Had another great run this afternoon. It was my 6th day is a row and my 10th in 11 days. I'm trying real hard to get up to the 1000 mile mark for 2009. After today's run I have 1 miles to go. Should be easy enough to do. We'll see. I'm running shorter and slower than I have been, partly because of the cold and poor footing and partly because I am simply enjoying the running for its own sake. and that has been the great reward! My runs have been so much more fun simply because I was enjoying them with no pressure attached.

We'll see how things go into the new year, but I have already decided that there will be no marathons on my calender this year, but hopefully a lot of shorter races, 5k's, 10k's, 15k's and a couple of half-marathons. That would be fun without the intensity of marathon training. My marathons of late have not been the best; no that is not true, they have in reality been awful. Having a good time running is big right now.

change tack, I'm glad to see the Obama health care package is slowly passing its way through congress. I'm very disappointed in it in many ways but it is still a huge step in the right direction and it can certianly be improved on over the years. It is still a far cry from the single-tier, single-payer system we have here in Saskatchewan but it is progress. I listen to the hue-and-cry from both the right and the left, and though my own leaning are very much on the left, I find that both sides seem to have a total lack of understanding that politics is the art of the possible, that no legislation is ever perfect and that there is(or should be) plenty of room for honest disagreement amongst citizens. The increasing polarization of the US in the last couple of decades seems to have destroyed this understanding, to the point that it is reported that pastors in their pulpits are praying for President Obama's death. This is so un-Christian that I fail to understand why their parishoners haven't given them the heave-ho, though my guess is that their parishoners have also never heard the Gospel as I hear it every week and as I read it in Scripture.

My own take on all of this is that the problem is a compound of the polarization, racism, Chicago School Economics, fear mongering, the growth of rampant individualism over any sense of community, and a sense for a lot of people that the world is changing too rapidly for them to get a grip on. I am afraid that it will end in the impoverishment and disintegration of the United States before I die of old age, and cause serious problems here in Canada where we seem to spend too much time trying to imitate the worst of America in order to shore up our inferiority complex.

Had a great run this afternoon and it gave me a jolt thinking about all the things that running has done for me. I started again in the 90s largely because my doctor and my genes didn't give me a lot of choice. But it has become a habit, some say an addiction, but certainly something that I love doing and missed greatly when I am unable to run. It is often a real struggle to get into my running gear, especially at this time of the year and head out, and the first mile is generally miserable but after that they mostly get better and better as I run. I have run in all kinds of places in all kinds of weather, from +110F in a California summer to - 38F here in Saskatchewan winters. Both extremes are miserable and dangerous without proper precautions. And both can be very rewarding. I love my early morning winter runs (if the wind isn't blowing) under a clear sky with the stars so bright, and sometimes shooting stars or Auroras; a treasure more than worth the pain involved.

I am certainly not a great runner, more a plodder than anything else, I have done 10 marathons in 6 years, 2 ultras and several dozen 5 and 10 km races. I've usually gotten a great view of these races from the back, and have never won or even come within shouting distance. But I have won my age group once and been second once; both were a great feeling and I am proud of them. I don;t run near as many races as I used to because it is so hard to get to them here; the nearest ones are generally 2 hours drive away at a minimum. Still.......... All of my training is done alone and so races are my only chance to see other runners and do a bit of socializing. They are very motivational in that way even if I am tailed off somewhere near the back. I'm still having fun!

Here are 2 contrasting pictures, one from my first marathon and one from today's run.

So the Copenhagen climate conference is about to go up in flames. Depressing but not surprising, given the self-absorbed nature of politicians and the corporate giants that sponsor them. I know that I get very cynical when I well know that changing the hearts and minds of people is a very slow painful process, as witness how long it has taken to change white attitudes towards blacks in the United States. It is now 45 years since the Civil rights legislation of the 1960's and many people are still as locked into old attitudes as they ever were. This kind of attitude is real visible in the 'birther' controversy surrounding President Obama.

Daniel Pink's writing may be shallow but he is correct in identifying our left-brain thinking as a source of the mess we find ourselves. But right-brain thinking will not necessarily be any better if it has not moral underpinnings, no values to guide it. Art and creativity are not necessarily any more healthy than linear logic, merely different. They have no ethical content in-and-of themselves and are just as vulnerable to the approaches of ideologues of whatever stripe. It is in this sense that I am very concerned that our culture is losing (has lost) it's moral bearing. Those institutions, such as the Christian Church, which should always be the custodians of those moral standards, seem to often to be just as adrift as the society they are embedded in.

The churches have, too many of them, bought into the anti-government, profit-is-all philosophy of the Chicago School of Economics and turned it into a dogma rather than standing as a constant critic of the current order.

It has finally warmed up enough that I will go out for a run this afternoon. It is -18C and not -30 as it has been for the past 2 weeks. But that is not what I want to talk about today.

I am really bugged by the Climate Conference in Copenhagen and the incapacity (unwillingness) of so many politicians and business people to realize or care that we are destroying the planet that has given us birth and life. If we do not change the way we live, as individuals, communities, and nations we will have only death to bequeath to our children and grandchildren. How has our sense of moral values gotten drowned in the sea of profit and efficiency and self-centeredness? As a Christian I understand the Earth and the life on it as a gift from the Creator. This implies that I (we) should take care of that gift, not abuse it.

This gift of life and land is a rich and bountiful feast that has been laid in front of us, to be honored and respected. We should strive to leave all we touch healthier than we found it, that our children may also be blessed by it. Our consumer culture is a very unhealthy structure and needs to be changed. Buying more and more and more of stuff we don't need and most of us don't even really want is foolish, wasteful and ultimately suicidal.

I completely fail to understand the thinking of those who deny global climate change. Whatever the failings and foibles of individual scientists, issues of turf protection and academic politics do not change the science itself, which is very clear in showing that we human beings are altering the planet in so many ways at an unprecendented rate.

This opinion column from the Washington Times is an excellent example of what I see as head-in-the-sand money rules all values mean nothing thinking. Or try this marvelous blog for a collection of the most 'prominent' deniers

I'm feeling the need to put down a lot of my thoughts on running, which is also the time when I do a lot of the thinking and meditating that enables the rest of my life. I rather expect that this will also include putting down all those thoughts etc that running seems to generate.

I've been running off-and-on since high school but have been only running seriously and consistently since 1996. That happen when I was living in Berkeley, CA and my doctor gave me the choice of medication for my high cholesterol or going the diet and exercise route. I chose the later and promptly started jogging. I was in such poor shape that it took over a month before I was able to jog around the block.
It grew from there and I eventually entered a couple of 5 km races and thoroughly enjoyed myself. At this point my wife and I switched churches, to Christ Lutheran in El Cerrito, CA. There I became involved with a group of runners. We all ran together every Saturday morning and had coffee and conversation after. Eventually we started entering races together, Saturday events as we all wanted to be church on Sunday mornings. This limited or choices but in an area like the Bay Area there are usually2-3 choices every weekend anyways.
Most of the races were 5km/10km races and I began choosing the 10k's as I discovered I liked the longer distances that didn't require quite as much raw speed. Since then I have run many races at many distances, and this fall completed my 10th marathon and my 2nd ultra-marathon. I have also moved, from Berkeley, CA to Archerwill, Saskatchewan. A very different geography, climate and culture for running.