Spring Cleaning

Not long ago, I promised myself that I'd spend the first rainy weekend day after the Boston Marathon thoroughly reviewing the contents of my room. Last Saturday, waking to the sound of gentle rain, I knew that it was going to be a long day... and hoped that it would be a productive one, as I didn't want to lose any subsequent lovely weather to the task that lay before me.

Sorting paperwork

After a refreshing morning run and some pleasant breakfast conversation with my brothers, I headed upstairs to undertake the first (and hardest) phase of the project: my desk. One drawer at a time, all kinds of paperwork, envelopes, folders, and similar items were spread out on the floor... one pile for discards, many others for reclassifying the material that I'd keep. A few hours later, my carpet was clear of debris, my desk drawers were neatly closed, and I'd carried more than 15 pounds of paper to the shredder bin or the recycling bucket.

Clothes for donation

I spent the afternoon going through my clothes, thinning out a wardrobe that has seen me through four distinct seasons for the past four years in New England. I didn't diminish its scope, yet I did narrow its variety, culling enough items to fill two hefty plastic bags with a range of attire suited to Worcester's broad range of weather. The next morning, I heaved them into a donation bin adjacent to the city's freight rail yard, completing the process of spring cleaning.

During the course of the day, a number of my brothers passed by my open door and commented upon my progress. One offered simple advice– "When in doubt, toss it!"– while another inquired wittily, "When's the yard sale?" Many stopped to chat across the threshold for a minute or so, some commenting on their own practice of periodically reviewing and thinning their possessions. When it came time to relax with the brethren before dinner, I felt a certain lightness, yet also a renewed sense of rootedness. Discarding so much paper and so many clothes gave me greater peace about the feasibility and smoothness of an upcoming move, but also reminded me that I'd much rather focus on the immaterial possessions that are genuine treasures– particularly the relationships of brotherhood that exist in my community and lend so much support and joy to my days. With notably less in my room, I'll hopefully be more apt to regularly appreciate those gifts that aren't possessed or owned, yet held with great care and devotion.

Spring Training

In the weeks since the Boston Marathon, I've been attending not only to my emotional and psychological recovery, but also to my physical recovery. Particularly amid a stretch of delightful spring weather, I've been finding joy in simply getting outside to exercise for the sake of relishing the gift of fitness and the blessing of each new morning. At the same time, in giving myself a break from running, I've embraced the freedom to indulge in other activities.

Spring cleaning the road bike

My Trek 1500... 15+ years old and still going strong!

The spell of mild, dry days has been marvelous for cycling. During my first ride of the season, on some lovely rural roads in towns north of Worcester, my friends and I noted with great admiration the efforts of various highway workers who had cleared the shoulders of leftover sand and grit from the winter, exposing the pristine blacktop that cyclists love. The gift of a smooth ride allowed us to savor the radiant beauty of tranquil marshes, forests awash with budding trees, and verdant fields– even the one at the top of a long hill, which advertised from afar freshly its freshly manured state as we sought to filter oxygen from odor while cranking up a steady grade.

Glencliff Trail, Mt. Moosilauke
Benton NH

Mt. Moosilauke summit (4,802 feet)
Benton NH

My spring training isn't entirely without purpose; it's been my practice for a few years to have a specific post-marathon goal in my calendar before I get to the starting line. This time around, it's an early June trip with friends (a repeat expedition for me) to Maine's Baxter State Park and a hike to the summit of Mount Katahdin, weather and wits permitting. As a warmup, while in New Hampshire the other weekend for a conference at Dartmouth, I was able to round up some friends for a hike up Mount Moosilauke. It was the season-opening hike for each of us, and as we discovered when we encountered 6 to 12 inches of packed snow on the trail's upper reaches, we were perhaps starting the season a bit early. Our strident efforts, collectively assessed every 20 minutes or so for their level of safety and sanity, paid off; clear skies in all directions from the peak afforded us views that stretched from the Green Mountains to southern Quebec to Mount Washington, the White Mountains, and Lake Winnipesaukee– more than 20,000 square miles of valleys, lakes, hills, and mountains.

