How
to Run a Mile
Rev. Mark
Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
2/21/09 & 2/22/09
“The
peak of the mountain is not too high and the bottom of the ocean is not too
deep as long as you have exertion.”—Tibetan saying
Call to Gather
Out of the 168
hours of each week,
This is one hour that we
set aside
To
celebrate our living
To
remind ourselves to be grateful and generous
To
challenge ourselves to expand our horizons and grow our souls.
We do this through the
spoken word,
through the sharing of silence,
through the gift of music,
through the recognition of our shared presence
on this spinning blue green ball that is our home.
This is one hour that we
intentionally set aside
To
encourage each other to fully inhabit our lives,
To
embrace the possibilities of our common humanity.
To
revive our spirits and renew our commitments.
This is one hour that we
set aside…to be together.
And it is good.
Sharing a Story
The
Tortoise and the Hare, Revisited by Mark Stringer
Once
upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about who was faster.
The tortoise knew his short stubby legs were no match for the hare’s long,
springy legs, but he couldn’t keep from boldly claiming he might be able to
keep up with him in a race. The hare thought this was all very funny and
offered to settle the argument with a competition. They would race down a
long, winding path through the forest towards the nearby pond. The tortoise
agreed, despite himself.
From
the moment the race began, the hare shot ahead and ran briskly. Then seeing
that he was far ahead of the tortoise, he thought he'd sit under a tree for a
while and relax before continuing the race. He made himself comfortable on a
bed of pine needles and soon fell asleep. Meanwhile, the tortoise, knowing he
couldn’t possibly beat the hare despite his bragging, also took his time,
plodding on down the road even more slowly than usual. “Why even try?” he
thought. “Me and my big mouth…” he muttered to himself.
Just as
the tortoise came upon the hare, still asleep underneath the tree, a loud crack
of thunder from a coming storm jarred the hare awake. The hare, laughing
as he saw the tortoise would still be easy to beat, jumped up and continued the
race, beating the tortoise to the pond without even breaking a sweat.
When the
tortoise finally reached the finish line, the forest animals all gathered round
him. They knew that he probably wouldn’t win, but they really wanted him
to, because the hare was a big show off and they were sick and tired of him
always talking about how fast he was.
They
patted the tortoise on the back and said, “Thanks for trying. You did
great.”
“Oh,
but I didn’t,” the tortoise said. “I could have won that race,” he said,
“but I was so sure I wouldn’t that I didn’t even try. If only I had given
it my all…”
“Oh
don’t feel bad, Tortoise,” said Raccoon. “Chances are good you still
would have lost the race.”
“That
may be true,” said Tortoise. “But I would have lost it for good
reasons…and I wouldn’t feel so bad about it all.”
Just
then Owl flew down from a nearby tree and said,
"Whoo…Whoo…Whoo
wants to know the moral of the story?”
All the
animals groaned. Owl was always wanting
to tell the moral. “Go ahead, Owl,” said
Raccoon.
Owl
declared, “The moral of this story is Getting beaten by a hare is not as bad
as getting beaten by yourself."
Meditation “Assurance” by John Corrado[1]
Be gentle with
yourself:
You’re okay.
Life has no
erasers—but life is okay, too.
Don’t wait for
forgiveness.
The only forgiveness you get
is that you take.
Don’t be afraid.
Have faith.
Say “yes” in spite
of the
temptation to say “no.”
Be a healer.
Address the world
with wonder.
Engage it with
courage:
Daring love
Daring trust.
Daring hope.
Open your soul as if
it were a window
Letting the sun
shine in
and letting the light of yourself out.
You can do it.
We can do it.
So let’s do it!
Amen!
Reading
from the book Good to Great by
business consultant and author Jim Collins.
He writes:
My wife, Joanne,
began racing marathons and triathlons in the early 1980s. As she accumulated
experience—track times, swim splits, race results—she began to feel the
momentum of success.
One day, she
entered a race with many of the best woman triathletes in the world,
and—despite a weak swim where she came out of the water hundreds of places
behind the top swimmers and having to push a heavy, non-aerodynamic bike up a
long hill—she managed to cross the finish line in the top ten.
