Bee Hives and Blisters

Israel, Richard J.

BEE HIVES AND BLISTERS Some unconventional paths to spiritual discovery RICHARD J. ISRAEL I earn my living as a civil servant of the Jewish community. Most of my professional time is taken up...

...Joshua asks me why I do it...
...The first 5 miles, I begin to plan out my activities for the next week...
...Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win—but my neshamah, my inner spirit, is not located in the activity...
...I may be deceiving myself to protect my own self image, just as David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, did when he listed his occupation on his identity card as farmer...
...I am far less a person who is running than 1 am a run inhabited by a person...
...I didn't sit out here in the rain for all these hours counting the times you went around for you to quit in the middle...
...It demands that I reflect upon the changes of the seasons and the passing of the years...
...But if I need to be tied down, and need to be forced to direct my thoughts, I also need to be free, to let myself go...
...Get out there and walk a few laps...
...And that is why I am a runner...
...Our task was to identify each other's lies...
...Though I was stiff that morning, I was less stiff than I had anticipated...
...Now in his late 70s, Fred still runs a very respectable ten-kilometer race (6.2 miles...
...Were I to go the whole distance, what would I have achieved then...
...I must be careful not to crush them...
...The only one who will stay with the runners no matter how long it takes them to finish and no matter what the weather...
...I am for the most part a rather straight, conventional and not especially distinguished rabbi/administrator...
...When the demons of his psyche are tamed, his sexuality better understood, he reluctantly leaves the sage and returns to the joys and sorrows of the conventional world...
...I am returned to tell the tale...
...It describes our passion for rigorous explorations that lead to insight, our drive for the wisdom and satisfaction that come from triumph over obstacles...
...Joshua, my 15 year old, has been accompanying me these last miles...
...Daily training in the ice and snow of a hard New England winter will certainly do as an equivalent of the wilderness experience...
...Fred is the only one around with the patience to organize 50-mile races...
...Running allows me to enter the myth...
...It was my least distinguished effort by two hours...
...Though running has done wonderful things for my cardiovascular system, it hasn't done very much at all for my feet...
...With Job, I can say, "From out of my flesh, I shall see God...
...He is helped by a sage or wizard to overcome these hazards...
...Once readied, he goes in search of The Holy...
...It is much worse than my first marathon when the same thing happened...
...The marathon distance, 26.2 miles, comes quickly...
...In the classic myths, whether Greek, Jewish, Christian or Norse, these elements are almost always present...
...Only the satisfaction of knowing that I have done something singularly and outstandingly dumb...
...It may be only endorphins or other chemicals producing an effect analogous to that of LSD, mountain climbing or perhaps, as I am told, even to some particularly demanding kinds of scholarship...
...I know that I am not going to be able to finish...
...Even though I spend many hours performing administrative tasks, I do not view myself as an administrator in any important way...
...The pattern fits modern myths as well as ancient ones...
...By the 35th mile, the worst is over...
...A little guilt, a little expertise, some mild chastening, a few words of encouragement, some magic brew and off I go...
...He is sorely tempted to remain there in the world of his quest where he has achieved perfect wisdom and understanding, but he decides to return to tell the tale...
...Job 19:27...
...His search leads him into a perilous land where he encounters great dangers...
...Recently I was asked, along with the other members of a group, to tell three things about myself, one of them a lie...
...I view administration like chess...
...It begins pleasantly, like every morning's run...
...My lie: that I was an administrator...
...The final period of preparation is concluded with rituals of food and dress—drinks high in potassium, a shirt that won't make the nipples bleed, socks of a special blend of wool and silk...
...I must never again give myself excuses about what I can and can't do...
...It is not the classic Jewish way to spirituality...
...That taught me a lot...
...You are doing nothing of the sort, young man...
...But if my thoughts wander, even for a moment, I am quickly punished...
...the sequence may vary, but the parts are there...
...and running, which brings a sense of joy, optimism and perspective to my basically cynical and suspicious nature...
...Rabbi Richard J. Israel is Executive Director of the HUM Council of Greater Boston...
...1 never have and never will come in first, but I have never quit either...
...The universal myth is an expression of a powerful human drive...
...Here, have some of my super sweet tea...
...If I want something enough, there are many fewer things that stand in my way than I would dearly love to claim...
...I had a much clearer sense of who I was, and what is and what is not important in the world...
...It took more than nine hours...
...Rubrics from the liturgy begin to jump into my head: "Blessed are You who guides our steps, who raises the fallen, who straightens the bent...
...My body is no longer very important...
...By the next day, when the real high came, I had begun to get some glimmerings...
...The hero achieves his goal and often wins a beautiful maiden as well...
...It is not that I fancy myself a real hero in my rational moments, but rather, I have found that through very long-distance racing, I can tap into a profound level of fantasy in which truths, otherwise not accessible, seem to become available...
...At this distance, I have seen trees turn blue and fences glow with iridescence...
...They were still revoltingly and painfully blistered...
