OK, I’ll go ahead and admit it:
There is no logic to running long distances. At least, none that make sense to
anyone who doesn’t want to do it.

I can make a list of why I like it –
the battle against my own desire to quite early, the peace of
meditation-on-the-move, the self-awareness that comes from so much time alone
within my own thoughts, the emotional transformation from finishing another
marathon, the short list of skills required, feeling the earth under my feet
and hearing the buzz of a community, the camaraderie of fellow distance runners
telling war stories, the vanilla milkshake reward earned after 15 miles – but I
understand none of those are enough for most people I know.

And marathon training, well there is
no logic to running 17 miles on a hot Friday morning in June, either. All I say
can say is that I still hear the marathon drumbeat in the back of my head and
I’m not yet ready to hang up my shoes.

But I cannot forget that I have 35,098
miles on my legs and feet and knees, and like most people I am getting older
and slower day-by-day, not than younger and faster.

I once heard Jim
Rohn say, “Casual living breeds casualties.” I think one reason I’ve been
hobbling on one bad knee since 2004 is that I got too casual about my running.
I thought I knew all I needed to know. I stopped paying attention to things
like strength training and stretching because I didn’t need them any longer. I
was beyond all that simple stuff.

I forgot about what George Sheehan
taught us: Our life is an experiment of one. I stopped experimenting. I stopped
learning. And, I got hurt. Now I am getting better, slowly, but it took a lot
of deliberate action on my part.

For example, I’ve been going to a
weight-lifting class a couple of times a week. I never did anything with
weights before that and I ended up with a lot of imbalance and weakness. I’m
much stronger now, especially in my quads and glutes and back. I believe that
will help prevent future injuries and stabilize existing aches and pains.

I’ve also been attending a Vinyasa
yoga class about once a week. I spent too many years, about 50, not stretching,
and this class has helped me overcome that a little. It has helped me learn
better balance, and given me greater flexibility and strength. I even breath
better, which has improved my trombone playing. Who knew that would happen?

A few years ago Cyndi and I
discovered a technique known as Chi Running.
I believe it’s allowed my sore knee to find peace, and taught me how to stop
hurting myself in the future. I don’t buy into the chi energy part of the
technique, but I do believe that learning to land on my mid-foot instead of my
heel has stopped further damage and will allow me to keep running for a long
time.

And because of the patient work of
Gladys Nichols at Seton Medical in Austin
I have strengthened my core muscles and worked to achieve better muscle
balance. Before Gladys I couldn’t run more than 5 minutes at a time; since
Gladys I have completed one marathon and I am currently training for my next.

Maybe the weirdest experiment I’ve
tried in my journey is barefoot running. Well, not exactly barefoot, even
though I tried that once and it took the skin on my feet a week to grow back,
but I have been running once a week in a pair of Vibram
Five-Fingers. I hesitate to call them shoes since they look more
like gloves for the feet. They have helped me learn mid-foot landing better
than anything else I’ve tried.

And I can’t go on without mentioning
Jeff Galloway’s run/walk technique. Once
I started using it on long training runs I realized I could finally hope for
many more marathons.

So I’m sorry if I am boring you
non-distance-runners with this litany of experiments, but I believe in living
intentionally, and that means trying new things. Just last week I was reading
from a devotional book and it quoted Hebrews 12:2 from The Message and it
reminded me of my recent adventures. “Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began
and finished the race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost
sight of where he was headed – that exhilarating finish in and with God – he
could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever.”

The first phrase that caught my
attention was “began and finished the race we’re in.” Since I hope to keep
doing that for many more years I felt a personal attachment to that sentence.

But the most important phrase was
this: “Study how he did it.” I hope I can study Jesus with the same deliberate
attention I’ve applied to my running.

I have been doing spirituality for
so long it is tempting to get casual about it. But casual living breeds
casualties, and I don’t want my life with Jesus to become a casualty; I want to
be always learning, always experimenting, always hoping.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” www.runningwithgodonline.com

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

So my opening question to the group
was: What is the worst thing about judging other people?

We talked about this for awhile, and
agreed that judging gives you a false sense of superiority, it scares other
people away, it can become a habit which leads to a judgmental lifestyle that
turns into bitterness and cynicism, it wounds other people, and it masks our
own problems.

