For eight weeks I have been silent, insofar as it pertains to this blog.  Thankfully it has been a mild winter with less than four inches of snowfall, so my silence cannot be attributed to being snowbound!  It would be so easy and convenient to expound on the turns my personal race has taken in the past eight weeks, but as in the training I do, greater discipline rules when I stop. look. listen.

Perhaps it was the conclusion of one year and the commencement of another that elicited a needed and welcomed period of reflective hibernation.  Nevertheless, a thought remains with me from the Christmas season.  As I celebrated with extended family during the holiday season, I recalled looking around the table, a familiar verse from a song came to mind, and a few days later I heard the very same words as I listened to them in a Mass reading:  “Because you are chosen, called to be holy, because you are the Lord’s beloved, you must clothe yourself in kindness and heartfelt mercy…”  I smiled, looking around the table at my mother and friends gathered together, and the familiar sense of heartwarming love flooded my senses.  Each of us was chosen, from the beginning of time, to be whom we were in that very moment, and the satisfaction of realizing this anew connected me to the sacred meal and the revelation of unbridled Love that we experience every time we break bread together.  Yes, indeed, we are chosen, holy, beloved….

And so the story continues with my preferred and perhaps well-traveled metaphor of the race into 2012.  In less than forty eight hours, I will attempt for the second time a stair climbing event that is also a fundraiser for the American Lung Association.  Eight hundred four steps await my friend and me, yet for me, I prostrate myself before this sacred journey, made in honor of a deceased friend, made in thanksgiving for the God-given ability to do so.  Although I have revisited certain venues in my new life, each visit offers me new opportunities to learn and grow. Each race, each climb, offers me a much-needed refresher on humility.  No heroism emerges or accolades are sought.  Rather, I seek to remember that each step is imbued in a holiness that does not originate with me.    I seek to connect to being so cherished and beloved by the joys and challenges that are the fabric of my life.  I am called to dig deeper and rise higher; I am chosen-to draw nearer to the blessings that my climb offers. I accept the invitation.

Nearly two weeks ago the idea to write about great expectations came to me, not the eponymous work that bears this name, but a reflection on great expectations that shape my life.  How dare I attempt to put into words such heart truths!  I shall be brief.

I am getting ready for Christmas…and for spring.  Two weeks ago, in the early days of this preparatory and reflective Advent season with which each liturgical year commences, I recalled two recent experiences of untold expectation.  Fearfully expectant, I launched myself headlong into the shadow ensconced in the news of a friend’s terminal diagnosis eight years ago, expecting light to emerge on the other side.  Through great fire, this was realized, and my personal transformation ensued.

Then the invitation three years ago, again during Advent, took fearful expectation and changed what I experienced as my previously normal life into something more beautiful than I could imagine.  My heart already started the journey, and now my body and mind ran (pardon the pun) headlong to this new life that is reflected in the difficult yet fulfilling temple maintenance I now embrace as part of my daily ritual and routine.  What is the catch?  Loss took human form for me, and the re-narration of my life draws me deeper into the mystery of my faith, reminding me anew of the Great Expectation embodied in Jesus’ advent, to set aright the great undoing left behind in the garden.  As I see my life undone and rewoven in this Great Expectation, I am humbled at the thought that redemption comes in small but mighty packaging.  Just as a baby conceived and born in “untimely” circumstances, each of us possesses the opportunity to join in this timely work.

I have not arrived unscathed to my current abode, and every day presents challenging moments where I miss the mark.  But I am not done…not yet. Tonight, as I drove home in the rain from the grocery store, I smelled spring in the air.  I was surprised to detect this familiar aroma, a sneak preview in these last days of fall.  Autumn’s beauty fades to winter’s pristine silence…and then new life comes with spring.  Advent-loss takes human form and ushers in new life.  Oh yes, spring is coming, and just as I smelled the earth’s freshness, my heart lifted, knowing that the beauty of the garden par excellence is at the doorstep.    I rest in this joy tonight.  I run to my loss, and I will not let it go until it blesses me.  I am undone-redone-by this great expectation.

