Early Morning Track Ponderings
One Word this week was track
I try to go to a local walking track at least three days a week. I go at 7 and the Texas summer is telling me I may need to go earlier. I started this morning with Spirit In The Sky playing in my ears, setting the beat, the cadence as I move around the track even though muscles are complaining. Thinking about spirit. The human spirit.
A minute isn’t long enough for two miles of thinking. I have to come back and revisit this.
Okay, where was I. Spirit In The Sky, warm day. I’m walking along, swinging my arms. Twice around is two miles. The song starts me thinking about the human spirit – isn’t that a misnomer? Human equals flesh – spirit, God. My misbehaving, undisciplined, flesh, complaining, moaning, whining it’s way around the track, down the path, on the journey.
I start out moving to the song, the music keeping the speed until my body settles and muscles loosen and I fall into rhythm with comfortable ease. About halfway through the walk the comfort isn’t quite as comfortable and I look at the shoe prints in the sand ahead of me and just follow those footprints still listening to the music knowing the goal is worth it. The killing the flesh, struggle to be stronger, healthier. Can’t get there without some pain. There’s pain – arthritic feet but you walk through it, past it.
Sometimes there is shade and a cool breeze. The walking is pleasant. I’m on the path and the path is smooth and easy on my feet. Other times the shade is gone and the sun beats down and I’m sweating and wishing I was somewhere else and I could be, it’s a choice after all. Sometimes I choose wrong but the path is always there and I come back. There is some ugly trash along the path but also beautiful flowering trees. Others walk the path as well. We nod and speak and all keep walking.
The track is not far from where I live but it isn’t exactly at my home. I have to act to get to it. I have to choose to get in my car and drive there. I choose to listen to the music and keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other, finish the race, claim the prize, complete the walk.
The spirit moves us, not our spirit. We move along the path, track, onward on the journey, wherever the spirit takes us, flesh dying, spirit moving, til we can go home. Trials on the way and joys too. Never alone, spirit always with us, nudging, prodding, waiting, speaking if we listen. Waiting for us to choose, listen, move, obey, and then come home.
What a perfect metaphor and very encouraging, too. We all walk a different path, different yet very much the same. Thanks for writing this. It is comforting and I enjoyed reading it.
Me finks ya on the right track
‘;
Dee: In this Lone Star State of Inferno, isn’t shade an amazing thing? On my morning neighborhood walk with Blue the WonderDog, there is a majestic ash tree up the block that completely blankets its corner lot and house with a shade that would douse out a thousand suns. Farther on, we walk across the desert salt flat of the local Walmart parking lot (at night, it sucks in wonderful breezes off the Gulf) to a tiny cypress tree whose feather light leaves offer shade I can barely stand under, but even here the miracle of shade is instantaneous…
I love shade but the last few days, even shade doesn’t help come about four in the afternoon. The ceiling fan on my back porch just moves the hot air around. Send me a little bit of that Gulf breeze please!