Author: Neil Hanson

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Review – Bicycle Dreams

The context of this film is the Race Across America (RAAM) that happens every year, where cyclists race their bikes from the west coast to the east coast. Unlike the big and well-publicized grand tours of cycling, this race doesn’t have daily stops and starts, stages, and all that. It’s really simple – everyone starts in San Diego, and the first one to get to the appointed spot on the east coast wins.

How many of the 24 hours in a day can you stay in the saddle and pedal? How fast can you keep going? These guys usually sleep an hour or two a day, and pedal the rest of the day – at least the ones that finish first do. The winner generally makes it in about 9 days or so. Read it again – 9 days to ride a bicycle from the west coast to the east coast.

With this in mind, it’s easy to see that while this film uses the RAAM as the context, the story is really a story about the ability of the human being to push himself to the absolute limit and survive. The riders are hallucinating in extreme states of sleep deprivation. Their support crews are fashioning devices out of duct tape to help them hold their head up as they ride. They’re pushing their minds and their bodies to the absolute edge of survival.

The bar is high to qualify for this race. You need to prove through previous events that you have the physical ability to excel at ultra-endurance cycling, with strong finishes in other races that require hundreds of miles of nonstop cycling in brutal conditions.

Even with this high bar to enter, only about half the folks who begin in San Diego will finish the race. For the rest, they find that limit to the suffering their body and mind can endure.

This film was compiled from footage of the 2005 RAAM. The race has been occurring since 1982, when Ron Haldeman and 3 others decided to race from the Santa Monica Pier to the Empire State Building. They called their race “The Great American Bike Race”, and Haldeman won it in 9 days and 20 hours. It’s grown since then, to become the premier ultra-endurance cycling event in the world today. For cyclists like me who feel good about a long day in the saddle when we can average 15 or 16 miles an hour over a hard day, then go home and relax, think on the fact that the record speed over the 3000 mile event is 15+ mph – that’s AGGREGATE, meaning you start the clock on the west coast, stop it on the east coast, and figure the average. Includes sleeping, eating, hallucinating, arguing with mailboxes, taking punches at your crew when they push you, all that stuff. Kind of humbling, isn’t it?

While not intended for mass-marketing, this is a film that will be loved by cyclists in general, and especially by long-distance cyclists, endurance cyclists, and ultra-endurance cyclists. I highly recommend it to all my cycling friends. But I also recommend this film to anyone who’s interested in learning more about the madness that many people succumb to – this madness of finding the limits to our sanity and our survival.

Bargains are Killing Us

We’re a culture addicted to the idea of bargains. Most of what we buy into as a bargain isn’t a bargain at all in the long run, but we’ve brainwashed ourselves to believe that a short-term bargain is some sort of victory that we can’t pass up.

Watch behavior at the fast-food counter. People opt for the “supersize deal”, because it seems like such a bargain. In reality, they’re generally not saving much off the menu price, but more to the point, all the extra calories they’re forcing on themselves is a gigantic health risk to themselves, and a long-term healthcare cost to the nation. But it seems like such a bargain, we just can’t pass it up.

Big-box stores? Let’s just give them the generic name of Big-Mart, since I’m not aware of any chain really named that. It’s a good generic name. Study after study has shown that the prices we pay at Big-Mart are no lower than shopping at the local grocery store or sporting goods store. In fact, many studies have shown that we pay more on average. Worse yet, produce wholesalers find that these Big-Marts are the place where they can unload their lowest quality products. Pay more, get less. No bargain there. The highest cost is that these stores come into a town, drive the local businesses out of business, and many of them refuse to abide by generally accepted fair-labor practices. This means that local businesspeople lose everything, and local workers make less. The community as a whole pays more, gets less, and suffers a big price to both small businesses and the local workforce.

Yet, when the Big-Mart opens up, the shoppers flock there, believing they’re getting “a bargain”, when in fact they’re paying more, getting less, and damaging their local economy. Hardly a bargain…

How about dining choices? In my little city we’ve got the typical national chains, generally with a waiting line on the weekends. Yet, we have several locally owned restaurants that struggle to stay afloat. Why don’t the local folks support their neighbor rather than supporting the big corporate chains? Do they feel like they’re getting a bargain? This one baffles me. I go way out of my way to avoid a chain and support a local business whenever I can, and I find that I get better food and generally pay about the same or less than I would at a chain. I certainly feel better about myself when I’m done.