Come run with me…to the manger, to the garden, to the tomb, to sunrise eternal.  I learn something new each time I run this course.

Last week’s Thanksgiving Day Race saw nearly 14,000 runners and walkers finish.  I walked it alone…sort of. None of my usual training partners were able to join me, and perhaps that is the way it was meant to be.  So I walked, surrounding by thousands of others, and I listened.  Not to my music, which assisted me in maintaining a steady pace, but rather I listened to my pulse.  Strong, steady, certain, and my mind focused on the person for whom I “ran” this race, my mother.  It was the final race I would compete in for 2011, and I wanted to offer my prayer on this day in thanksgiving for my mother.  She has been steadfast in her support of me in this new life I now lead, even reaping some positive health benefits too, and as I left home to drive downtown for the race, she sent me with breakfast, a smile, and her inimitable prayer: “Go and win.”

Go and win.  Hmmm, now that is sublime wisdom, not spoken with hubris, but humility.  Remember your roots, Roxanne, is what I heard, dare I say, felt with her blessing.   How apropos  that a few days before the start of Advent, my mother would be waiting  for me yet again, so as I walked I recalled other times she waited for me, and one singular event came to mind.

It was a Saturday morning in mid-November, and a young mother was at home, and the familiar pain that she felt before told her that today would be like no other-she would give birth today.  Soon.  And so it was, in the early hours of that day, her waiting ended and I arrived in the world.  She waited for me.  She hoped for me.  It was not an easy world in which I was born, I imagine, for in the familiar grasping of hands, perhaps I somehow knew that more struggles would come…and that I would not release them until they blessed me.  Strengthened me.  Made certain my steps in an uncertain world.

Many more such times would she wait and hope for me,  and again she tells me, “Go and win.” Once again, she sent me forth to find my path anew, and she stands at the door waiting for me.  As with Simeon from of old, she waits for the blessing, and she will not go until she sees it come to pass.  My mother knows something that I do not know, cannot begin to fathom. She knows that it is okay to wait for the blessing to come.

Thank you, Mom, for waiting and hoping for me.  May I one day reflect the depth of trust you so now eagerly embrace.  I am grateful for you, for the reminder you give me of another mother who waited for the blessing to come to pass.  The blessing each of us can be in the world extends forward to infinity and backwards to eternity.  Mom, you remind me that I am not great in and of myself, but that I find greatness in the hope, faith, and trust that love me to life each day.  So yes, I am thankful for you-more than words can say.  I too await the blessings to come.

Twenty one days. A lot can happen in one day, even more so twenty one days. I have read that it takes that long to form a new habit, but I do not want to write about new habits today, unless the new habit involves being…awake. Not just getting out of bed awake, I am talking about the full-fledged I-smell-the-coming-of-a-new-season awake. Not asleep, not awake, but ALIVE. The I feel/smell/taste/love/live sense of being alive.

Not what I expect to reflect on when pounding the pavement in a 13.1-mile race. On a cool crisp morning three weeks ago, I hit a wall and experienced some shadow moments that I did not anticipate. And still I ran to them, albeit by a slow walk. The weight of my body, the gravity of the prayers I carried in my heart, the mental temptation to abandon the very call for which I came to the sacred space embodied in the race rested heavily upon me, around me, within me. As I walked, I poignantly felt the daily struggles of my friends for whom I promised to pray.  There was even a well-intentioned Samaritan who offered me a ride to the finish line; I declined. I came to run my race to its completion. I had to finish what I began; love compelled me to persevere.

Every race has a purpose greater than me. I finished as the course was being dismantled, yet calmness washed over and through me. “My God, take the prayers of this vessel of clay, borne patiently for love of those for whom I pray, and make something beautiful from them.” It does not matter who sees or knows what I do. Who I am is forged in the hard moments, when I hit the wall in private, and I am reminded of my humanity. I pressed on, I press on, for love. Family and friends texted and called me on the course, cheering me on. Fellow competitors who ran past me told me to keep going. Dare I say it, the heavenly hosts, my friends in high places, cheered me on too, “Remember the love for which you run. Finish and don’t give up. Remember the love.” Even the last song I heard as I finished the race reminded me that only love is necessary.

