Workout Three, Week Two

I just finished Workout Three of Week Two of Couch-to-5K. If I stick with the schedule in the app, I'll be able to run 2.5 or 3 miles continuously sometime right around my birthday at the end of July. If I stick with the schedule, and if my knees hold out. I learned last night on the Couch-to-5K web site that knees absorb 2.5 times as much force when you run as when you walk. This injures tissue, but with rest in between workouts, the tissue repairs itself, in fact, becomes stronger than it was before.

I hope this is true. And I hope it is as true for me now as it was when I ran when I was in my twenties. In fact, I hope it's even more true, because when I was in my twenties I ran through the pain of heel spurs, shin splints and inflamed Achilles tendons and didn't worry too much about long-term injuries. These days I have friends my own age who have had knee replacement surgery, which reminds me that bodies and body parts are finite. They wear out.

On the other hand, I have met 73-year-old Doris Schertz who has won her age group in the Boston Marathon--twice. She, like me, is a former La Leche League Leader, and she didn't start running until she was in her fifties. I'd like to be bouncy and energetic like she is as I get older, able to sit cross-legged on the floor and get up and down with ease. Can't see myself training for hours on end, but it does feel good to run down suburban streets in summer, with linden trees smelling heavenly and sprinklers watering the green hostas that anchor walkways and flower beds.

Running is doing something that is continuous with other versions of myself--the young woman who started running in graduate school and kept it up, more or less, until the first trimester of her first pregnancy (that nauseous, exhausted couple of months when you're barely pregnant but thoroughly miserable). I ran for a while when my youngest child went off to preschool--put him on the bus and headed down the street in my running shoes and baggy t-shirt. I walked last year, furiously some days, with head phones and music blocking out the loops of complaints and aggravation that were playing in my brain. When I was younger I reminded myself that I would always feel better after a run, even if I didn't feel like running. Now when I walk or walk-and-run on stressed-out days I tell myself that I can stay mad, if I want, and I might not feel better after a workout, but I won't feel worse, and at least my exercise is done.

Week One, Week Two, Week Three. A day of running, a day off. A decade of running, two decades of child-rearing. A year of running, a long time without it. Days accumulate, things change. I have grown up, survived, gained some intuition, and what's more, learned to trust it. But in that pile of accumulated days, there are aches and pains, wishes and unresolved hurts. I worry about the repair process.

When I was young I assumed things would work out one day for the best, and if even if I knew that "happily every after" was a fairy tale, I still assumed that this was where I was headed, where I wanted to be. Safe and okay. But now I know this cannot be taken for granted.

Someone told me recently that if I was going to worry I should smile while I worry. It was advice for singing, which I'm doing with care and attention to technique these days, trying to fix habits accumulated over a lifetime. Why I worry so much when I sing is a long story, suitable for a therapist's couch, but it is a continuous piece with my younger self, with whom, curiously, I seem to be spending the summer.

While I was out tonight doing my alternating minutes of running and walking, I realized that I know of three men in their fifties who have died suddenly in the last couple weeks: a relative of a friend, a cousin of my cousins, the son and brother of dear people I've known a long time. Strokes, cardiac arrest, that sort of thing. There are superstitions about deaths coming in threes, so there it is: three deaths, three men allotted less than the biblical three-score and ten.

Those seventy or eighty years or more of a lifespan ought to have an arc to them, a storyline, a plot, or a coda that explains it all and brings healing at the end. These human years are a quick time gone by, and strictly linear. Time in other dimensions, in the cosmos, in quantum mechanics, may fold back on itself and repair the past as it's lived. I am not wired to experience this, though if this is how the mind of God works, perhaps I can hope that continuous repair, back and forth in time, is God's salvation at work in me.

Meanwhile I live one day after another, concentrating on the smiling.

That second cup

My son took the second mug of coffee in the pot, on his way out the door to work. Not a problem. I'll pretty much give anything I've got to one of my kids.

But an hour later, I'm going to the kitchen to make that second cup for myself. Be right back.

While I was in the kitchen, I took my allergy medicine, which I keep next to the coffee maker, because making coffee is pretty much the one thing I can count on myself to do every day. So if the Zyrtec is right there, I'll probably remember to swallow some. Remember the pills and I can forget about the symptoms. (Forget the pills and a day or two later I notice.)

I usually swallow a calcium and vitamin D supplement along with the allergy pill, but I read in the paper this morning that this doesn't actually prevent bone loss and it ups the risk of kidney stones. I had a kidney stone once. It hurt. I'm giving up on the calcium.