It might be because I’m a small businessman, and I understand clearly the value of the relationship between local merchant and local customer. But it’s not rocket science. A chain of any sort comes into a community to pull money out of it – that’s its job. They have a corporate structure somewhere else that must be fed, and the local outlet is nothing more than a way to suck as much money from the community as possible. Of course they provide a service – that’s why we give them money. But the local merchant provides the service as well, and he reinvests the money you give him back into the community. He buys locally, and sends his kids to the local schools, and pays property taxes on the home he owns locally.

This is happening all over America, as we let the big boxes and the big corporate chains siphon money from our local communities, draining them of their vitality. Even worse, this is our behavior at a more macro level as a nation. We have no problem with the fact that our economy is now a consumer economy rather than a producer economy. We’ve allowed the big box stores to ship all the jobs overseas, so that we can save a couple bucks on a pair of shoes.

Throughout history, this step of becoming a finance based consumer economy is the final step before the demise of an empire. We still have the power to thwart this fate, but it will take a concerted effort on all our parts in every single buying decision that we make.

Refuse to walk into a big box discount store, and shop instead at your local grocery store, hardware store, or sporting goods store. When you go out to eat, patronize only locally owned eateries. Next time you buy a vehicle, see if you can find one that’s truly made in America, and buy that one. The beauty of a free market in a democracy like ours is that you get to vote not just every couple years, but every single day.

Every time you let money leave your hand, you’re voting for a lifestyle, or a way of “being”.

Let’s stop looking for the bargain, and start looking for the good investment.

The Sparrow and the Hawk

The cold weather this weekend has the birds spending lots of time at my feeders. They’re equal-opportunity feeders, meaning that while seed-eating birds flock to the feeders, the occasional falcon takes advantage of the congregated birds to take a songbird as a snack of his own.

Photo by Will Elder

I watch a Kestrel (a type of falcon also known as a Sparrow Hawk) sitting on a branch above the feeders. While a Kestrel will sometimes take a bird, their primary diet is usually little creatures like mice. This one has apparently figured out that mice glean the seed that falls beneath the feeders, and he watches the ground intently.

Photo by Terry Sohl

The songbirds seem to know a falcon is sitting in the tree, as they stay away from the feeders while he’s there. I see them gathered not far away, clearly wanting to feed on this frigid day, but nervous about the falcon.

In most cases, hunger will eventually trump risk, as it does with the sparrows and finches. The flock might lose one individual, but the flock as a whole needs to eat.

The first to approach the feeders is a group of Titmice that stumble into the area. Their rapid flitting from branch to branch attracts the attention of the Sparrow Hawk, and as they notice his presence they decide to move along.

Just as the Titmice move along, the Sparrows and Finches move into the top of the tree. They seem to know the Sparrow Hawk is still in the tree, staying above his perch as they chatter and move about from branch to branch. The Sparrow Hawk is clearly on high alert – looking for a chance to take a little bird who lets his guard down for just an instant. Eventually, a group of half a dozen or so Goldfinches drop down to the feeders, and the Sparrow Hawk makes his move.

Fortunately for the Goldfinches, they’re agile on the wing, and the Sparrow Hawk doesn’t have enough space to gain any reasonable attack speed. The hawk flies off empty-taloned, and the Goldfinches resume their feeding after a couple minutes.

Photo by Peter LaTourrette

I’m always torn about who to “root for” when the falcons are around the feeder. It is a bird feeder, after all, and falcons are birds too, right? My immediate reaction is always to root for the underdog – the songbird. But common sense usually takes over and I figure it’s out of my hands – it’s just nature happening around me, and I’m blessed to be able to observe. No need to “root for” anybody.

Why’s that so hard for us – to just observe without rooting for somebody? Why do we always feel like we need to be on one side or the other of something?

After all, G-d isn’t rooting for one or the other, right? It’s just a balance thing, and it’s happening and balancing as we watch. And there’s beauty in balance, regardless of the outcome of this little confrontation or that little close-call.

We often mold G-d into our own image, and this is one of those areas where I think it’s most apparent. Our human nature (for whatever reason) pushes us to always take sides on things, rather than simply understanding things and solving problems. This is a human characteristic, not a Divine one, yet we can’t resist pushing G-d into this little mold.

I coached and refereed competitive soccer for years, and watched as many teams would have a “prayer” prior to the beginning of the match. While I have no doubt that the basic underlying intention of coaches was good when they did this, I also have little doubt that most of the time it was unconsciously a show – putting the “religiosity” of the coach on display in front of an audience. This aspect of the practice amused me.

But another aspect of the prayer disturbed me. The likely collateral effect these “prayers” had on young minds bothered me – implying that G-d might just provide the most help to whichever team prayed the best, or the most, or with the right words. As-if to imply that “G-d is on my team, not on the other team.”