And that was enough to carry me home. Amazing what love inspires me to do. In the beauty of the slow run I embrace as my walk, my soul flung its arms wide, as it ran through the gossamer veil until it saw the sun. Every pain, every prayer, every step summed up in one word: yes.  Yes to a renewed sense of being awake and alive after coming through fire.

O sacred steps taken in love, you take me through shadow, suffering, and loss to purify me. Thank you for the lessons I continue to learn, for I will run until the fullness of the blessing is revealed. Shadow and veil, splinter and suffering, broken earth and stones rolled away, I run to you and I will not let you go until you bless me.

Awake, alive, run, walk…for love.  Every race has purpose; will you come run with me?

Last weekend, several girlfriends and my mother went to Chicago with me.  Ostensibly, it was to celebrate my graduate school commencement, but I had an ulterior motive: making another memory in the transformation of a lifetime with my mom as we celebrated her birthday.  She had never been to Chicago before, and more importantly, she witnessed all of my graduations.  Fifth grade.  Eighth grade.  High school.  Baccalaureate, and now my second graduate school opportunity.  There was an unmistakable lift in my heart as I looked out into the Navy Pier Grand Ballroom and saw my family beaming at me.  No words were exchanged, but when I saw my mom’s quiet smile, I knew that this was the right call.

And so it is so often in my life, even before I fully embraced the turns on the course.  Stepping out in faith, going outside my presumed comfort zone, digging deeper, reaching farther…making memories that change, grow, and challenge me.  So while I did not write a piece for my mother’s birthday this year, this one that I wrote three years ago speaks to a truth that I am humbled to witness:

How do I tell the story

That has such a good end,

One so unexpected

That has yielded a friend?

Do I talk about the one

Who sometimes misunderstood,

Who couldn’t always see

Past the bad to the good?

Then first, I must talk about me

Because I am the one who could not see

And who had to grow deeper

So that I could be free.

Free to love and live

And to learn how to give

From the one who gave me life.

That one is you

And you often knew

That your yes to my life

Would get you into so much too.

You care, and you share

You give, and you live

You press on and go

And most of the time

No one knows

All that you do.

But I do.

And so does God,

Who regularly gives you the nod

Of a Father who knows

That the seeds that were sown

Fell on good ground in you.

What is written here is just a start,

For this story of love

Is written in my heart.

© 2008 Roxanne E. Barnes.  All Rights Reserved.

Indeed, every race has a purpose greater than myself…and some races, such as our trip to Chicago, was serendipitous.  As the hood denoting my degree was placed on me, I looked out and saw my mother, and as if crystallized in a single moment, all the love that brought me to this moment overflowed me.  Serendipitous-yes.  Sacred-even more so.  May I never stop seeking the serendipitous, for therein lies a reflection of love.  To this I will never cease running.

Come, run with me.

While walking this morning, I found myself amazed that though music piped through my earphones, a certain silence enveloped me.  Yes, I was grateful for the sun’s warmth after an astounding cool down this week, and I basked in its glow.  Yet with each step, I pressed through a gossamer veil…into silence.

Tomorrow marks an anniversary no one in America wants to celebrate.  Into our beloved nation’s history now stands another stark reminder of what our brothers and sisters around the world endure more frequently, the rebuilding of lives after terrorist attacks.  The relational brokenness that permeated my life that fateful September 11, 2011 Tuesday morning as I worked in a community pharmacy melted into near-nothingness as my heart ached with my nation’s at the loss of thousands of lives in New York City, Washington, DC, and above the sky near Shanksville, PA.  The sinewy fingers of death sought to silence us, but it failed.  Resoundingly. Failed.

