Sunday, March 7, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
I'm leading The NO BULL 8K Training Program offered through Bull City Running Company! In another way, it is the All Bull program because we will be running in our beloved Bull City, Durham, North Carolina.
Kick off date is Thursday, April 8 at 6:00pm. Group runs will be offered on Tuesdays at 7:00am and Thursdays at 6:00pm. This 9-week clinic is geared towards runners who have been comfortably and consistently running and are trying to improve fitness, add a little speed, and learn new training and injury prevention techniques. On several of the Thursday night sessions local experts will cover topics including strength training, yoga, and chiropractic techniques. Cost is $100 which includes the 9-week clinic, entry fee to the Running of the Bulls 8K on June 5, and a synthetic running hat. To register, please stop by the store or email with any questions at: bullcityrunning@gmail.com.
Most runs will start and finish from the Bull City Running store at South Point Crossing shopping center, but we will will venture out to some other fun locations. I hope you will consider this clinic as a way to jump start your Spring and Summer season of fitness, running, cycling, triathlons, or curling. Okay, I know nothing about curling, but I can help you with all the rest.
What's Calling You Now?
My alma mater, Furman University is offering a retreat for alumni over a long weekend at the end of July 2010. Looks like a great opportunity and I wanted an excuse to post this beautiful picture.
We should all be asking the question daily, what is calling me now? Seems like such a big question, but it can start rather simply. What song is tugging at your for a click on your iPod? Where do you get your news? Whom do you count among your friends? Your enemies? Start small and God will pull you into the bigger vocational, familial, geographical sorts of directions.
Someone from the Midwest was complaining that Durham's roads are the worst he'd ever seen. No road leads to where he thought it would or should. It's all twisty and windy around here. Our city planners don't seem to get the concept of "grid." I like that it takes a lot of time here to learn one's way. It takes patience and humility. One needs some time on task before knowing where to go and how to get to the destination. There is rarely one way to get there. How are you being called to get where you are going?
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Green Silence
Myong, A faithful runner and friend to Bull City Running Company logged 14 miles in her new Brooks Green Silence this morning. She says that she is definitely using them to race in next week at the Myrtle Beach Half Marathon. The Green Silence is a super flexible eco-friendly shoe that work well as racing flats and lightweight trainers for runners who do not require a lot of support. We were thrilled to get early feedback on this very intriguing new shoe from Brooks. Come check out the Green Silence at Bull City Running Company.
Go Myong and all our other friends who are headed to Myrtle Beach the weekend of February 12-14!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Anne Lamott and Religious Inquiry
Recently I discussed Anne Lamott with a few avid readers. We had all come to the session having read, Traveling Mercies and Plan B (Further Thoughts on Faith).
Here are a few of the quotes that struck me most for the teaching session and a few notes of my own mixed in.
From TM, Forgiveness, "I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish" (131).
From PlanB, holy of holies 101, "I know that with writing, you start where you are, and you flail around for a while, and if you keep doing it, every day you get closer to something good" (61).
I like Anne because I can read her stuff in chunks. She talks about small short assignments for each of us as writers and she gives us short assignments as readers. I'll be honest, I struggle with 300 page novels. I'm ashamed of the novels I don't finish. But with Anne, I check off a story and before I know it, I have checks next to each story and the book is complete.
I re-read her stuff more than most books on my shelf. I only do this with my favorite and most compelling words, like the Bible. She is worth a second and fifth read.
From TM, Sister, "Most of what we do in wordly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched (231).
Anne’s real. She tells the truth. When I say truth, I don’t mean to say that she is the final word on much of anything. That’s no longer my definition of truth, if it ever was. Truth is what is real and honest, what grapples with the dark places and courageously tells the story not as we would like it to be or wish it would be, but as it is for us today. You know when you are hearing this truth and you know when you are not. Frederick Buechner says that writing is simple, sit down to the typewriter and open a vein. That’s pretty much true. Let your soul come flooding out and see if anyone has something to say back. I hope that faithfully we are not waiting for the world to respond, though that may happen, but trusting that God will respond to our truth.
Listen to an interview with Anne Lamott at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhP5GmybvPM
Here are a few of the quotes that struck me most for the teaching session and a few notes of my own mixed in.
From TM, Forgiveness, "I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish" (131).
From PlanB, holy of holies 101, "I know that with writing, you start where you are, and you flail around for a while, and if you keep doing it, every day you get closer to something good" (61).
I like Anne because I can read her stuff in chunks. She talks about small short assignments for each of us as writers and she gives us short assignments as readers. I'll be honest, I struggle with 300 page novels. I'm ashamed of the novels I don't finish. But with Anne, I check off a story and before I know it, I have checks next to each story and the book is complete.
