Running – innerwoven

Six miles of damp, spongy pavement pounded out this morning. Running – the healing constancy of deep, rhythmic breathing. So good in this environment. It’s little wonder that Portland, Oregon is America’s running capital. Every back road, trail, and alley is afoot with runners. It houses Nike corporation and its disciples, of which I am, apparently, one of the faithful. I’m a committed convert to the marriage of time, distance, and pain.

Baffling to non-runners, it is, in its own way, contemplative space. And, these days in particular, as I struggle once more on the longest road, the one leading toward daily sobriety, it becomes apt metaphor in the slow process of change.

Hanging like a shadow over it all are those who would pooh-pooh this whole sober-running enterprise, suggesting in my case that it is classic avoidance – the via negativa of the dry drunk. In this scenario, one merely transfers addiction from one thing to another, trading booze for the self-emasculation of hardcore running.

“Well, he may be running,” say they, “but it doesn’t mean he’s dealing with anything related to addiction.” To such self-righteous do-gooders who feign any real interest in me preferring, instead, bookish platitudes I offer the following retort(s):

Um, f*** off.
Okay, that was overkill. Thank you for your concern, but…
Do you think I am unaware of this?
Despite the built-in danger of avoidance, is this not much better than alcohol-induced madness?
Give me half a chance to work through this on my own terms, please.
I’m back in A.A., working the steps. I’ve got this. Well, my Higher Power’s got me. So, relax.

Phew, now that that’s off my chest, some brighter notes.

I’m awash in the effervescence of expectancy. The more I consider who God has made me to be, the passions that drive me, the skills that help me, the more I prayerfully consider my options. What doors and windows are availing themselves through which to move into bigger sky? What new field of dreams might await my conveyance?

More every year, I believe that so much of this is more our decision than the theologians lead us to believe. Jesus tells us that we gain our lives by giving them away. But to give something away is first to own it. We cannot give what we do not own. Otherwise, it’s just passing something down the pipeline that found its way into our hands. Once we own ourselves, there is real sacrifice, but greater reward, in relinquishing ourselves to love and serve our neighbour.

God has given all of us a vocation. It is for us to discover it. Then, it is largely up to us how to fulfill it. For me, that may be changing. Imperceptibly at first, baby steps toward cave openings through which new shards of light are reaching out, tempting me in. Sitting here in this place, dedicated as it is to the rigour and welcome of the spiritual life, its delightful chaos, there grows in me a light. It is yet dim and inconsistent. But it grows moment by moment.

I want to do all I can to fan it into flame.

Recently, I was reintroduced to the wonder that is Alberta.

The barn copy.jpg — Barn on my Mom’s ranch near Camrose

I spent some quality time with Mom and friends, albeit under rather sad circumstances, camped atop Alberta’s green waistline near Camrose. Life is slower here, although bearing the weight of a daily regimen of tasks that would shame a comfy city dweller like myself. Folks are simple, genuine; their politics bespeak as much. I need these types in my life to remind me of life before the city, before we traded green for grey, heart for hurry.

Calgary, that sprawling spray of suburbanism, welcomed me back into her bosom. It is the visual race-for-more set deceivingly in the beauty of rolling foothills climbing their way upward into the Rocky Mountains to the west. She eyed me closely however, untrusting of the broader perspective, gleaned from years of life elsewhere.

The bare shoulder that is Cochrane, held aloft against the Rocky Mountains to the west, provided some jogging (more slogging really) at nearly a mile above sea-level. It was backdrop to a spacious visit with my sister and her husband.

Okotoks. A once-proud cowboy town among the lemon-lime valleys south of Calgary, now Boho-wannabe with more yoga pants and boutiques than boots and hankies. She played host to the auspicious (suspicious?) occasion of my wife’s 35th High School Reunion. As much as an event aimed at aging 50-somethings could be described as ‘epic,’ I’m willing to give us the benefit of the doubt.

Reunion pic copy.jpg — Okotoks Senior High School, class of ’82

The unattainable majesty of Lake Louise, made impenetrable by the ant colony of one-eyed, phone-clicking tourists. Paradise through a view screen.

Lake Louise perfection copy.jpg — Lake Louise in unspoiled beauty…

I’m surprised, even shocked, at my close and immediate affinity with the place. There is much more of me here than I ever suspected. My guts tighten a little whenever my senses get re-assaulted with the pungency of rape seed and peas. My eyes widen at the foothills, frolicking, green with spruce, poplar, birch and aspen, or the salutary pomposity of the Rocky Mountains. My ears still cringe a little at the old crone call of the magpie. My heart swells with memories clamouring for space.

Alberta birch copy.jpg There is a regal order, a persistent danger to this place, in equal measure to its complete lack of pretention. It sits in your lap, comfortable and familiar, like an old farm dog. But, treat her with due respect or she’ll reveal her strength.

It’s easy to forget the relative wealth of the place. Alberta practically drowns in money, choking at times on oil vomited from her broad, black belly. It has made her insanely rich and her people a little myopic with respect to the rest of the world. The furious pace of new construction and the larger-than-life cars, hardly suggests the unforgivable economic downturn so bewailed by her inhabitants. But, lest I come across as ungrateful, that same controversial landscape made for an upbringing much of the world would crave. I am as thankful as I am uncomfortable. It’s an uneasy tension I live with to this day.

The folks here are as big-hearted as the landscape – expansive and verdant – looking for something to grow. But decades of oil and gas revenues have created a monster that lives below, quietly snoring, biding her time. Have the best steak and potatoes of your life one day – cigars, laughter, and foot-stomping music in tow – and all is well. Dance to the beat of the oil drum and they’ll give you their shirts and a layer of skin to boot (cowboy style, that is). But, reveal yourself, even casually, as someone uncomfortable with fossil-fuel damage, global warming, and the need for alternatives and you throw in your lot with the cattle headed to be your own supper. They are a strong and proud folk, duly protective of their fossil-fed way of life.

Mom's 5 copy.jpg — Earth and sky in equal measure

So, conversations stay safest where family starts. They wander in and out of the calf-pens holding the warm and grazing words of easy strangers who feel like friends. These are those whose unadorned view of the world around them makes them quick to laugh, quicker still to pray for rain. Their hopes are found tucked in saddle bags and blue jean pockets or Esso attachés, and slumbering in the subterranean black. Their hands, farmer’s tans, truck culture, and souls are of a piece; indistinguishable parts of a whole.

It’s me through a macro-lens. It may not meld perfectly with the bio-me, but it is the stuff of who I am nonetheless. Born and raised an Alberta boy, now with complicated Celtic-progressive overlay, I can’t deny it any more than run from it. Who I am today, even this very moment, is still the product of wheat and soil, mountains and laughter, horses and magpies, oil and prairie tornadoes.

And, it’s good.