"And it's run for the roses..."

"..It's the chance of a lifetime
in a lifetime of chance
And it's high time to join in the dance
it's high time to join in the dance..."

My husband and I went to see Disney's Secretariat at midnight, on the day before its opening in theatres. I was sure we'd be standing in long lines, and was surprised to see that we were the only ones at the ticket counter.  Where was everyone?  I was as excited as a school girl.   As we found our seats (30 minutes early) in the empty auditorium, I could barely contain my happiness.  I was nervously impatient with the silly previews (something I normally enjoy).  I wanted opening credits, a title screen, the first appearance of a "Big Red" stallion.  This was a story I'd loved for a long, long time.

I remember the 1973 Kentucky Derby, like it was yesterday.  Sitting on the avocado green, sculptured-loop carpet in my best friend's living room...eating popcorn and drinking TAB...while we waited for the horses to appear...emerging from the bowels of the stabling area...on their way to the starting gate.  My heart thumping, my palms sweaty, I searched the television screen for the first glimpse of him.  Then, there he was. 

Like so many girls (most of them much younger than I was at the time) I had a crush on a horse.   And not just any horse, this was a very special horse.  This was a horse whose story had captured the heart of a nation.  But I felt like I had seen him first.  From his first appearance in horse magazines, I'd been making pencil drawings of him on notebook paper, dreaming of him, wondering what it would be like to ride him.  I was short, I was little, why couldn't I be a jockey???


Secretariat was the object of my affection.  He was tall...16 hands of pure muscle.  He was fast...the Kentucky Derby in under 2 minutes.  He was handsome...a deep rich chestnut thoroughbred.  And he was much safer to be in love with, than any boy. 

Dan Fogelberg's "Run for the Roses" talks about "chance" but for me, Secretariat's success on the racetrack had nothing to do with chance, and everything to do with heart.  I'd been following his story like the rise of a young rockstar.  and there was no question in my mind that Secretariat had the heart of a champion.  He certainly had mine.   I rankled at any suggestion that his potential was based on chance, luck, breeding, or investors, rather than his right to run...to do what he was meant to do because of his relationship to God.  Even when I wasn't sure about this spiritual fact for myself, I was sure of it for him.

One of my favorite Bible stories is that of the man who was "born blind."  Jesus disciples are baffled that they cannot heal him of his blindness and so they bring his case to Jesus.  Jesus gently rebukes their question, "who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?" with the paradigm-shifting, "neither did this man sin, nor his parents, but that the works of God may be made manifest." 

He then spits in the dust, makes clay of the spittle, anoints the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and then asks him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam - "which is by interpretation, 'Sent'".  The antidote to being born blind, was seeing oneself as sent...sent by God, sent for a holy purpose, sent to manifest the works of God. 

How often do we see ourselves as "borne (carried) blindly through life by chance, circumstances of family...wealth, poverty, academic legacy, genetic-predisposition to a certain level of intellectual rigor...political leanings, acculturation, nature, nurture...you name it. 

But we are not "borne blindly."  We are "sent" into each moment with a heart for every task put before us.  It is our fidelity to that "heart" that fulfils our right to be the manifestation of God's work...the coincidence of divinity with humanity, moment-by-moment...every second of every day. 

I believe this was true for Secretariat.  He just "showed up" with a heart full of wonder.  He was not genetically predisposed to winning.  He was not an anomaly of chance.  He was spiritually predisposed to being Secretariat.  To being the manifestation of God as "horse"...full of wonder, joy, eagerness, determination...heart.  He was a horse with a heart for every task put before him. 

He was verb-driven, not noun-defined.  He wasn't running Belmont any differently than he ran his home track at Meadow Farm.  He didn't run for jockey Ron Turcotte, differently than he ran for trainer Eddie Sweat, or beloved owner Penny Tweedy...he just ran.  

There's a lesson in this story for each of us.  When we run, really run, our race...the race that is "set before us", day-by-day, moment-by-moment, with a heart that fully understands it has been sent, and is bursting with a desire to live in service to its divinely appointed purpose, we "win" our own spiritual triple crown...self-knowledge, humility, and love.

I love you "Big Red"... still do,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Here is a link to Secretariat's hear-stopping win of the 1973 Preakness which wrapped up his Triple Crown.

