Recovery

When the long run has taken its toll on the body, recovery is in order.  

Seasoned runners are very in tune with their bodies.  When I began distance running, I ignored my body's warning signs and sought instead to push my body to its outer limits.   There are numerable benefits to pushing the body.  The endorphin rush is always worth the trouble of the extra miles.  The additional burned calories makes the size 6 blue jeans a reality.  The extra time spent on the path means less time working and dealing with life's stress.  The more time I run, the more I can escape.  There are no people to spoil a good path while running.  Because I prefer to run alone, the solitude shelters me from outside noise.  Bills must be paid and clients tended to and children nurtured, all of which disappears on the path.  It is just me and the path.  

Positive enticements notwithstanding, there is a bad side to running in excess with no regard for physical limits:  the body will break down.  Once I began to realize the bad side of running, I began the journey toward recovery.

A runner who is not in recovery is not a runner in the true sense of the word.  He or she is instead a person whose legs are moving to the beat of gratification.  This will make for an injured runner.  This will make for a broken runner.  This will make a non-runner, in the end.  

There are many ways to recover from a long run.  STEP 1 of recovery for the body is knowing when the body needs a break, while realizing that the runner inside would never stop running if allowed by custom, convention, and physicality.

STEP 2 to recovery from the long run is stopping the run so that recovery can take place.  This requires a belief that stopping the run will restore the body.  The Runner Within will bargain with the mind.  It will rationalize and plead to remain on the path for long periods, every day.  Recovery requires restoration of the body and that means stopping the run.

STEP 3 requires for the avid runner to be realistic about the length and type of recovery warranted.  Sometimes this requires that the runner surrender to the advice of the greater runner (for there is always a greater runner).  Sometimes it requires simply to trust the higher instinct which knows the body's limits.  Many times it requires pain as a reminder of the limit.

STEP 4 of recovery would have the runner take an inventory of the body and its aches, to better assess the length and type of recovery needed.  This must be an honest assessment, which is not easy for the one who longs for the path. 

At some point, the runner may have to admit to another runner or to a physician the exact nature of the bodily limitation which makes recovery important.  Often times the runner will hide from herself the reality of the body, which makes understanding and naming the problem critical.  A runner who accomplishes this task has gained STEP 5. 

The runner must be prepared to have the body fully recovered.  This means that there must be a true desire for bodily healing which outweighs the instant urge to run.  When that true desire materializes, the runner has made it to STEP 6.

STEP 7 requires humility from the runner because the runner must understand the body's limits in order to remove the body's shortcomings on the long run.  Humility is centered on the possibility that the runner cannot control all that the body is, and therefore may need to rely upon outsiders, or minimally, upon a rest from the path.

While resting, the runner should take an inventory of why the body broke down and understand how to avoid this in the future.  STEP 8 is not difficult because often times the injured runner has no choice but to inventory, because a run is not possible.  The runner must be able to understand how the body was harmed by the run and be willing to make amends to the body.

When possible, the runner should directly address the body's needs, unless doing so would cause the body more harm than good.  STEP 9 would not have the runner binge on food, alcohol, drugs or cigarettes while trying to recover the body.  Rather, the runner should care for the body while at rest so that the run may return in full.

Many runners never make it to STEP 10, which requires that the runner take a continued inventory of the body and its limits and act promptly to prevent abusing the body on the path.  This is because many runners, once healed, gorge on the run and ignore the body's warnings until the runner is thrown back to the beginning.

The fortunate runner will pray and meditate to improve his or her contact with the body.  This means that the runner, after recovery, will realize that the run is one long recovery for the soul and for the body.  The oneness of the attention to the body's limits when placed with mindfulness of thought and soul is the center of STEP 11. 

Finally, the runner who understands recovery of the body can and should carry that message to other runners, through both word and deed.  STEP 12 feeds the body because it causes the runner to remember, through example, the body's limits.

And now it is time for my "midnight" run...

Language of the Soul

This afternoon I ran 11-miles while I considered the "birthday" of two dead people in my life. On March 10, 2005, my client was executed. I celebrate his birthday each year on his execution date. He was set free by the needle, an irony of proportion, in light of the needle tracks on his arms the day he was arrested.

I associate the hawk with my client and when I see a hawk, I feel his presence in a metaphoric sense. I recently read that metaphor is the language of the soul. This is true, which is why I can see the metaphor even in a pile of crap.

You see baby, I've got soul, and lots of it...

Not long ago a hawk hovered over me. It faced into the wind and my back was to the wind. I was alone on a long corridor next to a very large water canal. I had taken my rosary out of a pocket and I can only imagine that the glisten of the gold in the sun attracted the huge hawk. The sun was behind this hawk and so I could only see a dark silhouette as time stood still. I stopped my run and gazed for what seemed an eternity at this giant hawk which was approximately 8-feet from my head.

