Jogging in the clouds . . .

My dad is 85 years old. I don't think he would mind me mentioning that since he mentions it to me almost every day. I often visit with him late in the afternoon and catch a couple of the cable news programs while bumming a few nacho flavored Doritos and reprogramming the TV remote.

"I just can't keep up with everything anymore," he told me today. "I'm sorry, but I just can't keep up with it all . . . especially this crap." He said that last part as he pointed toward the TV with the remote, more specifically the cable news/political shows, which at the time were wall-to-wall ceiling, debt-ceiling that is.

I don't believe he can't keep up with it anymore. We have had too many recent discussions about it that have given great evidence to the contrary. He understands more about it than I do. But he is so frustrated with our "public servants" that he just doesn't want to keep up with it. In my eyes his life has been one of public service, something I wish I could emulate and will write about more fully sometime. We talked about the recent developments and critiqued the various news hosts and guests. Then I left to take a little jog. He told me it was too hot, but to be careful.

It was a dumb idea. The temperature was still about 92 degrees. About a mile into the jog I saw a familiar figure up ahead coming toward me, actually sort of like a stick figure. It was Bert, an old friend who lives at the end of the street I was running down. Bert has got long legs. I think they attach directly to his neck. And they are skinny. Birds that passed by looked at them with envy. Bert is in his mid-eighties. I always thought of him as very wise, and his counsel has always born that out, but, since he also chose to be out exercising on such an evening as this I began to wonder. He was sporting a bright yellow "Mule Days" cap from Ider, Alabama. I was sporting my bright crimson super baggy University of Alabama basketball shorts. We stopped for a moment or two in the middle of 4th Avenue to chat. But not for long. We both were on a mission. To get some exercise. As we parted I told him I hope to see him again soon when we could talk a little more. I don't know if he heard me. He was already on his way.

My jogging route took me part of the way up Shuff's mountain, through a little cut-through known by some as the "preacher's trail", and back down. As I jogged breathlessly I remembered the words of a friend who used to run that route regularly. Perhaps my brain was now overheated to the point that I was seeing visions, sort of like in one of those sweat lodges that some Native Americans use in religious cleansing rituals.

"You seem to think you are stuck," my friend told me a few years ago, somewhere close to the beginning of that trail. "But you are where you are, doing what you do because that is what you choose to do. You always have a choice." That simple advice changed my life forever.

Later in the jog I was greeted by an old friend parked at the ball field who offered me encouragement and told me it was unnecessary to try to speak. As I cooled down from the jog with a walk toward the Prius a loud honk of a car horn from a passing SUV startled me. I looked up and two friends were smiling and waving as they headed down the road.

When I got back to the Prius there I had a message. Rita called at 7:23 to tell me she loved me.

That's the way life is supposed to be I think. Sort of like a 10K or half marathon or just a pitiful jog, with folks along the way, both present and past, cheering us on, giving us advice, or running alongside us as long as they can. A Bible verse came to mind, so I came home and checked it out. Hebrews 12:1:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us . . ."

Maybe the jog wasn't such a dumb idea after all.

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