A few years ago i was at a conference in Washington DC for young clergy. On one of the nights they offered a nighttime tour of the capital and they made it sound pretty neat, but for some reason i couldn’t do it. I have been back a number of times and walked all over DC, but never much at night. After a long day of class, a meeting and some phone calls I had some spicy chili and then walked with my friends to get some key lime pie. i haven’t been feeling well, but I felt like after the day I had had (and the pie) I needed a run. I set out at about 1030pm and I finally got my tour of the capital at night. The streets are mostly well lit, but at that time of night they are deserted and it’s like you have the monuments all to your self. There is something pure about it, something beautiful that can get missed in the crowded day time or the endless news cycles filled with all the bickering, posturing, bad mouthing and scandal. At night the city looks like what you hope it can be, like what it is meant to be. The Capital Dome is all aglow rising into the night sky and it exudes a sort of authority. The Smithsonian Castle looms in the dark in contrast to most of the other buildings, but that is perhaps fitting because it is something different and yet it belongs there just as much as anything else. On down is the Washington Monument that great obelisk pointing to the heavens stark white against the black it takes on a monolithic feel at night. To my left the Jefferson monument shines brightly enhanced by the reflection of the water it draws your eye. As I continued to run alongside the reflection pond the lights weren’t working and the night rested there in the long spaces on the way to visit Lincoln. It seemed further than I remembered, and I couldn’t actually see the monument for a long time, but I knew I was going the right way and then bam, there it was. I couldn’t help but run up the steps to say hello to the man who ended slavery, reunified the country and proposed the Methodism should be the national religion (okay so even I admit that the other two are more impressive, but still). The natural history museum, the archives and oh yeah the White House sitting separate and majestic it looks kind of lonely at night and I couldn’t help but think what how fitting that was because no matter who its occupant is the position is a paradox of constantly being surrounded, yet always alone. As my own night tour ended off down a side street to my friends house I am thankful for the privilege of seeing this other side of the capital and grateful for the lasting images that will stay with me.

If I told you that we were going on a hike in the Issaquah Alps that sounds pretty good by itself, maybe even exotic simply because of the term alps. If I added that we were going to hike Cougar Mountain it sounds even better like some kind of outlaw hideout or danger filled wilderness. Add to that a waterfall and an historic townsite and we’ve got a mystical adventure in an exotic wilderness right? I mean a hike up Cougar Mountain past a historic townsite along a well groomed path through the lush forests of the Issaquah Alps to a cascading waterfall sounds pretty good on a brochure. To be fair we had a great hike, but when you know that Cougar Mountain is more a hill than a mountain, many of the Issaquah Alps have neighborhoods on them, the historic town dam is about four feet high damming a creek, and the waterfall is maybe twenty feet high and five feet wide, the reality doesn’t quite live up to the billing. For the most part I knew what I was getting before I did the hike, but I just kept thinking how everything on paper sounded so good.

Last night I was able to attend the Rite of Reception for the Most Reverend J. Peter Sartain as the Ninth Bishop and Fifth Archbishop of Seattle. The service began with the Archbishop elect knocking on the great ceremonial bronze doors of St. James Cathedral. These doors are only opened for special occasions and later during the service the retiring Archbishop Burnett mentioned that this is only the ninth time Seattle has welcomed a new bishop. Only other bishops are allowed in the narthex as the incoming Archbishop knocks and makes his entrance. the Rite of Reception and the welcoming him through those great doors is symbolic of his being welcomed by the diocese and by the Cathedral itself, which will be his home church. Once he came into his seat a procession of other faith leaders, bishops from other “ecclesial communities,” and community leaders presenting varied demographics such as the deaf community, the black community, the filipino community, the young adult community and a whole litany of other groups.

To be made both proud and humble doing the same thing on the same day is a wonderful learning opportunity. Out with my kids and my dad we ventured to the science center where they have all sorts of tests for your ability. They have tests for your balance, your reflexes, your hand-eye coordination, your sense of smell, and your flexibility. It was in this last that I was made both proud and humble. The chart above the test said that the average male of my age could sit and reach 12.5 inches so I sat down and gave it a try. You are supposed to average three attempts and mine came out at 21 inches so I was feeling pretty good about my flexibility. Later that night I tried out a new yoga routine on my DVR feeling very flexible before I started after my science center results. Just minutes into the flow I was asked to stretch in ways I do not stretch and to bend in ways that I do not bend and I wasn’t even close. It was actually an interesting moment of being humbled, challenged, frustrated and thoughtful about whether this was actually something I needed to work towards. I love a challenge so while a part of me feels a satisfaction that I continue to improve and very little desire to repeat that routine, another part of me says, “I guess I have a long way to go.”

To be made both proud and humble doing the same thing on the same day is a wonderful learning opportunity. Out with my kids and my dad we ventured to the science center where they have all sorts of tests for your ability. They have tests for your balance, your reflexes, your hand-eye coordination, your sense of smell, and your flexibility. It was in this last that I was made both proud and humble. The chart above the test said that the average male of my age could sit and reach 12.5 inches so I sat down and gave it a try. You’re supposed to average three attempts and mine came out at 21 inches so I was feeling pretty good about my nightly yoga and flexibility. Later that night I tried out a new yoga routine on my DVR feeling very flexible before I started. Just minutes in I was asked to do the splits in several different stances and I wasn’t even close. I can do backbends and I can balance and twist in all manner of positions, but this was a simple act of flexibility and I am just not there. It was actually an interesting moment of being humbled, challenged, frustrated and thoughtful about whether this was actually something I needed to work towards. I love a challenge so while a part of me feels satisfaction when I achieve something, another part of me is looking already for what the next challenge will be. I was feeling good that I am nearly twice as flexible as the average male my age, but just hours later I was reminded that I still have a long way to go.