Then, a few weeks
later while sitting at breakfast, Joanne looked up from her morning newspaper
and calmly, quietly said, “I think I could win the Ironman.”
The Ironman, the
world championship of triathlons, involves 2.4 miles of ocean swimming and 112
miles of cycling, capped off with a 26.2 mile marathon footrace on the hot,
lava-baked Kona coast of Hawaii.
“Of course, I'd
have to quit my job, turn down my offers to graduate school (she had been
admitted to graduate business school at a number of the top schools), and
commit to full-time training. But...”
Her words had no
bravado in them, no hype, no agitation, no pleading. She didn't try to convince
me. She simply observed what she had come to understand was a fact, a truth no
more shocking than stating that the walls were painted white. She had the
passion. She had the genetics. And if she won races, she'd have the economics….
And, so, she
decided to go for it. She quit her job. She turned down graduate schools. She
sold [her business]…. And three years
later, on a hot October day in 1985, she crossed the finish line at the Hawaii
Ironman in first place, world champion.
When Joanne set
out to win the Ironman, she did not know if she would become the world's best
triathlete. But she understood that she could, that it was in the realm of
possibility, that she was not living in a delusion. And that distinction makes
all the difference. It is a distinction that those who want to go from good to
great must grasp, and one that those who fail to become great so often never
do.[2]
Sermon
This time of year in the Midwest,
when the sun rides higher in the sky each day,
when a thaw breaks through the cold once or twice a week,
when the grass begins to make an appearance from under its white
blanket, and ice patches melt into puddles on driveways and sidewalks by day,
only to return to their frozen state by night,
when the wind carries the promise of a someday spring even as it smacks
us in the face with its icy hands….
This time of
year, I can’t avoid getting a nervous feeling in my stomach and experiencing
some nervous twitching in my legs. No, I
don’t feel this way because we’re getting close to canvass time…
No, this time
of year is when my sense memories of track season begin to kick in.
I ran on the
track team for just two spring--8th and 9th grade
only--but my recollections of those two seasons have stayed with me these
nearly 30 years later, making a permanent imprint on my winter-into-spring
psyche.
I think I
remember track so vividly because I disliked it so much.
I didn’t want
to run on the track team. I did it
because I thought I should. I think I
even remember telling myself “Mark, this will be good for you.” I had tried out for the 8th grade
basketball team and was the last person cut.
Seeing my disappointment, the 9th grade team coach suggested
I run track instead. He told me, running
track would get me into shape, and maybe even improve my basketball skills for
the following year’s tryouts.
My older
brother had been a distance runner for his high school team and seemed to be
enjoying it. So I figured I, too, could
give it a shot.
However, at my
first track team practice, on a February afternoon, as my gangly teammates and
I ran laps around the hallways of our junior high, a training exercise reserved
for those still-winter days when running outside was not an option, I was
reminded that I was not my brother.
I didn’t want to run. I
definitely didn’t want to practice.
Our coach was a
former shot putter. He didn’t know
anything about training for the distance events, and so he let us coach
ourselves. Knowing nothing about training for any sport, I decided to tag along
with the school record-holder in the mile and 880, a nice, somewhat introverted
guy named Don, who accepted my obvious need for help by quietly going about his
routine, which, as far as I could tell, primarily consisted of running
successive sprints of 400 yards…all afternoon.
I’m sure this was an effective way to train, but it was easy for me to
abandon, because, well, it HURT!
Pain is hard
enough to endure when we want to be doing something. When we don’t, pain is a deal breaker.
I decided I
would reserve my pain for the races themselves.
Soon, March had
arrived, and with it the first of our track meets. While I enjoyed seeing my friends compete in
their events, I spent most of the afternoon dreading the start of mine. The anticipation was always worse than the
reality, though, for once the gun sounded for my first race, the mile, I knew
that every step I took would carry me closer to the finish line.
My basic race
strategy didn’t change from meet to meet.
There was no need for me to keep up with the obviously faster runners,
the ones like my teammate Don who sprang forward from the start, who ran like
they really wanted to win. No, I was OK
with hanging back with the second tier runners, those who just might have been
going through the motions, like me.
