The Return, Part I

7:30 Saturday morning, sun rising, house quiet, big cup of french press java.

Nice.

I have been thinking about getting back into the blog and of course with that comes the thought of "what do I return with"? And after much thought, I have decided to return and write about nothing in particular. I have decided to just throw something out there just to get back into it. Seems like when the pendulum swings (please read Hermetic Principle #5 about rhythym for more on this) and I get back into things, I seem to go overboard, taking on too much, and sooner than later the pendulum swings back and it all comes crashing down. I try and do too much, set too many goals. Example - I'll take up running again and figure out something like this - I'll do this race which is this far and then I'll do that one which is a little longer and after that there's another which is longer still.... Good recipe for disaster there. As I sit and think about it, for me, thats ass backwards. So, my solution, I am now just running each time a little farther than I ran the previous time. That works. No goals, no pressure. When I am able to run 10K, I will find one to enter instead of entering and trying to work up to it.

Well, seems as if the princess has arisen and I therfore am going to leave this post unfinished and spend some quality time with her.. Look for part II later today.

The Race for the Cure

Floccinaucinihilipilification – the act of judging something as worthless. What does this have to do with the Race for the Cure? Nothing. Which makes it worthless in this blog, which means I have floccinaucinihilipilified. I think…

Sorry, not quite sure what the hell that’s all about, but you never know what to expect here right? So, moving right along… This was the first year I have run the Race for the Cure, and I will no doubt be running every year until I can’t run anymore. At that point, I will walk it, until I can no longer walk. For those of you not in the know, the race is a 5K run or walk presented by the Karmanos Cancer Institute to help raise money to fight breast cancer and is honor of Susan Komen. I proudly ran for my best friend, my mom, a survivor that runs the RFTC each year down in Florida . The first race was back in 1982, and since then, has grown to become the largest series of 5K runs/walks in the world, with over 100 Races in the U.S. and five international races. To date, over one BILLION dollars has been raised to help find a cure. It is a very powerful, very emotional event. I do not have the numbers for this year yet, but there were over 30,000 participants last year that raised over 2.3 million dollars, just for the Detroit race. That’s cool. This was my first race since October of ‘06 and what a fantastic race to do!! My time was 31:04, which is great (I would have been happy with 33:00) and I raised over $500! Thanks again to all of you that were able to help. Next year, my goal will be forming a team and personally raising $1500.

Earth School

No, I did not write this. It is from DailyOm.com. and thought it worth sharing...


Life is the province of learning, and the wisdom we acquire throughout our lives is the reward of existence. As we traverse the winding roads that lead from birth to death, experience is our patient teacher. We exist, bound to human bodies as we are, to evolve, enrolled by the universe in earth school,an informal and individualized academy of living, being, and changing. Life's lessons can take many forms and present us with many challenges. There are scores of mundane lessons that help us learn to navigate with grace, poise, and tolerance in this world. And there are those once-in-a-lifetime lessons that touch us so deeply that they change the course of our lives. The latter can be heartrending, and we may wander through life as unwilling students for a time. But the quality of our lives is based almost entirely on what we derive from our experiences. Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul, as well as the intellect. The scope of our instruction is dependent on our ability and readiness to accept the lesson laid out before us in the circumstances we face. When we find ourselves blindsided by life, we are free to choose to close our minds or to view the inbuilt lesson in a narrow-minded way. The notion that existence is a never-ending lesson can be dismaying at times. The courses we undertake in earth school can be painful as well as pleasurable, and as taxing as they are eventually rewarding. However, in every situation, relationship, or encounter, a range of lessons can be unearthed. When we choose to consciously take advantage of each of the lessons we are confronted with, we gradually discover that our previous ideas about love, compassion, resilience, grief, fear, trust, and generosity could have been half-formed. Ultimately, when we acknowledge that growth is an integral part of life and that attending earth school is the responsibility of every individual, the concept of "life as lesson" no longer chafes. We can openly and joyfully look for the blessing buried in the difficulties we face without feeling that we are trapped in a roller-coaster ride of forced learning. Though we cannot always know when we are experiencing a life lesson, the wisdom we accrue will bless us with the keenest hindsight.

