I mean literally and not "not literally true but used for emphasis or to express strong feeling"*!


*the new google definition for literally...is not literally. Sounds like an oxymoron to me, but who am I to contradict society!? Or pop culture for that matter!? In fact, I firmly believe that someday, one will be able to answer the question, "How are you?" with the word, "Good" and society will consider it grammatically sound. I move to start this process now! How are you today?

No, Thank You!

   Basically, to write well, one must narrow days/ weeks into a single moment-- three minutes max. So, I spend hours every day deciding which moment to choose. Which moment will wrap up the entire day? Or in my case, as of late, which one will wrap up the last couple of months?   Could it be the one where I attempt to teach my nieces correct canoe strokes with a broom; or perhaps it's watching my Aunt and Uncle manuever a tandem along the Greater Allegheny Passage; or maybe it's having the privilege of running a 5k with Jerry Johncock, the man who has the 85+ age group record for the marathon.   All of this to say, a lot has happened in the last few months and writing so little is overwhelming.

   On the bright side, as I've mentioned in past posts, I work in adult foster care. As of now, I help take care of two residents (Bill and Lacey...not their real names). Bill's speech is limited, he tends to sprinkle his acquired language with obscenities* and his behests often sound rude. He's not rude on purpose, but tends to speak in one tone, which is fairly loud and, when put in the form of a request, more of a demand.
   Lately, we've been encouraging him to say "please" and "thank you". Most of the time he ignores or claims that he did say "please" and/or "thank you" even though he didn't.  Tonight, though, I rolled him to bed, put his pj's on, and turned the lights out.  Just as I was leaving he turned over and yelled "Fank you, b****!" Needless to say, my coworker and I raised our arms in fists of silent victory! It felt as though we were saving the world one word at a time.



*Ernest Hemingway censored For Whom the Bell Tolls, using words like "obscenity" and "unprintable" where he would have otherwise put swear words. Sometimes I write down Bill's sentences in the style of the censored Hemingway and it usually comes out something like, "Obscenity, unprintable, mickey fickey, unprintable, obscenity." I find this version quite entertaining and also tasteful--not to mention family-friendly.

Been A While

"It is one of the difficult and delightful subtleties of life that we must deeply acknowledge certain things to be serious and yet retain the power and will to treat them often as lightly as a game." -C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I would choose to run with Chelsea. We're not runners who happen to be laughing so much as laughers who happen to be running.

Mike or Frank?

Last August I moved back near my childhood home in Michigan. As of late, about once a month my dad and I prune the fruit trees he’s planted over the years.  

One of my more obnoxious qualities: I ask questions… all the time—some philosophical, some, well, not.  If I’m really comfortable with you the questions, normally contained within the confines of my head, shoot out, quite unfiltered. So I ask him about global climate change; I ask him whether he thinks public schools encourage mediocrity; about Ted Bundy’s wife’s psychological state; whether it’s ethically sound to have children with the problems that could arise with global warming; why does it seem like when people try to help others, they often end up hindering instead; where will Cambodians get clean water when surface water is polluted and the well-water contains arsenic; who fights to legalize the serving of horse meat; if he could have lunch with one of the American Pickers, would he go with Mike or Frank?

When we prune, I’m the climber. Pops moves the ladder and takes the lower branches.

So we trim. I ask questions.  He answers,

“Try sawing the branch off there.”

“Don’t worry about that bald spot, it’ll grow back.”  

“See the vertical shoots? Those are called suckers. Trim all of those off and the tree will put more energy into the horizontal branches.”

“ The great thing about pruning is that if you make a mistake, you can go back in a couple of years and fix it.”

"Mike."

So I climb the ladder; step onto the branches; shimmy up the tree; cut all the suckers, the ones shooting straight up; saw off unnecessary branches; stop worrying about the accidental bald patches...they'll fix themselves; and silently agree that Mike would be the Picker with which to lunch. 

Bankrupt Descriptors

A while back I left my apartment around midnight and ran for about an hour. The snowflakes fell small and slow. They resembled glitter in the streetlights. At one point I took a right onto the trails—just me, the darkness, the light of the snow. I was fortunate enough to have been the first to run the trails since the snow fell. No other footprints marred the landscape.

Okay, stop. As I describe this, I’m sickened.  The description looks like any other winter night. There’s nothing special about it, yet there was something special about it, something that I cannot portray with my limited vocabulary. My brain scrolls through bankrupt descriptors, and as the words tick by, I check them off one by one and give up.   Attempting to describe this night has only served to silence me, to humble me. Maybe one of the precursors for beauty is that it can only be spoken through gasps, odd facial expressions, and absolute humility.  And if that’s the case, maybe it’s okay to receive confused looks and crinkled noses at my pathetic descriptions, which reminds me,

Last fall a friend of mine found a salamander for the first time. Even at 25 years old, she was so enthused that, as we ran through the woods, she stopped to show me the exact log it had been hiding under.

And then I recall when my little cousin, Joe, found a baby turtle. It was about the size of his thumb—cute.

“So, Joe, do you have a name for your turtle?”

He smiled, letting it crawl across his palm, “Yup.  Joe.”

As he passed it on to his little sister, she went on, “But what if it’s a girl?”

Joe shrugged his shoulders, “Then I’ll call her Josephine…but Joe for short.”

And as he ran off to find a camera, I had to look at the turtle again, extra carefully this time, because there must be something…

Most walk right by the sculpture, eager to see flashier pieces of art.  My dad, however, ponders the bronze and says under his breath, “He’s probably trying to pass his wisdom on to the younger generation.” The sculpture is an old man beside his grandson. He has a beard, a cane, and his bronze wrinkles are cut deep, especially around the eyes. A few weeks later my nieces come to visit. They take a picture with Papa beside the sculpture. Dad acts almost reluctant to take the picture, as if humbled by the prospect of being compared to the old man.  

And as I think on these instances of others’ experienced beauty (C.S. Lewis may call it glimpses of joy?), I run through the shin-deep snow, an empty palate awaiting the paint of my shadowy footprints…and revel at the fact that I can only gasp and continue on.