On Saturday my husband and I drove down to Confederation Park, tucked in the western corner of Lake Ontario, to join hundreds of others in the Road2Hope races along the lakeshore. Justin was running the 10k at 11am. I would be walking the 5k at 10am.
My initial plan, when I signed up for the race, was to run the 5k. It had been a while since I’d run regularly, and this felt like a good incentive to start training again. And I did start training…for a while. I started a couch-to-5k plan on Runna and started walk/running my way around our neighbourhood.
But then I missed a run…and another one…and soon my plan was way off schedule and I had to recalibrate. And then recalibrate again. And at some point – I’m not sure when – I just stopped running.
Motivation is hard to come by these days. I’ve been in liminal space for a while now, waiting for some sense of direction about what’s next, waiting for search committees to meet, waiting for the right door to open. Life feels a bit like molasses, and I’m trying to wade through it all, but more often than not, I just feel kind of stuck.
I don’t like feeling stuck. I’ve always been someone who looks ahead, who wonders about the next thing, who chases the next opportunity. I don’t think I’m unusual in this. We all struggle with contentment. We all have ideas about what will make us feel fulfilled and happy. We all have dreams we’re chasing.
But sometimes those dreams don’t materialize the way we thought they would. Some dreams die, some dreams change, some dreams just take a long time to come true. Last week I gave a workshop on this idea of dream deaths at the Lester Randall Preaching Fellowship in Toronto, exploring how we as preachers can be cognizant of the pews full of unrealized dreams before us. We talked about specific dreams, but also the general sense of despair present today, particularly among young people who wonder if they’ll ever be able to buy a house, if AI will steal their job, or if the sun will literally continue to shine.
In response, I talked about a recent Substack essay I’d read by Elizabeth Oldfield. She writes about how hard it is to predict or prepare for the future right now, how frustrating it is to feel that lack of control, and how exhausting it is to try and distract ourselves into a place of happy denial.
“I am not optimistic or pessimistic about the future,” she writes. “I am not hopeful, either, except in the deep, long, metaphysical sense. I believe love is stronger than death. I have decided that the future is above my pay grade, and my job right now is
a) To develop ever more tolerance of this uncertainty, so I can really live and
b) To be faithful to the work that seems closest aligned with goodness, truth and beauty, to act and live with as much courage and love and creativity and mischief and good clean grief as I can muster, for as long as we have.”
Oldfield’s essay is a call to presence, to being present, in the here and now. I was reminded of Jamie Smith’s book, How to Inhabit Time, in which he discusses Peter Leithart’s translation of the Hebrew word hebel in Ecclesiastes. Often translated as “meaninglessness,” Leithart argues a better translation is “vapor” or “mist.” Life is not meaningless, but fleeting. Out of our hands and out of our control. The invitation is thus not to “chase the wind,” but to “shepherd” it.
This is then, says Smith, “not a counsel of despair or resignation but rather an invitation to reframe expectations such that I can ‘enjoy’ what’s before me, who is with me, fleeting as their presence might be. The question isn’t whether we can escape this condition but how we will receive our mortality, how we will shepherd what’s fleeting yet given” (pg. 103).
Uncertainty makes us feel vulnerable, and vulnerability makes us aware of our mortality. But if we can “receive our mortality,” how much more present will we be to the life we are in fact living?
I ended up walking the 5k with a group of core members from L’Arche. We started at the back of the pack and there we stayed. The runners out front had finished the race before we reached the 1K marker. I got to cheer Justin on as he started the 10k because we got to the start/finish line at the same time, and our little group had to wait to finish our race so the next one could begin. The race organizers scrambled to unbox the medals they’d already put away.
It was an exercise in humility, to be the last to arrive. And yet, if I took the “race” element out of the equation, what I had been given was a beautiful stroll along the lakeshore with friends. I had time to take pictures of the fall foliage, to marvel at the gulls perched on rocks in the water, to do silly dances and sing songs and delight in the warm fall day.
By not chasing after something, I could shepherd what I had. I’m trying to be better at shepherding the wind, to receive what’s in front of me, to enjoy the walk, even if I feel I ought to be running. To be where my feet are. And to live with courage, love, creativity, mischief, and good clean grief wherever I am.
