Moving along at a slow waddle

As miserable as they sound to a lot of people, I've always enjoyed my weekend long runs. They're hard, of course, but I like the time to myself and the scenery of Stone Mountain and the sense of accomplishment when I'm done. This is the case almost every long run day. But not today.

Today's run killed me, brought me back to life, and killed me again. It was bad. It was bad from the start. Two and a half miles in I was running up this hill and a truck came up behind me and I thought, if that thing ran over me right now, I would probably not feel different. I was supposed to do 3 7-mile loops around the mountain. By the third, my "run" had pretty much become a slow waddle. And then I started walking up every hill. And then I just walked the last three miles. I've never had to do that before. I felt defeated.

So I came home and read some Ecclesiastes. As evidenced by my blog title, it's one of my favorite books (ever since Dr. Strawn's class first year.) Ecclesiastes is, in a way, about accepting our limitations. For Ecclesiastes that means death and the apparent lack of ultimate meaning in life. It's only when we stop trying to find or create things that last that we can simply eat, drink, and enjoy our toil--because that's God's gift to us.

My athletic limitations are probably a superficial parallel. After all, if I were Ecclesiastes, I would have run this marathon, won it handily, and still pronounced everything vanity in the face of death. But hey, we all have to accept less significant limitations every day. Accepting that I couldn't finish the run I planned today means that instead of dwelling on it I can be thankful for the fact that I could run, walk, and waddle around that mountain for 21 miles. And I am thankful for that. A few months ago it would have been unthinkable.

I'm not giving up on the marathon training. Come March 29 I am going to run that bad boy. But for today, I accept defeat with a grudging smile and give thanks for what God has given me the physical strength to do on this particular day of my vain life.

This is the weather, with which I am not pleased

It's raining today. This annoys me. It annoys me first of all because I own two umbrellas, and I know where both of them are (on the floor of my car), and I knew it was going to rain today, and I did not manage to bring one to school. It annoys me because I always go to Panera between Friday morning classes for coffee and a chocolate chip Muffie, and I had to walk through the rain to get there. And it annoys me because I need to run later. I really want to love running in the rain. But last time I did water got in my contact and it rolled back in my eye and I ran half a mile with one eye open and one eye closed. I don't love running in the rain.

This semester I've started going to the Friday midday Eucharist service in chapel, and today the Gospel reading was the baptism of Jesus. I didn't think much of it. Then during the prayers of the people I caught one line between zoning in and out: "Pour out your gift of water on all creation." And I thought, HEY! God IS pouring out God's gift of water on all creation! Rain is like BAPTISM!"

Now, I know I am hardly the first person to connect rain to baptism. The Eucharist liturgy even mentioned the flood. But sometimes we need reminders, and I was reminded. So I sat there in the dry chapel feeling good about myself for realizing this and thinking about how my walk home after Greek would be like a mile-long affirmation of my baptism. I felt good about this all the way up until I had to leave the chapel to go to the theology building for Greek, and my thoughts changed from "Remember your baptism and be thankful" to "Oh, why, God, why?"

On the walk home I really tried to remember my baptism and be thankful. But it was cold. And my hair was getting frizzy. But then I thought about how babies cry when they get baptized. They don't like it, either. But that water is still a symbol of God's commitment to them. And I guess that's true with rain. On my walk home I made peace with the fact that God's grace doesn't depend on whether I'm thankful for it.

Then halfway home some people I know only a little stopped and made me in their car so they could drive me the rest of the way. Sometimes, grace is easy to be thankful for.

Now I can still have Splenda

Welcome to my Lent blog.

For those of you who don't know Hebrew, the title means "vanity of vanities," from Ecclesiastes. I named my blog that because that's probably what it's going to be.

When I got certified by my DCOM this January, the issue inevitably came up that I have no devotional life to speak of. Someone on the committee asked me a question about Wesleyan spiritual discipline and I kind of sat there awkwardly for a few minutes, hearing "Bueller? Bueller?" in my head. Then I gave a theological rockstar answer along the lines of "I don't really have any spiritual disciplines, but I really want to start." Another committe member said I sounded like the married couples he counsels who really mean to start going on dates sometime. Oh, snap.

So as much as doing something of the devotional variety shouldn't actually be an exclusively Lenten practice, it's a start. Here's my goal: have one theological thought a day, and write it down. That's all.

I was going to give up Splenda for Lent. Seriously, that was my plan for a long time. It was going to be like the opposite of giving up sweets in hope of being really, really skinny by Easter. (I've done that one a bunch, too...turns out it doesn't work if you just eat tortilla chips instead.) See, I use Splenda (and related brands of fake sugar) like it's my job. Soda, coffee, yogurt...I love Splenda because it's like cheap grace. Eat all you want, don't worry about the consequences.

The thought was, giving up Splenda would make me think harder about what I actually put in my body. Especially since I got back from India this summer I've been more and more convinced that there's just no reason to eat all the crap we eat here when people have so little in other places. Except then I realized that training for this marathon means I'm already thinking about my body pretty much all the time anyway. Adding a Lenten practice to make me do that more is probably just bordering on having issues.

Also, I didn't want Splenda to go out of business in These Troubled Economic Times.

Anyway, my lack of a devotional life is probably a bigger peril to my immortal soul right now than my consumption of sugar derivatives.

So if anyone is actually reading this, enjoy my attempt at a combination of spiritual discipline and public theology. And if not, well...hakkol hebel.