...I have no illusions that my race was of any real significance, but whatever it is in the human psyche that makes people go off on perilous journeys in order to come back with new perceptions of the world, I too have shared...
...I suddenly realize that Fred was right...
...They say that back in the 30s he used to train with Clarence DeMar, the only man to have won seven Boston Marathons...
...Whether I do it well or badly is beside the point...
...I am quitting...
...Next year you ought to train before you try one of these things...
...They will be waiting for me after the race...
...Within 30 seconds, I had 60 stings on each ankle...
...But none of it mattered because the world seemed whole...
...I must be sure the weather is just right and that the flowers from which they have been gathering are open...
...I didn't quit...
...That will pick you up...
...Fred has been a runner forever...
...I have to be able to explore my inner self and the world around me...
...In any case, that group experience led to my recent reflections on the three essentially unrelated forces that do seem to energize my life: Judaism, which gives me structure...
...It ties me to a series of issues and behaviors—and I need to be anchored...
...I yell at my wife...
...Far too tired for elation, I am just quietly satisfied...
...I want to stop, but because the race is in laps, not a straight line course, I periodically have to pass Fred Brown...
...Then, without warning, collapse...
...Beekeeping is my tool for centering...
...Now I am much better at focusing and my mind is extraordinarily refreshed after half an hour with my bees...
...If given complete attention, they are gentle, harmless and productive...
...The hurt was far more in my head than my feet...
...It is a force too powerful to ignore...
...From 5 to 10 miles I begin to get angry...
...He sets off to explore his own terrifying inner world and does so with the help of the wise analyst...
...In the last 5 miles, my speed picks up amazingly...
...Most of my professional time is taken up with writing letters and making phone calls, the bread and butter of bureaucratic life...
...He is insistent...
...it is a most interesting game...
...Fred, I can't do it...
...I have won all of them...
...I quickly shift from the spirit to the flesh...
...My Jewishness locates me in time as part of an ancient tradition...
...I mustn't move rapidly or make jerky motions...
...How thin the veneer of human culture is, how little stress it takes to turn me back into a rather ordinary male primate competing for the females of my species...
...In some stories one theme is developed, another condensed...
...It is wonderful on the mountain, in the castle, at the burning bush or in Nirvana...
...In one version, the central figure goes off into the wilderness to prepare himself for the monumental task...
...He is a pretty good runner, but is starting to have trouble keeping up...
...To the extent that I am unconventional, my eccentricities do not extend much beyond the 150 pounds of honey I try to get annually from my four bee hives and the couple of marathons I run every year...
...I have got to use enough smoke, but not too much smoke...
...I personally must remain seriously attached to the traditional Jewish patterns lest I become too self indulgent about my private revelations, but I am grateful for what I have been able to discover through my own adventures...
...You can do it...
...I said that I was a runner, a beekeeper and an administrator...
...I can always walk the last 15 miles if I have to...
...It's all in your head, young feller...
...I still ache just as much as I did at 30 miles, but I have come to terms with the hurt...
...Too much pain, not enough energy...
...His article, "The Kosher Pig," was printed in moment in March 1982...
...It makes me think about ideas I would have long since abandoned if left to my own devices...
...Even so, the race was preceded by months of preparation...
...beekeeping, which gives me focus...
...Once, shortly after a rainstorm, I opened a hive carelessly...
...If I am not completely present to my bees, I will have cause for regret...
...I tell my children they had better shape up or else...
...I am telling you that you are in much better shape than you think...
...Then it is time for the perilous trip itself...
...The women I pass have become very beautiful, and they are mine...
...You don't look like much but you will be just fine...
...What are the tasks to which I must give priority...
...I rage at my professional colleagues...
...My Jewishness makes me consider my relationship to my people, to other peoples, to the food I eat...
...I ran, but not very fast or very far...
...I have somehow transcended the pain...
...For example, the psychoanalytic patient is in the wilderness of his desperation when he decides to seek wholeness...
...On a nice day I can work my four hives wearing only a pair of running shorts and sneakers...
...By the 15th mile, I am at peace and smiling like a Buddha...
...They give me a kind of directedness of thought that I would find difficult to attain without them...
...On what new projects would I like to work...
...After 30 miles it has become terrible...
...Each step hurts more than I can ever remember hurting...
...I have done something very hard...
...Some months ago, I ran my third 50-mile race...
...He is the gruff patron saint of the area's runners...
...I no longer fight it...
...Bees are fierce Zen masters...
...It is a crazy thing to do anyway...
...The sage provides little, but what he does provide is essential to the hero's success...
...Jungian writers, interested in the great legends, often describe what they believe to be the all-inclusive hero story, the mono-myth...
...He is a good wizard...
...My mind and body are one...
...They demand total concentration...
...It doesn't seem to matter to me...
...To run 50 miles, you must know...
...At the 50th mile, I am very pleased...
...Each of the three times I tried to stop, Fred drove me out again...
...I begin to count backwards towards the diminishing number of miles left rather than adding up the miles already run...
...I say I don't know...

Vol. 7 • October 1982 • No. 9


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.