Running, Love, and Faith

I've been thinking about running quite a bit lately.  I ran the Ragnar relay last month, which was SO FUN!  Our team did really well considering all the circumstances leading up to the race, and I know for sure that new friendships were forged, which is awesome.  The summer thus far has been really excellent, and full of all kinds of emotions, good and bad.  I've found what I've been searching for for years, but as with so many good things, its like trying to hold on to a fist full of sand.  I suppose that is sufficiently vague, so I'll move on.

The more I run, the more I realize Pearl Izumi is on to something: running is predatory at its core.  George Sheehan put it this way, "Victory is of the moment. It must be followed by another victory and then another. I have to run just to stay in place.  Excellence is not something attained and put in a trophy case. It is not sought after, achieved and, thereafter, a steady state. It is a momentary phenomenon, a rare conjunction of body, mind, and spirit at one's peak. Should I come to that peak I cannot stay there. I must start each day at the bottom and climb to the top. And then beyond that peak to another and yet another."  Running is predatory, and excellence--a conjunction of body, mind, and spirit--is its prey.  And, odd though it may sound to some, I think running is a lot like love.  Isn't love predatory?  Isn't love a daily decision, a daily "exercise?"  Are there not peaks and valleys in all human relationships?  Isn't a pure conjunction of body, mind, and spirit what all "normal" beings seek in relationships?  Look at the charity aspect of love. We seek charity to ultimately conquer our "natural man."  We are in a life-long chase, hunting down that selfish alter-ego.  Take another aspect of love, friendship.  Would it be accurate to say that we are all "hunting" for the friends that will do us the most good?  Or take eros.  If that isn't predatory, I don't know what is.  I guess the main, important thing to realize about predatory love versus other predators, is that it doesn't seek to destroy.  Running doesn't seek destruction.  It seeks conquest; taming the beast within one's soul so that beast can be a tool.

The more I run, the more I realize running has nothing to do with the waistline, nothing to do with weight control, nothing to do with distance or time or speed.  It has everything to do with a journey of creation and discovery and meditation.  It has everything to do with spiritual, mental, meta-physical health, if you will.  It has everything to do with freedom.  The majority of people in the world don't discover that because they can't get past the pain, and they focus on getting results.  But pain is part of life, not just running.  It's part of love.  As soon as you learn to make friends with it, and digest it, it becomes part of you and makes you stronger.  It's like spinach.

Speaking of getting results, I think its in Born to Run that Christopher McDougall says that you can't expect anything out of running.  Give all you have to it, and expect nothing.  There's a life lesson.  That's what Jesus did.  That's what must be done if we truly love a person, because "to love another person is to see the face of God."  Give all you have, expect nothing, and you receive everything.  That's when miracles happen.  I guess its a different way of looking at faith.

I'll try to update this thing more often, but I don't want to write trite blabberings, so I'll keep my thinking cap on.

For some odd reason I woke up at 4:45 this morning, so I decided to get a drink.  When I looked out the window, there it was.  Snow?!  Really?  Ugh...

Huzzah!

Huzzah!  The semester is over!  Glorious day!  I want to futterwacken...vigorously...  I narrowly averted finals disaster this morning.  I stayed up late studying, and as has been happening as of late, woke up a solid hour before my alarm this morning, which was just terrible considering my first final today was at 7 am.  So 6:52 rolls around, I look at my clock, and holy crap!  So I was late for my first final, but luckily that was non-consequential.  This semester wasn't all that bad, actually.  It had its high spots, and it had its low spots, for sure.  But overall it was pretty good.  I certainly was more successful than the previous semester.  I'm just really looking forward to this summer break!

I really love this time of year.  Life it seems, is finally waking back up.  I love seeing and smelling all the new flowers, seeing the trees come back to life, the grass turn green again.  The one thing I don't like that I've found is flowering pear-can't stand the way it smells-just one more reason I dislike the tree.  But setting that aside, spring always reminds me that there is hope to be had and life to be enjoyed.  It reminds me that even after the darkest, coldest winters in life, spring comes.  A renewal, a rebirth occurs every year, bringing with it new adventures to be had.  I do love the beauty and serenity of the winter, don't get me wrong.  But there's something about the spring-the transition to summer-that wakes something up inside me.  The beast is stirring...

Class Ends, Ceramics Teaches, Summer Awaits

Class finally ended yesterday!  It was a fitting ending, too.  I watched the last few minutes of Elder McConkie's last conference talk.  Amazing.  Less than one week of finals left, and summer awaits!  Plants are coming back to life, the sun is shining, the air refreshing.  I love this time of year.  So much potential awesomeness awaits, begging me to grab it by the horns.  As soon as I'm done with finals I plan on treating myself to a massage and a campout.  I need to get back in touch with Mother Nature.

I was talking to Bronson a bit today-while I'm on the subject of Mother Nature-and we discovered that just about everything is female for some reason.  Nature, cars, ships, etc.  I started thinking about that, and I realized that perhaps there's more to that than I think.  Why is everything referred to as "she"?  Maybe its to teach us men to first master ourselves, then learn to listen to, handle, respect, love, care for, become one-unite-with all things female to then do the same, and become one with woman.  I dunno.  Just a thought.  The Lord has given us everything to teach us, and most of that teaching is symbolic.

These past two semesters have been pretty productive in the ceramics studio.  I've come to understand more why I love ceramics so much.  It's a great act of creation.  Creating is ultimately our greatest purpose as children of God and as humans.  There are so many ways of being creative, even in running, in sport, there is creation.  There is genius within all, waiting to be released, set free.  Ceramics is one of my creative outlets.  I've come to realize too that it is a pretty accurate manifestation of what is going on inside myself.  Some days I have no fire within, or no patience, or I'm frustrated or sad, and those are the days when creation ceases.  Those are the days when there is no harmony between myself and the clay, and nothing turns out.  Ceramics, though outwardly expressed, is totally introspective.  A lot of things are like that.

Anyway, here's some of my stuff from the past two semesters.  Gave a bunch away, and there's still some on the way.

Better than facebook...and more!

This may be a surprise to see me, of all people, with a blog. I'm a bit surprised myself. But its better than facebook, I say.

Today I heard a quote from Boyd K. Packer about adversity that reminded me of a simpler quote from Ken Chlouber: "Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone." First quote of the day. Once you make friends with pain, you find solitude where there once was loneliness. And speaking of solitude, I was seriously thinking today that this might be the year that I finally disappear and run into the mountains for a while. I've talked about it for a long time, but never have done it. I don't know what's keeping me. The time approaches... At any rate, I can't wait to spend some serious quality time camping and hiking in the mountains. Summer is nigh!