When I was a boy, I was all hung up on Bruce Jenner. Before he became the Guardian of the Kardashians, he was the epitome of the all American athlete, winning this “athalon” and that “athalon…” When my father informed me that Jenner grew up not far from where we lived in suburban New York, his status was crystallized in my superhero driven mind.

While I didn’t actually watch the Olympics when he competed, he seemed to show up on every cereal box down the “crunchy fun” aisle, from Wheaties to Special K, and he became an instant hero. Bruce Jenner was a real life Superman. I knew Superman didn’t really exist but Bruce Jenner did.

At the same time, a new brand of sneaker called Zips came onto the scene with a particularly flashy ad campaign. Tween boys would slip on a pair of the special shoes and take off into the sky like home grown super heroes. I wanted Zips (with the BIG ‘Z’) on my feet because I required the added speed they would surely provide thus allowing me to run like the wind around my block for hours. I was seven years old and I honestly believed the claims they made on TV that they would double my speed. I was already crazy fast, but double? Faster than a speeding train?

My mother, against her better judgment and far above the modest cost of my usual pair of Keds agreed to get me the magic running shoes at Marshall’s Shoe Store. I had them out of the box and on my feet before we pulled into the driveway. It was a warm summer day and the sun (as well as the son) still had some legs before dusk. I reassured my mother that I’d be back around the enormous block in no time…I now possessed the proper equipment to optimize my performance.

Whoooshhhhaaaaaa! I was like lightning out of the gate.

I was sure I could feel my new sneakers lift the rubber soles above the sweltering pavement helping me achieve a supernatural cruising altitude. I already envisioned my beaming face on the Wheaties box, relishing the jealous stares of every little boy around the breakfast tables of America.

I was on fire.

Until I hit the Wall.

My wiry, little legs pumped faster and harder than they had ever experienced previous to Zips Day and they suddenly, simply, said “No.”

“But…? But, I have the Zips now?”

“No. Done. Over. You’re a scrawny little kid and it’s hot out and there’s that German Shepherd growling and did you really think plastic shoes would make you faster? You’re done. Just stop. Walk it on home. Retire while you’re at your peak.”

By the time I made it around the block and back to the driveway, my mother was leaning against the car, waiting.

“So?”

“They don’t work,” I said.

My Zips spent the rest of their short life in the Closet of Effective Marketing and Irreconcilable Dreams.

Since then I have experienced a complex relationship with running.

I tried running away from home. I ran toward the bus on the first day of grade school. I ran around in circles for High School Track and Field. I ran through forests and streams on the Cross Country team. I have run toward women, sprinted past them and scrambled frantically away. Running has been a significant part of the journey, any way you scissor-kick it.

Yet, always, the process of running; the thrill, ecstasy, passion and perspiration has been visited by the Wall. The voice of negativity and reason, low self esteem and broken records; my Wall is the accumulated shadow for all of my life’s great accomplishments, lurking…prowling…waiting to pounce on the first sign of false hope, misguided focus and lactic acid.

So, why do I continue to run? Through injuries and shin splints, muffin tops and fat tires…? Why do I accept facing the Wall every time I strap on my Nike Plus and unleash the hip hop?

There’s something about running that is more integral a part of me than the feet I use to run with because it demands a connection between my heart, mind and body. I must not only get past the pain and just plow through the Wall, I must uncover the joy of feeling my fullness, my wholeness, my whooshing being, in dialogue with the world around me.

In truth, I have lived the greater part of my life living on the Wall, whooshing back and forth between ecstasy and disaster, optimism and pessimism, trust and disgust.

If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

“I’m Sorry You Weren’t Saved in the Rapture.”

Thus reads the official blog for Judgment Day 2011. The automated blog post was intended to be an “I told you so” to survivors of Judgment Day and an attempt to have us left behind find our way to Jesus and save our souls before the second wave hits.

While Harold Camping, the retired civil engineer turned prophet, still has not officially emerged from seclusion there have been several pastors across the country asking for forgiveness from parishioners due to the misguided information.

Matt Ivers from Idaho offers this apology:

“I am very sorry for wrongly teaching that and it is my best and sincere interest to not mislead, frustrate, or lie to anyone. I hope that you can forgive me and that we can all grow spiritually from this lesson.”

