For the last 30 years or so, I’ve risen on Christmas morning to go for a run at a local golf course near the home of my in-laws. While the families slowly tumble out of bed at their respective rates, my favorite activity is getting out for a 4-6 mile run.
Over the years there has been snow, sleet and rain on some of those mornings. But many times it is has been calm and cloudy with very little snow on the ground.
Years gone by
Crunching around the loop of that golf course on Christmas morning is a wistful experience now that all those years have passed. Those mornings when the kids were little and eager to open their stockings and some presents to wick off the steam of their eagerness, I’d wait to go for my run. There were plenty of years when I’d hold off altogether until after the presents were opened.
I’ve told the story of how one Christmas morning I went for a cross- country ski journey instead of a run. The snow was simply too deep for effective running that year. And while I was skiing I happened upon the shape of a wheel in the snow. It was a big circle with spokes leading to the middle where a dead Canada goose lay half-eaten in the snow. I can only surmise this was the work of coyotes. Why a wheel? Some mysteries are never meant to be solved.
That’s how I feel about Christmas too. I don’t really buy into the literal Nativity narrative that so many Christians seem to worship. All those wise men and sheep and cattle lowing over the Christ child…are in fact manufactured symbolism for the holiday. That’s why the so-called War On Christmas is nothing more than pathetic joke conceived by attention-hungry conservatives determined to make their politically constructed brand of faith seem important.
Political purposes
The Gospels themselves were written for marginally political reasons. The birth of Christ tale steals from tons of other religious traditions claiming a virgin birth and hailed by wise men.
So the original War On Christmas was conducted by Christians themselves. Very early in what would become Christian history, Gospel writers worked very hard to align Jewish prophecies with the tale of a Messiah come to earth. The Gospels were written decades after the death of Christ, and sequentially they go Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Each has its own style and elaborations. Yet they ultimately lean toward a more spiritual view of Christ.
But not too spiritual. That was what the Gnostics and other sects of Christians wanted, a mystical Christ that shunned the material world.
Balance of power
So a balance was struck, and a politically acceptable version of Christ was born. It was helped along by Paul, the author that threw open the doors of Christ to Gentiles as well as Jews.
That became the Christianity eventually embraced by Rome and Emperor Constantine. Out of that Christian world emerged the Apostles Creed and other professions of faith.
Then Christianity made its run through the gantlet of the Dark Ages, when the Bible in Latin through the Catholic Church became almost a weapon against the people. That engendered a bold move by a priest named Martin Luther that helped lead to Protestantism. It was a protest against what Christianity had become, a source of power and control over the lives of other people. And a moneymaker too. This all served its role in bringing stability to a tempestuous world, but ultimately this too had to evolve.
Crusaders and conquerors
Because along came the Crusades, and battles with Islam over ownership of the so-called Holy Land, and Jerusalem. And both sides won, yet both sides ultimately lost.
Then the Christian world expanded to the New World, most often by violent means. Men searching for gold and wealth, power and status murdered all who stood in their way. It happened in Central and North America. It was sooner or later branded Manifest Destiny, which seems so far removed from the vision of a Christ child in the manger it almost beggars the imagination.
Christian conquerors then violently brought slaves across the ocean to serve their needs under control of the whip and chains. These conquerors transmogrified into racists claiming superiority simply for having the will to dominate. And these are not yet gone from our midst. They remain in white militias and dog-whistle power mongers claiming they want to “take America back” from the supposed evils of non-Christians seeking civil rights and equal protections of law for women, gays, the environment and soccer fans.
War Over Christmas
So you can see, the real War On Christmas is actually a War Over Christmas. The meaning of it. The history. Who rightfully owns the story of Jesus in the manger? Is it the conquerors or, as Christ once proposed, the meek who shall inherit the earth? Listen to the likes of men like Bill O’Reilly screaming at his guests in the No Spin Zone about the War On Christmas, and honestly ask yourself: Who really represents the Word of God?
The Genesis Fix
I’ve previously written a book (2007) that explores this question of who represents the World of God from an entirely different perspective. That book is called The Genesis Fix, A Repair Manual for Faith In the Modern Age.
It contends that there is a narrative within the seams of the bible that has been almost entirely ignored by the men (and women) who consider themselves conquerors. It proposes instead that Jesus was indeed that balance between the spiritual and the material man. Jesus taught using examples from nature as a principal means to communicate balance between our material and spiritual lives.
His parables, and the many organic scriptural examples of God’s creation used as symbols for the spiritual world (metonymy) throughout the bible, are directives for what we should all endeavor to achieve in our faith lives. We should respect creation first, and all good will follow. That is the same as respecting God, for it flows from the same foundation.
