This One's for Charlynn

This morning I woke up at 7:30 after snoozing my alarm for nearly an hour. I finally rolled out of bed with just enough time to pull on clothes and pack my lunch before my ride to work arrived. I was pretty tired and kept nodding off on the drive up to Marin. Once at work though, I pretty quickly got into the swing of things. I had seven interviews scheduled, but only ended up conducting five of them since two candidates needed to reschedule. They were actually all decent interviews, and I found myself really enjoying the conversations I got to have. After work, I got dropped off at home and was intending to go the gym and then catch up on some work projects I brought home with me but got derailed by a phone call from my brother and a TiVo'd episode of House. I re-heated some leftovers from yesterday, sat on the couch with my food, and enjoyed a fairly indulgent evening in front of the television, first on my own and later with my roommates. Now I'm writing this post. And that was pretty much my day.

So here's the deal: Charlynn told me the other day how much she dislikes blogs that are about inane day-to-day details rather than the blogger's thoughts. And I thought, wow, what a perfect way to knock out an easy post.

But here's the other thing: as much as this kind of post is not what I think this blogging exercise is about for me, I have to admit that today was a very pedestrian day and that I enjoyed it for that very reason. Nothing spectacular happened; I had no great epiphanies. In fact, I somewhat purposefully let myself veg out in front of the TV most of the evening and ate more than I should considering I didn't work out. Sometimes it's nice to check out for a night and not have to analyze and over-analyze and find some sort of deep meaning in everything. Sometimes I need to live in my life without thinking about it too much. Sometimes my brain (and heart and soul) needs a mini-vacation. And this act is blog-worthy, I think, although probably not as interesting to some of you. Sorry, Charly. :)

Speechless

I woke up this morning without much of a voice. I've been fighting off a cold the past several days, and I guess it finally caught up with me. I stayed home as I was pretty much useless at work -- hard to conduct telephone interviews in a whisper -- and spent most of the day in silence. It's been a long time since I was that quiet, and it was an interesting experience. So much of the past year and a half has been about me finding my voice, and overall I've made a lot of progress in that quest. But I think that sometimes I've gone overboard; sometimes I talk too much and too loudly.

I read Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter recently and there is some really lovely interplay in the narrative between the literal and figurative processes of speaking and being speechless. The book was a lot deeper than I expected, and I found myself identifying with the story in a lot of ways. I wonder sometimes if for me it will also take something tremendously momentous, or if it will simply take the better part of my lifetime for me to grow fully into my own voice. I suppose it's all tied up in figuring out what it is that I have to say as well. I've gotten very good at asking the questions. I am not so good at expressing the answers I think I've found. The words I need are ever and always more elusive.

Perhaps the missing step here is listening more, which is why the silence today was nice.

Selective Memory

I was struck today by the way my memory operates.

I spend hours of each workday engaged in intense conversations on fairly serious topics, and I devote a tremendous amount of mental energy to listening intently to these interactions and processing the subtle nuances as well as the overall impression they leave me with. Lately my days have also been interspersed with snippets of conversation of an entirely different nature: playful, lighthearted, and frankly, entirely frivolous. At the end of the day if you ask me to recount how my serious conversations went, I find my mind is at best blurry, if not outright blank in this regard. All of that focus apparently leaves little lasting imprint. I can, however, at the end of the day, and sometimes even several days later, recount the silliness I have engaged in with uncanny detail.

I don't really have any profound insight into why this is, although I will admit that it worries me a little. I do find it interesting, and I wonder what it all means. If I knew, would I even remember?

For the Time Being

This morning's sermon was on fixing one's gaze to find healing. I have some thoughts on this and on the passages which were read (from Numbers, Ephesians and John) but mostly I was struck by this excerpt from Auden's "For the Time Being" that was quoted:

He is the Way.

Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

I suppose it's kind of cheating to post this selection and not actually share my reflections, but I want to let it stand on its own. Plus, Sundays in Lent are cheating days anyway.

