Running and cheering • Seeing beauty • Coming alongside
For encouragement or joy or hope or camaraderie or all of the above
Hi to all my readers. I have several things for you to read today and hope that one or more brings you encouragement or joy or hope or camaraderie or all of the above.
Today was to be the Twin Cities Marathon. Not that I run it in, but my husband and I typically walk down the block and stand alongside the route, along with our neighbors and loads of other people, and cheer the bold and brave runners on their 26.2-mile route. Today, though, the sky is clear and the air warming to mid-80s with high humidity, and so the marathon was canceled due to excessive heat. Even so, on the way home from church, about 10:30 am, I was delighted to see many marathon runners yet wearing their tags and running along the route, using the sidewalk not the now-open road, and being cheered by people who had gathered on the route, regardless that the race had been cancelled. To me it was an image of doing what you’ve worked hard at and trained for, no matter that anyone is watching or anyone is going to greet you at the end with a ribbon.
A couple weeks ago, when cleaning out a box of pocket notebooks I’ve kept for far too long, I found a note I’d made many years ago, now a bit faded, when I first read the novel Charming Billy by Alice McDermott. The note was a couple lines from a scene that I’ve reflected on multiple times in the decades since. Billy, the book’s main character is out of New York City and on Long Island. The year is mid-40s. He is overwhelmed by the beauty of the ocean and the houses and the black starry sky. “I never knew,” Billy said, “I never knew what it was like out here…. Isn’t that something? I had no idea those places were out here…. It almost makes you wonder what else you don’t know about yet.”
That last line, read it again: “It almost make you wonder what else you don’t know about yet.”
The email newsletter from Over the Rhine that recently arrived in my inbox included this quote from Mary Oliver, from her book Upstream: Selected Essays: “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” I think Mary Oliver would approve of a recent move I made, resigning from my full-time medical writing position and returning to part-time freelance work. There were multiple reasons, but one of the key reasons was to give more time to creative writing. I’ve written this line on an index card and hung it on the bulletin board above my desk as an encouragement. Perhaps you also need this encouragement?
On a recent morning walk, I watched a group of adolescent boys ride past me on their bikes. Three or four were clustered together, riding fast, and behind them about 20 feet were another two going at a slower pace. Of the two, one was a head or more shorter than the other and those who raced ahead. Maybe he was younger. Maybe he was built with a smaller frame or on the not-yet side of a growth spurt.
“If you ever feel you’re being left behind, tell us to go slower,” said the taller boy to the shorter.
The taller boy didn’t join the others and yell back to the shorter boy to hurry up. He didn’t come alongside him and say, Can’t you go faster? He didn’t sigh and shake his head. He didn’t sneer. He didn’t roll his eyes.
Instead, he rode alongside and said so very kindly—you’ll have to take my word for this—“If you ever feel you’re being left behind, tell us to go slower.”
I wish I could tag this taller boy to see who he grows up to become. He gave me hope for what is ahead.
Thank you for reading. May your eyes be open to the beauty that you have yet never seen. May you hang onto something needfully creative rather than let it go. May you come alongside another or may another come alongside you. May you cheer and be cheered.
[Photo: taken of the bark of a red pine at Itasca State Park in north central Minnesota earlier this summer. The headwaters of the Mississipi River is here (shown below) at Lake Itasca.]
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Congratulations on your job change, Nancy. I'm rooting for you!
Such a rich mix to ponder and hold close or to set at a distance and let it be.