While this might not by the explicit intent of the coach, I believe it’s one of the implied lessons beneath the practice. While I love the practice of prayer, I can only imagine how much more valuable the practice would be if both teams came together before the match, and prayed together. What a powerful lesson that would be for the players and the spectators. It would imply clearly the reality that G-d doesn’t “choose up sides” in this sort of thing, and that our need for prayer is our need to keep ourselves close to G-d.

It’s an unfortunate reality we face in the world, with so many all across the globe believing that their perspective of G-d is the one and only right version – that G-d rejects all the other people who happen to have been brought up with a different perspective or different traditions. It’s quite selfish behavior really, and the sort of self-righteousness that’s led to more war and misery than anything else in our history.

In my Christian tradition, we’ve got a really nice hymn that’s based on words Jesus spoke. The words from the refrain that are most memorable to like this:

“His eye is on the Sparrow,

and I know G-d watches over me.”

Image from BirdsArt.com

Maybe He watched the dance at my feeders. If so, His eye probably was on the Sparrow, and on the falcon as well. The falcon missed this time, but the odds may have worked in his favor later in the day, and he probably found a mouse, or a finch. And G-d probably smiled at the beauty of the balance that continued to be maintained.

Shovel Therapy

Scrape, throw; scrape, throw; scrape, throw. My heart thumps heavily in my chest and my lungs find a steady rhythm – pulling the cold, fresh air deeply into my chest and sending the steamy exhale back out. These rhythms come into a sweet harmony with the strokes of my arms as they dispatch one shovel-full of snow after the other from the cold concrete of the driveway.

In short order, the heat is building nicely inside my jacket, and the steam rises from my head. Though the temperature hovers around zero, both my body and soul are saturated in a zone of warm satisfaction as the concrete is steadily stripped of the layer of snow that covers it.

Shoveling anything is satisfying to me, but snow is a particular pleasure. Especially when it’s fresh snow with a consistent weight and consistency – before it’s been walked in or driven on. It lends itself to the mindless rhythm of shoulders, back, legs, lungs and heart as the shovel sweeps in a steady motion. The cold air is a bonus, as it allows high work output without overheating.

Like bicycling, shoveling snow has a sweet combination of qualities that allows the body to fall into a holistic rhythm of work. It’s almost like a drug to me, and I suppose there’s something to be said for the endorphins that are probably released during high work output. Perhaps there’s some physiological reason for the magic, but it’s magic nonetheless.

This morning, there’s less snow than was forecast. The dry ground of the high prairie needs the snow this year. Beyond the joy of shoveling, it feels good to see the moisture coming down. I enjoy the peace of the quiet blanket of white in the early light.

Simple joy. Deep joy.

We’ve built a complex world of broadband, fiber, blogging and email. We keep ourselves wrapped tightly in our cocoon of warm isolation from the world around us, while sharing a high level of intimate information with all the friends, family, and complete strangers who happen to read our Facebook page updates.

We shop a lot – our entire economy now revolves not around making and building things of value, but instead around filling shopping carts full of “stuff” – most of which we have no real need for. Buying “stuff” is not only the center of our economy, but seems also to be the place we’re searching for some sense of satisfaction. Doesn’t it seem, sometimes, that filling our shopping carts is our misguided attempt to fill the gaps of joy and meaning in our life?

But we still feel that gaps. We’re still searching for the meaning. We still long for the joy.

Simple joy. Deep joy.

These gaps aren’t always foremost in our minds, but I think they drive our behavior more than we’d like to admit.

When for most of us, many gaps are easily filled by pretty simple things in our life. They’re usually things we don’t have to reach very far to find, and they’re often things we spend a great deal of time hiding from.

Like hard work. Simple hard work with a steady, mindless rhythm to it. Work that keeps the heart pounding and the sweat pouring. Work that makes the muscles burn now and again. Work that lets the mind wander in peace.

Later in the morning, I sit in my office, and I feel good. The warm satisfaction from a little shovel work is still wrapped around me, and the sunlight is occasionally exploding across the snow-covered landscape outside. I watch as some folks struggle with their snowblower, finally getting it started, turning their head away from the exhaust blowing in their face, putting in earplugs to mute the scream of the motor.

I shift my gaze back to my front porch. There – leaning up against a rail – is my trusty snow shovel. I’m pretty sure the machine doesn’t save the neighbor any time, and I’m absolutely positive it deprives him of the joy to be found on the end of a shovel.