I re-read her stuff more than most books on my shelf. I only do this with my favorite and most compelling words, like the Bible. She is worth a second and fifth read.
From TM, Sister, "Most of what we do in wordly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that's a little sloppy because at the same time it's also holy, and absurd. It's about surrender, giving in to all those things we can't control; it's a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched (231).
Anne’s real. She tells the truth. When I say truth, I don’t mean to say that she is the final word on much of anything. That’s no longer my definition of truth, if it ever was. Truth is what is real and honest, what grapples with the dark places and courageously tells the story not as we would like it to be or wish it would be, but as it is for us today. You know when you are hearing this truth and you know when you are not. Frederick Buechner says that writing is simple, sit down to the typewriter and open a vein. That’s pretty much true. Let your soul come flooding out and see if anyone has something to say back. I hope that faithfully we are not waiting for the world to respond, though that may happen, but trusting that God will respond to our truth.
Listen to an interview with Anne Lamott at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhP5GmybvPM
Friday, January 22, 2010
Backwaters
I've never read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, okay, sue me. This Annie Dillard classic has been bandied about among people I know and admire for a couple of decades. But I felt like I heard a big piece of the book when a friend, Laura C, took from the book that we live at the backwaters—that back and forth at the ocean where the water is headed out to sea and headed inland, always back and forth. She did that kind of motion like when you are icing a cake, big strokes back and forth. I remember using chocolate icing as a child for this purpose and I also remember that I never knew when to stop. It felt like I should go on spreading for eternity. And that's what the ocean does with its' waves and what the river does with the water that meets the sea.
On a Sunday in August, I woke up early in the morning. This was after a wedding that I had officiated, my first. I was not drunk or hungover, but I was drunk with the sense of being "on" all weekend, talking a lot, trying to well you know, behave. Heck, the 41st President and his wife had been present at the wedding. It was a lot to take in and a lot to preside over. But Sunday morning was mine and I was preparing to do what I had been waiting for all weekend. I jogged down to the marina in Kennebunkport, Maine, just a mile or so from our hotel and I rented a kayak and paddled it upstream, up the Kennebunk River.
This was what I had been waiting for all weekend, some time to myself. This was my time to think about Maine and this river, my family and Jesus and how much I enjoyed being priest for those gathered throughout the weekend. I felt like it was just me and the Holy Spirit using the water behind the big yachts as eddies, or small pockets of calm water, to navigate and then ferry across the upstream current and paddle hard forward so that I could slowly and steadily make my way through the town center, under the rickety old wooden bridge and into quieter parts of the river upstream. Once past the bridge I was about a mile and a half away from the ocean and moving farther away. I would move back and forth from river right to river left, wherever the smoothest line of travel seemed to be. I tried to make quiet, subtle, yet powerful strokes, powered by good body rotation where my shoulders twisted and swung forward looking for a smooth place to catch the water and poke the paddle below the surface. I'd make my strokes fairly short as not much power is produced once the paddle has come even with the hips and then I would pull the paddle blade from the water and swing back for another stroke, while the power phase was occurring on the other side of the kayak and my body.
I navigated the small rapid that was present at this particular tide-level, the one near the practice putting green at the golf course where we had played a round two days before. I was really getting the hang of this craft now and having the quietest calmest fun imaginable. Two more miles I paddled up the river, navigating mostly a steady upstream flow of water, but on two occasions some rocks and rapids that took a bit of planning and strategy. I waved to golfers and thought how glad I was to be in the water now rather than on the grassy fairways. Golf had been fun, but this was better.
I dreamed that I would make it to where the river was no longer navigable, but I had no idea where that might be and finally at a left hand bend in the river, and a cabin up on the river left bank, I turned my craft around and began my return. Now I could really move as the downstream steady flow seemed to rocket the kayak forward. There were no waves, only the sense of the people mover at the airport moving underneath the plastic between me and the water. Before I knew it, I was darting under the rickety wooden bridge which marked the town center and I already had a plan that I would go past the marina and out to sea. For all the fun I'd had, here was the best part--the backwaters, where the waves of the ocean met the river. I was flanked by the mounds of boulders that were placed at the inlet to slow down the oceans force so that crafts could calmly navigate the river. I paddled past these boulders and into the open waters. To my right was the beach that we had played at yesterday with hundreds of other tourists. Man, was that water cold, even on a sunny August afternoon. To my left, as I went further over the waves, and mind you these were not breaking waves, but choppy rocking waves that the kayak seemed to roll over as if it were exactly what the plastic had been poured and molded to do. To my left was St. Ann's By the Sea. I'd thought it so beautiful all the times I had gazed on it in the last four days, but no vantage matched my final view, this view from the ocean. The church was on it's own peninsula that jutted out into the Atlantic. The grass in the front yard was as green as the 13th fairway at Augusta National. The stones which shaped this chapel seemed to be placed perfectly and awkwardly, not with precision, but with love in a kind of jumble. Various amounts of concrete and mortar could be seen between the stones and it was as pretty as a gray and brown colored building could ever be. This was the pride of this small New England port town and I could see why. Upon seeing the structure, I remembered all that we had done there the day before. Congregants promised to watch over the fledgling couple. I said a prayer for the newly married and the beauty of this morning, the gift from God to put me right there in the particular moment in the backwaters where time seemed to stand still and the waters stood still not knowing which H2O's belonged to the river and which molecules belonged to the ocean. I turned my kayak 180 degrees and headed back to the marina. My Maine vacation was complete and I could turn to other things.