My next question was: What is the
best thing about judging other people?

Well, judging other people is very
fulfilling, it helps us know whether to hire someone for a job, helps us
evaluate a prospective son-in-law, gives us the ability improve other’s
behavior, lets us know how to genuinely help other people.

The Bible says many things about
judging other people; sometimes it tells us to leave all judging to God, other
times it reminds us to make our own judgments about who we follow and who we
associate with. It isn’t a simple discussion. We must engage the world around
us if we want to share the love and life and grace of God, but we can’t engage
effectively without picking-and-choosing, without passing a few judgments.

We were studying from I Corinthians
5-6, where the Apostle Paul wrote a lot about judging other people. He started
off by stating his disbelief that the church had allowed a blatantly immoral
situation to remain among their membership. He urged the church to drastic
action … to pass judgment. Paul made it clear that he had judged the situation
already, even from a distance.

I had been chewing on this question
of judging other people all week as I prepared my lesson for Sunday morning.
One day as I read from my Daily Bible, from the prophet Hosea, I realized it
spoke to the issue of judging, if only tangentially. Hosea has always been one
of the hardest books in the Bible for me to read because of what happened. The
prophet (Hosea) was told by God that he should marry Gomer, a
habitually-unfaithful prostitute, in order to communicate a message to the
people. Gomer’s adulterous life and Hosea’s continued acceptance of her would
remind the people of their own betrayal of God and his own acceptance of them.
While it was a powerful real-life illustration, it seemed like too much of a
burden for a man to bear, even a prophet of God. Surely being a prophet was
hard enough without being saddled with an intentionally bad marriage.

When I read Hosea I wondered about
my own prayers to know God’s will for my life. What if God told me he wanted me
to do something terrible just so my life could be an example for the people
around me? I didn’t want that. Maybe I didn’t want to know God’s will if that
sort of thing was a possibility.

Then I realized my mistake. I had
always put myself into the story as Hosea, wondering if God would do something
like that to me. I should have put myself into the story as Gomer, wondering if
God would heal me and take me back. I assumed I was always the faithful prophet
and never the unfaithful sinner.

And then again, while running on
Monday it occurred to me that when I asked those questions – What is the worst
thing about judging other people? What is the best thing about judging other
people? – I asked them from the perspective of being the judge, not the victim.

We assume we are the judges who know
the absolute truth, and whether we hammer people with that truth or accept them
with that truth, it is always our choice. At least, that was my personal
perspective.

But what if I am the person being
judged? How do I answer those same opening questions? Now what is the best and
worst part about judging? How arrogant it was for me to think I was always the
person in position to judge and never the person who begged “please take me in
I need healing.”

What I know now is that I have a lot
more thinking do about this topic. I just hope my own arrogance doesn’t keep
getting in the way of my understanding.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” www.runningwithgodonline.com

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a
necessity of the human spirit,” wrote Edward Abbey. I thought about that as I
finally drifted off to sleep, Monday night in my tent, in the Pine Top
primitive campground. I was backpacking in the Guadalupe
Mountains National
Park with Chad
and Cory and Clark. Our original plan was to
spend Monday night at Pine Top, do the nine-mile Bush
Mountain – Blue
Ridge loop on Tuesday, spend Tuesday night at Pine Top, and then
hike down Tejas Trail in the cool of the morning on Wednesday. But because of a
fire, most of those trails were closed, and the only place we could hike was Hunter Peak
and a small portion of The Bowl. It was a shame, but couldn’t be helped.

It took us a long time to hike up to
Pine Top. We arrived at the Pine
Springs Visitor
Center early enough, but
had to wait for them to open the doors, and then we had to wait in line through
lots of discussions about the forest fire and where we could hike and what we
could do. It was a bit of a shock to realize they’d been fighting the fire for
five days, yet this was the first any of us had heard about it.

We didn’t start up the trail until
10:00 AM. I had expected it would take us four hours at most to reach the ridge
line but the heat and altitude took its toll and demanded a full six hours. I
was so exhausted when I finally got the top and set up my tent that I took an
hour nap just to recover. I don’t think I’ve ever spent six hours on my legs
under a 60-lbs. pack (24 lbs. was nothing but water). I thought of a definition
I read somewhere: Backpacking is an extended form of hiking in which people
carry double the amount of gear they need for half the distance they planned to
go in twice the time it should take. 