I think it would be wonderful to all grow spiritually from this experience. For starters, I’d like us to become more conscious and responsible about the things we say.

One of the most fascinating things about this whole Rapture business is how many of us sat up and took notice. Like the prophets in the Old Testament, our contemporary prophets are not always dialed in to the exact truthiness of a thing. But, wow, do they have passion. When someone believes something with all of their being, it is hard not to stop and marvel at it, wonder how it came to be that they feel so strong about it and decide for myself if I, too, am of the same mind.

However, many of us push our way into the “fields” of other people and attempt to manipulate their organic decision making processes.

George W. Bush looked very sincere, even earnest, about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s) but he wasn’t passionate. It was Colin Powell, who I actually trusted, that was most convincing because of his character. “Well, maybe they do have them,” said the part of me that wants to trust others…

Renowned scientist, Stephen Hawking, came out publicly last week and suggested that the only reason he is still alive today is due to science. It makes me wonder.

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Hawking, the 69 year old physicist, is much like Albert Einstein in the latter years of his life, offering his $.02 about humanity, God and what, if anything, might come beyond this life.

What troubles me, however, is the arrogance that tends to accompany such declarations. Many of us believe that we think a certain way, therefore it must be so. There tends to be a dismissal of the possibility that I may be wrong, that I may be influenced by my emotions, my personal journey, and that, most important, others may believe and “know” things that directly conflict with things that I “know.” And what is more, it tends to be those already in the public eye that have the greatest impact on our beliefs. Yet, with the power of the Internet, we hear from all sorts of folks now.

There is a spiritual pride that many believers assume when they know something. There is also a pride that many non-believers assume when they know something. That pride tends to resemble straight arrogance when we assume that because I know it, you must know it as well. Even more, if you refuse to know it, you are either an idiot, ignorant, or going to burn in Hell.

Whether my computer will simply power down into nothingness at the end of my life or if I return to a conscious state of endless bliss and everythingness, my process of self-discovery and transformation is my own.

If I need you to believe what I believe in order to feel more assurance that what I believe is correct, then I don’t really know what I know.

As one of the old school prophets suggested, “Not By Might, Nor By Power, But By My Spirit – Zechariah 4:6.” Live and let live, people. Trust your heart and live the life you believe is yours to live, regardless of all the chatter that may surround you.

I wanted to believe that this might be the only blog in town this week not about Osama or Obama. That I wouldn’t write a tome about “to kill a killer” or “to gloat or not to gloat.” Yet, in the end, it’s all really about the meaning of life, anyway. I’m talking about BIG stuff, here. I’m talking about THE POINT.

What’s the point?

And I’m not coming from that nihilistic, black nail polish kind of place. I’m coming from that stare into the mirror and sigh sort of place.

It seems like back “in the really old days” people had basic survival to contend with more than anything. Hunt, gather, and/ or grow food and do ones best to protect the family from marauders and generally bad people. Also likely was the added concern with the fate of one’s body, mind and spirit in the assumed or hotly debated afterlife.

Today, we’re still concerned with the procurement of food ( I mean, who doesn’t like a cold Coca Cola) and self-protection (could I ever build a wall high enough), however these basic needs are often overshadowed by the pursuit of new technology (patiently, peacefully waiting for the IPhone 5), preparing for retirement (what does that really mean in this day and age) and where and when we will take our next vacation (when did we need a fancy term for staying home instead of going somewhere else).

Back in the day when folks were primarily concerned with the survival of self and soul, do you think they felt an overarching sense of meaning in their lives? Do you think they felt connected to the rest of the planet; a kinship with other humans? Even without CNN? Makes me wonder…

When faced with my survival, is there really significant emotional and physical space to worry about the existential nature of meaning and purpose?

Today there are surely billions of people who are still concerned with their souls in the afterlife and who derive a sense of meaning from their respective religions or beliefs. Yet, I am unsure as to whether there is a unifying, universally coherent, common purpose for us all; something that draws us all together. Was the notion of the Tower of Babel (one of my favorite parables) merely about language or was there a deeper, existential notion of DIFFERENCE?