Greenough Boulevard path
Watertown MA

Greenough Boulevard path
Watertown MA

The fitness that my friends and I have chosen to cultivate and share makes our adventures on the roads and trails possible, but we wouldn't be as drawn to the outdoors if it weren't for the real stars of the spring training season– the flora returning to life after a long winter. These daffodils along the Charles River are a short walk or drive from anywhere in the towns on Boston's western edge, and the only training needed to enjoy them is an ability and motivation to simply notice them. In my case, it took a conscious decision to park my car nearby (I was running early for a meeting), settle on a bench, and take in this charming spring scene. Mountaintops may be far less accessible, and cycling far more exhilarating in its rush of speed, but literally stopping to smell and gaze upon these flowers was just as rewarding as any peak I might gain or bend I might round.

May your spring be a blessed season, whatever training you might undertake.

Assignment

I'm participating in a faculty seminar that explores "the spirit life of art and ideas." In addition to a slate of thought-provoking readings, intriguing conversations, and a marvelous film on the works of artist Andy Goldsworthy, the dozen of us in the seminar have been given three assignments. The final assignment, to be completed by May 1, is both straightforward and challenging:

Create an art installation in a public space somewhere on campus (not your office). Do not seek permission; do not tell anyone what you are doing. Your installation should be inherently impermanent. Visit and document changes (and, if applicable, responses) to your installation over a few days or weeks.

Although I've narrowed down my ideas into a feasible project and chosen a site for my artwork, I've hesitated to undertake the work of collecting and arranging the materials I have in mind. Facing the elements of that "artist's block"– my tendencies to self-criticism and perfectionism, my ambivalence about maintaining anonymity while working in a place where I'm likely to be noticed– is surely a more monumental endeavor than the effort I'll invest in the installation itself. I suspect I'm not alone in the group, for I haven't noticed any other installations around campus, and there aren't many parts of it that I miss in my daily and weekly rounds.

Then, suddenly, I stumbled across one today. It wasn't there yesterday. I'm convinced it's someone's fulfillment of the assignment, but I'm not sure whose work it is. It's something I never would have imagined, and yet it's perfect for the space... a stairwell that gets reasonable use despite its remoteness. I won't say anything more, inviting you to contemplate this surprising creation just as I did... and to perhaps undertake the above assignment on your own.

Ambition

In the midst of a stop-action series I've been developing this spring, I've become much more attentive to sudden and subtle growth in a variety of the campus flora, in addition to the crabapple tree and rhododendron bush I've been photographing each day. Although there have been some lovely days over the past week or two, a sense that winter is fully behind us has been slower to arrive. For example, as I went about my floral rounds today, my subjects and I were braving temperatures in the 30s with a chilly mist under gloomy overcast skies. Students, professors, and staff seemed halfway back to their wintry hibernation habits as they shuffled from building to building.

Ciampi Hall lawn
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA

Yet the plants seemed ambitious, even brazen, in the face of another chilly day. Pansies lived up to their hardy reputation, crabapple blooms didn't grow any further (as far as I could tell), but they didn't retreat. Some sprouts that I didn't notice the other day are rising assertively from our recently regraded garden... sprung from seeds that no one intentionally planted.

As the campus community gears up for the semester's final push– reading period begins in two weeks, and Commencement is a month from tomorrow– the grounds are already setting the tone. God willing, all will look wondrous by the end of May, and ambitious efforts seen and unseen, intentional and inexorable, will draw the admiration that they merit.

Boston Recovery

Ordinarily, I'd follow my running of the Boston Marathon with some reflections on the day of the race, a week or so off from running, and a more or less routine approach to the physical recovery process. Yet last week saw no ordinary Boston Marathon, and the coming days, weeks, and months necessitate a very different recovery process.