As I would make
my way around the poorly maintained cinder tracks of our conference junior high
schools, dressed in the simple, decade-old uniform previously worn by a
succession of other gawky teenaged boys, the sounds of my breath and heartbeat
filling my ears, I would tell myself things like, “Hold something back
Mark. Don’t wear yourself out too
soon. You’ve still got 3 laps to go….Hold
something back, you’ve still got 2 laps….Hold something back you’ve still got 1
lap to go….”
The funny thing
is, my first year on the team, this strategy worked well enough, at least
according to my own limited expectations.
If a team was particularly thin in its distance competitors, I might
even earn (?) an occasional third place finish, garnering a point for my
team. Before long, I would be back on
the bus, headed home, listening to one of my teammates’ boombox blasting
AC/DC. I never cared much for AC/DC, but
on the way home from another track meet, blessedly over, it was truly music to
my ears.
I finished out
my first season without much fanfare. I
enjoyed being around my teammates, and our team was moderately successful, due
mostly to the performance of the 9th grade members, but I was
delighted to see the season end all the same.
Even as I did
not enjoy running track, I came back the next year to compete again in the
distance events. Why did I return to the
team when my heart was clearly not in it?
I don’t know for sure. Maybe it
was the connection I had to my teammates.
Maybe it was the responsibility I felt to my coach, who encouraged me to
return. Maybe it was a nagging feeling I
had that I needed to be there…that my participation might be teaching me
something important about life.
Whatever the
reason, I now found myself a senior member of the team, with eighth graders
looking up to me, following my lead.
I can’t say I gave them much to follow.
I still didn’t care for practice, preferring to train by myself, which
gave me the freedom to goof off. I still
clung to my race strategy of holding back, holding back, holding back…and I
still was getting nowhere with it.
Our ragtag team
was having a dismal season. We were
getting blown out of every meet. Morale
was low. Even the AC/DC didn’t sound so
good any more.
But near the
end of the season, something changed for me.
I think my responsibility for the team started to kick in. Or maybe it was my responsibility to myself.
I remember well
the track meet where the changed occurred.
Before my event, my teammates and I had been sizing up our competition
when we learned that the best miler for the other team had just recuperated
from having mono. When he was healthy,
he could have beaten our best times by a good margin. But we knew that he might struggle. Maybe we could steal a victory. Their second best miler was definitely in my
league. At the very least, I should be
able to get a third place finish.
The gun sounded
the start of the race and I began my slow but steady run around the track, with
my slow and steady monologue of “hold something back…hold something
back…”. Before I had finished the first
turn, I started to cramp up, searing pain in my side that forced me to run even
more slowly than usual. My primary
competition blazed ahead of me as I struggled to run through the cramp. About midway through the race, my pain went
away, but by this time, I was in fourth place by at least 200 yards. I was so relieved to not feel the cramp any
more, I decided to not hold back and do everything I could to catch up. I could see that I was gaining, and so could
my teammates who were cheering me on as I began the final lap, now only about
100 yards behind. By the final turn of
the final lap, I had made up all the distance and was now running even for
third place. My competitor seemed
surprised to see me, but not so surprised that he couldn’t give a little extra
effort from a reserve I no longer had left.
He beat me by at least three paces and that was that.
As I walked off
my exhaustion, trying to catch my breath, my teammates congratulated me as
though I had won the race. My coach
looked at me with astonishment…and respect.
And I discovered the exhilaration of giving it my all. Now it was crystal clear that my strategy of
holding back had been all wrong. No, the
better way to run a mile was to keep up with the competition, run each lap as
its own race, and focus not on holding something back, but in giving more—more
than you even think you can.
At the next
track practice, I trained more intentionally.
I returned to the 400 yard sprints that my previous teammate Don had
run. And I encouraged my teammates to
come with me.
The next meet,
the last meet of my track career, I was ready like never before, which isn’t
saying much. Again, our competition was
weak, but their track was not. It was
flat, and smooth, and bouncy even. The
weather was perfect. When we lined up
for the start of the mile, my monologue was not “Hold something back”. My monologue was “This is it, Mark. This is it.”