Later that night we all sat outside
and ate and talked theology and family and history until well past dark. In
fact, I didn’t finally go down to sleep until 11:30 PM.

Tuesday morning we took a leisurely
pace to meet at Chad’s camp to
eat his pancakes. We felt obligated to keep eating so he wouldn’t have to pack
the weight of pancake batter and syrup all the way back down the mountain. We
were doing him a favor, taking one for our brother, and all that.

With full bellies we started hiking
toward Hunter Peak, one of the only trails open to us,
where we spent about an hour on the summit rocks taking in the view and eating
trail mix and Fig Newtons and talking about life. The view from Hunter Peak
is one of the best mountain views anywhere. It is the 6^th-highest point
in Texas, at 8,368’, and drops almost 3,000’ to a desert floor
that truly resembles the ancient Permian
Sea that it once was. And
to the south was a postcard-perfect view of Guadalupe Peak.
Using my 6×16 Audubon Monocular we could make out hikers on the Guadalupe Peak summit near the stainless steel
monument.

Looking at the Guadalupe Peak
massive I wondered what it was about mountains that speak directly into the
heart. Maybe it’s their size when viewed up close; maybe it’s their seemingly
indestructible presence in an ever-changing world; maybe it’s the physical
difficulty they cause when we try to climb them. Who knows? But sitting on the
flat limestone rocks at the top of Hunter Peak surrounded by the infinity of
the West Texas desert, talking about old favorite movies and rock-and-roll
bands becomes more than mere casual small talk. The shared effort to get to
that spot made us brothers of the trail, and the stories we shared made us
brothers of heart. It was a good day.

Since we’d exhausted the only trails
left open by the National Park Service, and since it was too hot to sit around
the camp all afternoon, we hiked down to the parking lot. We didn’t get started
down until 2:30 PM; we were on the wrong side of the temperature gradient this
entire trip. We unloaded our packs into Chad’s
pickup, sucked down ice-cold soft drinks from the visitor center vending
machine, and drove home to our waiting wives.

I wish we could’ve made the Bush Mountain
– Blue Ridge loop. I’m certain it is extra
green this year after a wet spring. Every time I do a solo hike through The
Bowl I wish I could show it off to more of my guys. And I wish we could’ve had
another night in camp to share more stories. But one of the attractions to
going outside into the mountains is the unpredictability of it. Nature dishes
out whatever it wants, whether rain or snow or lightening or fire, and the
hiker has to respond and adapt. The risk of last-minute plan changes is part of
the charm.

And another thing. I’ve been doing
this with the guys long enough to know I can’t evaluate an experience right
away. The true value of guys-outside-together may not show up for months or
even years. I’m OK with that. Men make friends outside, and the more often we
get outside together, the better we will be.

One of the glories of my present
life is that I am surrounded by good men; they are among the finest men I have
ever known. It was a privilege and honor to share the trail with three of my
best.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” www.runningwithgodonline.com

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

Having standing water in the corner
of my front yard is not the sort of problem I expected to have living in West Texas. Around here we usually want to find more
water, not get rid of it.

We first noticed our water problem
last summer while planting a new bush. Our yard is designed with
low-maintenance in mind. One of my goals when we built a new house was to never
have to mow the grass again, so we don’t have any turf grass. The house takes
up most of our small lot, and the yard consists of Jasmine groundcover and
trees and bushes. One day we noticed the plants in the northwest corner of our
lot dying so we decided to replace them with something hardier. But when we dug
the hole for the new planting it quickly filled with water and never drained.
This was in the hottest part of the summer, and it was a dry year, and it was
unbelievable that the hole would stay full of water. That seemed like a Louisiana problem not a West Texas
problem. Out here we expect any wet dirt to become dry dust after one day of
exposure.