Tootin' My Horn, 'Cuz I Got Skillz

Three weeks ago tonight I introduced two friends to each other. Let's call them Ken & Barbie. The names are fitting because it was just that perfect of a match, and I saw the proof of it at Ken's birthday party tonight. Barbie couldn't have been happier and neither could her posse of Malibu beach friends. And Ken, well, needless to say, I didn't get him a birthday present as there was really no way to top what I'd already given him. It's been a fairly amazing process to watch these two dolls go from a first conversation to their present state of bliss, and even I was surprised at how quickly it all went down. I must also say that I'm pretty proud of my part in all of this. I've never set up friends before -- the whole Jewish matchmaker gene does not run strong in my family, thank God -- but apparently I'm a natural. (Not that I'm planning on making a habit of this. I kind of like that I'm batting a thousand right now and may just keep it that way.) It makes my heart glad to see two awesome people so happy together. And yes, Ken, I will take you up on that offer of a free lunch for every week you stay together. May it be for a long, long time.

I feel like my life no longer has any margins. I'm not sure when it happened, but lately it seems that on any given day of the week I can double- or even triple-book my calendar and still not be keeping up. Tonight I shirked two invitations, both activities I'm sure I would have enjoyed. I told myself I needed to stay home and knock out some work so I wouldn't have to do it this weekend with Joel in town. I told myself it was a night to take care of housekeeping: cleaning up, doing laundry, actually going for a run for the first time this week. I think I would have felt really great if I had actually followed this plan. Instead, I . . . well, here's the thing: I'm not really sure what all I did tonight. I partially did what I planned: I sorted laundry, but didn't actually put any of the dirty clothes in the wash; I made a small dent in the pile of applications I need to grade for work, but didn't finish the stack I intended to; I put on my workout clothes, but didn't make it to the gym. I sent a few emails, I chatted briefly with a friend, I ate a bowl of cereal, and watched bits and pieces of this week's American Idol. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with spending a Thursday night at home, not being especially productive. And it's not that I still have these other things looming over me, the things that I didn't get done, the people I didn't see, and looking forward I see no space to slot them into. I think it's that my time somehow no longer seems like my own, and my life seems to be moving forward without my steering it. I guess, really, it's all about the control freak in me losing control.

As I read back over this paragraph I just wrote, I'm annoyed at my whiny tone. Honestly, my life has been only good and more than good lately, and the lack of margins speaks more to a fullness of life that than to an existential crisis. Can I chalk this post up to tiredness and leave it at that?

The Ups and Downs of Snyder Siblings

Note:
The title of this post is a reference to a lovely book I've taught many times to 2nd graders, who, by the way, are some of the most awesome people ever. The book, The Ups and Downs of Simpson Snail, chronicles the literal and emotional rises and falls of Simpson and the steady support his friends provide through his adventures. This post chronicles the turbulence of today's events in the life of me and my brother:

Up: I wake up excited that Joel is arriving today for a visit. A quick day's work and he'll be home waiting for me when I get off.

Down: I see him online, message him, and realize that he has confused his departure date and missed his flight.

Further down: the airline company informs him that they have canceled his entire itinerary, including his trip to Arizona that was to follow his visit to me.

Up: Joel informs me that he was able to work something out with the airline.

Down: Joel informs me that "working something out" means that he got them to apply the money he already paid to a new flight to Arizona but that he can't get a flight to CA that isn't ridiculously expensive.

Down Again: We resign ourselves to not seeing each other for another few months.

Up: I do some research and discover I have enough frequent flier miles to get Joel a free flight.

Down: I do some more research and discover I have ALMOST enough frequent flier miles to get Joel a free flight.

Up: I discover I can purchase the additional frequent flier miles I need to get him a flight.

Down: After purchasing said miles, I discover that they may not post to my account for up to 48 hours.

Down, Down, Down: After much talking with customer service I discover there is no way to get around this waiting period and there is no way to make the purchased miles available any sooner.

Down: I spend all afternoon and evening realizing just how excited I was to see Joel and just how pissed off I am at airline companies for their inane policies.

Up: I check the airline website one last time and discover that against all probabilities my purchased miles have actually posted and can be used.