I learned something today

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Luke 23:34

Oops, wrong Luke...

Yup, Brycedaddy's quoting the big book. No, I haven’t gone all religious (not in the Jesus, Mary, and Joseph sense anyway), but this is something that we’ve ALL heard before, and chances are, we haven’t given it a second thought. Well, I’m thinking about it today, along with a few other quotes, like this one from Helen Prejean –

“…forgiveness is tremendous strength. It is the action of someone who refuses to be consumed by hatred and revenge.”

Very powerful stuff. And the reason I am focused on forgiveness? Well, that is what the universe has decided I should be focusing on, duh. Oh wait, maybe an explanation is in order here. See, last weekend, I was betrayed and deeply hurt by “friends”. Don’t ask who it was, or what happened, my lips are sealed. Well, I went through the whole disbelief, anger, acceptance cycle and a few days ago decided to just forgive them because “they know not what they did”. Well, the thought was there, but not the feeling (you know, like when you ask someone “how are you?” with zero genuine concern about their well being). Jump to today when I am talking with someone and they ask me “aren’t we supposed to forgive people?” to which I go and quickly find a webpage with lots of quotes on forgiveness so I can accurately give them the quote from Luke. I spent a great deal of time there reading each of the quotes and it really started to sink in. How often does someone wrong us and right away, we get angry and hateful. We begin to carry a grudge and possibly plan revenge. What does that do to our energy? How can anyone possibly remain positive and healthy when they are carrying all that negativity? Impossible. As Einstein once said “you cannot simultaneously prevent and plan for war”. Just SAYING you forgive someone is almost the same as continuing to harbor the anger! Oops, lost track for a second, where was I… oh yea, forgiving those that hurt me. I really thought about this whole thing and the results of it from their perspective and concluded that had they known the absolute hurt that their actions caused, and still showed no remorse, than obviously they really “didn’t know”. Knowing that, why should I carry around the anger and the hate of their actions? Hell, even if they DID know, again I have to ask, why should I carry around the anger and hate? Does me no good. I have a life to live, so now after the forgiveness, I guess my next step is to move forward, taking with me the lesson that I learned and leaving you with one last quote…

Seeing with better eyes "We can recognize that the offender is a valuable human being who struggles with the same needs, pressures, and confusions that we struggle with. We will recognize that the incident really may not have been about us in the first place. Instead it was about the wrongdoer’s misguided attempt to meet his or her own needs. As we regard offenders from this point of view (regardless of whether they repent and regardless of what they have done or suffered), we will be in a position to forgive them.

Namaste

Damn laziness...

What the hell is going on here?

6 and a half weeks since my last blog? Almost a month since I last ran? Jeez... You would think I had suffered some life changing setback or something. Scary thing is, I havent. And if I had, it would have been great to blog about it. I have no real excuse. I mean if I was laying in a coma with a case of swine flu, well, that would be a pretty legit reason. Or if I had been wrongly imprisoned, running and blogging might not be on the agenda. However, I am very healthy, and very free (although I could go off on a philosophical tirade on this, bringing up material possessions, ego, blah blah, blah), so what gives? Why stop, if even for a short time, doing things that I not only enjoy, but keep me healthy, happy, and sane? To think that I have a 5K two weeks from today! AND, I have had a couple of really fantastic things that I have been wanting to write about. Things that I have been reading about lately that seem to all tie in with each other - NeoPlatonism, the soul, mind, spirit, death - really good stuff. Ohhh, man just talking about it makes my little brain quiver with the thought of jumping back in the wonderfully wacky world of my blog. And I know if I could just get my running shoes on, fire up the MP3 player and get my lazy ass out the door, I would be right back into the running groove! So, what's the hold up I ask? Am I that busy? No. Have things really changed in my life to stop me from continuing these things? Again, I gotta say no. But now, with my first blog in a long time out of the way, I just have one more little thing to do and I should be back and better than ever.

Wish me luck (which, btw, I could off on another tangent , writing about how there really is no luck, it's all cause and effect, but that's for another day).