Language Matters

Language matters. The words that we use, particularly those most common in our speech, are as important to who we are as the food that we consume, the clothes that we wear, and the neighborhoods where we live. Language is essential in the human experience and caring for our language is one of our greatest responsibilities. We have formed habits that affect our language and speech and our writing. We need to be thoughtful where language is concerned.

I have noticed a disturbing trend in the last decade, primarily among the running community. I am not certain if this misuse of language is ill-intentioned, but I think we can do better. When middle of the pack runners refer to those who win prestigious races, they use a common term—“Kenyans.” We who use this language are almost exclusively slower than the elite and we are almost always White or Caucasian. White upper-middle class folks represent the majority of the endurance running community. We also represent the power structures of the world, and I think it is time we take better care of our speech. We are using the term, “Kenyan,” a bit too haphazardly. We have become sloppy with our speech.

How many times have Haile Gebrselassie or Kenensia Bekele been labeled as a Kenyan when finishing at the front of a major race? My guess is that it is not once or even twice that these gentlemen have been mislabeled. Granted, it is possible that the next 10 finishers were all from Kenya, perpetuating the word choice, by the very excellence and accomplishment of runners from Kenya. But these gentlemen are Ethiopian, an entirely different nationality. What they do have in common with many elite Kenyan distance runners is that they are fast and their skin color is dark. I am not of the belief that because I am white and a mid-pack runner that it is just okay for an onlooker to assume that I am Canadian. I am from a whole other country. In the case of Gebrselassie and Bekele, it is even more insulting given the pride that they take in their homeland. They are always seen wearing the colors of Ethiopia. Gebrselassie has given his country an amazing economic boost from his personal success. At various times in his career, he has held every world record from 3000 meters to the Marathon. If I am distance running fan and I call him a Kenyan, I am ignorant, and I insult him.

This article intends no disrespect to any Kenyan or the nation of Kenya. Kenya has produced some of the finest distance runners the world has ever seen, but not all African runners of success are Kenyan.

How is this assumption, this lumping together of fast runners of African descent, any different than labeling all Latinos as Mexicans? We need precision in our language.

Are we using the term Kenyan collectively because names like Robert Cheruiyot, Abderrahime Bouramdane, Khalid El Boumlili, Gashaw Asfaw and Kasime Adillo are too much trouble to try to learn how to pronounce? Is there skin color a latent factor in our lack of care to know them by name and by country? Is there a subtle religious arrogance, since some of them are of Muslim descent? These names represent the top five finishers at the 2008 Boston Marathon, yet only one of them, Cheruiyot, is from Kenya. Many of us who might see the results and lazily say something like, “The Kenyans finished an hour ahead of me at Boston. I can’t believe how fast they are.” How is that different than making an off-handed remark like, “The Mexicans who cut the grass in our neighborhood, they are really great guys.” What if it turns out that in fact the lawn service is two brothers from El Salvador and the simple fact is that I have not bothered to find out where the men were born and from which Spanish speaking country they come from.
Even when our remarks are basically well-meaning, acknowledging an excellent running performance or being thankful for those who work hard, we need to be careful with language. It is not simply that we live now in “P.C.” or Politically Correct world where we have to walk on egg shells in order not to offend. It’s more than that. Being careful with language reflects how we take care of one another. Labels matter. Whenever we begin to speak of people collectively we had better know what we are talking about and who we are talking about. Runners from East Africa have revolutionized distance running around the globe from Kip Keino to Juma Ikanga to Sydney Maree and Paul Tergat. Let’s not call them all Kenyans because they look like they might be from Kenya. Ethiopia, Tanzania, and the like, deserve their props as well.

Ionesco and Memory

At Durham Nativity School our Thought for the Week of April 14 is by a early 20th century French dramatist. Eugene Ionesco writes that "Dreams and anguish bring us together."
When Eugene Ionesco writes about dreams and anguish as uniting forces in our lives, he is speaking more broadly about memory। In some cases a collective memory of suffering and anguish are a uniting force. For groups that are tortured or enslaved, it is their anguish that unites them. What other groups are bonded by collective suffering?

Ionesco also writes, The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all। I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware.”

How do you remember your greatest achievements? How do you remember your greatest failures? Are all these memories strictly self-generated or do they somehow have a corporate life with those who share in them?

I remember a canoeing trip when I was thirteen years old. It all culminated in the last rapid, the Nantahala Falls. To go back there now to that whitewater, as I have done many times since, the Falls are never as big as they were on that hot July afternoon in what must have been 1988. Jeff Barr and were each 75 lbs. soaking wet and we muscled around a big Green Bluehole--a 16 foot whitewater canoe. We managed a 360 in the top hole which means that above the bottom drop we managed to turn our canoe in a full circle before going down the falls. We peeled out of truckstop, a massive eddy on river left and headed toward the center of the river with me in the stern controlling the 45 degree angle to the right. When we flopped down over the top hole, Jeff laid down one of his brilliant draw strokes and with that magnificent stroke and the force of the water we had hit the top hole as an eddy and quickly prepared to peel out before getting side surfed in the turbulence of the top hole. I exposed the bow to the quick moving down stream water and before we knew it we were heading back down stream and over the falls. Meggan and Brian, our counselors, and the other paddlers on our trip cheered over the loud pounding of the frothy water. We were heroes.