"In the Bleak Midwinter"

Last year, in celebration of the holiday season, Hallmark released a new James Taylor CD of songs and carols.  On this collection was a song that within an hour of first hearing it,  I began replaying it over and over again for spiritual inspiration and comfort, and in it I found direction on a journey that, at best, felt most dark and bleak. 

This song, a traditional carol written by Christina Rossetti in 1872, is one that Taylor and his partner on this recording project, Dave Grusin, breathe new life into with their haunting arrangement.  "In the Bleak Midwinter..." (full lyrics below) includes the following prayer:

"Then what can I bring Him empty as I am
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would know my part;
What then can I bring Him?
I must bring my heart."

My days were filled with the colorful busyness of the holiday season...choosing just the right gifts, wrapping presents, making and carrying out travel arrangements for loved ones, cooking, baking, chauffeuring children and meeting with patients, tea with friends.  This busyness, with all the details of caring for others, allowed me to push down the deep sadness and pain that poked constantly at the edges of my smile. I felt like I couldn't even begin to consider what were looming questions about my life and the lives of those I loved.

My nights, however, seemed like a colorless empty pit...a void so dark and abysmal that I often felt,  once I had the children settled in for the night, I would never climb out of  the utter confusion I felt about how to take steps towards a solution.  Even the process of discovering what those steps might be, seemed lost in a quagmire of emotion, culturally interpreted issues of respectability, and my own fear of failure and rejection. Night after night I would put on my running shoes and pound the streets in our neighborhood, and cover miles on the local track, praying for direction and guidance.  I often wasn't sure whether I was using running, metaphorically, to get away from my problems, or to move towards a solution...but I ran, and ran, and ran. 

By the last week in December I had listened to Taylor's CD so often that I had all the words to each of the songs memorized.  "In the Bleak Midwinter" was my step by step mantra for covering the endless track-based miles I convered each week (an earlier blog speaks of Martina McBride's "In my Daughters' Eyes" and how that song gave some direction to thoughts during the "street" sections of my nightly running that winter). 

One particularly cold night as I stood, bent over at the waist, mid-track...having just finished an exhausting two mile "loop"...I realized that the above quoted stanza was also running, side by side with me,  in a loop through my head, and it wasn't stopping from exhaustion.   One part of my nightly routine was to take a break after each two miles on the track and go to the long jump pit where I would move through a series of yoga-based stretching positions under the treeless bowl of stars above me. 

As I found my balance in the Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-facing Dog) position that night tears rolled down my temples...gathering and freezing in the stray hairs that had fallen in front of my face.  I was bringing to that moment every sacred hope I had cherished for a peace-filled resolution to what seemed like almost an insurmountable dilemma.  I was hearing over and over in my prayers, "What then can I give Him...I must give my heart".  I returned to Balasana (Child's Pose) as I exhaled and released myself from every self-presevationist instinct that I had left to retain control over my own heart.  I gave that which I most thought I could control and hold sway over, my own heart...my own right to be the architect of my expression of love.... into His hands under the stars that night. 

As my tears froze on my face I wept for what I knew I no longer could control, determine, "make happen"...I gave up my right to define outcomes, design impressions, or preserve pretenses....I surrendered my right to decide how I was going to be seen, how my motives were going to be interpreted, or how those around me were going to feel about me.  What could I give him in this moment of worship, in the midst of these feelings of profound emptiness...  I could give Him my heart.  It was really all He ever wanted from me.  The only gift that made a difference in my worship.  So I did.  I gave him all that I loved, all that I hoped would symbolize love in my life...I gave Him my fondest hopes, deepest desires, my most longed for outcomes. 

I didn't finish my run that night.  I lay on my back in the long-jump pit until I was almost too cold to move and "let go" more and more with each exhale of steamy breath into the clear star-filled night.  I watched stray clouds move across a mid-cycle moon and knew that I was walking into a wilderness I could not anticipate the landscape of.  I rose to my feet and took a variation of the Tree Blows in the Wind position, yielding to a divine pneuma or wind that would "blow me where It listeth" ....I became a willing willow rather than an intractable and rigid oak.  I walked the rest of my course that night and was keenly aware that something in me had shifted into a new and unknown place of worship and sacred surrender.   I walked away from my control and into Her arms...for her "Mother's kiss".

