When the alarm went off this morning I could feel that pull--that seductive voice that accompanies the ache of my sore muscles saying, "just a few more minutes. It won't hurt if you rest some. You need rest. You deserve it after doing a good job yesterday." They (you remember the all-knowing "they") say we should trust our instincts, listen to our body. Well, that's the thing about the widom of "they"...like anything else it can be proof-texted, taken out of context, and used to rationalize things that ought not to be rationalized. When you're starting an exercise discipline, consistency is key. Barring some kind of serious self-torture, you need to get up and go and ignore that voice. Having been through this process of starting and stopping exercise disciplines before, I wore my running clothes to bed, set my coffee pot to auto-brew, and charged up my ipod the night before. "Know thyself" is the key to everything (I know I said getting up was the key to everything yesterday...that's true. There are lots of different locks on the door into our proverbial "self-care house". Therefore there are lots of keys :-)
I took my 10 year old black lab, Maya, with me for the first half of the run, then put her up and finished by myself. To bring the dog, or not to bring the dog...to listen to music or not to listen to music. It's really the difference between solitude and accompaniment. As a mom, it's difficult to figure out what I need at any given time. On one hand I love the quiet, the luxury of no bickering, not being asked for things, not being asked to "watch this". Silence takes on a whole new kind of fullness and presence of its own after you have kids. It's a beautiful thing just to be able to rest in the absence of noise. On the other hand, I now live in a place where I don't have the social connections I once had, or the adult conversations I once took for granted. So, on days like today, music helps. When I exercise, I always try to listen for a word, a phrase, or some kind of noticing that comes to mind that I can carry with me throughout the day. That may sound wierd, but I use exercise as a kind of meditation; a way to encourage reflection to rise to the top of my consciousness, after it has been stampeded by the sheer volume of other stuff to attend to in a family.
On my run this morning I was listening to some hip hop and kept hearing the phrases "compassion in action, devotion in motion (MC Yogi)." As a minister I'm often disappointed by how we "religious people" often manage to take very mystical encounters and turn them into very cerebral concepts, stripping them of their mystery and spirit and putting them in a box, securely fastened by our fears. Compassion and devotion are not static. They are not ideas. Compassion and devotion are ways of being that necessarily require openness of spirit, vulnerability of soul, and the willingness to step out of our comfort zone and enter into the experience of the "other". When Jesus said that the second greatest commandment was to "love your neighbor as yourself" he was immediately asked, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus didn't answer with an idea or a bumper sticker-ready platitude. He told them a story of a guy who had been left for dead in a ditch, beaten and bloody. In this story person after person walked right past the man, more concerned with their own cleanliness, their own safety, their own security, than with the pressing need of the bleeding beaten man. In fact, it was the purity laws of their faith which kept them from extending their help. The Samaritan, one who was himself already on the fringes of society, one who was already considered an outcast by religious authorities, was the one who got in the ditch with the man, lifted him up, used expensive oils to clean him, and looked him in the eyes as he did it. When asked, "who is my neighbor?" (in other words, "how far do I REALLY have to extend my love?") Jesus told this story of compassion and devotion. Compassion in action, devotion in motion. As we go through our exercise disciplines, granted the priceless gift of motion, let us be reminded of the higher purpose that drives us. Let us be a people of action and motion, not just the mindless motion of distraction and diversion, but of purposeful movement toward the mystical encounter of compassion. Let us be devoted to actively loving, actively seeing one anther, actively helping those who aren't easy to love or to help. Let us set aside our need to box up and corden off our love, and instead give it away freely. After all, it's not ours to keep anyway.
I preached on that passage last week, saying much of the same thing.
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