I asked the hawk what he wanted. If the hawk answered me, my spiritual density blocked the message. It was as though he was warning me of something and time needed to stand still for him to convey the message.

Approximately 3-months later, I pulled into my driveway with my 2 children in the car. A hawk larger than the one which had hovered swept down over my windshield. It swooped close to the ground, up my driveway, and into my backyard. This hawk was obscene in his gestures. I told a friend that I was warned by the great hawk, but that I did not know what the warning was.

My sister was in a car wreck 6-nights ago. She was 46-years old--three years my senior. She died 2 nights ago. I had the gift of her last fall, for a few brief days, when we walked the beach in Florida and sat before the eternal sunset as we discussed life and love and God and our childhoods. One day, we floated together on one raft with our legs dangling and our arms hugging the raft. She shared her secret with me and I took it from her and kept it in a safe place.

My sister suffered since age 17 with bi-polar disorder and at times it got the best of her.

I loved my sister, but I hated her illness. She helped me to understand the mentally ill and this has impacted my legal work. I learned from her that the mentally ill do not belong in jails and prisons. I learned from her that the mentally ill have souls and fears and loves, just like the rest of us, but that they are obstructed from sharing their gifts with us at times.

Prior to her death 2 nights ago, I had not spoken to my sister since November, 2007, because she went from floating on that raft with me to her illness before I could say goodbye.

She told me that my running around in circles was senseless, and that I got nowhere.

She stayed awake until 3 a.m. and left at 6 a.m. "to watch the sunrise", even though the sun does not rise on the Gulf of Mexico. It sets.

It was not her. It was her illness. I simply drew my clear boundary to protect myself.

I lost my sister well before her car accident. I began letting go of her months ago when her illness showed itself to me. I knew then that she was headed for a path of destruction and I feared for whomever might be with her on the path when it happened.

For whatever reason, my concerns were lost on others. I did no convincing. I knew what I knew. I knew that my sister had driven me down an airport runway at 11 p.m. one night and that she had no idea what she had done until I screamed her back to reality. I knew she wanted to be free of her illness so much that at times she left her lithium in its container, with the prayer that perhaps she would not need it.

It was not my sister, because she was sweet and loving and harmless and she was a perfect mother. She was the most thoughtful person I knew. She was a beautiful sister.

For me, my sister died when her illness took her for the last time.

I was sensitive to her illness. I knew it well. She showed it to me in a way she did not show it to her other siblings. I have to believe there was a reason for that. Perhaps deep inside she knew I would protect her from danger, or I would locate her in the dark when no one else could or would.

She knew that I knew her illness.

I did not save my sister this time. I did not fight her and pull her in my direction toward safety. I closed myself away from her illness this time.

Now she is dead.

Goodbye my beautiful sister. I love you. I pray you are now free as the hawk.

Crossing the Drawbridge

Last fall, when life was carefree and happy, before I was told that I required a new right hip, before I experienced internal bleeding in my right thigh, before my anti-DNA lupus antibody climbed, and before I began my journey of surrender in pure love...when I chased butterflies as a child, and photographed flowers with no time boundary, and loved for granted...along that way of my path, there was a drawbridge which pulled upon my soul like a magnet.

Each day I ran past the drawbridge, and I watched as the small boats waited patiently, as if in prayer on bended knees. The boats requested passage on the journey with their still silence. The tower-keeper eventually opened the drawbridge and allowed passage. I never ran past the point of the drawbridge. I do not know why. At that time, I was just not at all curious about the journey for the boats once permitted to cross. I was fixated only upon the point of passage, where the bridge drew open from inside and brought forth two large wings, which lifted to the sky...a man-made structure which recognized the pure symbolism of our dialogue with God.

Despite being pulled toward the symbol, its message was lost upon me at the time. Now I realize that the drawing open was an opening to God and the still silence was a necessary gesture for those wanting passage on the journey. Thankfully, the bridge imprinted my soul even though spiritual density tried its best to block the imprint.

On my final day with the drawbridge, I was disappointed to see that no boats requested passage during my run. Toward the end of my run, I was a half mile away from the bridge, when I saw a boat pass me in the direction of the bridge. I knew what this meant. With blind will, similar to that which caused me to later chase a huge buck across the ravine during the Griffy Lake run, I sprinted toward the drawbridge with the hope I might get a photo. My camera phone had no zoom, and so I had to run as fast as my legs would carry me.

I got my photo, from afar, which I now realize is exactly where I belonged on the stage of the metaphor at that time. It was an opening up that I did not comprehend in the transcendental sense, but which I recognized on an instinctual spiritual level. It was similar to when I studied in China and I knew no Chinese, but I quickly understood what was being said in a general sense. It was a survival thing because I used to pay cab drivers to take me where no foreigners were allowed, and then I had no way of getting myself back to the beginning. I used cases of cigarettes and a written Chinese note which gave the name of The East China Institute of Law and Politics, which I knew phonetically as hwa deng sheng faw shey uey...this landed me further away from school each time I tried to pronounce it.

