Honking in the graveyard

In the spirit of Leap Day, rare-ish day that it is, I departed from my usual village routes and went for my run (okay — walk/jog/slog) at Mount Albion. 

While I was there, I saw someone stop her car at a gravesite and honk. Yep, honked — right there in the silent cemetery, like 5 or 6 times. I realized I was witnessing something seemingly unusual, but it made perfect sense to me. It’s a small community and I’ve lived here a long time. Even from about a football field away (yeah, we measure in football lengths here in A-Town), I thought I recognized the honker, and if I’m right, the grave was her child’s. What warrants extreme acknowledgement more than that?!

So on Leap Day, she stopped at the cemetery on her way to work and honked. As if to say: “Hey! You lived because I lived! I’m still alive! Where are you?! Time for school! C’mon! Gonna be late! Honk, honk, honk, honk, honk! (sigh…shudder) Guess I’ll have to let you sleep today. Again.” (Did she hope that this extraordinary day would bring a different answer?)

Oh, gut-wrenching grief! You are why I run. Because I don’t know how else to bear witness to such pain, and live.

…love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. – Song of Solomon 8:6b

'Time for a Liddell something...'

There seems to be a direct correlation: When I run, I write. Something about putting one foot in front of the other in the open air gets my mind moving, as well as my muscles.

“Waddle on, friends!” I heard John Bingham say this morning. (I really was waddling.)

“…throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…” the ancient words I learned as an adolescent often come to me when I run (“…with perseverance the race marked out for us…”)

The to-do list intimidates me less. Anxieties fade away with each steady puff of breath … in-n-n-n, out-t-t-t, in-n-n-n, out-t-t-t …

I remember something cute my sweet son said a few weeks ago. I keep meaning to write it down, and now I finally am:

Tom took the kids to the circus – the older three. Reuben, age 7 ½, observed his 6-year-old sister and her friend laughing heartily at the slap-stick antics of the clowns. He turned to his dad and said knowingly, “The young children are really enjoying this!”

I suspect that what my father said is true: Exercise is the fountain of youth. And, I would add, vitality. For as long as I live, I want to really live. I relate to the runner-missionary Eric Liddell: “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.”