What I 'saw' in the Dark!

It is because of the run I’m about to speak of that this blog exists.  The experience was so rich that it pushed me ‘off the fence’ about whether to write a blog or not.

Due to a pretty rigid running discipline of Monday, Wednesday and Friday and an early meeting at Henry Ford Community College this past Monday morning, Dorothy and I set out in the dark.  It was very dark, and very early!  Under “About Me” to the left on this page I speak to my current spiritual confusion, and that heart-space has been unavoidable during my morning runs.  What seemed to set this run as so unique and so rich were the two major factors of silence and darkness, most often brightened by moonlight, and sometimes even that was absent.

It was much earlier than Dorothy usually woke and evidently she’d been up late the night before with my husband and a houseguest – one guest who loved on Dorothy like no other house guest here has!  I actually had to take the lease into the meditation room where she sleeps and put it on her, when ordinarily the sound of the dresser drawers opening as I get dressed to run are enough to get her up and wagging that wonderful tail!  Her hesitation paralleled mine, but her energy actually EXCEEDS mine; my running discipline is often driven by avoiding an indoor, albeit small for her breed, pit bull with pent up energy.  I take her with me every morning run and walk on alternate days. So off we went.  The darkness was more disorienting to her than to me; she actually ran behind me for a good mile before she was in the ‘alpha dog’ groove and out front making sure nothing harmed either of us. 

The morning moonlight was remarkable.  During my morning meditation as I sat on a cushion on the floor, the moon had ever so gradually started setting and eventually bathed me in its light through a window.  I knew it would be a good run in that earlier moment.  The first mile we run is usually in a neighborhood, and there are short stints along busier roads to get to more secluded roads, depending on which direction I choose.  Knowing the snow-less running mornings were numbered, I decided to venture toward a major road (which will be unavailable to run on once the plowed snow narrows it) to get to a heavily wooded dirt road.  Unfortunately, the cars coming toward us and heading to work early were blinding, and of course distracted me from enjoying the moonlight – a poignant, disappointing experience of light pollution.

The first major spiritual truth of the morning was revealed as we turned onto the dirt road.  In contrast to the car lights, it was as if I was blind for the first few yards, but I kept going.  I then thought I heard an outdoor electric generator, got further down the road noticing no home lights on, and realized that my eyes had adjusted. It was just going to be dark.  The stretch of dirt road is about 1.5 miles, and since the earth was turning away from the moon, the moon was behind the dense trees.  I was on a road that is often plagued by wash-board like bumps, not to mention unexpected dips and rises, and it was dark - very dark. 

Some of my recent restlessness, I had just days before realized, was due to a lack of collaboration, to borrow an overused buzz word.  I found as I looked around my life, I felt as though I was managing EVERYTHING and felt the weight of the world, at least MY world, on my shoulders.  It was my life’s mission at this point to manage everything around me.  And in that present moment I realized, there is only so much managing you can do in the dark – the condition is very limiting!  Managing the world, I had realized, left me with little trust in anyone or anything, including myself.  I had a choice on my run, I could trust my skills, and the process, and accept the fact that there was little I could manage, or I could turn around and go home.  I had to keep going.

Looking down constantly was as dangerous as not looking.  I was very conscious of the full foot strike on that road so that I had a better chance of not turning an ankle; creating a wider base.  I was less aware of upcoming hills and declines because I couldn’t see more than 5-10 feet ahead of where I was.  Another dynamic I became aware of was how much I ordinarily ‘rubber neck’ it on that road looking for deer during my runs.  They could have been all around me that morning and I wouldn’t have known.  There was fear during that stretch, and fear isn’t productive when running – being uptight and putting all sorts of demands on your body in addition is a bad idea and counter-productive.  I felt forced to relax, and to trust.

Despite all of those limits, I felt very strong.  The day before was sedentary so I had energy.  It took the letting go to capitalize on the energy I stored up, and to push myself physically, which makes the run that much more effective throughout my day.

The next turn was the next spiritual gift.  The road I turned on was not busy, but wasn’t desolate and wooded either.  So a few people drove past, and the side of the road I was running on meant that the closer vehicles were driving near me from behind me.  The light that came from behind also dispelled the beautiful moonlight, but the moon was also behind me at this point.  So whether it was headlights or moonlight, my travels were made so much easier due to back lighting rather than light in my face when the rest of the environment is bathed in darkness. 

During the run I let my mind drift to any possible spiritual truth that I could find in being ‘backlit.’  I’ve never been one to strongly believe in an interventionist God.  My case against that has been the fact that there people starving and dying and suffering, and God doesn’t intervene?  And I don’t buy the party line that God allows those conditions to exist in order to give those of us who aren’t suffering something to do.  God is an unconditional lover.  God doesn’t just sit idly by creating and allowing suffering on the part of God’s creation. So it is our human greed and our less-than-perfect being that creates suffering, as far as I’m concerned.  Since I don’t believe in a direct interventionist God, I was left wondering, and happily so, how God and my faith might light me from behind?  It sure seemed effective!  And maybe times like earlier in the morning, where I needed to face the light (being bathed in moonlight) in stillness to draw energy and peace from something, some force, greater than myself, were also part of this equation.  There are times I must stop doing – stop managing - because I can’t see – either because there’s too much light or not enough.

The night before this run, I had a conversation with a former spiritual director over the phone.  I told him I had recently had trouble sleeping.  He quoted some famous spiritual writer as saying, “My final prayer will be to fall peacefully into the loving arms of God.”  I tried doing that the night previous to this run and it didn’t work.  I truly was in a place of mistrust.  I didn’t feel God there.  God showed up – or more likely heart recognized God – more in the surprisingly unwelcoming (surely by Dorothy’s standards) dark, early morning run.  I am grateful!