I don’t think I need to go shopping for anything today.

I hope is snows again tonight.

Standing Still For The Light

Since she was born in the middle of December, we always worried that our daughter’s birthday would be overwhelmed by the Christmas holiday. Consequently, we never decorated the house, or let the “Christmas Season” begin, until after her birthday was complete.

That tradition remained, and even today as an adult, she’ll have no part of anyone in the family starting “Christmas” until after her birthday.

Which is great with me. Traditionally – back in the olden days before we were an economy and a society addicted to consumerism – Christmas actually didn’t “start” until Christmas Eve. Back then, folks would come together as a family on that eve, and decorate the home, and share good cheer, in anticipation of the beginning of the season of Christmas. Starting on Christmas Day, the season lasts 12 days – hence the song, “The Twelve Days Of Christmas”.

Acting like it’s Christmas too early in the year gives us all too much time to squabble over whether or not this group or that group celebrates the holiday correctly, or whether it’s OK to use this decoration or that decoration in front of this building or that building. It gives us too much time to wallow in the “stuff” that we want, and the “stuff” that people around us want. It’s a sad but true commentary on the degree to which we all submit to the consumerism that’s become our master in these modern days.

Build a new way to celebrate Christmas this year and in coming years. Come together as a family on the eve of Christmas. Decorate the house for the holiday if you haven’t already, and share in good cheer and joy. Seek and find the religious significance in the holiday that’s important to you. Let the joy and significance linger for the entire holiday season – all 12 days of it.

Photo From ScienceBlogs.com - Winter Solstice of Fairbanks, AK

The winter solstice brings the shortest day of the year – the day when the sun stops its retreat toward darkness, and begins to move back toward light. The Latin root of the word “solstice” translates to something like “the standing still of the sun”. The sun stands still for a moment, then turns away from darkness and begins the journey toward longer days and greater light.

This year, the winter solstice brought a bonus of a beautiful red lunar eclipse to my part of the world. The moon turned dark red as the earth shaded it from the bright sun. Then, emerging on the other side of the shadow, it sparkled again in the bright winter night sky.

Photo By AP - Lunar Eclipse

Each year, the solstice is the opening act for the Christmas Holiday, (though I suppose my daughter would argue that her birthday is the opening act for the solstice…) As we bask in the joy of lengthening days and growing light in the world around us, it’s the perfect time to stand still in our heart and soul for a moment, and seek the Light that waits for us. This year, a moon emerging from a shadow is an extra bonus.

Stand still for just a moment, and feel the warmth of Light shining into your heart. Open yourself and let the Light from within your Soul shine into the world around you, and into the lives of those you love. Emerge from any shadow that life or the season might have brought into your life, and find again the bright Light shining into your heart and reflecting on your face.

The “true meaning of Christmas” – find it for yourself.

Searching For Fiscal Responsibility

I’m a fiscal conservative – one who really believes in the principles. One of the things that I’ve found really troubling in recent decades is the theft of that word – conservative – from the very foundations of the real meaning of the word. While I try and stay mostly a-political in this blog, I do like to post links to articles I write for others that do dig into political issues.

You can find the article at Tikkun – follow this link.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

Paradox Of Unknowing – Part 1

The closer you look, the less you see. If you want to understand the Pacific Ocean, you’d hardly look at a tiny drop of water flowing into it from a river – you’d need to back up and see the thing in context, see the whole picture.

How much damage is done in business, politics, and relationships by folks who charge into something with a “solution” or a “change” that causes greater damage because the situation or the problem wasn’t understood well or fully? How many times have we each been embarrassed by actions we took or words we spoke that clearly didn’t have the wisdom of good understanding behind them?

To understand something, you have to be able to see the context.

Great sages have talked about this throughout history as it relates to our ability to walk the path of a Faith Journey. In different ways, with different words, in all languages, they’ve described that moving further toward G-d in this life requires that we release our human requirement to understand everything about G-d.

One of the greatest favors bestowed on the soul transiently in this life is to enable it to see so distinctly and feel so profoundly that it cannot comprehend God at all. …They who know God most perfectly perceive that God is infinitely incomprehensible.
Those who have less clear vision do not perceive so clearly how greatly God transcends their vision.

St John of the Cross

This is tough for us in our western world, where we’ve constructed a universe in our mind that we know and fundamentally understand. Our addiction to knowing and understanding are the very things that keep us from moving toward G-d.