I think it is really easy to rest on our laurels, especially when we have done something better than average or when some goal has been accomplished. The thing is though; we need to be reminded that there is more to be done. They say that true wisdom is knowing that you do not know everything. I guess my lessen in flexibility takes that further to say that no matter how much we have accomplished or how good we might be at something, we can always get better. It should never be about comparing ourselves to others like my reading of a chart that says I did well, it should be about motivating ourselves to do more, to do better. My make is not 9 inches better than average, it’s just 21 so next time I should want it to be more than 21. I choose to set a high bar for myself, but the real point is to set a bar at all and to understand that we must be humble or we risk frustration and giving up. We all need goals and we should never be afraid to set them high. Being reminded is a good thing as we can be both proud of how far we may have come and humble about how long the journey ahead still may be.

In Susan Vreeland’s collection of short stories “Life Studies” there is one story entitled, “Respond,” I don’t want to give away the story here because the whole collection is worth reading, but part of the lesson in this particular story has to do with our response or lack of response and how we can get lost in the things that weigh us down to the point that those are the only things we can still respond to. It’s more complicated than that and is focused as much on relationship as anything else, but it came to mind today as it relates to so many other responses we have. It’s easy to point to Pavlov and his dogs as we try to explain our conditioned responses to things, but often there is more to them than salivating to the ring of a bell. There is a case in California where the video game industry is fighting against a law banning the sale of video games with violent or sexually explicit content. I don’t really want to get into the free speech freedom of expression thing. Anyway I was more interested in the studies about how these games desensitize people to violence or go even further and actually make people more violent. I remember about ten years ago a study on violence caused by song lyrics which talked about killing cops and other things. I guess I just have to wonder when we stopped learning to think and became so influenced by even the unrelated that we are conditioned to act out against our better judgement (or I suppose the point is that we no longer have our better judgement). This wasn’t where i was initially going with this, but my overall point is, “what happened to the thoughtful response?” instead of thinking through things we have already had our responses ingrained in us to certain things, so if it is like that thing, we respond accordingly regardless of what’s really going on or the chance that it might be different. To not respond is a response, and can even be the most thoughtful one. I guess I am hoping we can break free from whatever it is that constrains us, what distracts us, what seems like we are supposed to do, and actually respond to the world with deep care and thought. I hope this whether we are responding to the tragedy of war or some global disaster, or the sometimes nearly equal disaster of a child’s skinned knee. I hope we don’t just respond, but rather we make a response.

Perhaps it’s all the decorative spider webs around or the fact that it is spider season and there are actual spider webs all over right now, but then again maybe it’s just that I ran through one today which has me thinking about them. My first thought was that there was a statistic that came out in the 90’s saying that the average person swallows 8 spiders a year in their sleep. It turned out to be an experiment to demonstrate how gullible people are, and it worked as the statistic spread and is still widely promulgated. The reality is that we don’t swallow in our sleep so it’s not very likely we would swallow anything much less a spider (to answer your question, “no I did not swallow a spider while running today.” Though that does not mean I haven’t before). My next thought however was about how the web is such a great metaphor for so many things. Nets and webs inspired things like the Native American dream catchers and they are a common image that we relate to situations we are stuck in, to the things that bind us together, to the hope that as we cast our net we might catch something, to “the tangled web we weave” which might come apart or get us stuck and any number of other things.

Rabbi and family therapist Edwin H. Friedman wrote extensively about family systems and even wrote a book called, “Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue.” One of the things he talked about was the idea of triangles. He said that two people have a very hard time maintaining a relationship for an extended period of time by themselves no matter how much they care for each other and often will find a third person to sort of moderate between them (this may actually be a third and forth person as each person in the original pair may seek someone else). As you extend the model further it relates to all kinds of relationships, including ones where you choose to go through someone else because you don’t want to talk to the person directly for any number of reasons. We involve people who are totally unrelated to the situation in things because that makes it easier for us, but we seldom think about what it does to them. Friedman actually says that this is one of the main causes of burnout for pastors and Rabbis. They become that third point in so many triangles it can be overwhelming. Some of it is the whole parking lot conversation thing of talking around people or behind their back that forces a triangle. These come about because people won’t just talk to the person they have a problem with or at least they won’t talk to them about the problem. They also happen for smaller stuff like one person doing a project needs someone else to do something but instead of just asking them to do it they have the pastor or someone else do the asking. For pastors and other leaders the goal is to push people into talking directly to each other even if you have to be there to help them do the talking. Triangles can be healthy, they aren’t a bad thing when you are struggling to work something out it can be very helpful, but they can also be part of an avoidance syndrome that allows you to never deal with whatever the real issue is. This morning I had to help someone not be a triangle for two others. They didn’t even know they were creating a triangle, which can happen really easily because we just don’t see it. It wasn’t their fault and both thought they were doing something good. We don’t think about the fact that someone else might be responsible for something and we think we are helping by doing that thing when we might be taking away something that is important for the person that normally does it. That sentence is a bit confusing perhaps, but the point is to think about who is effected by what we do. In the end it was a miscommunication, and the triangle was being formed that didn’t need to exist at all. We all should be aware of the triangles we create and pay attention to who they are effecting.

It is a gift that I have never needed much sleep. The thing of it lately and the last couple of nights in particular is that I really do appreciate those four to five hours and I haven’t even been getting those. I might have gotten an hour total last night and maybe two the night before so it’s been a challenge to get going. My mantra has always been that “there are twenty-four usable hours in every day.” My cure is the same as the one I use when I travel to avoid jet lag, which is to simply keep going. I go for a run often in the morning anyway, but when I have had no sleep I always run and most of the time it keeps me from crashing.