A prescient silence fraught with the untold miracles, stories, love, and potential of lives whose earthly sojourn ended that day rewrote the song of the universe forever.  Silence, yes, but also the song of sacrifice.  Oh that we could have more gracefully entered the dance, but sacrifice is never so convenient.  Two thousand nine hundred and seventy seven people laid down their lives, and thousands of others bear in their souls the indelible mark of the sacrifice of their beloved.  How dare I attempt to write of a sacrifice so great?  I must lay down my pen, still my typing fingers, for I have no idea of what I attempt to speak.

So I step, no, I kneel, with my nation and the world…in a certain silence, and I remember.  No matter the mode by which we journey, the sting of death is always surpassed by Life.  Every race has a purpose greater than us.  Truth never changes.  Therein is the beauty of sacrifice and freedom.  We live on and are the blessing…and so are they.

I am empty,

Empty like the tomb.

I am light

That leaves the day too soon.

I am dark,

As the third watch of the night.

I am song,

With wings your soul takes flight

I am freedom,

Encased in pots of clay.

I am life,

That can never be taken away.

© 2006.  Roxanne E. Barnes. All Rights Reserved.

Sweet potato pies. Red Kool-Aid ® be it strawberry or cherry flavored.  Her dog Duchess.  Kool ® cigarettes that she would fashionably burn, occasionally smoke, and eventually dropped from her repertoire.  A fiery temper if someone hurt the people she loved, and unflinching loyalty to support to the same.  Playing in her closet that went on forever, not realizing its length was attributable to its location under the hallway stairs (see photo).  Recuperating from my broken ankle 30 years ago in the same recliner my grandpa used to sit in that she kept in her apartment.  My mother doing her grocery shopping for and with her, and some of the quirky habits she developed as she gracefully aged, such as stuffing facial tissue in nearly every purse she owned “just in case” she needed them or ducking down a different aisle in the supermarket.  Grape jelly sandwiches so full that the bread crumbled.  Attending my baccalaureate graduation in Texas, flying on an airplane for the first time to see one of a few college graduates in my family at that juncture.  A delicate flower in the nursing home where she spent the last 7 years of her life, those final hours when my seminarian friend came to bless her and I heard her speak two words, the last two she would speak in this world, “Thank you.” And the unspeakable beauty of the nearly wordless exchange between my aunt and mother with a love that permeated the room in those final hours.  They are 23 years apart in age, so when their parents died, my aunt became mother to my mom.

My Aunt Marie, my dear sweet Aunt Marie, laid down the mantle of this life three years ago today.  She inspires me now to stay the course in the face of difficulty, and yes, she is oh so sweet (did I say that already?).  Although she was not Catholic, how fitting that the enduring matriarch of my family died on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother par excellence.  I see a lot of her in my mother now, more so than when I was younger, and what a sight to behold.  May I run as well as she did, so that my life reflects the timeless beauty in her and my mother that is summed up in this piece I re-wrote especially for her:

New life, new life
The melody is true
“I make all things new!”
Eternity is come,
Singing to me
The unending song of love and life.
No tear and sigh
No question why
They have their yes in him.
I am free, and I am whole,
and now I am home.
New life, new life
The melody is true:
I am made new.
And when the time comes,
you will be too.
Well done, Aunt Marie, well done.

©2008, Roxanne E. Barnes.  All Rights Reserved.

Last week’s race was not a long one, only a 5K, but each time I am privileged to compete in this particular race, a wellspring of gratitude within me is tapped anew.  In some ways, this race inspired me to begin writing my blog nearly two years ago.  It takes me to a sacred place, holy and special to me.  Last week’s race, as it has been for the previous two years I walked it, winds its way through Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum.  Not as many people compete in this race as some others in which I compete, perhaps because of the venue and the poignancy such a place stirs.

For many people, the cemetery is not a place of celebration but one that reminds them of tears, sadness, and loss.  I thought of these, felt these, when I came to this place to bid farewell to the earthly life that so many loved ones led.  I remembered visiting their gravesites, leaving flowers, saying a prayer of thanks for their lives.  And then, yes, then, I remembered the day I felt the firm press in my palm of my friend’s hand after I prayed at her grave, or the day I saw a rainbow reflected in the noonday sun at the same locale.  Life changes you, her, everything, I later wrote, and it remains true today.

