Higher Cause

Michael's been getting a lot of air time lately in the glider. Flying seems to put him in that place where everything falls into a zen-like, seamless reality of earth and sky melding together. I know how it feels to have that 'right place'...what running has been for me in those magical moments when my body feels strangely at ease in the motion. Saturday's run brought me this insight: despite the need for strength, endurance or 'form', there is a distinct lack of normal controls to running. Meaning, in every other area of life, there is a deliberate sense of posture, positioning, presentation. But in the run, its a flat out goal to keep moving forward, and hey! it's not always pretty!!

When the factors all come together, running movement is a meditation motion. It lifts the mind from it's usual frame of reference and allows a kind of sideways slide into an alternate perception of reality. This 'slide' brings relief from the constraints of all that other sitting, standing, laying down; a freedom in motion that seems to allow the brain to release itself from the any mental urgency. The motion gives 'permission' to move a lot, a little, a little bit more; to grimace, laugh, sing, cry. To contemplate universal truths, to indulge fantasy and day dream. Without the Editor (unless of course it's the critical coach...) the hour or 2 on the road is an escape from any other role in life. For me, FREEDOM. No matter how poorly the performance, I am most completely myself...open to whatever the run brings.

Any time we seem to 'plug in' to those magical processes, we serve the Higher Cause of our own path and practice. I know Michael does this in the glider. His excitement comes through and is the proof it takes him to that place. For the folks I work with, the message comes back to Joseph Campbell and 'find your bliss'...the connection to something Greater than you is there!

Solstice Solidarity

To my northern family: I have absorbed the images of Solstice 2010. I walk the path, wave the flags, and show the colors of my rainbow nature, in sync with the spirits of the land, air and all elements of life. I pour my heart into the core of your circle where our hopes and prayers for our Mother shoot into the Soul of Universal Light and change. May the Beneficent Ones, who wait in our good future, help us build the bridge which sustain us all!

With you always in the Work, and Love. With Her, and Them. And it IS SO!!

Viktor Frankl: Why to believe in others | Video on TED.com

Viktor Frankl: Why to believe in others | Video on TED.com

Momentum

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Today's run on the same Griffin loop was much tougher than yesterday. No active storms, lots of blustery winds and very high heat and humidity gave me plenty to work against, the active resistance making me dig deep to keep up an active gait for a few stretches up Emerald Hills, 35th...walking the last mile home.

My thoughts have been deep into the process of change we are undergoing. When I saw Mom on Sunday, she was tucked into her little bed for a nap; we exchanged a few "i love you's" and small talk before I left, as if I was watching her curling up inside herself, ready to launch anytime into the next world. How does the body disconnect from the mind's control? Or is it the body which digs in and demands presence in life? I'm reading research on the brain which proves to me that we are so clueless about how the interplay between the seen and unseen forces in life interact. What drives us forward? How does this next generation, my children, see a future when all around them is the devastation of their world? Once the momentum of hope is in motion, can it be taken out from under us?

Watching HBO's Gasland last night; if you missed it, find it on the web. When I was a kid in the midst of suburban development which stole every bit of natural land away, I was keenly tuned to this loss. At mid-life I see nothing has changed. From Rachel Carson to Loren Eisley, to the many expressive activists working to make The Shift a reality, the voice of Mother Earth has been out there. Has the Gulf disaster finally given it a megaphone...and can enough 'shift' happen to save ourselves from the destruction we so carelessly court?

Momentum comes from 'practice', from the consistent application of your discipline of choice, whether you find it in self-help, religion, service, neighbors, love or work, whether your 'mission' speaks to you in traditional- or non-traditional- channels... we are summoned to our life to choose sides. Will you go blindly into the vortex of black doom, letting the industrial pirates prevail? Or will you find your way into the Eden which is our birthright, our mandate, the necessary place to put things right? Never believe you are powerless...once in motion, you are unstoppable. It may take time to build endurance, but the inner strength is there, amplified by millions like you who search for their own good road.

Hope Knows

Making sure I have plenty of sleep before a Monday run appears to be a great strategy (and maybe the pizza 'hit'...?) since today, for the first time in a very long time, I felt like I could've run on and on...

