Recently while running it occurred to me why I do such a crazy sport as strapping shoes to my feet and hitting the pavement for anywhere from ten to sixty minutes several times a week. Perhaps others who exercise or have some other diversionary hobby can relate to my recent revelation.
Simply put, running is for me a centrifuge of my soul.
For all the busyness of life, I need some settling and separating activity, something that will jar my mundane loose from what is sacred and central in my life.
Its not for cardiovascular well-being that I run--it is not health per se--unless you consider sanity health, which is perhaps safe to suggest in our holistic age of three-dimensional fitness.
No, it is more like prayer. I commune with God and myself and discover again what is important from my day, in my week, and in my life.
As a centrifuge, then, running takes on a maintenance-character for me. It has a centering, settling effect.
In this centrifuge, I remember things I've forgotten, and I forget things I've been burdened with remembering for too long.
To use what is perhaps the most current image attached with the centrifuge, I have access to the information molecules of my spiritual helix, my soul's DNA. While the rest of the parts of the cell, useless in this endeavor of psychic processing, spin to the top and away, that which is profound and heavy settles and is safe.
Reading the New Yorker recently, I came across a fantastic quote:
Doing a quick search online, I found that it is quoted nowhere else except here, by an actor and instructor of acting, on his blog. (Interesting blog, too.) I'd love to know the author of this quote, someone who is, apparently by the author of the article, a "philosopher."Without a killing, there is no feast.
But its significance to me goes beyond the field of acting or even philosophy.
Think for a moment: the Christian faith is compared to a feast. Themes of satisfaction, fullness of joy, and being filled (with the Holy Spirit, with grace, with love, etc.) abound.
What is remarkable is that this bounteous feast of grace has been prepared for us through the death (and resurrection) of Jesus. Even more remarkably, the one who prepared it, the Host, is the one whose death was required.
Reading elsewhere online, I came across this quote from Old Spurgeon, the famous 19th century Baptist pastor:
Gospel joys are elevating, they make men like angels. As in the gospel God comes down to men, so by the gospel men go up to God. I might also have shown you how absolutely peerless are the provisions of grace. There is no feast like that of the gospel, no meat like the flesh of Jesus, no drink like his blood, no joys like that which crowns the gospel feast. (Spurgeon on Isaiah 25:6)
Neil Gaiman, novelist, is quoted in a Wired Magazine interview of Ridley Scott, opining on the nature of science fiction:
Kurt Vonnegut believed that what science fiction and pornography have in common is that they are visions of impossibly hospitable worlds. But what Blade Runner did was create a dystopic, inhospitable world. Its dark and its grungy and you wouldn't want to live there but you'd love to go there. (Wired Magazine, 10/2007)
Whatvever Kurt Vonnegut's credentials are for delineating the nature of porn, it seems clear that he's at least touched on some truth. Pornography, like science fiction, is an invitation to a world that doesn't exist through the "door" of what is just close enough to plausible to coax many of us to make the leap.
It seems to me that science fiction and porn have something else in common. They "clothe" their social commentary on the present with the fantastic, the surreal, the impossible. In that "garb," we are drawn to embrace not a distant vision of reality, but one that is very present, one that is close at hand.
In an ode to suffering we all can relate to, John Mayer writes in one of his ballad tunes:
When you're dreaming with a broken heart;
the waking up is the hardest part.
Waking up is indeed the hardest part. Wake up, O Sleeper! Rise from the dead! And Christ will shine on you!
In the spirit of the NFL playoffs, and also taking an opportunity to praise a modern hero, here is Brett Farve, Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, on his favorite memory in his long quarterback career:
Ask people around Green Bay for their favorite Favre memory, and you'll get countless anecdotes but rarely any hesitation. So many elite athletes captivate with their otherworldly physical gifts, but the common theme among the Favre highlights is the human element.... Ask Favre for his own favorite memory, and he's quiet for a moment. "I've got so many plays running through my mind," he says, finally. "The funny thing is, its not only about the touchdowns and the big victories. If I were to make a list, I would include the interceptions, the sacks, the really painful losses. Those times when I've been down, when I've been kicked around, I hold onto those. In a way, those are the best times I've ever had, because that's when I've found out who I am. And what I want to be.
--Alan Shipnuck, "Sportsman of the Year: Brett Favre," Sports Illustrated, 12/10/07 p. 56.
