Tags
aging, C S Lewis, Joan Chittister, Mere Christianity, races, staying the course, The Monastery of the Heart
“The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.”____C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
One of the best things about growing older is being able to reject activities that we never particularly relished in the first place: hosting spend the night parties for pre-teen girls, heading up the PTA, attending bridal parties, lifting heavy objects (like pianos), and a myriad of other jobs and duties that fell into the category of de rigueur when we were younger. Occasionally, however, something comes back around, slips up behind us, and shouts, “Gotcha!” And we find ourselves involved in a surreal reenactment of a familiar old experience. That happened to me this past weekend.
Back in the 80’s my husband embarked on a physical fitness campaign for our family that almost killed all of us. He biked, ran, and swam like Lance Armstrong on steroids. Every weekend we traveled around the country to any race or triathlon in which he and the children could compete. My job was to hold the jackets and valuables and to find a place to display the armloads of cheap trophies they carried home.
Finally the children got old enough to rebel; and my husband’s feet, knees, and back fled the punishment as well. “At last,” I thought, “we are through with this.” I should have known better.
This past January, at 68, “Turbo” decided to make a comeback. He pulled out his old bike, started training again, and on Saturday ran in his first 5K race in many years, making a respectable finish in the middle of the pack. I have to admit: I was right proud of the old guy!
While the finishers sweated profusely and waited expectantly for their trophies, I looked around at this crowd of dedicated early morning runners. Amazingly, there were many who ran with my husband almost 30 years ago. And here they were now, in their 70’s and even 80’s, still hanging in on the race circuit instead of hanging out at the local coffee shop or nursing home.
One of my favorites is a man named Pat Carmichael, who will turn 80 next month. Every day—rain or shine, 30 degrees or 100—Pat shuffles through town on his own three-mile course with his eyes on the ground, moving forward one short stride at the time. Skinny as a toothpick and flashing a grin wider than his face, Pat is “staying the course.”
Perseverance and endurance, of course, are great things; but so are kindness, and generosity, and good humor. Pat possesses all these and more, because the course he has stayed is a much broader one than that narrow path he runs every day. It is the course of Christian character and love. The writer of Hebrews called it “the race marked out for us” and admonishes us to “throw off everything” that may keep us from winning the race. (Hebrews 12:1) The image here is one of singularity of purpose.
Joan Chittister, in her new book The Monastery of the Heart, calls this singularity “stability of heart;” and she expresses it this way:
Stability of heart—-
commitment to the life of the soul,
faithfulness to the community,
perseverance in the search for God—-
is the mooring
that holds us fast
when the night of the soul
is at its deepest dark,
and the noontime sun sears
the spirit.
It is stability of heart that reminds us
that we are on our way yet
to what we are meant to be—-
if only we will stay the course.”
As we age, the lines on our faces show whether we have spent a lifetime smiling or frowning. Stability of heart evidences itself just as visibly: a heart at rest manifests itself in an aura of peace that affects everything it touches. May we all run the race that has been set before us in such a way that, in the end, we may indeed be what we are meant to be.