This race, I
kept up with the competition. I gave it
my all, the whole way, not just the last lap.
As I approached the fourth and final time around the track, I could see
a possible victory and I would not be denied.
I took the lead and never relinquished it. Not only did I win the race, I ran the best
time I ever had, by a considerable margin.
I felt great
and foolish at the same time. I felt
great for the effort I had put forth and the results that had come with
it. I felt foolish for all the time I
had spent holding back, not giving it my all, participating without the passion
and commitment that would have enriched my experience and brought me more
satisfaction than my holding back ever could.
I was reminded
of this life lesson learned in junior high track when I was reading a passage
by Buddhist monk Sakyong Mipham entitled “The Virtue of Exertion.” [3]
Mipham writes of how we often think that happiness comes during the times when
we are not exerting ourselves, when we are doing very little or taking
on few responsibilities. There are
certainly times when taking it easy is necessary and rewarding. We all need a break now and then. However, Mipham reminds us that the true
rewards come when we put forth effort toward what really matters to us, when we
fully engage in the present moment of our reality without wishing it away or
pushing it aside or merely going through the motions out of a sense of
obligation, when we embrace the opportunity of our living with open arms and
intentional action…action that is driven by our curiosity, our sense of
possibility, and our gratitude for the opportunity of another day of living and
loving, rather than simply obligation.
How many of us
spend our waking hours yearning for release from whatever obligations we may
have, maybe freedom from our responsibilities as parents, as partners, as
employees, as students, or even as volunteers, when those responsibilities are,
in reality, the places in our lives, however challenging they may be, where we
can derive the most meaning…and, in turn, the most satisfaction?
How much time
and energy do we spend dreading what we have to do, wishing our moments away in
search of some imagined land of rest and relaxation that is rarely as
attractive as it seems from afar? I
don’t want to oversimplify my point here.
Some of us do overwork, we can over commit ourselves and leave too
little room in our lives for rest and renewal.
And some of us are just plain busy.
There are phases of our lives when there just isn’t enough time in a day
to fully meet all our responsibilities, real or imagined. However, I’m thinking
that if we spent as much time fully giving ourselves to the commitments we have
chosen as the time we often spend trying to avoid those commitments or holding
something back out of fear that our life resources are more limited than they
usually are, we would find the renewal we need in the sense of satisfaction
that comes from living those very commitments.
Taking us back
to my track example, all the time I spent fretting over the race to come did
nothing to improve my performance in the race itself, or my attitude
afterwards. I was so focused on just
getting through it, that I couldn’t be fully present in it.
My fear in
building this sermon on the metaphor of a track competition is that I may give
the impression that “winning” is the supreme goal…that we are only successful
if we are better than someone else. But
I want to be clear that the kind of victory I am talking about today is not a
victory over other people. It is a victory of our life’s possibilities over the
assumed limitations we often carry with us.
No matter who we are or what we do, there will always be people who have
abilities and accomplishments that exceed our own. It’s like my instructor told me the first
time I went skiing, “Mark,” he said, “there will always be people on the hill
who are better than you and there will always be people who are worse than
you. Don’t worry about them. Just get down the hill the best you can.”
“Just get down
the hill the best you can.”
My point today
is that we can get down the hill with the monologue of “hold something
back…hold something back” or we can get down the hill with the monologue of
“This is it. This is it.” Which serves us better in the end?
I am especially
interested in the difference between “hold something back” and “this is it” as
we head into the time of our annual canvass, a time when members and friends of
our church are asked to consider the intersection of their generosity and
commitment to this congregation and the church’s financial needs. As Heidi told us earlier, on March 29th
we will all gather for one Sunday service at Drake University, a time for all
of us to be together at one time to celebrate this church and make our pledges
for the coming year. As we lead up to
that very important morning just over a month from now, we need to talk some
about money. Most of us aren’t used to
talking about money and so we can be uncomfortable doing so. In my nearly eight years as your minister, I
have rarely talked about money from the pulpit.
I suppose I was working under the assumption that people will give what
they give and who am I to suggest that they give more. But I can see now that my hesitancy to
discuss money with you had more to do with me, than with you. My hesitancy had more to do with my own
discomfort, my own fear, my own desire hold something back, to not have to talk
about money and to focus instead on how we interact with one another and with
the world we share.