Up, Up: I use said miles to get Joel a ticket to arrive in SF only two days later than originally scheduled - I was going to have to be at work those two days any way.

Up, Up, Up: Joel on an airplane, thousands of feet above the ground, on his way to visit me.

Insomnia

I want to sleep
and normally I can
but tonight instead is this
muddled mess of musings:
parents with concerns
and concerns about my parents
and parents who upon first meeting
reveal so much and so little
about their children
and are so unexpected
why am I surprised at their humanity?
and banter with boys
and batman
and bread
and bread shaped like batman
that might be a signal in the night sky
calling for help or for rescue
or foretelling the arrival of something
bat-like
I could use some radar right now
as I'm mostly flying blind
I'm not sure if the pow! bam! whack!
is my head and heart about to crack
or the hero's fast-flying fists
protecting me
and typos
and flirtation
and frustration
and singing loudly to country songs
by shania twain
and wondering whether teachers that I hire
will be good
or good enough
and who I'll have to fire
and whether the bread should be shaped like turtles instead
they move much more slowly
and I could stand for that
and for versatility
they live both in water and on land
I wonder where they prefer to sleep

Tortoise vs Hare: Halfway Through & Hard to Tell Who's Ahead

I've realized that I'm just about halfway through this experiment of blogging, and I feel like this realization should prompt some sort of reflection on my progress so far. What strikes me is that my 'progress', if there is any, is not apparent to me. Halfway points for me are most often points of feeling behind, points of thinking I should be so much further along than I am. Very rarely at any halfway mark do I feel I've actually covered half the distance I intend to. My gait tends to be one that picks up towards the end. Actually, making a mad rush at the end after letting myself fall horribly behind and feeling progressively more guilty about it but not doing anything it until it's intolerable and nearly too late to recover is probably the more accurate description. The fact that I've often been able to pull things off with a degree of aplomb while operating under this last-minute intensity has not aided my attempts to become more of the slow and steady type. No matter how many experiments I undertake, I fear I will always be much better at power sprinting than long distance running. Halfway through this particular race, I think the verdict is still out. Looking back, I suppose I am somewhat satisfied with what I've done up until now. Looking forward, I wonder if I'll make it to the end.

Losing my Religion in Church

I'm not sure which is more ironic -- the fact that a message on losing religion to follow the Way was preached in one of the most formal church settings I've encountered or the fact that for me embracing some of the ancient formality and ritual has actually been a step away from 'religion'. More than the irony, though, what struck me in this morning's message was the sense I got of everything coming together, of the theme being the perfect summation of my own journey over the past year and a half, and of a greater voice than the pastor's speaking to me. Every now and then I reach points in my life where the pieces seem to converge and coalesce in this way, points where the themes begin to overlap, patterns emerge, and for a moment everything fits together. Today I had one of these moments; it has shed light on my path and given me new confidence in the Way I am seeking to follow.

Third time's the charm

Since the beginning of the year, I have gone on three dates -- exactly one per month -- with three different guys. The first was pretty innocuous, which is not a good thing for a date to be. The second was the source of much entertainment for my friends, although I still shudder a little every time I think of it. The third, well, the title of this post really says it all.

The beginning, of course, was a little awkward, because that's how beginnings always are. But by the end, I was definitely smiling. In fact, I still am. There was a lot of walking (about 8 miles as best I can tell), a lot of talking (about six hours of it), and a little flirting. There was joking, there was seriousness, and most of all there was good times all around. I definitely have questions -- and I'm working hard to turn the over-analytical part of my mind off before my questions undermine the whole process of getting to know someone new -- but I also had a lot of fun.

I'm realizing that this is what I've been missing all these years. In my overly serious adolescence and in my jump-all-the-way-in-way-too-soon adult relationships, I never got this part of it: dating is fun. And flirting is fun, too. Somewhere in my conservative upbringing this sort of fun got a bad rap, and so I simply steered clear of it all, taking high offense when people called me flirtatious. I've decided I'm over that. I like to flirt, and I am no longer ashamed of this fact. I take great pleasure in the banter, in the mildly antagonistic back-and-forth, in the subtly suggestive teasing that is flirtation. I'm pretty damn good at it, too.

