This morning, my BlackBerry alarm chimed at six, so I rolled out of bed like I do every morning, turned on the coffeepot, and put on the running skirt Goddess Schawn gave me and laced my Brooks running shoes. With my supplies at the ready in my 7.5K waist pack, 45 minutes later I headed out the door for my daily morning ritual.
My breathing was deep and steady as usual after a couple miles of warm-up, air covering the full length of my lungs, and I wondered what today would bring as, once again, I opened my posture in a position to receive. As I ran, I continued to contemplate trees, the trees that save me daily. Instead of thinking of the individual trees I have loved and named, however, I began to think of their collective body as a sacred space, much like the collection of an artist at a gallery showing, how it becomes a village for all the vegetation and creatures who inhabit it. A forest. Drooping cedars with their bony folded wings, douglas firs, wonderfully messy-shedding oaks and maples with their leaves’ edges curling like torn cuticles, and black cottonwoods surrounded my chosen route along the water in not so much a line but rather, like the path of an uneven fault crack, still providing comforting shade in the hot, early-fall morning. The abundance of ponderosa pines, like crisp ribbed stalks, that marks the Eastern Washington forest brought to my mind John Muir’s comment that “of all the Pines this one [the ponderosa] gives forth the finest music to the winds.” With amber needles as a bedspread for my path, brown upright pinecones mimicked robins, tricking my mind’s eye, and turning red ivy, like crimson veins that run just beneath the surface of skin, twined their way up trellises of trees and the shapely shoulders of rocks.
Feeling the creative Life force in this landscape of Elders, like all of life, I recognized that the duality of either/or does not exist as Truth in these forests. True, I was experiencing the protection and healing generosity of Spirit from these trees in my unguarded and unveiled movement, but I also knew that Life struggles in these forests. That predators and prey, mammals and insects, trees, bushes, plants, and weeds, all seek balance, like the balance of light and dark in Autumn’s Equinox.
So I continued to run, as the unwavering Solstice continues to approach, with each long stride of my legs touching Earth and with each inhale and exhale of my lungs in balance as well, my attention devoted to intention and mindfulness, making THIS one run another mystical experience like all the others. As Thich Nhat Hanh suggests when speaking of his own intentional, mindful walking, “We generate peace within our body, our consciousness. We embrace and heal the pain, the sorrow, the fear in us, and that is the ground for helping peace to be a reality in the world.”
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But I have to be honest. Today, I TOTALLY kicked ass.
My run? Bloomsday Road Runners Club’s Sundae Sunday 10 miler, through Riverside Park, in 1 hour 20 minutes, watch-less and ALL right-brained with several stops to mark thoughts in my small journal…and I didn’t hold back on the glitter, either…including a thick layer of glitter lipstick.
SUPER SWEET.
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Right-Brained Running Supplies on Canvas, 9/13/2009
Right-Brained Running Supplies on Glass, 9/13/2009
GL, 9/13/2009. Prevail.
WOW. You are FAST. {Small salute} {Big high-five} Love the rhythm and pace. You completely capture it.
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