Boston Marathon Finish Line
Copley Square, Boston MA
14 April 2013

Marathoners, by virtue of their hundreds of miles of running over several months, do some intentional and measured harm to their bodies. Training is really about strengthening bone and flesh, as well as mind and nerves, to survive (and eventually thrive) under ever-increasing exertions. Running 26.2 miles on Patriots Day is an emphatic exclamation point, but the sentence it concludes is far more personal, hidden from throngs of cheering spectators, but known to family, friends, and running partners. The motivations, details, and adventures of getting to the starting line are the stories that animate the athletes' village in Hopkinton, where friends are made with the person who sat next to you on the shuttle bus, the runner who's next to you in the portajohn line, and the person who notices a common detail on the apparel that you might soon donate to charity. ("Do you work at Boston Children's?" "No, but my friend was a resident there, and she gave me this hoodie.")

Ever since the actions of two young men started Boston's people down an arduous course they never expected nor wanted to run, my prayers have been focused on those whose lives were cruelly ended or forever altered. The rising rhetoric of "Boston strong," and the courage with which over a million of us ran through the toughest first days of this new course, points me toward my faith in Christ who restores all things, heals all wounds, and companions us throughout the long, gradual, yet unstoppable progress towards these glorious ends. Thoughtless and impersonal harm was done to us, and we've been responding to the task of recovery with truly inspiring and deeply personal generosity and solidarity. It will take a long time; after my first marathon, it took nearly three months for me to again feel the same level of physical fitness and stamina that blessed me at that marathon's starting line. Whatever time and mileage my physical recovery requires this year, it will be no less than what my psychological and emotional recovery will require. In talking to fellow runners and Boston-area friends, I've heard the same sentiments.

Prudential Center, Boston MA
14 April 2013

A week ago, no one anticipated how relevant Adidas' "all in for Boston" slogan might suddenly become. We've been blessed with the resolution of the manhunt, and a weeklong (and welcome) surge of solidarity and support that raised up a stunned city and gave great hope to the fallen and the surviving. It's my hope that we're mustering that energy not for a sprint, but for a marathon, not only in Boston, but also in all of our neighborhoods, towns, and cities. I hope that we, as a nation of communities, will go "all in" for the training that will achieve lasting peace, harmony, and justice that remains to be gained and secured for all people. That goal's exclamation point is still a long way off, but we can all start writing our sentences in that story today, and every day. Recovery, just like training, is one day at a time.

Emptiness

Lafayette Cemetery #1
New Orleans LA

But at daybreak on the first day of the week they took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb; but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were puzzling over this, behold, two men in dazzling garments appeared to them. They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. They said to them, “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day.” And they remembered his words.

–Luke 24:1-8

With all due respect to a certain member of the Koenig clan, this image has been persistently arising as I meditate upon the above Gospel passage during this first week of the Easter season. Encountering this empty tomb, and others like it, during a week in New Orleans last June was somewhat unnerving, yet also an unexpected exercise in resurrection faith. If I do believe in eternal life and something quite distinct from, yet somehow continuous with, the mysterious blend of body and spirit in this earthly life, then this scene shouldn't be entirely macabre. If anything, I should have identified with the puzzlement of the women referenced in Luke's account of Easter morning... they find something quite unexpected, yet recall that they had been told about this ahead of time.

My desk, sans laptop

The same sense of surprising emptiness struck me as my gaze paused upon my desk while I was back home for my lunch break, stopping in my room to brush my teeth before returning to work. Although I try to keep my desk at home relatively organized, it tends to get covered by a variety of articles– a sacramentary (for purposes of study and prayer), my running log, a few mementos, a picture of my goddaughter– in the long intervals between dusting its surface. The empty area typically occupied by my laptop– on my desk at work at the time– suddenly seemed as shockingly gaping as an empty tomb, a space from which something was missing, although in another (reasonably) expected place.

