Run For Your Depth

What is all our running for?  The age old question re-visited.  We have so many types of runners... so many different reasons for running.  Granted, it is not important for any of us to say what distance running "must be" for anyone, but it broadens me to stretch myself for the reasons which I myself run.  To regularly re-break the threshold of age old understanding of humanities pursuit of running long distances.  Indeed we are clearly spiritual at the core of our design; cognitive & bright of intellect (most of us!); and we are deeply nomadic in our physical needs and make-up.

This having been said there is a wonderful quote from WILD, An Elemental Journey (Jay Griffiths).  She says, "Nomadism is like an original fire in our wild minds; we stole it from the gods, and we made it into our own, leaping to new places, quickening to motion, curious and light as flame.  The keen urge has never left us to take a flitting tent and fling it under the stars, then swing on at dawn, on an elemental journey.  That is how to burn most brightly.  That is how to catch like wildfire." I cannot imagine any holistic distance runner NOT celebrating the spirit of what she writes!

I decided to write this post after some time off because of the picture of the week to the left... LOVE.  After another couple thousand miles of running, it continues to occur to me that the basis for the modern distance runner; who continues in their practice for holistic development; seems to be for greater depth of life.  A greater spiritual, intellectual and physical depth will give us the greatest package of love we could have to share.  Sharing this "package" is what life is all about.  

Sure, the origins of distance running are surrounded in basic and utilitarian need.  However, in modernity we do not need to run for our sustenance physically... but how we DO need to run for our connection to our humanity!!  We run for our depth!  All the distance runners I have enjoyed reading, or had the opportunity to speak with, have a broadening capacity for depth and love and respect of humanity.  A capacity to understand suffering and joy.  This reality is an amazing thing!

What makes the image to the right so rich is because it indicated the core of what is most important to us... LOVE.  Probably love which is bigger than our own views of it... for this mother is a refugee.  She does not know where she is from or where she is going; she does not know where today's food for her child will come from or if she will have food today at all; she has no documentation of identity, no possessions to speak of, no job or source of income and she has no concept of our modern world.  She is in the lost world... BUT she does have love.  Probably greater love than we have understood.  Look closely at her now. 

Of the many reasons I run... I run for my depth.  Do you?  Cheers!            

Strictly Archaic

'Strictly Archaic' means committed to the very basics of life.  It has been a long time since I have turned so much of my inspiration to a Post!  With deepest respects to the ancient life I trace while land-running, and the "finds" I have come across... I will speak strictly archaic.  The "term” actually resonates with me because this is the essence of many people’s hearts when they lace their shoes up and make ready for their regular distance run.  Our mind releases itself to a strictly archaic place where we will not simply be outside, yet we can actually become a part of the wilderness!  Our running expression is no less "wild" than the ground we cover & air we breathe!  Holistic Distance Running!

My trails across the ancient life!  Listen closely to the following quote: “The desert winds would salt their ruins and there would be nothing, no spirit or scribe, to tell any pilgrim in his passing how it was that people had lived in this place and in this place had died. ~ Cormac McCarthy” (Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History)  This last year in land-running; covering some 3,000 miles; I have traced the steps of the American Indian.  I have been discovering their ancient hunting grounds.  It has been unforgettable!  Life & running has changed for me! 

As for archeology, the last month has been relatively slow.  The earth has been silent and undisturbed by machine.  Still, with the keen understanding gained of sacred places, I have still been able to return to the earth and find the abundant traces of their steps… for the Amerind were daily after the needs of their life and the food which would sustain them.  Through this season of the winter rye grasses, small fruits of ancient stone work in arrowheads can still be discovered IF the location is exact.  The images attached continue to tell of their pilgrimage!

To make a long story short; strictly archaic; these small tokens are feasibly the oldest remains of our own humanity findable.  They average 4000BC and each piece speaks through ages untold of an individual’s desire, ambition, need and personal expression.  If we could take a moment to peel away the layers of our own materialism… if we could sink back through our own modernity… then this people’s life might be seen for its purity & strength and help our own expression.  But as it is today, the year 2013, most cannot imagine the basics of human life and the joys which might inherently exist in our own instinct.    

THIS is the place where holistic distance running helps bridge the gap!  Run on long distance runners and think of life differently!  “The universe is wider than our views of it.” ~ H.D. Thoreau

Good or Not

Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization. ~ Lindburgh

Good or not we all might run. For most of us who even think to read about distance running, our running has been "good".  But this is not what I am really referring to.  We have continued forward... running without promises of reward or goodness.  Good or not many also now write.  We write lots of things... millions of blogs, digital fragments included, thousands of books, yet all happen with regularity - good or not. {And we all know they are certainly NOT all "good"!} 

As a distance runner, when there is something within us which has been designed to run and has been forming from the beginning of our childhood, when many things which are grafted into our soul, have become a product of who we are, we are inevitably faced with going out the door, good or not.

The reality within is that no matter how the run turns out does not matter, we are going to move out after it. Good or not.  No matter what the limiting factors might be, as much as within us lay, we are going out to meet the run. Good or not.

No matter the factors which might limit... and they could be innumerable... the holistic distance runner sets themselves to express their fullness in every opportunity.  Mastership measured by the attention and detail given to all the areas of "us".  Attention to spiritual matters, attention to intellectual matters and attention to physical matters, have all ~ as a force of one ~ met us. 

Good or not the holistic distance runner wraps their strength around complete expressions in every opportunity.  Good or not.