So we spent last fall and winter
brainstorming what to do about our underground swamp. We suspected some sort of
barrier, like dense clay, was preventing the water from draining. And since the
northwest corner was the lowest part of our lot, all the irrigation water ran
to the area and accumulated. One solution seemed to be to dig out the corner
until we found good dirt and then refill the hole with porous sand. I suggested
an alternative might be to plant something that needs a lot of water, one of
those plants we usually avoid, like salt cedar or kudzu, to drink up the water,
but I knew they would eventually jump across the street and choke out our
neighborhood pond and I would be thrown out of town.

So my first free weekend after
Easter, I went to work. I couldn’t stall any longer. I dug for four hours on
Saturday and another hour on Sunday (Cyndi didn’t think my Saturday hole was
big enough). My hole was roughly L-shaped, eight feet on each long side and
about three feet each width. I dug about 18” deep into a mixture of clay and
soft dirt, apparently the result of the original landscaper tilling the soil to
break up the clay. But then I hit a solid layer of clay and I couldn’t go any
deeper with a shovel. I put about 2” of water in the hole hoping it would soak
into the clay and make it more digable.

But Monday morning the 2” of water
was still standing in the hole. It might’ve been deeper having gathered
drainage form the rest of the lawn. And at the time of this writing, about
three weeks later, I still have several inches of standing water.

So what do I do next is my biggest
question. I could get a backhoe and keep digging until I get past the clay, but
I’m afraid a backhoe would leave a bigger hole and more damage to my sprinklers
than I want. Or I could rent a drill and try to sink deep holes into the clay
to allow the water to drain. I have been offered the use of a pickax and a
posthole digger, and I’ll probably try those next. But since I don’t know how
deep the clay extends, and it may go all the way down to caliche, I have no
assurance digging deeper with help.

This week I have been working
through I Corinthians 4, and in verse 16 Paul said something that used to
frighten me. He said, “I urge you to imitate me.” How could anyone be so bold
and presumptuous is what I thought.

Of course, I said the same thing to
my kids when teaching them how to run, or how to ski, or ride a bicycle, or
read a book. It wasn’t scary to tell them to do it like I did. But when talking
about spiritual maturity, like Paul was, I never felt qualified to be the
example to be followed.

I was wrong. I thought being mature
in Christ meant I was a reservoir of wisdom and knowledge, and I couldn’t hold
myself up as an example until I was sufficiently full. But filling up just to
be full could be just as destructive to those around me as my water-logged
corner of the yard was to my plants.

To be a healthy place for my bushes
and trees the soil has to be a conduit for water to pass through, not a jug
from which water cannot drain. And so to be a healthy place for other people to
grow closer to God I have to be a conduit through which God flows rather than a
full reservoir. I can say “imitate me” if I am willing to give it all away.

One of my new rules for living is to
give something away every day. I urge you to imitate me. You don’t want to be
the sort of person to hold onto stuff and never let it out. You don’t want to
hoard the ideas and insights and dreams God has given you. Give it away every
day.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” www.runningwithgodonline.com

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

OK, so here is the story about these lists of love songs. A few years
ago (2007) I decided to make a CD of love songs to give away to friends
and family in celebration of our anniversary. Since getting married was
the best decision I ever made I thought it appropriate to spread the
love.

Here are the playlists that I've used so far. I am still
working on my 2010 list. And, I am always appreciative of suggestions –
especially new songs, since I tend to hear only the songs played on NPR
or at Gold's Gym.

I hope you will go to YouTube and listen to
these, and then buy them, so you can play them with your lover and your
hearts can go soft together and your future will be brighter. And, all
that.

2009
Love Song Play List (30th Anniversary)

Reading The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin, S.J., one
of the early companions of Ignatius, who said, “The road is our home.”

I am pretty sure what Nadal didn’t
mean was what Merle Haggard sang about the road as his home, “I’ve had ramblin’
fever all along.” Nadal’s road was not a road of escape from duty and
relationships, but a path toward God.

I also don’t think he meant a road
as home like Willie Nelson, who sang, “I just can’t wait to get on the road
again.” For Nelson the road itself was only a means to an end, the interval
between concerts. For Nadal, I think the road was his final destination.

I’m not exactly sure what Jeronimo
Nadal meant, but I think he meant that a life of prayer and contemplation was
not enough unless it was also moving down the road. A follower of Jesus is
expected to lead an active life, to be a “contemplative in action.”