There are other things I should give up in the morning. Like reading the paper--more precisely, sitting down at the computer to read the paper online. It takes time and fritters away my early-morning ability to focus on creative tasks. What do I get out of it? A sense of connection to the larger world. Often, some interesting ideas--but when I have to get on to the work of the day I don't have time left to work on those ideas.

This begs the question--does it matter if I do think about big ideas, or the news of the day, or what's going in Washington or the Eurozone, the Mideast or Appalachia? I have no effect on these things, none whatsoever. Wouldn't my time be better spent lining up my late-afternoon errands, organizing my work projects and deciding what's for supper? Should I even be reading a blog about somebody else's garden in Ohio when there are weeds in my own backyard? Global, schmobal.

That second cup of coffee--is that the one that calls me back from the world of news and ideas into restless action? I'm nearing the bottom of the cup and starting to feel it.

Overload

I've been reading books lately like I'm at Old Country Buffet--some of this, some of that, finish this, but leave that. Many flavors and textures piled together on the plate. There's no savoring of one well-made dish. When the plate is empty, or even when one corner of the plate is empty, I go back for more.

I've ripped through a couple novels--Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" and Rachel Kushner's "Telex from Cuba." Franzen's book has strong bones and muscular writing. He writes with firm energy, like a kid with an active mind whose math notes are surrounded by drawings of supermen, drawings that push the pencil deeply into the paper. There's a triangle in "Freedom," and while it's the woman's actions that upset the men's lives, the men seem to have more volition than the woman. She loves, not enough or too much, because of her need. They love (and consumate that love) as an expression of their individuality. Or so it could be argued, I guess.

"Telex from Cuba" tells of expatriates in Cuba during Castro's Communist revolution. They are recognizable people--teens, parents, bosses and workers--in an exotic situation. There are non-American characters as well, including Battista (the dictator overthrown by Fidel) and an international weapons dealer. They're all scraping after power and the security they want from that power. Almost nobody gets the life they expect.

Reading category number two is Alzheimer's memoirs. This is a depressing genre, why go there? I'm traveling deliberately, kind of a slow sight-seeing trip. I've written a few chapters of my own in this category that I"m not sure what to do with. I've got three books going. The first, "Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey into Alzheimer's," by Andrea Gillies. She and her husband thought that the caregiving solution to the challenge presented by his demented mother and chair-bound elderly father was to buy a large house in rural Scotland for three generations to share--running a B&B on the side, to help pay the mortgage. It doesn't turn out well. "Nancy," the mother-in-law, is constantly struggling against her disease, her environment and her caregivers, and they struggle back. Everyone's expectations seem too high. Scene after scene moves toward the point where a frustrated caregiver explains things to Nancy, which is, of course, pointless.

I've also got "Iris and Her Friends," a memoir by John Bayley, husband of novelist Iris Murdoch, an Alzheimer's sufferer (as the English would say, instead of "victim"). There's surrender in this book, to sadness and to joy; Bayley is a devoted spouse, who has always lived the life of the mind. It's easier for him, because he is not trying to be a multi-tasking middle-age Wonder Woman. The third book is "Alzheimer's from the Inside Out," a collection of essays from a psychologist with early onset AD, sharing his experience of his mind's deterioration.

All three books contain ruminations on what is mind and what is memory and who are we with these things and who are we without them. It's an inevitable question. I can still invoke it just by turning my head to the right and imagining Lon, my demented husband, beside me. Which Lon fills my memory? The one I met and romanced and married, had children with? The one who took me to the movies, who ate my cooking, who made the house boom with colorful conversation? Or the silent angry man, with the taut, skinny arms who was haunted by things we couldn't see, who kicked the dog and threatened the children with wordless clenched fists?

It was an exotic situation. Freedom? Choices? Struggle, or surrender? There are many things contained within one person, one character. What holds them together?

"I know my own"

Truth be told, the best moment of my Good Shepherd Sunday was not the well-crafted sermon on the John Gospel text, nor the carefully rehearsed and surprisingly successful performance of Randall Thompson's setting of Psalm 23 for choir and harp.

Nope. Those things were lovely, challenging, tasteful. They preached the dying and rising again of Jesus. Good enough, surely.

