Still Catching Glass!!

THE GLASS CATCHER!!  I have been a Glass Catcher for well over a year now!  Here is a great idea that came to me at that time!  What a great hobby for any distance runner!  What exactly is Catching Glass??  Well let me share a couple ground rules & tips which help me…

1.       Catching Glass is finding little unique pieces of glass, very much like “Beach Glass”, but on the roads!
2.       As you can see in the image above, they all fill their own place in the beauty and fun of it.
3.       I do have criteria about the pieces I find!!!
4.       I always look for glass not much larger than a quarter, but preferably thick, worn and old.  Since we distance runners place ourselves out into the air to be tried and "pressed"... finding pieces like this speak of the facets of us running!   
5.       It has been very rare to ever come back without catching anything, but if I do strike out, I do not waste any time over it!  Days when I find quite a few pieces make up for it! 
6.       AGAIN… NO NEW GLASS!!!  (The history behind a piece of glass is part of the beauty of the collection!  Just think of all the stories behind each piece!)
7.       I average about 2-5 pieces a run.  NEVER touch plastic! 
8.       As for colors… around this area (Rural NC!) green and clear are common… older glass is tinted (very nice!)… and red, orange and blue glass are VERY RARE! {I still have not found ONE piece of orange!}
 
Catching Glass is something great to look forward to in addition to regular runs... good for meditation and hope.  Now I think of better and “best” containers to display it all!  Besides, all the colorful, unique glass speaks of so many great runs!!  Now when you look at all your little pieces building daily... there is a tangible display of the history of your own running life!  Cheers!

Unchangeable Joy!

It has been a while since the last post, yet certainly this has not been because I lacked any ideas to write about!  I have never had a better heart to distance running… never broader or deeper or more serving to the many needs which regularly drift through my consciousness as a human being.  If you run distance… rather if you have some love of being Nomadic within and without… then it is my only hope that distance running is fitting into a winning place within your soul.  There is an unchangeable joy in the ardent quality of it! 

I find myself regularly pressing the issue with staying true to running holistically.  Today I found the revelation of the "opportunity to run” (that is running when the opportunity best suites) having a far better place within, than running after a specific effort… or demanding certain "mileage" or "pace rate".  Remarkably recovery happens regularly!  This staying true to pre & post run diet needs, hydration, rest/sleep, eating fairly right and training intensity need.  Of course all these ‘distance running issues’ happen so much better with an open heart and mind!  

Here is another perspective, for running wild merits us better perspectives daily!  I realized that I spent 4,701 seconds running yesterday morning.  To me a simple average time to run… an effort to suite the human soul.  I also wondered what the possible condition could be of the human soul which does no work or has no labor.  I could not imagine the condition of the heart and mind which resists the very design of their humanity.  What really happens to the soul which resists themselves in inactivity? 

Certainly we all know the physical ramifications of inactivity, but what liberation of mind… what lifting of the spirit is also missed!  So, can you tell me just how many second this day you ran wild and gave your soul to the efforts of your humanity??  As many of us know, there comes so much good of it!    

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”  ~ H.D. Thoreau      

A "Substance" Called LOVE

One would think that loving someone would be the grandest and most beautiful thing in the world. It is, BUT, loving someone is also the hardest, most self-effacing and ardent things given us.  Especially if you REALLY love a person.  Loving a human cannot be rightly assumed a shallow, simple thing or without substance.  Human beings, in their very nature, release an eternal substance with their "person" and be it either love or hate... this "substance" shared does last forever.  Certainly the emotional pull and squeeze of such a 'substance of LOVE' is strongest when we are closest to it, or even closest removed from it, but like all things in shared relationships... TIME does very strange things to us.  

Loving someone also seems to come as a very divided thing.  That is, the quantities are balanced... divided and delineated.  There would be no one truthful who could say that they love "everyone" the same.  For of nature there is a specific quality of love shared with very exact measure to all we cross paths with.  LOVE is diverse and without limits in its nature and appropriation.  LOVE is a pure substance; whether we love much or we love little. 
Sometimes the MUCH is so right, and sometimes the MUCH is far too much!  While sometimes the LITTLE is so right and sometimes the LITTLE is far too little!  We must survey the substance we share and give it in all respects passionately.

As for the few we overflowingly LOVE... how rare, how capturing, how needful!!  Here the "substance" within our soul bubbles up and over our ability to rationalize it... and often our ability to contain the emotion of it below some safe and dignified surface.  But this... the wealth and the height of all our loves, is the LOVE which most matters, which most changes, which most inspires!
 
Like the magnificent mountain above, high and dignified, overflowing LOVE makes its own place in our emotion.  How do we determine who merits this?  How do we guide and direct such a strength?  LOVE; like LIFE; is not some tidy thing which a box doth keep... but a coursing force replenishing.  LOVE; like the sea... swelling, coursing, cresting... LOVE deep, full, crashing.  You see, if LOVE be not this, then it is not LOVE.