And today, I think I found someone who just might be able to keep up with me in this regard, someone who might in fact be a worthy object of my skills. At the very least, he's worth a second date.

Inevitability

It finally happened. I always knew it would eventually, but I'll admit there was a part of me that took a little pride in the fact that it hadn't happened yet, a part of me that thought I might end up being the one exception to the rule, the one person who managed to avoid it through a combination of watchfulness and good luck. And I did stave it off for a solid 17 months of living in this city, which is pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself. But this week, my streak came to an end and the inevitable finally occurred: I got a parking ticket.

The annoying thing is, I can't even get upset at the city about it; it was totally my fault and I deserved it. The only thing I can chalk it up to is my own tiredness. I drove home on Wednesday evening, knowing full well that I would be riding into work with Kristen for the next two days, knowing as I pulled onto my street that I needed to find a spot where I could leave my car parked until the weekend. But somehow this knowledge did not manage to play out into my actions. I pulled into the first spot I saw, which happened to be on the Thursday street cleaning side, and didn't think twice about it until I decided I would drive to the Richmond tonight rather than taking the bus.

I suppose it's good that I made this mistake -- my vanity can certainly stand all the lessons in humility I can get and my perfectionism now has one less foothold -- but I think it's also one more piece of evidence that I need some de-fragging this weekend. Apparently my boss knew what he was talking about in that pep talk yesterday.

Ah, the inevitability of my own humanity!

They say that sometimes if you just start writing, the words come to you and you find all of a sudden you have something to write about. I have no idea who "they' is, but apparently it's kind of true -- after all I hadn't been thinking about that at all just a moment ago before I typed that first sentence. I've never been a fan of the stream-of-conscious thing. It's always irked me, in fact. James Joyce is known for quipping on the reader's task being to work much harder to understand his writing than he did to compose it (this is obviously a very rough paraphrase), and this stance strikes me as essentially arrogant. It is laziness posing as profundity, an abnegation of the author's role, and a failure of creativity. It's not that readers shouldn't have to work hard; it's that if you're going to expect someone to spend the time reading what you write, you should at least attempt to help them in that endeavor. I ask my students and my employees to bring their best effort to their work, and I feel it is fair to do so only because I require the same of myself. Working hard is both the curse and the honor of all human beings; neither readers nor writers should exclude themselves from this, no matter if you are f-ing James Joyce. Language is tricky and too easily misunderstood all on its own; it doesn't need your help in this respect. Understanding another's thoughts is always a battle; this fact is no excuse to disengage from the struggle involved in the articulation of one's thoughts. Shouldn't both parties be bringing their best to the field?

If you're having trouble following my thoughts here, do not fret. I think this only proves my points:
1. You're struggling here because I am as well -- there is equity in the effort.
2. The stream-of-consciousness thing is overrated.

'Ji' is not a word, but 'jo' is, at least according to the official Scrabble dictionary, 4th edition. Kirk learned this the hard way tonight, and while he sulked a little, he was mostly a good sport about it. Arcenia surprised us all with an early breakaway: 'quips' (which I later wanted to turn into 'equips' until I was cruelly blocked). Judy pulled up from behind with a last-minute bingo and took the game. It seemed fitting that this trump word was 'holiest'. Not that scrabble usually gets me thinking about deep spiritual issues, but the topic had come up in an earlier conversation, and I was already thinking about how I feel God's presence most keenly in moments that seem anything but religious. There's something about dancing my heart out til 3am at a club that feels a lot like worship and something about playing board games with good friends on a Wednesday evening that feels a lot like holiness. The boundary between the sacred and the profane is permeable, I think, and holiness seeps into all kinds of mundane moments.

Blogging has not been good for my sleep schedule. Posting is that one last thing I have to do every day, that one task hanging over me that I so artfully avoid, that nagging at the back of my mind that pushes me to do a million other things that don't really need to be done. The only thing I can't use to avoid the writing is turning in for the night, and so that too has gotten pushed back, night after night. One would think I was avoiding sleep and not this blog.