The living waters of the day came from something else: four eight-foot pieces of white cloth, held by eight young people standing across from one another in a circle, waving the eight-legged cross they made up and down, fanning the air, and seeing it spin rainbow pinwheels held by other young folk. It was the convocation at the end of the Dream Act Pilgrimage. The Dreamers presented their lives, the fears and dangers lurking in their undocumented status. But they also spoke of their faith in the Good Shepherd, who knows their names and their status and calls them to be witnesses and gifts to others.

Go in peace. Serve the Lord.

What part will you play?

School chapel homily for Tuesday of Holy Week on John 12:20-36

When I was in second grade at St. John Lutheran School in Forest Park we acted out the story of Jesus dying on the cross. We had acted out other Bible stories, but we worked very hard on this one, because it was such an important story. And we performed it one evening for our parents.

Most of the kids in the class (probably all the girls) were part of the crowd. I was the narrator. I had a loud voice and could remember the whole story and tell it in my own words. A boy named Barry Prescott played Jesus. And when it was time for Jesus to walk through the streets of Jerusalem wearing the crown of thorns and carrying the heavy cross, he took off his shirt. It was very serious, very dramatic. He had to imagine what it was like to be Jesus. What was it like for Jesus to give up his life?

In today’s reading we heard Jesus explaining some things about his death:

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified….Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”

Christians have been studying these words for a long time. We ask ourselves, why did Jesus, who was God, have to lose his life? And what does that mean for us? What part do we play in the story of Jesus’ suffering and death?

You might see yourself in the crowd, as one of the people who shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” They’re angry and mean and they was to be sure they don’t get into trouble themselves for following Jesus.

Are we like that sometimes? I know for myself that I do things that are angry and mean. I’m careless and cruel, unkind, wasteful, lazy. I’m a sinner, just like those people in the crowd. But I also know that Jesus died so that my sins could be forgiven.

But I think Jesus’ words about his death are also inviting you to play another part in this story. Jesus is inviting you to follow him, to lose life, like he did, and to be like him.

We get to play the part of Jesus. This means doing the things Jesus di, like helping people who are poor and going through a hard time. Mr. Mortensen reminded us yesterday of how we did that with our offerings earlier this year.

I want to tell you another story about acting the part of Jesus. This one is about some friends who graduated from Grace School three years. They are still very good friends, and they have another close friend whose name is Nate.

A week ago Saturday, Nate jumped into the pool at his water polo meet. When he got out of the water his legs felt funny. He sat down on a bench and fell off the bench onto the floor. His legs were completely numb. He couldn’t fell anything. He couldn’t move them. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and it took the doctors a couple days to figure out what had happened to him. And when they did figure it out, it was very bad news. Nate may not ever be able to walk again.

All last week Nate was in the intensive care unit at a big hospital, lying flat on his back. And his friends went to visit him. Almost every day.

This wasn’t easy for them to do. It involved a trip downtown into the city. It’s scary going into an intensive care unit full of machines and tubes and monitors. They could have just sent a card of flowers. Or called on the phone. They could visit him and just say a quick hello and leave in ten or fifteen minutes. But that’s now what they did. They brought games and music and books. They stated and talked with him. They let him know that whatever happens, he’s still Nate, and he’s still their friend and people care about him. They shared his frustration and his worry and his hope.

When I talked about this with one of the girls, she said she’s been having a lot of questions about God lately. And she’s not sure what God is doing in all of this. But she is there for friend. She is being Jesus, even though it’s hard and frustrating. She and her other friends are losing something about their easy lives, to be Jesus for their friend.

How will you lose your life and play the part of Jesus today? You can help people who are wick and poor or frustrated and sad. You can stand up for kids who are being bullied, and you can be friends with kids that others are not being very nice to. You’ll have to do things that might not be easy to do. It’s not easy to lose your life. Our Bible reading says that Jesus “was troubled,” was fearful about what was about to happen to him. But Jesus knew that losing his life meant life and forgiveness for all the world. And that means a new life for you, too.

Children of God

My Facebook status currently has a link to a video about "Spread the Word to End the Word," a campaign asking people, teens and young adults especially, to take a pledge not to use the "r-word." The r-word is retard, and the idea is that using it to deprecate someone else, or even oneself, deprecates the people who have been diagnosed with mental retardation. Using it to describe dumb behavior is saying, gosh, horrors, I don't want to be like one of those people living with a label that to many makes them less than fully human. The videos on the Spread the Word Facebook site, made and shared by families and friends of people with intellectual disabilities, show people with Down syndrome and autism and other disorders as great people, laughing, smiling, working, loving.