Most of my own contemplation comes
at one of two times: while I am writing raw thoughts in my journal, or more
often, while I am moving my feet down the road (running or hiking).

The reason I have been thinking
about roads is because of what my newest friends, Gary and Peter and Carl and Chad,
told me last weekend. I was at a very small men’s retreat (almost like private
lessons) where we spent many hours talking about God’s calling on our life. We
told our life stories, we discussed images that described various aspects of
our heart, we talked about movies and books and music and wives and friends. We
were strangers to each other when we first arrived, but they soon knew as much
about me as my longest friends. One theme the guys saw in my life was repeated
references to paths and trails and bridges and doorways. Roads. I live my life
on the road.

I knew it was correct the minute I
heard it. In my mind and heart I am always on the road. I hope my road is not
like Willie Nelson’s or Merle Haggard’s, but rather a road into the future
toward God. I want to believe my best days are ahead of me, just a bit further
down the road. I hope my closest days with God are down this pathway and my
best times with Cyndi are across that elegant bridge. Not that my best is
always out of reach, but that my best is ahead of me. I want to live a life
moving into the future down this road, toward God’s best.

Jon
Katz wrote (The Bedlam Farm Journal) about Joseph Campbell, who had an idea
that most people are either security or mythically driven. Security-conscious
people make deliberate choices about their life. They have money saved, jog and
exercise, are prepared for recessions, retirement, illness, and beyond.

Mythically-driven people are
different, and they make different choices. They take risks, and make
deliberate decisions that the choices they make may not result in security as
most Americans define it – money in the bank, fat IRAs, mortgage paid off.

So far, I’ve spent my life on the
security road. Yet, surprisingly, as I’ve gotten older I’ve veered
incrementally toward a more mythically-driven path. I would’ve expected the
trend to go the opposite direction. I had expected age would make me even more
cautious and anxious for security.

Campbell said mythically-driven people risk
everything for their dreams. While I doubt I’ve ever risked everything for
anything, I often wish I was more risky with my dreams. I know my dreams are
taking up more space in my life and security is taking up less, but the ratio
is still far from 50/50.

One more song reference: Russ Taff
wrote a song titled Farther On,
saying, “Now I’m standing on this road your hand has brought me to; you
faithful love will lead me farther on.” So while I don’t want to stand on the
road, I want to keep moving. But even more, I want to stay on the road God’s
hand has pushed me to.

There was something else the guys
pointed out to me over the weekend: I don’t want to go alone. As much as I talk
about my need for solitude, I have an even bigger need to travel the road with
my group. I don’t care whether I am in the lead, but I want us to keep moving
together. I want you with me.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” www.runningwithgodonline.com

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

I was reading I Corinthians 1:1
where the Apostle Paul described himself as being “called as an apostle of
Jesus Christ by the will of God.”

I wrote in the margin, “He is
confident of his position.” For myself, I often choke on the phrase – called by
God. I’m not sure I have a right to make that claim. I believe it
intellectually, but struggle with it practically.

It is easier for me to say “I am a
petroleum engineer” since I have a university degree to back it up. Easier to
say “I am a marathoner” since I have a collection of finish medals to prove it.
Easier to say “I am a deacon” or “I am a teacher” since I have a certificate in
my file cabinet and a class full of people.

But to say “I have been called by
God,” to teach or write, is harder. I’m not sure why. Now that I have published
my first book I can say “I am an author” with confidence, but to say “I am
called” is harder.

Maybe making a claim to have been
called by God, like the Apostle Paul did, assumes an endorsement by God,
implies a level of skill and talent that seems presumptuous to claim for
myself.

Yet I can describe multiple distinct
encounters in my life when God spoke to me about my life as a writer and as a
teacher in unmistakable ways. When he told me to start publishing weekly
journals and when he called me out on that picnic table at Wild at Heart camp,
just to mention two. While I may be reluctant to claim being called by God
because I don’t have a medal or a success to show off, I cannot deny those
encounters with God.

I doubt I’m alone in my reluctance.
I imagine most people feel the same way I do. It is always easier to see God’s
calling on someone else’s life than to see it in our own. More than one person
in the Bible resisted being called by God.