What I'm wondering tonight is whether it counts when I'm doing this only because I know I should, when the sole thing propelling me forward is the fact that I said I would do it. Because tonight's post, I'm sad to say, is pure obligation. I like to think there's value in this action, even if it is obligatory. I like to think that pretense can become fact, doing can become being. I don't like to think I'm copping out. But even if I am, I'm a little too tired to do anything else in this moment. And I don't plan to lose any more sleep over this dilemma tonight.

Here's to sweet dreams. I hope.

I had an epiphany today. It started out as a joke I made a few days ago, but today I realized it was true. This will make sense only to a few (if any) of you, but here it is:

Compliments outweigh bad spelling and grammar.

I need to remember this more often.

Grieving

A good friend called me earlier tonight to catch up on life. The last time we talked, she told me about a situation that had caused her a fair amount of anger and pain. I asked how she was doing in this regard and heard an answer that made all too much sense: the situation was no longer immediate for her temporally or spatially and so it was easiest just to let it lie. She felt she was doing better but had suspicions that underneath the story went much deeper. I wish I did not understand her so well.

In many areas of my life I am driven and relentless; in recent years I've chosen to become even more so. Despite this, I sometimes find it is too easy to mistake distance for true healing, moving on for moving through. I can't count how many times the ghosts I thought I had conquered have reappeared down the road or how often in unguarded moments I've realized that my dealing with an issue amounted to little more than ignoring it. For me, grief is one of these areas.

I've thought a lot about grief over the past six weeks or so, not because anything particularly sorrowful or traumatic has occurred in my life (quite the opposite, in fact) but because I've realized that there is some loss from my past that I haven't fully felt. I know this because it pops up on my emotional radar at odd moments here and there, usually when I'm least expecting it: after a particularly exhilarating workout, upon getting a lovely email from a new friend, when watching a favorite old movie, or when kneeling at the communion altar. It comes as a sadness, sometimes gently, sometimes more rudely, and it always feels both foreign and familiar.

I know that what I really need to do is get myself away for a little while -- away from all the stimuli that allow me to ignore the underlying grief, away from all the triggers that bring it back to my attention -- and let myself just have it out. I've known this for a while now. I have not done it. Yet.

Part of me is afraid that I don't really know how to grieve and that trying to won't truly work. Part of me doesn't fully know what it is I'm grieving and is afraid that if I let myself find out, I won't know how to recover from that knowledge. Part of me knows that if I don't do this soon, it will continue to pop up, and it will continue to affect my life in unforeseen ways. And part of me knows I'm just making excuses.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

The Violence of Redemption

Tonight I went to see Slumdog Millionaire with my roommates and a few friends. (It's actually the first movie I've seen in the theater all year, but that's a separate topic. Also, while I'm in these parentheses, I should mention that I'm going to give away some details about the ending, so if you haven't seen it yet, consider yourself warned.) After the movie we walked from Embarcadero to Union Square to get some late-night Thai food. On the way, Judy, who has a low tolerance for ambiguity and whom I love for the dogged curiosity inspired by this trait, was asking a lot of questions. One of them was, "Why does Salim fill the tub with money and lie down in it when they come after him at the end?" One person speculated that it had something to do with the luxury of it, of reveling in one last moment of wealth to spite all the destitution he had lived through. Another person posited that his death in that bath was a very literal representation of how bloodstained the money was. My take is a little different:

The money in which Salim meets his death is in some ways the very money that his brother Jamal was winning at that same moment. If Jamal had not been on the game-show, if he had not made it to the final question, he would not have used his last lifeline, and the bad guys would not have heard Latika's voice on the line or realized Salim's betrayal. Jamal's winnings are the undoing of his brother. Jamal's moment of redemption is causally linked to his brother's death -- they are in some ways the same moment.

I wrote a paper in college on the pairing of violence and redemption in Flannery O'Connor's stories. This aspect of her work shocked me at first, but now I see that it can be no other way, for O'Connor or for the world at large. Redemption, from the very beginning (and by that I mean going all the way back to Genesis) has always been a violent proposition. It is violent because it is transformational, and any force that creative carries destructive power as well. I could launch into examples here, but really my point is that the violence, the cost, is what gives the redemption its efficacy. The slumdog's triumph requires some payment, some failure, else it is meaningless.

