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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.
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