Skip to main content

From, "Therapy On the Run"...




Chapter Twenty-Two
The Glove of Heaven

…As I approached the well-lit dam, more joy, and fascination ensued.  It was about five o’clock in the morning or close to that time.  The night sky appeared to encompass me like a glove of heaven.  It’s cool, crisp air embracing me so deep, I could feel it in through my eyes and in my blood. 
    I had heard deer leaping in the wooded areas surrounding the path I took.  Yet, I did not see one.  It was as if they were running beside me.  I actually have had a deer run with me as I ran, once.  It was miraculous: 

Leaping deer…

    It was early one morning.  This buck with a full rack, ran side by side not more than twenty feet from me, leaping over fences as if to keep up with me.  My friend, Brian McCourt, was running to my left and the buck was running in sync with us to Brian’s left.   This was for a good hundred yards. 
    Brian didn’t notice it till the end of the run with the buck.  Brian as usual, was hammering me, pushing our pace as he ran, now warmed up.  My quads started to scream.  I knew the pain would continue for miles as always.  Then depending on how soon I felt my right leg start to collapse out from under me.  It would buckle and then I’d try to drive the body with the left leg and my lion’s heart.  When I’d get to this point, just moving my head would make me trip or fall over.  My balance seven years before was not good.  Back then, I thought no one knew this.  I figured if I avoided the subject, I could win my legs and my health back. 

    My thoughts digress about where my body had been before today, before all of this peacefulness.  I ran back then to conquer illness and injury.  To get past and increase my energy to twenty thousand cycles per second, and to explain myself to God, and to rid myself of detained rage. 
    Rage?  Oh, everyone has rage embedded into their soul.  Most of us are in denial.  I had a few men make me face it, one for bad, many others for good.  If you don’t rid yourself of the toxic levels of rage, your immune system is suppressed.  You become diseased.  You become an addict.  You’re no longer enthused and perhaps no longer marveling at life.  Then you lose the joy of your life.  Not the tangible finite part.  It is the worst you lose.  You lose a little piece of the eternal part.  The sacred intimate relationship you have with your Maker.  And that is what Hell is.
    The glove feelings I’ve had while outside my home, running, at times fighting for my life or for what is right, the gloved feeling has come in many forms.  Sometimes from the late night air; the desert late day breezes of heat, yet over one hundred twenty degrees fahrenheit, it still feels good.  I wondered as I feel the glove of heat from the desert, if this is how one feels, if they were to be such Biblical characters as Moses or Christ wandering in the desolation of a desert terrain.
    Those early mornings in spring-time when, only the first tweets of birds are heard in the stilled darkness just before light.  And the secure gloved feelings I’ve had near times of death.  The times I thought I’d be dead, I became somehow masked from, and felt the protection of God’s essence.  Something perhaps few have felt.  Even seemingly dying, was replaced with calmness of the glove of heaven, then I re-arrived back to earth.
    I’ve had other experiences such as these, fighting for dignity or what’s right.  That day you raise your hand, and swear on a Bible.  Walking into a courtroom to testify, when you know you’re the truth and all else evil must fall at your feet.  Because you know you are just a spec of sand, yet the glove of heaven secures your task at hand.
    Now this all was past, and I ran knowing for now as much as I’m on amber alert probably forever, I’m still progressing forward.  I’m feeling every spec of air as I run and pull away from the lighting of the Monksville Dam.  The darkness increases.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.