For example, Moses argued with God
about his calling even while standing barefoot in front of the burning bush.
You’d think that would’ve convinced him. And Gideon pulled a double stunt, the
wet fleece/dry fleece bit, hoping to understand the call that he feared. He’s
lucky he wasn’t slapped down by the angel sent to give him the message. And
even though God called Jeremiah to be a prophet before he was born, as soon as
he was old enough to object he said, “I don’t know how to speak’ I’m only a
child.”

Maybe some level of reluctance is a
good thing. Maybe that’s what keeps us leaning into God to fulfill the calling
rather than using our own ego. Maybe the humble spirit God is looking for is
hidden within that reluctance. That is, as long as reluctance doesn’t turn into
rebellion.

Well, I was thinking about this
journal today while I ran. And while I ran I listened to a podcast by Erwin
McManus who asked the question: “Are you doing what you were born to do?” I
couldn’t believe it. How did McManus know I needed to hear this very question
back on May 9^th when he preached it?

He asked, “Are you doing what you’re
doing on purpose?” Otherwise we are like a big log floating downstream wherever
the current takes it, hanging up on brush, bumping into rocks, jamming with
other logs. Understanding what God has called us to do demands intentional
action on our part.

McManus said, “We all want to be the
guy up front swinging the ax, but few have the discipline to sharpen their
skills.” He quoted Ecclesiastes 10:10 (NIV): “If the ax is dull and its
edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success.”
Realizing your call from God can be frightening, since with great power and
energy comes even greater obligation and expectation. We have to hone the
skills God has given us.

So I’m headed north to Colorado this weekend to
attend a small gathering of men where we’ll explore this very notion of our
calling. The retreat will be led by Gary Barkalow (www.TheNobleHeart.com),
whose voice has been one of the most influential in my life these past ten
years. I am excited about the opportunity to understand more.

And so I’ll ask you, where do you
see yourself in this discussion? What has God called you to do? Is it too scary
to talk about yet? Are you sharpening your skills? Are you waiting to hear?

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

I have been thinking a lot about my
heart lately.

Maybe it’s because I’m two weeks
into one of my 40-day challenges and several of my workouts are aimed directly
at strengthening my heart. Yesterday I spent 40 minutes on a recumbent exercise
bike at Gold’s Gym just for my heart. I like that style of bike because I can
read my book while spinning (“A Farewell to Arms,” by Ernest Hemmingway), and
it requires no skills other than perseverance and patience. I ride the bike
simply to burn calories and train my heart for the next mountain trek.

Or maybe it’s because of my friend David whose heart stopped beating suddenly in the
middle of a basketball game, a condition noted in his official medical report
as “sudden death.” David
miraculously recovered after considerable effort on the part of doctors and
nurses and the entire town, and I have already booked him a spot on our next
mountain hike next fall. Maybe his story made me more aware of the condition of
my own heart.

Or maybe it’s because my 31^st
anniversary is coming up and I’ve been listening to a lot of love songs and my
heart is soft.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve been
working on my second book which is about guarding my heart and feeding my
heart.

Or maybe it’s because I’ve been
reading Proverbs in the mornings and Proverbs says a surprisingly lot about the
heart. For example, Proverbs 14:30 says, “A heart at peace gives life to the
body, but envy rots the bones.” Well, my heart is hardly at peace when I’m
spinning, but I certainly don’t envy the big-muscle guy on the bike beside me.
I’d hate to have to haul all of those heavy muscles around a marathon course no
matter how good they look in a ripped T-shirt.

Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the
Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;” This is not
as easy as it sounds for an analytical problem-solver who tends to trust his
own judgment and understanding over anyone and everyone else’s. How do I do
this even a little bit, much less how do I do it with all my heart?

Or this one: Proverbs 22:17 says,
“Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise; apply your heart to what
I teach.” Again with the heart? Why doesn’t it say apply your mind, behavior,
plans and dreams? Why heart?

And another, Proverbs 23:12 says,
“Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.” I tend
to think of my heart as the passive part of me, the “result” of me, the part of
me I’m supposed to guard and protect. I think of my intellect as the front
line, the part I’m supposed to engage with, the active part. Yet, here, he says
to “apply my heart.” That sounds active to me.