Our society doesn't seem to like emptiness. We fill our roads with vehicles (and expand them to accommodate more traffic), we fill communication devices with text and images, we fill time (often scheduling it accordingly) with activity in a way that seems to value busyness over rest. An empty shelf in the fridge or the pantry, an empty space on a desk, an empty wall in a room or an office– these all seem to suggest something not just missing, but lacking, a void to be filled. There's that old adage about nature abhoring a vacuum, and plenty of examples from the natural world to prove it true.

Flowering crabapple
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA

Yet everyone acquainted with Mr. and/or Mrs. Koenig, and with Jesus, would surely agree that filling the void of their respective tombs is not the ideal situation. Rather, it's the emptiness of these spaces that speak of the power, influence, and presence of those who no longer inhabit them. He is not here, the angels say to the women entering Jesus' tomb. What the emptiness yields is of unspeakable value, stirs joy that cannot be fully expressed in words and gestures alone, and accomplishes wondrous deeds. To a much smaller extent, the ideas that find expression in what I compose from that space on my desk– be those writings electronic or in the flow of ink– have some potential to enrich the lives of those who consider them. The emptiness need not be filled... for it has the paradoxical potential to fill those who find nothing there.

Backing Off

Nearly 400 miles into my training for the Boston Marathon, I've been blessed with the endurance to move through twelve weeks of running, the grittiness (and occasional folly) to stride through a chilly January and snowy February, and the company of a training partner who has now officially made it through a winter of outdoor running for the first time. I've managed to tweak my schedule around two trips to Washington DC, and just last Monday, I caught up (while striving fiercely to match pace) with a good friend during a seven-mile pre-sunrise loop through the city and the National Mall.

Yet a familiar danger in my annual marathon preparation is the risk of overtraining or injury, which tend to be related. The latter can occur on its own– I've had my share of near-wipeouts on slick wintry surfaces– but the former is a more complicated matter. Pushing hard in pursuit of a new threshold– clicking through my weekly 800-meter repeats in 2:45, getting under 7:15 pace for a grueling, hilly 18-mile long run– can lead to a breakthrough... or a breakdown. I'm prone to shove my way across some boundaries of time or distance, and often self-critical when I consider backing off and admitting to some sobering physical and mental limitations. Ambition is a great motivator, but rather needy in terms of attention.

So it is with mixed feelings, but also a subtle sense of prideful prudence, that I skipped a run this week, in hopes of bouncing back for a scheduled 20-miler on Saturday. One of my knees had been feeling weird for an entire day– not seriously affecting my walking stride, but clearly telling me that all was not well in this crucial and majestic joint of bones, muscles, and tendons. Another round of snow meant that the track would be unusable once again, a source of mounting frustration. And the marathon lies a mere 24 days away... no time to be courting the risk of a long-term injury.

Frosty greenhouse reflections
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA

It's been a good exercise in patience, a virtue that seems appropriate for any number of contemporary situations that also seem to demand urgency. On the third day of spring, the Holy Cross campus remains blanketed with snow. Our nation's budgetary and political climate could certainly benefit from a change in season. Both Pope Francis and Justin Welby were installed this week as leaders of their respective global faith communities, each of which is characterized by great diversity and vibrancy, as well as voices clamoring for strong and positive solutions to troubling issues. I imagine that there are those people who would have wanted these and other changes to have been tackled swiftly and accomplished decisively. Yet there's a sense in which our responsibilities and motivations to labor towards worthy goals shouldn't be equated with the ability to achieve them entirely on our own.

Psalm 130 proclaims, "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and I hope for his word. My soul looks for the Lord more than sentinels for daybreak. More than sentinels for daybreak, let Israel hope in the Lord." Though I haven't always embraced such waiting and searching eagerly, I have found that the faith it entails has played no less a role than my own determined efforts in getting to a desired point– a new season, a marathon's starting line, or the successful completion of a project. And I trust that the same applies to all situations in which Christ is laboring, inviting not only our participation, but also our patience.