Confessions Of A Flabby Ironman

January 8 - Our Pilot Our Guide
The following passage is taken from a seminary commencement address

Christ is our employer as surely as the general contractor is the carpenter's employer, only the chances are that this side of Paradise we will never see his face except mirrored darkly in dreams and shadows, if we're lucky, and in each other's faces. He is our general, but the chances are that this side of Paradise we will never hear his voice except in the depth of our own inner silence and in each other's voices. He is our shepherd, but the chances are we will never feel his touch except as we are touched by the joy and pain and holiness of our own life and each other's lives. He is our pilot, our guide, our true, fast, final friend and judge, but often when we need him most, he seems farthest away because he will always have gone on ahead, leaving only the faint print of his feet on the path to follow. And the world blows leaves across the path. And branches fall. And darkness falls. We are, all of us, Mary Magdalene, who reached out to him at the end only to embrace empty air. We are the ones who stopped for a bit to eat that evening at Emmaus and , as soon as they saw who it was that was sitting there at the table with them, found him vanished from their sight. Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Rahab, Sarah are our brothers and sisters because, like them, we all must live in faith, as the great chapter put it with a staggering honesty that should be a lesson to us all, "not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar," and only from afar. And yet the country we seek and do not truly find, at least not here, not now, the heavenly country and homeland, is there somewhere as surely as our yearning for it is there; and I think that our yearning for it is itself as much a part of the truth of it as our yearning for love or beauty or peace is a part of those truths. And Christ is there with us on our way as surely as the way itself is there that has brought us to this place. It has brought us. We are here. He is with us - that is our faith - but only in unseen ways, as subtle and pervasive as air.

~Frederick Buechner

I love Buechner, he says things in a way that sums up what I have to say in a way much more eloquent than I could ever say it. I wasn't particularly good at reading my copy of The Message yesterday (I accidentally left it in my car), but it's sitting next to me here in my office today and I'm going to continue working my way through Ecclesiastes.

This morning I'm at 232. Strangely, looking in the mirror this morning I noticed that when I sucked in my gut, I could see the bottom of my rib cage jutting out under a layer of fat. It was kind of strange.

Angela has decided that she needs to do a week to two weeks along with me to deal with some crap that she wants to deal with. She was talking last night about how she hasn't been tempted by the biscotti that she sells at her store or anything like that, she's been tempted more-so by images on the TV. Emeril cooking this salmon dish on his program, a Papa John's ad for cheese bread (that I will fully admit I looked at wantonly the other day while on the treadmill).

I spent some good time on Sunday talking with two fairly new friends from the young marrieds group Angela and I are a part of. They've been reading the posts on Facebook and it was really good to just sit down and talk through what I've experienced so far. I thought it was really cool that they were genuinely interested.

Lately it seems like people are mostly freaked our or amazed about this fast, like it's some sort of thing that they could never do. I don't think I'm particularly special. I know that I have a mixture of talents that have allowed me to excel at my job, but I have all kinds of fallibilities that keep me from being any different from anyone else. So when someone tells me that they don't think they could handle something like this, or a century bike ride, or the Ironman I have to go, "You can! You really can! There's nothing that I'm doing or that I've done that you couldn't do!"

I think if you're willing to extend the effort, God will fill in the cracks. When I did my first double century, a 200 mile ride out of the Twin Cities and up and around a gigantic lake called Lake Mille Lacs . There were quite a few times I wondered if I could make it. By the time I finished I had been pedaling for over 14 hours. That's a lot of loneliness... while it's not 40 days, the sensation you go through as you're pedaling in silence (these are country roads and while there's an occasional dog bark, there're no iPods or anything like that) is I'm finding, quite similar. Time slows down, especially when you fall out of the zone. There would be periods where it almost felt like time stopped as I felt my body pedal and barely perceived any movement in the grassland all around me.

My mind raced throughout the day, thinking about how if I just pedaled one mile an hour faster I'd cut this much time off and I'd be done at time x:xx. Then, after slowing down, my brain would let me know, "Hey! Guess what! Now you're not going to finish until time z:zz!" To get through that, I had to still myself and meditate. Find the place in me where I COULD meditate. Athletes might call it the zone, and I think that's apropo, but I also think that it's not totally out there to acknowledge that it was a time where I was meditating with God. Often when I'm riding I'll find bits of worship songs or other lyrics floating in my head. I find myself singing out loud or just remarking to myself or my riding partner about the beauty of God's creation. I'm finding just a little bit of that in this fast.

Fasting as an endurance race. I guess I wouldn't have initially thought about it like that, but I think there's something to be said for it. I'm sure I was drawn to it because I'm drawn to stupidly large sized things. I mean, I do think that everyone is capable of an ironman, or a century, or a marathon, or a forty day fast. We just have a habit of falling into what my friend Commodore likes to call Common Man Syndrome. Maybe the reason that I've done these things is that I have a propensity to want to break through that. Like I said, it doesn't make me anything special, just different.

Have to get to work, this is a bit of a mess, but hopefully it makes some sense. Maybe I can expound on it later.