One would think the condition of our environment would have accomplished a unification for our species long ago yet the fact that the nations of the world can’t seem to work together to solve global warming is an indication of our state of affairs. We still remain scattered across the earth doing our own thing. Some countries still consider global warming an Other issue as a matter of public policy.

Then there is, of course, the issue of doctrine, dogma and subjective truth. The marauders attacking my village thousands of years ago believed they were justified in attacking my village even though I strongly disagreed. I mean, I REALLY disagreed with the essential premise of their approach to life.

Many of us today are in favor of free speech and democratic process until someone threatens us for real. When marauders come rolling through my sense of peace and calm, I want to stop them by any means necessary because I’m still basically a human being who doesn’t care about you until you make changing me and altering my agenda, your agenda. Then we have a problem, man.

The notion of that primordial tower was for all the nations of the earth to band together for a common end and build a structure so amazing that we could reach God, thus becoming Gods. However, that scoundrel God “confounded the language of all the Earth.” (Genesis 11:5-8) and set us back a ways. Now look at us.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
~ Albert Einstein

I knew a man once who was obsessed with ZERO. You name it, he was all over the zero aspect of it. From numerology to astrology to tax returns, he was very interested in the number zero. Yet, it was clearly more about the idea, the depth of zero that fried his shrimp.

Negative space, for example. The white line that is about to follow this line full of black typed words with, well, with incredibly meaningful ideas, right…? Yet, if you breathe into my intention, my personality, spirit, psychology, etc. there is a whole world about me that you may have access to beyond the words I choose to share. There is oftentimes so much value in grasping the “meta-communication” that is being imparted in the negative space between our words.

The paradox of the Tarot’s arguably most mysterious character, the Fool, is the lucky recipient of a Zero at the top of its card. The notion being that the Fool has no value at all, or perhaps the wise fool has more value in not being connected to a specific value. There is no beginning or end to its value. Even still, it is the Fool and her journey that embarks on the entire meaning of the Tarot’s Major Arcana and perhaps, the journey to understand the meaning of life.

Martin Buber ( 20th century German philosopher ) taught about the power of the I-Thou relationship. The space between two unique, empowered and conscious beings, he suggested, is exactly the most magical, creative space that exists in the universe. In fact, God/Creation/Invention/Healing exists in that “zero” space between two people who mutually encounter one another without expectation or projection. As Neo says, “Whoa.”

In the beginning, before there was the word and all that, there was NOTHING. ZERO. NADA.

“Bereishit bara elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz veha’aretz haiyta tohu va vohu ve’choshech al p’ney tehom” – which means – “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Tohu va’vohu. Unformed and Void. Nothingness was the earth. Yet, from that nothingness emerges everything! That’s a pretty powerful pile of zero.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

I’m sorry.

I say this tiny little phrase all the time. Sometimes out loud, oftentimes in my own head.

I’m sorry.

I have heard it repeated to me throughout my life. Sometimes out loud, oftentimes implied through remorseful eyes or pursed lips.

What does it mean, really? Do I mean it when I say it? What could it mean to truly be sorry?

In many languages, “sorry” is equivalently translated as “excuse me.” Yes, oftentimes the way I mean “I’m sorry” is akin to bumping into you at Starbucks and accidentally spilling your coffee. There may be a stain but it’s not life or death, so get over it.

I consider the prevalence of “I’m sorry” in our whack-a-doodle culture. Everyone from priests to politicians, professional sports figures to movie stars, all seem to find their way in front of a camera to utter the requisite mea culpa. Back in the day, folks even used to throw in a “maxima” between mea and culpa, offering “my most grievous fault.”

However, who really means it anymore? And why do we seem to expect public figures to go on global TV and utter those empty words as part of some inane PR process required to return to box office or golf course power? Who are you really saying those words to? Me? You?

A spiritual teacher once told me “everyone will hurt you at some point, so you might as well get used to it.” Well, then. That’s not a fun concept, is it?

Yet, the truism has seemingly had some legs in my life. Sometimes they have been little hurts, other times they have been some culpae maximus… Oftentimes, however, they are accompanied with “I’m sorry.”

If it is a simple fact of life that we will inevitably step on grass and bugs, even killing them, what does it mean to be “sorry?” If I choose to do something hurtful, malicious, even premeditated, what does it mean to be sorry?

Excuse me.