I gave Him/Her my heart and didn't try to hold on enough to pull it back if things got scary.  And they did. 

He/She still has my heart.  God has proven to me this year that when I give Him all that is dear and precious and most holy and sacred in my life, He cares for it in ways I could never have expected, anticipated or imagined. 

He has a plan for you too....trust Her with your heart....She will tenderly care for Her young, She will protect and preserve its innocence, purity, its most tender desires and fiercest loves.  He is the Creator of your heart and the conductor of its rhythm, the choreographer of its beating...trust Him/Her.   What then can you give Him?....you must  give your heart".

In the bleak midwinter, icy wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow on snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long..so long ago.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim rising in the air;
Oh, but holy Mary, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a Mother's kiss.

Heaven cannot hold Him, nor can earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall fall away when He comes to reign.

What then can I give Him, empty as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would know my part;
What then I can I give Him: I must give my heart.

- Christina Rossetti

Kate

"Oh my beautiful....feet"

Anyone who knows me would laugh to think of that statement ever coming out of my mouth. I have spent most of my post-high school life treating my body with disdain and depriving it of almost everything good...food, care, exercise...you name it. And my feet, oh my goodness how I abused them as a dancer and as a young woman with a near obsession for uncomfortable shoes.

Two summers ago something happened that forever changed my relationship with my body though. It started as a simple statement made by a well-meaning and very thought-provoking colleague. He made the connection between spiritual growth and physical activity. I heard him say (and remember this is to an audience of young athletes who were training for the rigors of a demanding sports season that they had signed on for being coached in) that one's spiritual growth was connected to one's willingness to push themselves physically. In fact, my memory of his statement was, "You can't grow spiritually if you aren't pushing yourself physically."

I was deeply offended at first! Even though I wasn't his "audience"...I was there and here is how my inner "office slug" argued with him: "How can you say that???? I study the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and the other writings of spiritual thinking pioneer Mary Baker Eddy 24/7, I take calls from patients who are seeking spiritual healing all day and through the night, I am in a constant state of self-examination and reformation...I have to be growing spiritually and I rarely push myself physically more than to get out of my office chair and walk across the room to the kitchen for a cup of tea...and...oh yes... maybe (okay, probably) some chocolate."

Well, his comments fumed and fussed, percolated and fizzled in my gut for three days before I came to the conclusion that, "I can't not know if he is right"....and thus began a journey that has transformed me.

I committed to discovering if what he thought the connection between demanding physical activity and spiritual growth...was true. I realized that this wasn't the same as "well, I was a basketball player in high school and I play basketball once a week with my buddies on Saturday"....unless of course to do this one was pushing oneself each week to do more and go beyond the boundaries of where one felt physically comfortable. No, this was about the push as much as the activity. If I was bedridden, that push might look like just lifting my hand to get the spoon each meal. But it would require a growing sense of body as an obedient servant....it wasn't about becoming an athlete...but using physical activity...or even athletics to... grow in one's understanding of one's relationship to God, as Mary Baker Eddy says, "Immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual." (Eddy uses, Mind - capitalized - as another name for God).

So, I went out and bought a pair of running shoes and a sports bra and borrowed a pair of shorts from my daughter and then went to ask the track coach at my daughter's school how to start. I had grown up a dancer, running was something that I had avoided at all costs...this was so new to me that I wasn't even sure I knew how to begin. Coach Simon suggested that I just start with making it once around the mile long loop on the campus where he coached. He offered that I could run fifty feet (the distance between two of the evenly spaced lightposts that dotted the entire mile) and walk the next two lightposts...then run one, and walk two, until I had completed the entire mile each day. I could switch it up to running two and walking one, and then running the whole thing as I felt ready to push myself into the next gear. This all made sense to me and it was exactly how I started. By the next summer I was running 3 and a half miles nightly and by last winter I was up to five miles a night...rain, snow, sleet....hurricane-like gales (or at least "just after"....fallen trees in the road and powerlines dancing on the street and I was out there dodging debris and leaping over downed branches like a maniac.)