When I think about the Christ child’s humble beginnings, with domesticated animals standing around the creche, and a star illuminating the night above, it is this symbolism to which I adhere: That all of us should cease to focus on conquering, and abide more by the love (both tough and tender) and forgiveness that enables us to reach out to our enemies as well as our friends, and seek understanding. And above all, seek wisdom.
These are the things I think about on those Christmas morning runs.
During my five-mile run this morning, I ran from Geneva, Il. up to St. Charles and back. Having lived in both of those communities over the years, the route I took has plenty of personal history. I’ve trained on these streets since the early 1970s, and am happy to live in an area as pretty as the Tri-Cities 35 miles west of Chicago. The Fox River cuts through St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia and bike paths follow both sides of the valley.
They were dogs. Big dogs. One wore reindeer antlers. The other leaned up to give me a kiss while she obliged me with a photo in the company of her dogs.
I quickly shared how the dog that entered our life played the same role. Our dog Chuck was a companion and ‘rescuer’ to our family during times of great strife.
And so it largely went until I became a cyclist. That first summer at the age of 45 I noticed a new look about my legs. Now they rise and fall every summer depending on the type and degree of miles I put in. That ability to actually enlarge my thighs was something of a miracle to a guy that had lived so long with really lean thighs. Muscle! What a revelation!
There is a white fence installed at the front of my house. I put it in the ground perhaps 18 years ago. It needs paint this spring but other than that it is not rotted or likely to fall down anytime soon.
I’d notice and even say hello to the tree when I walked out the front door on my way out to go for a run. Or I’d sometimes pump up my bike tires next to its friendly little branches. I’ve always loved the way pine trees look in the same way I like bass as a fish. They both seem like a “good” species to have around. Their shapes are nice, and they generally are not pests.
So I’ll enjoy the company of my little tree this year. She and I have already seen many years together. When we’re all through with Christmas, she and her big sister will go out back with the bird feeders. They’ll provide welcome cover for the juncos, sparrow, finches, rabbits and squirrels over the winter. The kingdom of God is not judgmental. It is practical and true. It shares and shares alike. It blooms and it absorbs.
I hold grudging admiration even for the politicians I most despise. They may be attempting to do the most egregious things imaginable, but one must admire their determination.
I get into the City of Chicago fairly frequently. Compared to twenty or thirty years ago, the city is neat, clean and well run. It’s more expensive than ever thanks to for-profit parking policies and elimination of simple metered parking in many places. But overall the city looks and acts world class.
There are bike lanes everywhere, and commuting by bike is well respected. That’s a very European dynamic, and a sign of a somewhat advancing notion of what it means to live in a civilized city. Accommodating bikes shows that a city respects the human beings occupying its streets, not just motorists.
America should have a minimum three-foot shoulder on every road, so that cyclists can move outside the white line when traffic is approaching from behind. Those lines should be dotted so that cars do know bikes have the right-of-way to move into the lane for regular riding. Cyclists could learn to show courtesy and intelligence by communicating and moving off the main road surface when needed.
It’s a strange dichotomy to see a Mayor trying to do good things on everything from recycling to urban sustainability and be faced with the ugly specters of street crime, gun violence and a generally aggressive and dissatisfied society that loves to blame the government for all these problems.
Instead, they point fingers at a minority of cyclists and build the hate meme by pointing out mistakes made by cyclists in traffic. This lumps all riders into the same category.
The last two days I made the wonderful drive up to Minneapolis, Minnesota and back. And I mean that seriously. It really is a beautiful drive.
North of Madison the landscape turns into sandstone hills where the Wisconsin River runs. Years ago a great inland sea dumped billions of tons of sand deposits that make up the bedrock of Wisconsin. Some hardened while others eroded, leaving crazy outcrops that resemble the hoodoos of southwestern Utah.
While driving north I thought about all those running and cycling experiences over the years. With business to conduct in Middleton, I drove west on 14 through Cross Plains following the meeting. That’s a corner of the Ironman Wisconsin course that I’ve covered many times now with Sue and our triathlon teammates and friends. I got a wisftul feeling glancing at the road where we make the turn south. That part of the course holds the hills known to all triathletes as the Three Bitches. They are interesting climbs to be sure. One is gradual and long through a soft green woods. The second is abrupt and sharp on an open road. The final Bitch 
turns menacingly to the left in a grinding arc that makes you appreciate that Wisconsin is indeed not a flat state. Of geography. Or being.
remains. It took the help of friends to usher me through that night of Vicodin and getting up in a daze at 2:00 in the morning to take a shivering piss in the cold stare of moonlight outside the tent. “What the hell are you doing?” my best friend asked while regarding the patently blank expression of my ass crack a few meters outside the tent flap. I just laughed. “Taking a fucking piss,” I laughed while holding my crank in one shaking hand to make a jagged line in the campground dust.