Proverbs means something besides
heart muscles when it says heart, but it’s hard to know exactly what. Proverbs
often contrasts the heart with the mind but it uses those terms in
non-physiological ways. I think heart in Proverbs refers to the way we feel and
think and dream. I suspect it’s a more holistic reference than the mind. Yet,
there are no footnotes in Proverbs explaining the terminology, at least none
written by the original authors, so there is a lot of guesswork involved.

Or maybe the reason I’ve been
thinking so much about my heart is because of what I read in Proverbs 20:5 –
“The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters …” I remember hearing at Wild at
Heart Camp that we have to get out in the deep water to know God. Gary Barkalow
taught from Luke 5:4-6, where Jesus told Simon Peter to “put out into deep
water and let down their nets for a catch.” Simon heard Jesus that day because
he was willing to follow Jesus into the deeper waters. Barkalow said that we
will hear Jesus call when we go with him out into the deeper waters … we have
to get out of the safe shallows if we want to hear Jesus.

Maybe that’s a peek into why God
says throughout Proverbs to focus on our heart – it’s the deep end of the pool.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

Saturday afternoon I was at Lowe’s
buying a few PVC pieces for our drip irrigation system when I heard the song
“I’d Really Love to See You Tonight,” by England Dan and John
Ford Coley (1976). I instinctively grabbed my phone and texted the lyrics to
Cyndi: “There’s a warm wind blowing, the stars are out, and I’d really love to
see you tonight.” We often send lyrics to each other.

Cyndi texted back, “It’s 61 degrees
outside. The warm breeze must be coming from inside your heart. Thanks. I love
you.”

Later we were talking about that
song and I said, “I couldn’t text the line – I don’t want to change your life.
Changing your life is one of my main objectives.”

She said, “I know. Me too.”

I said, “And I hope you keep
changing mine.”

She said, “I know. Me too.”

I had been listening to an audio
book by Elizabeth Gilbert titled Committed:
A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage. She wrote, “Love limits, almost by
definition. Love narrows. The great expansion we feel in our hearts when we
fall in love is matched only by the great restrictions that will necessarily
follow.”

To personalize Gilbert’s writing, I
would say Cyndi and I have an easygoing relationship, but don’t be fooled: I
have claimed her as my own. Her energies belong to me and to no one else – not
even entirely to herself anymore. She owes me things like information,
explanations, fidelity, constancy, and details about the most mundane little
aspects of her life. And I belong to her, in exactly the same measure.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about her husband, “I have therefore fenced him off
from the rest of the herd.”

The Apostle Paul wrote the same
thing in I Corinthians 7:4 – “For the wife has no longer full rights over her
own person, but shares them with her husband. In the same way the husband
shares his personal rights with his wife.”

For some people, these may be good
reasons never to get married. Why allow another person rights over your own
body? Who would want that? Wouldn’t you rather be in charge of yourself and not
have to answer to anyone?

The verse reminded me of a scene in
the movie Air Force One (1997) with
Harrison Ford, after the airplane had been hijacked and the president chose NOT
to use the secret escape pod but instead remained on the plane. When his team
back in Washington
learned that he didn’t take the opportunity to escape one of them criticized
his decision: “He has no right not to escape. Doesn’t he know he belongs to the
country and not to himself?” (That is an approximate quote; it’s been awhile
since I last saw the movie.)

His point was that the office of
President was bigger than the selfish wishes of one single man. The President
of the United States
lived his life in a bigger story and he was responsible to a wider sphere.

I think that is what Apostle Paul
was talking about in I Corinthians when he said neither husbands nor wives have
absolute rights over themselves, but they belong to each other. We give up our
personal rights in order to live in a bigger story, to move beyond our selfish
personal self-interest and live in a wider sphere.

Again, from Elizabeth Gilbert, “This
is what intimacy does to us over time. That’s what a long marriage can do: It
causes us to inherit and trade each other’s stories. This, in part, is how we
become annexes of each other, trellises on which each other’s biography can
grow. His private history becomes a piece of my memory; my life gets woven into
the material of his.”