This may seem grim to some, but I find odd comfort and hope in it. I find it hopeful because redemption without cost would seem too cheap; violence seals redemption's value and is evidence of its permanence -- both the judgment and the grace are equally irreversible. And then, of course, there is the reverse implication of what I'm proposing: if every redemptive act is a violent one, then all violence is potentially redeemable.

Catching Up & Coming Clean

Okay, so I have to admit that I haven't been completely truthful in my blogging recently. On the very top of several of my posts there has been a blatant lie. You see, one of the marvelous features of this blog is that I can manually set the date and time of any post to whatever I choose, and I've taken advantage of this feature more than once in the past several days. Why? Because I wanted it to look like I had actually written a post every day. That is, after all, one of my Lenten experiments: to blog every day. The truth is, though, that while I have thought about blogging every day, and have stared at an the empty text box of a new blog post every night before going to bed, I have not actually written every day. There have been a handful of times when the old shadow won, when I succumbed to whatever it is in me that keeps me from this task, when I gave in to the very thing that I'm trying to conquer through this experiment. I knew from the outset that this would be a battle and that it would not be easy. What I did not know is that I would care so much about exposing my battle wounds and scars to the world. There's still a part of me that wants to present a complete package: a thorough, thoughtful, and edited post neatly stamped with each successive date, no gaps, no holes, no misses, no failures. I want my efforts to look like success, even when they are a struggle. And I think this urge in me, the desire to cloak the weakness and the failure, is not so far removed from the thing that keeps me from writing in the first place. Which is why I'm choosing to write on this topic, why I am exposing my own fraud. It probably matters little to anyone but me that I've been fudging the dates, but to me it does matter. The irony, of course, is that part of the reason for blogging every day, rather than just writing or journaling, is that a blog is in the public eye and therefore presumably carries a certain level of accountability that more private writing does not. I found a way to bypass that accountability, but now I am caught up, and I am coming clean. No more hiding my mess, no matter how messy. Instead, I will continue my attempt to follow through on my original intent and I will endeavor to focus on the process, not the final product. If I miss a day, I miss it, but I will let the dates from here forward be true. Not that you have any way of really knowing, of course . . .

Singin' in the Car

For the past several weeks I've been carpooling with my friend Kristen to work. In addition to all the usual perks such as saving gas, saving money, saving the environment, and having someone to keep me awake on those insanely early morning drives, I've discovered a fellow car-singer. It all started a few weeks back, after I had watched Singin' in the Rain on PBS. I was telling her how much I used to love that movie as a kid, and the next thing you know we were both belting out lines from the title song. From there we moved into a gleeful rendition of "Good Mornin'" and from there we never looked back. We've continued to have spontaneous sing-a-longs whenever a tune pops into one of our heads, and we've covered ground from classical musicals to Journey (thanks, JB, for that one -- don't stop believin'!), from old-school Britney to Elton John.

I don't remember how it started, but today on the drive home we started reminiscing about songs from childhood, tunes we learned in Sunday school, at summer camp, and in school assemblies. It was gads of fun, but more than that, it was amazing how many of the same ditties we recalled. Amazing not just because it's been (gulp!) two decades since I last sang some of these songs, but amazing because Kristen, who grew up in rural Indiana, apparently had the same musical upbringing as I did in my far-flung nomadic childhood. It was such a surprise, and a joy, to realize we had this thing in common, to share something that I hadn't even realized I still had with someone who in many respects is very different from me. Some might say that this commonality is a sad comment on the conformity of our culture and on the mass production and marketing of childhood that occurs in modern America. For me, however -- a person who has seldom felt a true part of her surroundings, who was always from somewhere else, who became the expert in blending in but never fitting in -- for me, this moment in the car felt a lot like belonging.

Kristen and I have decided, by the way, that we need to record our musical adventures and produce a series of "Kristen & Leah mixed CD sing-a-longs" so that the world can join in the transcendence that is our daily commute. So keep an eye out for us on iTunes or Amazon or wherever else you get your music. Believe me, you won't want to miss it!