Then there is the cumulative effect of all those years in our memory banks. Some of them are crisp. Some foggy.
It seems like life hunts our hopes and dreams the same way at times. We can be innocently flying along when some shot of reality strikes at our hearts. We realize something we long believed was never true. “What a fool believes is always better than nothing,” the Doobie Brothers once sang. And that’s true for the moment. That’s one of those phrases that’s both true and untrue at the same time.
It shows you that we’re not immune to either moments or memories. I think about my own children coping to this day with the loss of their mother and it tears me apart sometimes. 
During college I took a course in existentialism. We read Sartre and Camus, to name one or two. One of the concepts we studied was the irreversibility of time. And it’s true. Despite all our succulent wishes for time travel, we cannot enter the past. We are “frozen forward” in time.
make sense of all we’ve experienced and are experiencing in the moment. Perhaps we make a cell phone call to a friend along the way. I did just that, making a call to a high school friend along the way. ” I’m driving past the place where you threw up that Boone’s Farm wine at Lake Delton,” I laughed. And he laughed. And that was it. The mists of memory.
At first he lived in a frat house on the University of Chicago campus after my son Evan and a friend rescued him off the streets of Chicago. Then while still a pup under a year old, he moved to our house in Batavia. This came about by request of my daughter Emily, who loved the little pup at first sight.
When someone comes home he jumps and leaps in excitement. It’s an annoying habit frankly, especially for women in shorts. His nails can hurt.
It has been bittersweet however, having Chuck move out. When you’ve lived with any reasonably sentient, loving creature for so long, there is an inevitable feeling of sadness. After carrying Chuck’s gear and crate to my daughter’s car, I stood out in the yard where the dog and I have spent so many mornings together. By my count, that’s been about 2000 mornings taking him out to pee or walk in the early morning light. And again sometimes at noon. Then again at night. So I stood there and cried for a bit. He’s kind of the last connection to all that caregiving and stress and mortality and loss. He’s been a little lamb in a life of wolves. So I’ll admit I cried for myself a little bit. It’s always time to move on. But some moves come harder than others.
Last Thursday the speed work went well, Yet the next few days delivered a set of barely sentient slogs. That’s the yin and yang of endurance sports. One day you’re flying high and the next it feels as if you’re crawling through dirt to make any progress.
I’ve shared that a roommate of mine and college track teammate finally broke that cycle of training intensity. We built a slow running base going into our senior year of track and both set PRs at all distances. The same thing transpired with those runners in Philadelphia with whom I trained. They ran their long slow distance really slow. And the benefits were really fast times.
When we’re young, it can be amusing to consider the vexations of older people. The flourish of youth enables this attitude. It’s hard to imagine that you’ll someday face your own symptoms of aging.
But it’s not just injuries that slow us down. Eventually, our bodies cannot process oxygen with the same efficiency, and our muscle volume can deteriorate as we age. That’s why it is highly recommended that athletes keep working with weights and strength to maintain muscle tone and volume.
These things sound funny to younger people, who can’t imagine themselves facing similar problems. But don’t worry, you’ll get there.
But the hips, well that’s a different matter. They do hurt after an hour of running. That means there needs to be specific strength work done to build up the hip flexors and keep them from tiring out late in a run.
There is no escaping the fact that our bodies do change as we age. We are simply not as fast at 50 as we were at 20. But the relative benefits of pursuing fitness and endurance sports with intelligence is a great way to live. It keeps the whole package in shape so that the little health problems we all encounter do not become worse issues because our overall health is bad.
Wouldn’t it be funny if girlfriends had scorecards by which they could grade their boyfriends or husbands on their day to day performance? Can you imagine?
This morning I got up at 5:15 to meet my girlfriend for a workout of 6 X 800 meters at 4:00 pace. It was a little hard getting out of bed at that hour, but really not that bad.
This is the brand of love you express or feel toward all human beings. I truly get those feelings when seeing other runners or cyclists or swimmers racing or training. A quiet “way to go” runs through my head and sometimes I even yell out the car window or wave at a passing runner or cyclists with a few words of encouragement. There’s a fellowship to all that. It even pays to get a little goofy at times to express that agape in this world.
In that atmosphere, every accomplishment or grain of wealth becomes a checklist against which all others are measured. “I earned every dollar I have,” goes the refrain. “I don’t want people freeloading off my hard-earned money.”
We Run and Ride 