healing

I wrote to a friend:

The first question is, what do I mean by healing when I say I have been surprised to find that healing is possible? I don't mean putting the broken vase back together as good as new, and I don't mean becoming the person I would have been if I had not had a painful childhood. To me, healing is putting all that I am together in a positive way. It means reaching a point where there is no longer a child inside me suffering all the time. Not because I left that child behind but because that child has gotten what she needs and can be happy. For me, part of the experience has been that those unmet childhood needs can be met now by a therapist who loves me. To my surprise, that does fill the hole inside me, not as if it never existed but making it into a beautiful lake instead of a gaping wound.

Today I heard a story that somehow fit with that for me:

During the Thirty Years War, theology professors spent a lot of time speculating that the second coming was at hand and Jesus would soon return to earth. One of his colleagues asked Martin Luther: "If you knew with absolute certainty that Jesus would return tomorrow, what would you do today?" Luther replied: "Plant a fruit tree."

long run and monthly totals

I did my last long run yesterday before the half-marathon Feb. 11. I did 11.35 miles, four times around a shorter version of the dike loop. Doing loops worked out well--it started out sunny but as I finished my second loop it started to rain. When I got to my car I put on my jacket, and rather enjoyed the storm. By my fourth loop the rain had stopped. I hadn't been sure of the weather so I started out in short sleeves but had put a long sleeved shirt in the car, so I had a dry shirt to change into for my last loop. The dry shirt felt wonderful, my legs didn't. But I experimented with walk/run intervals, and that seemed to help.

Monthly totals for Jan. 2006:
swim 15 hours 10 minutes
bike 111 miles in 10:14
run 73 miles in 19:10
That is a total of 44 hours 35 minutes training for the month.

local news

On Wednesday I spoke with a reporter from the Greenville News who was doing a story about laptops in college, and she and a photographer came to my class later that morning to take pictures. She had told me the story would run Friday. I hadn't expected it to be on the front page with the picture above the fold. I thanked the students for making Clemson Univ. look good--the reporter saw only one student looking at something other than course material on his/her laptop, in a class of 110.

SAT

My 12 year old daughter is taking the SAT tomorrow, because she was nominated for the Duke University Talent Identification Program. I have pretty mixed feelings about the whole thing. Luckily she is looking forward to taking the SAT, not uptight about it. Singling kids out as different makes me nervous. And yet I also feel I never got the information I needed when I was young about how to make sense of my own abilities. The trouble is, the top 5% (or even the top 1%) has gotten to be a pretty crowded place. That hit me when I read an article several years ago in The New Yorker that said that Yale could if it wanted fill its entire freshman class with students with two 800s on the SAT.

long run

In between being overwhelmed by job candidate stuff, I did get my long run in yesterday. I'm glad I did it yesterday--the coach worked us much harder at masters swimming today than he did yesterday. I ran 10.3 miles, a loop from the baseball stadium to the golf course and then along the dike to the crew house and back by the rugby fields, repeated three times (plus once around the football practice fields). A year ago I was proud of myself for running 2 miles three times a week.

I kept a pace pretty close to 15 minute miles for the first 6 or 7 miles, then really started to drag. It hurt even to walk down a steep hill by the end, but I could have walked 3 more miles, not very fast. So I should be able to finish the half-marathon, and maybe with one more long run and then proper tapering I can run the whole thing (except a few short steep hills). No blisters or chafing. I forgot to try taking electrolyte capsules. I ate health food store fig bars, but I think I will go back to Fig Newmans. My legs were sore afterwards, but are fine today, except the usual hip soreness, which is no worse.

rainy day

The forecast this morning was for on and off light rain, starting around 10 am. So I hurried out on my bike and got in a 10 mile ride before Sunday school. I knew I wanted to move my long run up this week to Monday or Tuesday, so debated whether to do a short run today. It rained a little while around 9 am; the afternoon was threatening but only a few drops of rain. I decided I would run--my daughter was interested in trying out the 5 K she and my husband are going to walk. I also wanted to try out swimming right after running as a way of stretching, which seemed to help while on vacation. So I ran 3.6 miles and then went to the pool and swam for 50 minutes. Only afterwards did I realize I had done my own triathlon today, though the run and swim were at an easy pace. And it all started from my frustration that the weather prediction was too bad to take a long bike ride.

Seven Cherokee Myths

I'm reading Seven Cherokee Myths by G. Keith Parker. I worked with Keith for six and a half years and the strange thing about reading his book is that I don't really hear the voice I know so well. I do see him reading the journey he and I took into the story of Tsul’Kalu’, or Judaculla, the Slant-Eyed Giant. But he always saw "perfect love casteth out fear" as a fuller answer than I did. I see the issue of being seen as more fundamental to the story than the issue of fear.

The book has carefully selected texts for seven Cherokee myths and sets them in some historical context. Keith even uses Theda Perdue's analysis of gender patterns among the Cherokee. Seven Cherokee Myths reflects on the myths in several different ways. Keith grew up and now lives in the area discussed and one of the things he does is set the stories in the actual landscape, as well as in the social patterns of Cherokee culture. The primary focus of the book is on a Jungian analysis of the stories, pointing out archetypes and reflecting on how the stories speak to how individuals struggle today with family issues and the task of becoming fully ourselves. For each story there is also a reflection on how it compares to Christian theology, not evaluating beliefs against each other but rather pointing out similarities that reflect deep patterns, in some cases common to many cultures.