I've not written of this story ever, nor thought of it in several years. If not for memory, it would be all but gone, as though it never happened. I can remember it more clearly because it did not happen separate from community. The cheerers on that trip would have retold that story when we returned to camp that evening. They would have even encouraged Jeff and I to retell the story. If it happened alone, I'm not sure I could recall it in the same way. Not to say that significant occurrences do not happen alone, but they are quite different than experiences that others witness and share in. Thanks to memory and the dream of a special moment in a young boy's life, I can recall it as easily as I can breathe. Thank you memory. Thank you Eagle's Nest Camp.

Who knows where the time goes?

Who knows where the time goes?
Lyrics by Sandy Denny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbpURBJA4uA

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time
For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?
(Copyright © 1967 Sonet Music)

Stream Splashings

About ten Trailheads ran at the Bel Monte Endurance Run outside Waynesboro, Virginia on Saturday morning. I had a great time running in the 25K or 15.5 mile race. The race started in the dark and my favorite parts of the race came in the first half hour where there were multiple stream crossings. I enjoyed the cool feeling of seeking out a sure path in the dark of the morning and the dark beneath the surface of the water. East coast steams are usually surprisingly smooth with rock that have had water running over them for thousands upon thousands of years.

As a tribute to my favorite aspect of Saturday's race, I ran for about 70 minutes on Monday afternoon and splashed through Carrboro's Bolin Creek, back and forth across the stream simulating the crossings on Saturday in Virginia. I felt like a kid relishing in getting wet and muddy. What fun. I felt like I was singing praises to the Creation and the Creator.

I woke up Sunday morning, stiff and tired, and a little sad for having chosen running over the Easter Vigil at Holy Family. As the birds sang to me, I sang back one of my favorite Easter hymns, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today, Al - le - lu- ia!" I have no idea how this hymn was in my head. I bet I had not sung it in a year. Of course, it was sung at Holy Family later that morning in worship. The fourth stanza of the second verse goes, "Christ has opened paradise, Al - le - lu - ia!" There is all kinds of theology latent in such a claim as this such as Christ undoing what was done by Adam and Eve in the Fall and I have loads of use for it all, but for Monday's run, I felt like Christ in the world opening paradise with each stomp on the surface of the water. Rather than tiptoe around and look for only dry rocks and paths I turned headlong into the danger of ankle twisting and falling and opened up the paradise of Bolin Creek over and over.

Prophetic Stirrings

Who is holding this scroll?

What is the reference?

What does it mean to you?

Whoever holds these words:

With a word, the Lord stirs me in the morning; in the morning, he stirs my ear to hear like a disciple,

I like the person and the words on the scroll. I find it a shock that anyone ever gets up in the morning. Teenagers have to be dragged out of bed with a front-end loader. When someone is depressed they have trouble stirring, though they usually are not really sleeping. Those who mourn want to stay in bed. Why get up? Someone dear to them is gone. They wonder, how long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever. But the Lord does not seem to forget. At some point, even if late the next day, God forces us up and out of the bed. Is it a Word that we hear or something else? For most of us, most of the days of our lives, God stirs us in the morning. We get up.

What do you hear first in the morning after you have been stirred? Lately, I hear the birds of Spring. They are noisy and while it is still dark they sing songs. Are they working, mating, building, fighting. Whatever it is, they sound busy. They say, get up. We do not care how long you waited to go to bed, no matter to us, because it is time to start again today.

Ordination--putting myself out there

Today, I forwarded an ordination paper or a spiritual autobiography to a church in Charlotte who, to my surprise, would like to ordain me to the ministry. Some of my running friends have wanted to know what it means to be ordained. Whatever I say, never seems to satisfy their curiosity. Here is what I know. Ordination publicly recognizes and confirms that an individual has been called by God to ministry. It acknowledges that the individual has gone through a period of discernment and training related to this call. Ordination authorizes that individual to take on the office of ministry and to perform baptisms, marriages, and preside at The Lord's Supper. All of this is by faith and understood to come by the power of the Holy Spirit usually witnessed in the laying on of hands at some point during the ordination service.

In my spiritual autobiography, I wrote many things, ten pages worth, but here is one excerpt about running and writing:

I believe in starting projects everyday, like running and writing. I start them, and then put them away, when we begin to fight with one another. It might be a sore knee, or a cluttered thought, but I will know when the fight has begun. I walk or turn away and begin the journey tomorrow. The essential is to begin the projects everyday. The days that they work, and juices start flowing, I will barely stop or take breaks. But here is the kicker, the days that I never start, do not even have a chance of being great runs or whole chapters to a book.

If you are in the business of prayer, and more of you are than you would like to let on, please pray for my ordination that it be to the glory of God.

athlinks.com --- post your results

I stumbled onto this website that keeps up with race results --- http://www.athlinks.com/. This is a very cool site and you should consider logging on and creating your own account so you can see how you have been doing the last few years. If some of your results are not posted and you remember a race that you would really like to see on your list, just click on: "Add a Missing Race," go through the steps and the athlink's folks will post your missing race within a day or so.

Have the last few years showed a steady quickening or slowing in your race results? Are there gaps that represent injury or a time when you were out of the country? If you are as vain as me, you might even delete the races that you'd rather folks not see or those races, you know, you didn't race hard, or you were running with someone else, but you don't want anyone to think that you are actually a 55 minute 10K guy. No offense to those who move kinda slow like, because I've learned the hard way, there is always somebody faster. We should all be humbled for the digital ticker never lies. Our excuses try to make a liar out of the clock, but the clock just does its thing. Regardless, athlink.com will allow you to tinker a bit with the results you make public. I'm also a bit embarrassed by how often I enter these races. What am I doing with my life anyway?