half of me is ocean, half of me is sky - the imagery works so well because it gives us that harmonized scene of a wide sky above an ocean, each reflecting the other even if one appears a little darker and more chaotic or texturized than the other. Both are boundless and expansive, and we have to embrace both to really love ourselves and let ourselves be loved. 

Running led him to the insight: “compared to what I ought to be, I am only half awake.” The experience he writes about here echoes the experience of self discovery we can have in the work of recovery. Free of the numbing and needy constraints of our delusional solution, we’re finally free to feel, to think and to look at those thoughts and feelings as messages for us to do with as we will. 

Danny’s survival depends on his ability to use the connection aspect of his shining to separate himself from the hotel’s clutches, not by denying the experiences his shining gives him but by understanding them and finding strength and insight from them. Our recovery is no different.

We need to view them as reflections of where we're at and evaluations of what we need to work on rather than measures of our worth as a human being. Our worth lies in all the practice and work, the unglamorous grind that takes place off the stage and continues when the spotlight ends.

It’s hard to admit that we’re still waiting for everything to work itself out, and it takes trust to accept that we’re where we need to be for that to happen. And if we can really trust in those promises, even the ones that seem as if they may never come to fruition for us, we might be able to find the strength to take the next step even if it’s in the dark with only patches of light to guide us.

We’re here by the grace of God, and that’s what overwhelms Vedder as he sings from this place of goodness. When we choose to look at that grace and let ourselves be present in it, the fear subsides. 

That’s how we get through it. We reach for the connections in our life, the real ones, and we deepen them. We tell them every little thing, and we listen to what they tell us. 

By and by is both the waiting time and the connection at once, a request for patience and a promise to keep showing up on the road towards that home. It all comes by and by, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

The war ends when we surrender our self will and begin the work of recovery, but even in recovery, we can find ourselves resorting to old behaviors without realizing it. We can give ourselves some grace with this process if we keep in mind that the war wasn’t erased from our experience; rather, it’s something we’re still actively getting over.

He lets go of that small purpose and opens space in himself for a greater Purpose and Plan about which he doesn’t have all the information. 

Watching film for him wasn’t just looking back on good or bad times; it was a serious analysis of his timing and movements, a return to a past performance with a clearer and more removed perspective than he had in the moment of play so that he might learn from it.

Choosing to love without reservation is simultaneously the greatest risk we can take and the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others. We risk rejection, hurt and disappointment in choosing to trust and love, but we also give ourselves freedom from that shelf we kept our hearts on for so long when we made the self-serving choice to let fear dictate how we loved and received love.

something for Sunday

“For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream….the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale.” -Tolkien

Turning around means we can’t just stop drinking and erase all past actions and current problems from our lives. We have to turn around and look at our lives, look at the resentments we’ve accumulated and the harm we’ve caused, and do something about it.

To stand and wait in Milton’s understanding is to endure, to stand firm in spite of hardship and to wait with the belief that this current suffering is part of a plan greater than our minds can fully comprehend.

As prophets in their own way, Abrahams and Montague witness and testify to the power in running a straight race, a phrase we hear from Liddell in one of his sermons in the film. Liddell tells his audience of the similarities between running and faith, and we see these parallels lived in real time in the lives of Liddell, Abrahams, Lindsay and Montague. Each in his own way serves not only as an ambassador of England to the Paris Olympics, but also as a prophet of the truths of life as enacted in running.

“The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith and to become one's own person, utterly and completely.” - George Sheehan

By nature and for survival, we learn from our experiences in life, and that learning is seriously affected by our warped and self-centered perception of reality. Our minds dutifully take lessons to heart that a healthier mind wouldn’t waste any notebook space on…

We don’t like pain or difficulty, but they’re part of life. We have to believe they’re part of a plan greater than we can orchestrate if we’re going to find the way forward, and we can’t do that alone.