There are days when I am struck by just how rich my life is and today was one of those days. I believe I have more than my fair share of joy and love and genuine relationship, and I am grateful for all the simple and profound ways this truth manifests in my life. I know I'm being vague, but it is because I am happy.

Shakespeare, as usual, says it just right:
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gates.
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
(from Sonnet XXIX)

Deciding Again

I started training for a 10k about a week and a half ago. For those who have known me for longer than two years, you probably recall my making snide remarks about the pointlessness of running when no one is chasing. But as I have with so many other things I used to disdain, I've decided to give running a good hard go. And believe me, it has been hard.

Runners always talk about pushing through the wall and hitting a spot where you feel amazing, where you could keep going forever. I have never gotten there. Perhaps I simply haven't run far or long enough yet. But I suspect that running will never be that endorphine-inducing, euphoria-driven experience for me. When it comes down to it, I simply don't like to run. And I spend most of my time on the treadmill trying to distract my mind from the fact that I'm running, trying to avoid looking at the clock because I know it's only been ten seconds since I last looked, trying to convince myself that I won't actually die.

Even though I tell myself at the outset of any run that I will for go x minutes or y miles, that goal, that pre-decision is not enough to keep me moving forward. Every step is a deliberation, every second is a battle with the desire to stop. I choose hundreds of times each mile that I will complete the mile, and each time it is a real choice, it is an act of will. One would think that making this decision dozens and dozens of times would eventually make the choice easier. I think it's more like flipping a coin: no matter how many times I've already tossed it, and no matter how many times it's come up tails, the probability of it coming up tails in the next toss is still only 50%.

These odds aren't the greatest, but that's okay. As someone for whom too much has come easily, I have tremendous admiration for those whose achievements come through struggle. I think they deserve much more credit than I do, and I'd like to learn to emulate them in any way I can.

So like I said, I don't anticipate this becoming any easier. However, I do anticipate continuing to decide again. And again. And again. I think the discipline of this -- of deciding moment by moment to do what's hard, of choosing time after time the choices that I've already made -- is good for my soul as well as my legs.

Rant

I actually wrote the following piece a little while back so including it now may be cheating, but it really does fit thematically with the purpose of my exercise in blogging: it's a rant against my shadow. If you can, picture me screaming it out into a deeply quiet night. This is very much a glimpse of, as my friend Jeff puts it, "ferocious Leah".

I speak
I speak to you
I tell you that you will not do
you cannot stay
you are not me
I speak and speak
insisting that my life
is not the blank
is not the pit
is not the sleeping never waking never dreaming
that you seem
I speak and speak and speak

into your gaping silence


And I speak

And in this is my victory:
my speech
my simple act of flexing vocal cords
of pushing air from lungs into the world
destroys you
shattering with the crescendo of my voice
My Voice
MY VOICE
your very presence
And in this is your utter devastation:
you have always been destroyed
from the beginning
you the void that hovers
troubling the waters that would be life
you were never even there
from the beginning

From the beginning
was the word
my word
my voice
I speak
and there is light
I speak
and it is good
I speak
to you the nothing:
you are nothing
and I speak

Compassionate God,
you have fed us with the bread of heaven.
Sustain us in our Lenten pilgrimage:
may our fasting be hunger for justice,
our alms, a making of peace;
and our prayer, the song of grateful hearts;
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen.

I really liked this prayer from the liturgy this morning, partly because the verb sustain is one I've always loved, but mainly because the focus this prayer gives to each of the Lenten practices feels quite significant. The actions are not mere actions but intents to become more, to help me become more. The pastor preached on repentance, the act of turning around, and framed it as a turning towards rather than a turning away, a repenting to rather than a repenting of. It is a choice to focus on the spirit of God, to turn towards his presence in and over my life. The fact that in so turning I am also leaving other things behind is coincidental. This turning is not a spurning of guilt or a judgment on shame but an embracing of love and a decision to walk in the direction from whence I hear his voice.