Like the foreigner trying to engage a language she does not know, I recognize there is something from God being spoken, but I rarely comprehend. More often, I get myself further away from my home as I know it to be when I attempt to communicate in the language for which I have no fluency. I pass spiritually phonetic chicken scratches to the passers by on the journey and inevitably push myself further from home.

All of this revelation has led to a weekly Lenten pancake breakfast with my very dear friend. I'll call her Anne. We discuss our journeys with God. We are "reading" a CD on tape together which she introduced me to which is called "Entering the Castle" and it is based upon the mystical lessons of St. Terese of Avila. I cannot get past CD 1, and my friend is stuck on CD 2. We are both digesting the material in a way that only two like-minds can do.

It is all so relevant. Everything. That is the problem. The pancakes are relevant most of all. They are most necessary. They temporarily relieve the suffering and the pain.

As I explained to my friend, a person whom I feel completely free to trust in the healthiest sense, I am on my knees now on a way I have never been. I cannot speak a prayer other than the words, "help me, help me, help me, help me...." and I utter these words all day, every day, and all night, even in my sleep. Even the Our Father seems too complicated to me right now, and so my last trek to mass consisted of me holding hands during that prayer saying in my mind the only prayer that I could say, "helpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelpme..."

Clint Eastwood's character in the movie Million Dollar Baby, had clearly lived a life of regret, pain, and suffering. He saw hope in a young female boxer who had to shake his soul to the core to get him to feel again. In the end, she had to leave him in a very bad and unexpected way. He prayed over her body and on his knees he made the sign of the cross in a manner that only a lost and spiritually disoriented man could. Because of his deep pain and suffering, he was unable to even complete a simple gesture such a making the sign of the cross.

The point is, though, that he tried anyway: He attended mass, in spite of himself, and he got on his knees and he prayed and he signed himself...he offered up his sloppy and sad and depressed attempts to be with God. I suspect that his internal words of prayer were simply "Help me, help me, help me..."

This brings me to Robert B. I took his case pro bono in 1999 and worked on it until 2007 in an attempt to free him from a 60-year sentence for a murder that he did not commit. I blindly fought for Robert while he did his time inside. I located the person who committed the murder and put him on the stand and got him to admit that he was present at the scene of the crime and did all of the things that the murderer did. He took the 5th. Robert was never legally vindicated, but he was factually and morally vindicated. He contacted me a few days after he was released from prison. I met him downtown and he wore a polyester suit with fake alligator shoes and his hair was braided and I hugged him in the public restaurant and I could not let him go. I could not have been happier to see one of my God-given soul mates in life, free at last.

Robert wore his sunglasses indoors. He was jumpy and shy and most afraid of his surroundings. Robert was held against his will for 30-years and was blinded by the light out of prison, even when indoors. I wanted to fix his soul but I could not. I could only tell him that I respected him, that he was my hero, and that I would do whatever it took to help him on his journey.

He asked nothing. He told me that I was his hero and that he was a permanent fixture in my life and that if I ever needed anything, he would be there "to cover my back." From Robert, this means the world. These words are better than any gold or treasure any person could ever give to me. Robert's vow to "cover my back" was a spiritual commitment from his soul to mine. It was his way of telling me that he loved me and that he was thankful for my friendship.

He recognized the running affect on my body and wondered aloud whether had I been thinner back in 1999 would I have won his post-conviction case. It was an honest thought, and Robert knows no thought other than an honest one.

Not long after, Robert was kind enough to address my Tuesday evening Criminal Law class, whose members he held spellbound for 3 hours, in spite of his prison lingo and lack of any education. He moved an entire room of people with his gentleness.

On our ride home, Robert shared with me that "God is great. God is good. I thank God every day."

After he exited my car, I knew inside I would likely never see Robert again. Maybe I am wrong, but he was headed to Louisiana, where he will disappear, I suspect. I felt a deep sadness for him and for his life, and he told me not to feel sad for his life. He reminded me again how good that God is. He told me that bitterness becomes a person inside and that he wants to shine inside and he said that God is with him and with me, and asked me not to be sad for him and not to regret that I did not win his case legally. He told me that God put him exactly where he was supposed to be on his journey.

The next day, as I ran where my hip allowed me to run, I thought that if Robert knows that God is good after having spent 30-years in prison for a murder that he beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt did not commit, then God must be good. If Robert doesn't belly-ache, then why should I ruminate about my hip or my blood or whatever else comes to my body?

On a later run, I considered that if Robert is not bitter about love lost, then how in God's name can I not surrender in love?

Robert inadvertently helped me run through myself on my longest run.

I told him when he gets back from Louisiana to call me, and we will have some pancakes...