As for me, I like being woven into
Cyndi’s story. It’s true that I go to great lengths to keep my life private and
to limit my exposure and to minimize expectations and to keep to myself. Yet
being responsible to Cyndi and knowing she has ownership over my personal
rights is one of the best parts of my life. I don’t resent checking in with
Cyndi before scheduling something on my calendar – rather, I am happy to have
someone to check in with, someone who cares enough about me to have an opinion.
I’m glad to know I am not alone but on a team with someone else.

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org

“The more afraid you are, the
heavier your pack will be,” said Dr. Warren Doyle, legendary Appalachian
Trail hiker, and his words caused me to stop working and pull out
my 3×5 cards to make notes. I was listening to a podcast called ATHiking while
working on the drip irrigation system we use to water the potted plants in
front of our house. Dr. Doyle was talking about backpacking and how we tend to
load too much heavy stuff into our packs “just in case.” The more things we are
afraid of the more gear we pack, and the heavier our pack becomes.

I remembered reading a similar
sentiment from Erin McKittrick, who wrote a book about trekking 4,000 miles
from Seattle to the Aleutian
Islands with her husband, titled A Long Trek Home: “Backpacks are the curse of backpackers. If we
carried nothing we could be light and agile on our feet. But we would also be
spending all our time simply trying to survive.” She continued, “Each ounce we
carried made our trip more possible, more enjoyable, more comfortable, and
safer. And each ounce we carried made our trip less possible, less enjoyable,
less comfortable, and less safe.”

When I go up into the Guadalupe Mountains I take some gear other
backpackers would leave behind to save weight. I take a tent because I like
having my stuff inside with me and I like my privacy, and because I am afraid
of getting rained on. Those might seem silly since I do most of my backpacking
in the desert in one of the least-crowded National Parks in America, but it has rained at least
one night during almost every one of my trips. I am considering trying a
lightweight tarp instead of a full tent during the warmer months. It does seem
funny to worry about privacy when the actual number of times I have shared a
camp site with other hikers is outnumbered by the number of times I have been
rained on.

I take an air mattress because I am
afraid of the aches and pains I get from sleeping on the ground.

I take three gallons of water
because I am afraid of running out. However, at eight pounds per gallon, I
should consider taking less water. I should push myself on this and take some
risk and try to lower the weight.

I take a headlamp, not because I am
worried about being outside after dark, which I seldom am other than for waste
disposal, but because I am afraid of not being able to read my book or write in
my journal at night in my tent.

I take an emergency bivi bag on my
solo day hikes because it makes Cyndi happy and in case I turn my knee or blow
out my ankle and, being unable to hike out, have to wait alongside the trail
until someone comes along, which could be days.

Some places where I have reduced
weight by accepting risk are leaving changes of clothes at home, taking a
smaller first aid kit, doing little or no cooking.

But of course the reason I heard the
quote by Dr. Doyle so clearly was because his statement was bigger than
backpacking. Fear adds weight to our life. Fear presses down on us and limits
our movements and squashes our freedom. Fear makes us heavy on our feet, and
unlikely to try new things. Jon Katz wrote in his blog, Bedlam Farm Journal, “Fear is a great depleter, and the more you
feel it, the less you feel the wonder of life. Fear kills the adventure of
life.”

Wow, I guess I should ask myself, why all these quotes about fear?
Where did this come from? What am I afraid of?

I can answer that. I am most afraid of looking silly. That fear shapes
more of my behaviors than I am willing to let people know about. I am sure it
has held me back from many adventures that God has put in front of me.

However, I don’t believe it is as heavy a load on me today as it was a
dozen years ago. Just as growing and maturing as a backpacker means
learning what to take and what to leave at home, growing as a Christian means trusting God and emptying my pack. It also
means living in community. One of the reasons my fears have declined a bit is
because I’ve learned I am not on a permanent solo backpacking trip where all my
survival gear comes from my own kit, but I am on an expedition and surrounded
by fellow travelers who share their strengths with me even as I help shoulder
some of their fears. Being on the trail together wards off fears.

1 John 4:18 says, “Well-formed love banishes fear.” (MSG)
Knowing we don’t have to do this all by ourselves is way less scary, and much
lighter.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32BU

To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” http://www.runningwithgodonline.com/

Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org