Walk outside on a dark night. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Try see something clearly in the dark by looking directly at it. You’ll find that if you look a little to the side, instead of directly at the thing, you’ll be able to see it much more clearly. You won’t see color and detail, but you’ll see shape and movement. While there are physiological reasons for this, it demonstrates the point well.

There are things for which we have no context for understanding. If we take our natural human approach – if we look directly at them – we won’t be able to see them. But if we accept that we can’t try and see the thing in the same way we’re accustomed to seeing things, the shape might start to appear.

Try it next time you find yourself out on a dark night. Each time I use this trick, it reminds me of the humility I need to nurture in order to have a chance to glimpse a shape now and then that might be the edge of G-d.

Princess Has A Birthday

22 years ago, I stood in an operating room and watched a tiny little messy baby girl emerge into the world. There was a stereo playing in the background as the docs and the nurses worked. It was an Eagles album – I’m sure it was a tape as CD’s probably weren’t invented yet. Desperado was the song that played as the little baby pulled that first lungful of Mother Earth into her lungs.

“…

You know the queen of hearts,

Is always your best bet…

And some fine things, have been laid upon your table…”

That little baby is all grown up now, celebrating her 22nd birthday today. She’ll always be the Queen of Hearts in my book I suppose, or maybe the Princess, though everyone else seems to think she’s all grown up.

I look at her sometimes, and listen to her talk, and wonder at the beautiful person she’s become. How did this happen? It seems so sudden. It seems only a short while ago she was 8 years old, and we’d race upstairs at bedtime, and negotiate how many books we’d read together before the lights went out. She’d fall asleep cuddled up to me. I’d fall asleep too.

While I miss those wonderful times a little bit, I also burst with pride and joy at the beautiful person that keeps emerging into adulthood. We banter now and then, and tease each other a bit, and I suppose in another 22 years I’ll look back on today with nostalgic longing, while watching in wonder as that little princess continues to emerge into yet another stage of beauty.

Happy Birthday Princess.

The Fortune Ledger and Advent

We’ve had an amazingly mild autumn in Colorado. We’re within days of the winter solstice, and it’s 60 degrees today, as it was yesterday. We’ve had a little snow, and a couple of cold spells, but overall it’s been incredible.

I was chatting with a friend the other day, and we were fretting over the fear that this mild weather now might mean some really nasty stuff later on. As-if there is some sort of cosmic balance of “rotten days”, and we might now have gotten on the wrong side of that balance.

It’s an interesting tendency, isn’t it? We look at many things in life within the context of this “ledger sheet” view of the universe. As-if someplace up in the cosmos, there’s an accounting clerk hunched over a ledger book with his green eyeshade on, making sure that we’re each enduring our fair share of misery. If we’re blessed with some good fortune, or unseasonably great weather, or a string of particularly good luck, we automatically look for “the catch” – the other shoe that must be going to drop.

It comes back to our desire to look at everything in life as a “payment” or a “barter”. There’s no free lunch, right? If it seems too good to be true, it probably is, right? There’s always a price to pay, right?

When we’re dealing with each other – with other human beings – it’s probably a good idea to maintain a wary approach. Since this is how we see the world, this is how we deal with one another. It’s safe.

But when it comes to Creation, the cosmos, the universe or the multiverse, or just plain Mother Nature, there’s a healthier way to let ourselves be part of the world. That image of the accounting clerk and the green eyeshade not only limits our capacity to receive the gifts of Creation, but also limits our capacity to be the source of gifts.

Every single day is filled with gifts. Sometimes the dice fall in our favor for several days in a row, and the gift is even sweeter than we expected. Sometimes our perception of “luck” or “fortune” limits our ability to see the gifts that fill the path around us, and we’re challenged to build the wisdom required to share and experience gifts in a new way.

Our fear of “the other shoe” or the “price to be paid” can consumes so much of our energy that we’re prevented from savoring the beauty of what’s been laid right in front of us.

For Christians, we’re approaching the final Sunday of the season of Advent. It’s a season of preparation – of opening ourselves to Spirit and anticipation. It’s not a time to worry about ledger sheets. It’s not a time to worry about whether or not we’ve received our fair share of misery. It’s a time of simple and hopeful beginning. A time to rejoice in the gifts that are laid all along the path that we’re on. A time to celebrate all humanity, all Creation, and all wonder.

Ad-vent: The arrival. The beginning. Especially of something momentous.

Every single day is momentous – every day is the advent of yet another gift.

Seek it, feel it, and enjoy it.

It’s a wonderful day outside today. Tomorrow might be another beautiful day, or it might not, but I think I’ll deal with that tomorrow. Today is waiting for me – I think I’ll not make it wait any longer…