On a Sunday in August, I woke up early in the morning. This was after a wedding that I had officiated, my first. I was not drunk or hungover, but I was drunk with the sense of being "on" all weekend, talking a lot, trying to well you know, behave. Heck, the 41st President and his wife had been present at the wedding. It was a lot to take in and a lot to preside over. But Sunday morning was mine and I was preparing to do what I had been waiting for all weekend. I jogged down to the marina in Kennebunkport, Maine, just a mile or so from our hotel and I rented a kayak and paddled it upstream, up the Kennebunk River.
This was what I had been waiting for all weekend, some time to myself. This was my time to think about Maine and this river, my family and Jesus and how much I enjoyed being priest for those gathered throughout the weekend. I felt like it was just me and the Holy Spirit using the water behind the big yachts as eddies, or small pockets of calm water, to navigate and then ferry across the upstream current and paddle hard forward so that I could slowly and steadily make my way through the town center, under the rickety old wooden bridge and into quieter parts of the river upstream. Once past the bridge I was about a mile and a half away from the ocean and moving farther away. I would move back and forth from river right to river left, wherever the smoothest line of travel seemed to be. I tried to make quiet, subtle, yet powerful strokes, powered by good body rotation where my shoulders twisted and swung forward looking for a smooth place to catch the water and poke the paddle below the surface. I'd make my strokes fairly short as not much power is produced once the paddle has come even with the hips and then I would pull the paddle blade from the water and swing back for another stroke, while the power phase was occurring on the other side of the kayak and my body.
I navigated the small rapid that was present at this particular tide-level, the one near the practice putting green at the golf course where we had played a round two days before. I was really getting the hang of this craft now and having the quietest calmest fun imaginable. Two more miles I paddled up the river, navigating mostly a steady upstream flow of water, but on two occasions some rocks and rapids that took a bit of planning and strategy. I waved to golfers and thought how glad I was to be in the water now rather than on the grassy fairways. Golf had been fun, but this was better.
I dreamed that I would make it to where the river was no longer navigable, but I had no idea where that might be and finally at a left hand bend in the river, and a cabin up on the river left bank, I turned my craft around and began my return. Now I could really move as the downstream steady flow seemed to rocket the kayak forward. There were no waves, only the sense of the people mover at the airport moving underneath the plastic between me and the water. Before I knew it, I was darting under the rickety wooden bridge which marked the town center and I already had a plan that I would go past the marina and out to sea. For all the fun I'd had, here was the best part--the backwaters, where the waves of the ocean met the river. I was flanked by the mounds of boulders that were placed at the inlet to slow down the oceans force so that crafts could calmly navigate the river. I paddled past these boulders and into the open waters. To my right was the beach that we had played at yesterday with hundreds of other tourists. Man, was that water cold, even on a sunny August afternoon. To my left, as I went further over the waves, and mind you these were not breaking waves, but choppy rocking waves that the kayak seemed to roll over as if it were exactly what the plastic had been poured and molded to do. To my left was St. Ann's By the Sea. I'd thought it so beautiful all the times I had gazed on it in the last four days, but no vantage matched my final view, this view from the ocean. The church was on it's own peninsula that jutted out into the Atlantic. The grass in the front yard was as green as the 13th fairway at Augusta National. The stones which shaped this chapel seemed to be placed perfectly and awkwardly, not with precision, but with love in a kind of jumble. Various amounts of concrete and mortar could be seen between the stones and it was as pretty as a gray and brown colored building could ever be. This was the pride of this small New England port town and I could see why. Upon seeing the structure, I remembered all that we had done there the day before. Congregants promised to watch over the fledgling couple. I said a prayer for the newly married and the beauty of this morning, the gift from God to put me right there in the particular moment in the backwaters where time seemed to stand still and the waters stood still not knowing which H2O's belonged to the river and which molecules belonged to the ocean. I turned my kayak 180 degrees and headed back to the marina. My Maine vacation was complete and I could turn to other things.
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