So Many Lessons

So yesterday during my long run, I "bonked." This is when a runner physically runs out of reserves. Like a car running out of gas, just past mile 12 I began to sputter on my way to a stop. I didn't meet my expectation to run 17 miles, and I couldn't keep up with my friends who ran the rest of the remaining 5 miles. Of course, that parental loop was running through my head: "Don't be a quitter!" "Why can't you be like your friends?" Among other messages.

Did it matter that December 1, 2011, I had not run for 30 years, and here I was on March 17, 2012 churning out miles? No. Of course not. Ego says it's black or white, finish or don't finish. Just do it! Not try, do!

Maybe Yoda and Mr. Miyagi are not always right.

Wow! That feels blasphemous to say. Or maybe we need to keep it in context.

There is a wonderful line in the movie Top Gun: "Your ego is writing checks your body can't cash." I never really understood that line until I began running again. Now it's beginning to sink in.

I laughed with four friends tonight as I described my journey from bonk to blessing. There are so many gifts that have emerged that I know I am yet to find them all.

I thought of the recent hospital visits I had made as a priest, called in to somehow say the right thing to strangers who had emotionally and spiritually bonked because of their own or a loved one's illness, or a sudden death in the family. God's little reminder: "Remember, Fr. David, that this is what it feels like to run out of reserves."

I thought about what it means to be a disciple. It means to follow a discipline. In the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 9, verses 14-29, there is a story of a possessed boy who is brought to Jesus to be delivered from a demon. Jesus casts out the demon, healing the boy. His disciples go to Jesus privately, and ask, "Why couldn't we do that?" You see, just a bit earlier in chapter 6, Jesus had sent the disciples out two by two, and gave them authority over unclean spirits. So, why is it just a page or two later that they fail at what He told them to do?
Jesus responds, "This kind can only come out by prayer." Some manuscripts read, "...by prayer and fasting."

Jesus was telling His disciples they couldn't do it because they were not prepared for what was required to do it. Their earlier successes gave them confidence, but confidence alone is not sufficient.

To be a disciple is to follow a discipline. And in running, the disciple would ask, "Why couldn't I do that?" And the Coach may respond, "This distance requires patience and pacing."

Whatever the answer, the wise choice is to listen to it rather than to keep repeating the question to myself. For 28 hours. Nonstop.

Some people question Jesus' humanity and some His divinity. I believe without doubt that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. My problem is that sometimes I forget I am fully human. I expect to function in the realm of the divine, and while I am always in the presence of God, I do God a disservice when I ignore my humanity. It is a gift given to my soul.

One of my theological heroes, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote about the divinization of our diminishment. My simple application of his profound thought is that when we crack, when something gives and our ego develops a splintering gap, we have an opportunity for God to be allowed to enter more deeply into our consciousness and fill that part with divinity where before we had filled it with, or more accurately, buried it beneath, our ego.

Thus, when we are diminished, we are in a deep state of blessing. Those painful fissures are open doors through which we can choose to admit God. They are opportunities to abandon the artificial loneliness in which we choose to live, and instead live in The Divine Milieu. Simply put, to abandon our lonely estate in favor of living in a state of grace.

So I didn't run for 17 miles in a row. My coach told me "the day delivered to me what it was supposed to." Apparently it was supposed to deliver by the truckload, and it's all good.