Life changes my grandpa, interred nearly 40 years ago in one of several veterans’ sections by which my steps took me.  Life changes my beloved aunt and uncle, interred in a grassy knoll that I passed near as well.  Life changes me as well, strengthens me to press on, grateful beyond words for the ways these four people changed me.  Each of them said yes in their lives, and through their yes, wonderful things happened:  my grandpa and grandma gave birth to my mother and her siblings; my friend inspired growth in me that led me to write and deepen my relationship with God.  I felt them near, so very near, and I wondered if others walking with me last week experienced a taste of the sublime as well.  Life changes you, me, and everyone. I deliberately speak of them in the present, honoring the eternal present in which they abide, no longer bound by chronological time, but by Kairos time, a time in which something specially appointed occurs.

I did not walk alone, though no one accompanied me directly.  With each footfall, every breath, and every stirring of the breeze, I walked with those who not only love me, but who love countless others to the fullness of life to which we are all called.  Last week, I took a serendipitous detour to someplace wonderful.  And I heard a familiar message that never ceases to amaze me:  come, come run with me.  The still, small voice does not stop speaking love and life to my soul…or yours.

Will you accept the invitation?

I do not often write off the cuff, but today, my heart was so moved, nearly to tears, at the gift I received this morning.  No, I did not win the lottery, although that would have been nice, nor did I receive a favorable response to recent career-related inquiries.  My heart opened a little more, my vision looked beyond where I expected, and hours later, the sun still shines within on this sultry day.  All this, because I chose a different path today.

Initially, I was grateful that the 75 or so degrees this morning felt so cool, in spite of a record-streak of hot temperatures enveloping much of the country.  I knew I would sweat today on my walk, but it would be a little more, dare I say it, pleasant.  As I approached the park where I planned to walk, a still small voice within me said, “Walk this way,” and my gaze turned to the neighborhood across the street from the park.  Gently reassuring, I wondered why I received this invitation…but I followed its call nonetheless.  I had no idea what awaited me on this path today.  Off I went.

First I saw some beautiful Rose of Sharon hibiscus, so I stopped and photographed them, giddy at the site of flowers I actually recognized.  I continued on my walk, and saw a beautiful array that included red hibiscus and several other flowers that made me want to jump up and down.  Sometimes an unexpected or even undesired turn  reveals hidden strengths that would lie undiscovered, unknown, and unwelcome had I not taken a different turn.

How many times have I run from the course that would take me off the beaten path?  I suspect there are not enough fingers on which to count or pages on which to record this oft-derided fact.  How many times have I opted for the easy, comfortable, and familiar, forsaking the invitation of the still, small voice that summons me to a wanderlust that embraces me in the home for which I have always longed.  Off the beaten path…it is where I long to be all whom I am meant to be.

Walk this way…how different my day would have been, how different my prayer would have been, had I chosen the predictable tree-lined park path.  I would have missed an opportunity to go deeper.  In every step I take, I press into uncharted territory.  Sometimes I fight to take the next step.  Dare I say it, sometimes (but not often enough!) off the beaten path, I pray too to be softened, so that I not be an impediment to others on their journey.

What lies around the corner?  The two deer I saw less than 100 feet away reminded me that grace opens my heart to honor those around me.  Everyone I meet has a race to run, a journey to take, and when I encounter them, I pray to see the beauty of their journey.  Sometimes, as in the wooded forest into which these deer surely bounded, the ground is uncertain, ensconced in shadow, and each step is taken haltingly-or not at all.  As athletes say, I hit the proverbial wall, yet I recall the still small voice that invited me off the beaten path today.  My choice?  I press on, looking for the blessing.

I truly love the days before a race, for regardless of the length of said race, my perception shifts, my heart opens, and yes, oh yes, I hear so much more clearly.  How to summarize what I felt this morning:  “Do not be afraid of the unknown, Roxanne.  You step off the beaten path to become all you are meant to be.” The certitude of the invitation of the still small voice within my heart is unshaken.  Come, run with me.  Home.