But how we
choose to share our resources with our religious community, this sacred place
where we are encouraged to live our lives to the fullest, to grow our souls and
do our part to build a better world, is entirely about how we interact with one
another and with the world we share.
Some of you
participated in the recent survey of our members and friends that was put
together by our growth team. The results
were very positive. Sure there were some
areas where we could improve, particularly in our approach to religious
education, which isn’t surprising considering the upheaval in that area of
church life we have experienced over the past two years. One of the most interesting results was that,
of the 169 respondents, more than half believed that our congregation is not
visible enough in the community. What is
keeping us from being more visible? I
suggest the primary reason, collectively speaking, is that we are holding back. We are holding back from fully inhabiting our
responsibilities as members and friends of this congregation to spread the word
about who we are and what we do here. We
are holding back from believing that excellence is possible. We are holding back from contributing all we
could to making that excellence a reality.
I don’t know
about you, but I drive around this town and I get annoyed at the fancy
buildings and programs of some of the more exclusionary churches. Why do they have so much money? What is it about what they offer that compels
their members to give so much? Is our
vision of life any less important than theirs?
What would it take for us to embrace our mission and vision of a
better world enough to give similar amounts?
During my
sabbatical last spring, when I visited other growing vibrant UU congregations,
I could see that for our church to make the leap from “good to great” would
require more and better staffing. So a
group of us have been working since my return on creating a staffing plan that
fits not only who we are today, but who we say we want to be tomorrow. We have
hired a professional director of finance and administration, with skills and
experiences that exceed anything we have had in that position before. We have hired a talented communication
coordinator, who is anxious to help us improve our church communications. And we will soon be hiring a full-time
director of religious education to help us as we continue to pursue excellent
programming for our children and youth.
We have increased the hours of our energetic membership coordinator, Lori
Emison Clair, who has been spearheading lots of new initiatives and events,
including the ever-expanding Wednesday night dinner and programming. And we are hoping to hire an office assistant
to give our staff a reliable go-to person for administrative support. All of these positions and improvements are
indispensable for our continued institutional health and growth, but they will
require a significant increase in our annual pledge income.
From where I
stand, this is a pivotal moment for this congregation. A time when we can hold something back and
stay where we are (at best) or a time when we can say “this is it!” and embrace the possibilities waiting for us
and this church we care so much about.
Earlier this
week I met with a dozen folks considering membership, people who have found us
amidst all the other options for religious community and who see in us the
promise of something better, something meaningful and meaning-filled, a
community of tolerance, possibility and transformation. I saw in their faces and questions the same
curiosity and yearning for excellence that I felt when I first joined a UU
congregation. But no one explained to me
the costs of that excellence and it’s taken me almost this long to figure it
out.
I don’t want to
make that same mistake with you.
The costs of
excellence are that each of us who calls this congregation home needs to
consider making a pledge between 3 and 5 percent of our household income. Not everyone will reach that goal…even those
who really want to. I know the economy is not doing well and that some of us
may be struggling or fearful. But that’s why a percentage gift is the way to
go. A percentage gift is the way to be
fair to yourself and to your fellow members and friends, some of whom stretch
to support this congregation more than you might believe. Isn’t the mission and
vision of our church important enough for us to pursue and encourage this level
of generosity?
Even if our
per-member giving averaged only 2.5% of our household income, we would more
than exceed our goals. Just think of
what would be possible if we went beyond that?
I’m tired of
holding something back. I’m tired of
people not knowing who we are. I am
tired of us going through the motions. I
want us to be present and accounted for in our mission. I want us to be known not for our membership
total but for our per-member giving and generosity. This is the time. This is the time for us to own and live the
promise of this place by mentoring for our newcomers and those who will follow
them what it means to be a community of abundance, a community that cares
enough about what we claim to believe that we want to invite others to join us
and to fund our efforts accordingly.
Now is the
time.
Our generosity
will do more than pay for staffing and programming and outreach. Our generosity will literally change
lives. Including our own.
You can do it.
We can do it.
So let’s do it!