So...was he right? Well, for me....yes...absolutely. But the key, for me, was motive. Why was I doing it? Was I trying to use spiritualized thinking to become a better athlete (or even an athlete at all)...NO. But I was using the physical activity of running as a means to better explore my spirituality. I wanted a better relationship with God and I also wanted to understand the relationship that I had with this servant body that Eddy refers to in her writings when she states, " In Science, body is the servant of Mind, not its master: Mind is supreme." (Here Eddy is, again, referring to Mind as a name for God).

Every night I would battle with the suggestions that "oh, you don't want to do this" or "you're already in your nightgown just relax...you can run tomorrow night".....but I would go back to "What can I do?" and "Why am I doing this?" Well, what CAN I do...I could begin by getting out of my nightgown putting on my running clothes and shoes and walking out the door and up to the mailbox...then I could run to the neighbor's mailbox and every night, even though I often had to pray through each and every step, I would find myself going further or running more than walking....digging deeply for a greater sense of Mind's authority in my life, and my body (not just my physical body, but the body of my work, the body of my service to mankind, the body of my thinking) as an obedient and willing servant to this Mind. And every night Mind ran with me and never let me down. Those nights of prayer for strength, flexibility (of heart and mind and oh, yeah...legs), persistence, etc. were coming from pushing myself out of my comfort zone and into a place where I had to turn to God for every step.

My life started changing so drastically that I was almost frightened by the limberness of movement that God was demanding of me. I often felt like I was in deep pain and there were other times that this total surrender to God's control of my movements was deeply unsettling and satisfying at the same time.

But what was I learning about this body...well, I had a very interesting experience last night that gave me a microcosmic look at my transformed view. I was putting lotion on my feet (usually quite cracked and calloused...but not at all lately) as I have done every night for decades and as I was spreading the cream in I looked at my feet and thought, "Thank you...you are so beautiful to me...you have served me so well and I am grateful that you have given me the opportunity to learn so much about my relationship to God" Wow...this all came tumbling out with such tenderness for my feet. I realized that I was grateful and that this gratitude was an indication of my expression of Soul (another name for God) and therefore I was growing spiritually...I was growing in my awareness of the deep spiritual connectedness that I have with the Divine.

There is a story that was shared with me of a very experienced spiritual thinker, healer and teacher who would get up each morning and take his shower, have his breakfast, shave, etc. and then he would look in the mirror and say something to the effect, "Okay, I have fed you, washed you and cared for you and we have much to do today in the service of our Maker so I don't want to hear another word from you."

Hmm...how many of us would serve faithfully an employer, an authority, who treated us with derision and disdain. Instead of denying the existence of this servant (or calling it ugly names) who we make demands upon to get us where we need to go so that we can do what we need to do...what if we were to see it as a good, obedient and willing servant who is waiting only for our respect, care, and the opportunity to serve faithfully.

Jesus, when asked by the Centurion to come and heal his servant, replies that he will come right away. But the Centurion says, no, you don't need to do that...I also am one under authority who says to his servant, Go and he goeth and do and he doeth it...well, Jesus is astounded at this man's wisdom and says that he has not seen such great faith...no, not in Israel. He is saying that this Centurion soldier has more faith that all the people who already worship God. So what did the Centurion say that so impressed Jesus. I think Eddy gives us the key to this story when she defines body as a servant. The centurion was a soldier, a man who understood hierarchical obedience. And he clearly establishes that he and Jesus are in the same position...they are both "under authority" not the authority and not the servant...but one who speaks to the servant with the conviction of knowing who is in charge...and the servant obeys. God is the Authority, we are "under authority" and have been empowered to speak to the servant with the expectation that it will obey.

What if we really understood, or had faith, that the servant was "with the program" and wanted to obey but was just waiting for orders from one "under authority"...and would serve He who is in Authority with joy, and strength and in silence. We might better understand how it is that we might "present our bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto to our God..." and we might understand why Eddy further defines, the word "temple" in her Glossary in Science and Health to include: "body...the shrine of Love" could this very temple, or body, be a place out from which we can serve our God and worship His Authority in our lives with gratitude and humility.

At the end of the day we might say, "Oh my beautiful body...thank you for your faithful (and silent) service."

Just something to think about....

And by the way...thanks Stuart!


Kate