The minute I walked out the door, the sky opened up to a downpour...scanning the early horizon, it looked like a passing shower, so I stretched a while and enjoyed the new downloads on the shuffle...not long it all dissipated and off I headed for my now usual Griffin loop. Nice and easy, warming up....heading into Emerald Hills and the lazy, puddled streets. I did a full stretch to the first pit stop at Maria G park. Headed up to the connector between Stirling and Griffin, another great stretch!! Hit by another downpour, I pocketed the shuffle and ran with the thoughts in my head. When the gait is sound and the rhythm of my footsteps fall in an easy pace, I can feel a sense of internal 'massage' all the way up through my legs, hips, waist...there is nothing else which achieves this acupressure-type response. Added to this the mental 'entrainment', or the syncing of brain hemispheres, (right, left, right, left) and you see the basis of such positive benefits from the run.

When everything seems to conspire to get in the way of this experience, the frustration grows. I've been stuck in an under-performing jag fueled by the tick-up of stress, challenges, and intensity all the way around. My body broke down to build back up, and today is my first hint of the 'come back'. When, however, Nature puts me in Her sweet spot, when the elements come together to deliver me the right platform, the run flows. Running puts us in the lap of Nature. Today, the ions, rain, and for the loop home the vast rainbow lifted my heels in a sense of awe and wonder. The bridge of colors, red on top, purple on the bottom, seemed to manifest the link between false hopes and true aspiration to that deep place it leads us to, inside the storms.

Our Great Mother is a poet. She jams through her elements, she improvises within the context of great multiplicities; the words are her many moods, layers of
experiences..how close or how far from Her you come. Some of us are drawn to get very close indeed! We feel a way through to our own inherent nature by coming into her domain. The run holds the beat while tripping into her vast kaleidoscope of design and beauty. And all the while she invites us on, singing to us in the language of the physical and metaphysical worlds.

High Mileage Days...will return?!

Generational Themes

Despite being neck-deep into the 'condo project' as I now call it, the complete dismantling of my parents' condo and lives, I managed some consistent running this weekend- I can't in good conscience call it 'training' anymore, as my goal is just to RUN, no matter how much or how far.

Saturday not so great, but Sunday, after my food fest the previous eve, was actually decent! Despite the 80 degree temps and ridiculous humidity (and this at 7AM!) Sunday I took on the Griffin loop and had some very nice stretches...I almost felt 'normal' for a runner...meaning someone who can keep a gait up for some time (more than a mile at a time?) and not have to stop every 5 minutes to regroup....LOL. I suppose that sounds like a running snob to newbies... and I guess It's 'normal' for folks like me who had better levels of fitness who are in essence starting over.

What my body goes through is just an echo of my mind, I know this. Inside the cauldron of mine and my mother's experience is a link to her past and on down to my son's, who carries on the struggle of adjustment to life events that can feel too large to carry. Reading her letters, journals, snippets of what she thought and felt about herself and her family read like a sad lament, with one constant question: why can't I change? why suffer so? why me?

I think everyone who realizes what their 'problem' is, whether born with, discovered through trauma, or inflicted by events (what Candice calls the karmic payment), must confront the same process of losing their innocence about the 'fairness' of life. We seem to carry an almost child-like hope that only good and easy things will come to us, so that, like children, we can remove ourselves from the work of growth. If I have a strength it is a lack of such fantasy- maybe as the last child I saw only too well what 'opting out' was like, as I watched my mother attempt to hide in the corner of her place on the couch, in a book, or deep into herself- away from any stress from the outside world.

I embrace The Work, even as I express my constant frustrations with it! I know there is a price-tag to everything we take on, as a debt to ourselves and future generations. Whatever seeds we plant into our own lives, good or ill, flower along happily disseminating every where around us; into our past, our future and dreams. I hang on with a thread of hope that the way forward is still open for the 'happy outcome'- for Mother Earth and all of Her children. But folks, I'll be honest: it will take bigger forces that we know to induce a sea-change in the destructive outcome we are creating... I seek peace, I seek the deep stillness inside to keep an eye out for my True Self, who despite everything looks out at the world with eyes of pathos and compassion...I know how tough it is- call out for allies! Perhaps the path is already laid, and we just need to find it!!