I cannot run at the present time. My hematologist and my internal medicine doctor are in conspiracy to place me in Hospital Prison because I have recently experienced internal bleeding which has manifested itself as small internal hematomas down my thigh muscle. I assumed it was a blood clot, only to learn after a few hours at the ER on New Year's Day that I have graduated to being both a bleeder and a clotter, rather than just a mere clotter.
I am moving up in the world, in a sense.
I have a deadly blood clotting disorder which I imagine will some day cause me introduction to the angels of heaven who guard the River Styx, over which I must cross. I treat this disorder as a person who I do not like: I tend to it only when necessary, and ignore it whenever possible. I don't even return its phone calls.
While doctors tinker with my blood thinner injections, I am left to remember my runs, rather than to experience them. Sometimes, I guess, the memory of the thing can be better than the thing itself. As William Wordsworth noted, "I gazed and gazed, but little thought, what wealth to me that show had brought. For oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude, and then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils."
I cannot get one experience out of my mind. It was near sunset on Christmas evening. I only had time to run a route from my home, and down to a nearby parish, where I knew the parking lot to be empty and paved with soft asphalt. The outside parameter of the lot is exactly 1/2 mile. From my home, over the bridge, and down an asphalt path to the church lot, then around the lot 4x and back is a an even 5-mile run.
I was feeling the love. I ran fast and my mind sank into a peaceful place as I made an even path to the church with the tall steeple. Used to be, I spent considerable time under that very steeple. For many reasons, I have taken a sabbatical from that steeple and, for now, I am content to view it from the outside in. As consolation, I attend the eternal church of the running path, where God joins me when He pleases.
Recently, while out of town, I interrupted a 20-mile run with a visit to a priest where I confessed and received absolution, for sins committed by me which were "known and unknown." I thought to myself, with head bowed and eyes closed, that this guy sure knew how to cover all of the bases. If he would just give me what I call "anticipatory absolution," for sins not yet committed, but which sins I anticipated committing. Maybe I should have asked for it specifically, but I did not. It was bad enough that I was an outsider to his parish sitting there sweating all over his chair from my run, while I muttered my act of contrition like a broken child. I couldn't possibly reveal that I anticipated future sin. Don't we all so anticipate it?
As luck would have it, this priest whom I had not previously met, was also a runner. As we conversed about sin and redemption and holiness, he incorporated running metaphors for my understanding. He gave me food for thought and thought for food. He wrapped up the session by giving me a list of things to ponder while running.
Holy of Holy's! I had a priest who dished out penance to be served while meditating on a long run! He blessed me and my decision to take a sabbatical from the steeple, and reminded me that God is everywhere.
And so it goes that on Christmas evening, I was circling the steeple from outside, all alone, but not alone. I decided to jog slowly into the prayer garden, which is .4 mile with various stations of the cross devised for prayer. As I entered the prayer garden, there was a small area of bricks which had donor names on them. It was covered with a thick sheet of ice.
I did not notice the patch of ice on the bricks because I was reading the sign at the entrance to the prayer garden. This sign displayed several rules about prayer garden etiquette. I found it so odd. One of the rules said something about how only normal conversation is allowed in the prayer garden. I wondered whether talking aloud to God is considered normal. Another rule stated that the prayer garden is monitored by a security company and said that any violations of these rules could lead to arrest by the security guards. I tried to visualize a person being arrested in the prayer garden for violating prayer garden conduct rules.
It made me want to violate a rule to see what would happen. Would the pigs use handcuffs? Would I be placed in a paddy wagon? What would the formal charges be? Could I get some Muslims or Hindus on my jury, because they pray real loud, and perhaps might sympathize with me as a prayer garden offender.
It was at that smart-ass moment that I became airborne. My legs both flew forward into the air ahead of my body. I had no time to react. I was twisting my body to avoid falling onto the ice. It happened so fast. By then it was nearly dark. I could see knocking myself out in the sub-zero temperature in the prayer garden at dark. The headlines would read: "Lawyer found frozen to death in prayer garden". I couldn't let myself end that way.
I avoided a fall by twisting and contorting my body. It was the kind of thing that should never be on camera, and movements for which I would surely have been arrested by the prayer garden police had they seen them.
It is not lost on me that I gave up all physical control, momentarily, in a prayer garden. I lost all ability to manage my direction and to save myself, and for a few split seconds, I was utterly helpless. I had no choice but to surrender.
William James said in The Varieties of Religious Experience, that prayer "is a process wherein work is really done and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, either psychological or material, within the phenomenal world." I can now officially vouch for that.
During those few seconds, I said a few, what we Catholics call, ejaculates (love that!), which are intensely short, but meaningful prayers, as I flew threw the air. Soon after, I ran back home. For whatever reason, a Latin phrase played like a perpetual rewinding tape in my head, all of the way home. It is important to note that I do NOT speak or know Latin, at all. I am not sure where I learned this Latin phrase, but I know it came to me as I slid around the ice at the entry to a prayer garden, outside of the tall steeple, and all alone, but not alone. It was:
Lux in tenebrs lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt. This is to say, "The light shines in darkness and the darkness has not understood it."
I think I understand why the phrase was brought to me during my moment of physical helplessness.
While I anticipate my next run, praying that my blood will behave, I see that the path is not waiting, but is inside, as a light shining in the darkness.
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