This afternoon I attended a forum on immigration reform, where several individuals told their stories and other advocates and organizers talked about what we can do to help. Educate others. Write your representatives. Care for those caught up in the detention system. And stop using the word "illegal." It dehumanizes people. It allows us to dismiss them as less than what they are--people who laugh, work, love and suffer under a taxpayer-supported system that is inhumane, ungodly and fearfully complicated.

Spreading the word to end this i-word would be much more difficult than getting "retard" out of the mouths of middle-schoolers. Undocumented residents of the U.S. are thought to be responsible for their own legal difficulties, though often they were brought here as children, not by their own choice, and this country is the only home they know. Their parents came here in order to be able to feed and care for their families. To stop using the word illegal we have to acknowledge all these back stories, and see ourselves, our love for family, our passion for work, our desire for security in all people, not just the ones who look like us.

"We are all children of God." More than one speaker said this today. What more thrilling thing is there to be called than "child of God"? There have been times in my life when being reminded that I am a child of God opened heaven for me.

There were so many children of God that I encountered today. A tiny baby, so new that she seemed to still be part of her mother's arms, the arms that cradled her all through church. Children of God whom we prayed for today because they have died or because they are grieving or ill. Another child of God going through yet another really rough time. There are the college kids sitting around the fire in my backyard, so different from who they were just a year ago as high school seniors. My daughter and her friends, disabled, but lively contributors to a community that marches in parades and supports one another when one of their own dies. Me, child of God, sitting by a candle flickering fast in the draft in the front windows.

I remember with those words--"child of God""--that the God of galaxies and sunsets and giant sequoias is here in my life, in a still small voice and the stuff of everyday life.

Twenty-eight days

I have just completed twenty-eight days of a spiritual practice.

My health insurance plan offers monetary incentives to complete healthy behavior-changing activities. Do stuff, track yourself and you earn points that become money in your account to help cover the deductible on medical expenses. To my own amazement I earned all of my possible points in 2011. So I set out to earn them again this year.

Twenty-eight days of practicing centering prayer or mindful movement was one of the options, presented in a program titled "Slow Down."

I chose mindful movement as my practice--the yoga I've been doing on and off for a dozen years--with a few minutes of meditation (or centering prayer) at the end. The program did not ask for much time--five minutes of movement, working up to ten or more over time; or just a minute of meditation to begin, working up to five minutes or more. That promise that it won't take long gets me off the couch or away from the desk. But once I get going I stay with it for fifteen or twenty minutes, and come away with a quiet, more comfortable body.

I also come away with a mind that is quieter and centered in my breath, in my body, not my head. I'm not sure what I mean by that--something like my brain and all its activity stays focused within me and doesn't go bopping off to fret over things I can't change or to obsess about stuff that doesn't matter anyway. Not that I don't think about those things--thoughts about work and other pesky subjects float through my mind all the time. But in this time, with the work of Triangle Pose or hamstring stretching I can't focus on them. This is a huge relief. It's kinda like not caring, but without the not-caring part. I still care. I just don't have to tie my whole being into knots.

Buddhists, I've read, say to avoid extremes of emotion--extremes of happiness as well as sadness. Those literary or artistic types burning the candle brightly and passionately at both ends, living life to its fullest and fighting every step of the way will not find contentment. Don't be like them. Accept what is enough for today.

One of the things that draws me to yoga is that it's not about how far down you bend or how long you hold the pose. It's about the fine adjustments you make, recognizing that each action has an opposing action, that you can reach higher to the heavens by grounding yourself more firmly in the earth, that you can balance better by opening up. You also move carefully and in good form, so that you don't hurt yourself. You accept your limits. As the instructor on the DVD says, this is your pose for today.

After twenty-eight days of practicing something or another you have to take an online survey to get credit for your experience. The last question was a curious one: do you understand "Slow Down" to be a healthy activity, like healthy eating, exercise, getting enough sleep, etc., or do you understand it to be a faith-based practice. I had to think a bit before answering that. I went with the faith answer, since the material about the program was pretty clear about the spiritual intent and about becoming more aware of God's presence. But I really wanted to check both boxes. Bringing together the spiritual and the physical is what makes this work.

And it did work for me. After seven or eight days I was more calm and this sense of freedom grew over the next week and stays with me. I'm aware of how busy my mind is but if I can't shut it off, I can at least tune it out, like kids in the back seat of the car. I stand up straighter, which makes everything else better.

Will I stay with it? After years of hearing yoga instructors say, it really helps to do something every day, even if it's just twenty minutes, or ten, I finally believe them. I'm going to try.