Start

Whoosh! Here we are. The shirt is ready, we've raised $450 (thank you amazing people!), and the training is done. It's time to run. I was greeted this morning by the biggest sky full of stars I can remember seeing in a long time around here. The air is clear, and the weather looks just about perfect. I feel blessed to be part of this day.

If you do it right, the process of training for anything is supposed to get you to the starting line ready to go. That's it. You have no control over what will happen during the event itself, so you have to let go of worry as much as you can.

I'll write more after my race about all the many things I've learned on my journey here, but for now let me leave you with this fact: friendship, being there for someone who needs it and just loving them and offering a hand, has made all the difference in so many lives. It's why I'm here today, toeing the starting line. So, to all my friends and folks who offered a pb&j, a kind word, or a laugh along the trail,

THANK YOU! Thank you for being here, now.

Love you.

Now i remember all to well Just how it feels to be all alone You feel like you'd give anything For just a little place you can call your own Thats when you need someone, someone that you can call And when all your faith is gone Feels like you cant go on Let it be me If its a friend you need Let it be me

Ray LaMontagne

Have a blessed, fantastic race day, folks. Thanks for taking this journey with me, and with those who need it even more. Don't forget how important you are, to your community, your friends, to every day, and to me.

Let's go!

Living generously

Dr. Kelly Flanagan wrote a beautiful piece recently about what the experience of acceptance, grace, generosity does for us:

This is the brilliance of grace: it welcomes our darkness into the light and does nothing to it, knowing that it doesn’t have to, because darkness thrives on hiddenness, and it’s at the mercy of the light. Light drives out darkness, not the other way around.

When we no longer have to push our darkness back down beneath layers of shame our darkness doesn’t stand a chance.

What about the other side of that equation? What does it mean to be the person providing that acceptance and generosity?

Individually, we have to nurture generosity in ourselves.

I believe the drive to live generously lives in most people. We want to be the gracious host, the good friend, the pocket of grace in a condemning world.

It takes work; even people we love, know, and trust can be brutal, crabby, just plain difficult, never mind extending generosity to the stranger, the person outside our tribe, the one from somewhere else who has nothing to offer us and no relations with us to oblige our indulgence.

Taking care of ourselves, rest, exercise, connecting with people who treat us well and care for us, and taking time daily to be with and experience what moves and inspires us creates a space in ourselves that allows us to live with generosity.

Collectively, we can create pockets of grace too.

There are so many examples of communities and organizations countering the trend towards criminalizing homelessness. It's important to recognize them too. I was struck recently by a story about RainCity Housing, a Vancouver nonprofit, worked with an ad agency to create benches that double as emergency shelter for "rough sleepers", with advertising that provides information on the shelter.

Another law attempting to criminalize homelessness, this one a Los Angeles ban on people sleeping in cars, has been struck down by a federal appeals court on the grounds it would open the door to discriminatory treatment against the poor.

Dr. Flanagan said

I can tell you now, grace isn’t just acceptance of the status quo. Grace contains the status quo—all of our struggle and pain and mess—and embraces us and values us anyway. Grace demands that nothing be changed for love and connection to happen, and that kind of love has power.

The power to accept people where they are, especially when it's outside our cultural comfort zone, is a power we can wield to help them begin again. Amazing stuff.

Don't forget to celebrate the downhills

When I was a girl, my mom used to take naps on the sofa under the big picture window in our living room.

One day, she had a dream she was a girl again, running down a big hill with her hands waving, shouting "Whee!" I heard her shouting, and asked her about it when she woke up.

My mom is gone now. But when I have hills, my mom still runs with me. I try to remember to raise my hands in the air and celebrate the downhills when they come.

Don't forget to celebrate the good stuff.