Inspirations

Stethoscope: FANTASTIC! (thanks, Allen!)

A particularly inspiring comment to my blog of April 21, 2011

(from fred)
I have done several small trialthalons over the years, but never the Kona Ironman (not good enough to qualify). I don’t know what your distances willbe, but here is my 2-cents of advice: to keep yourself motivated and positive (I can do it) durng the race, keep thinking about the distances you have done in practice. If youdid the full race distance in each event, think to your self that “I have done this before. This is no problem.” If you HAVE NOT done the full race distance before, think (for a 10 mile race run) “I have run 8 miles everal time. I can do two more miles easy. ” Keep thinking about this as you run/ride/swim. Not once,but over and over. Ithelp metally pull you through and distracts your brain from pain and distances. It really helps when you are on a lonely stretch of road. Good lApril 22, 2011 at 10:20 | Report abuse | Reply

Lent

from “Wishful Thinking”, Frederick Buechner. pp. 74, 75.

In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year’s income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year’s days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.

If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn’t, which side would get your money and why?

When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?

If you had only one last message to leave the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?

Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?

Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?

If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.

Interesting words from a Delta Airlines commercial: “If you run before the wind, you can’t take off. You’ve got to turn into it….The thing you push against is the thing that lifts you up.”