Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
National holidays are mostly abstract. Even the 4th Of July, as tactile as it is. The national anthem is a difficult, bizarre piece of music, and underscores how vast a gulf there is between our times and the world back then. Hardly seems like the same place at all.
MLK Day is a difficult holiday for some. Within my lifetime, some states have resisted the very idea of the holiday. The opposition to the holiday seems so odious that one avoids the subject altogether, fearful that some of the mud will splash onto us.
The events of 2014 are reminders that gulfs exist between the races. Racial profiling by law enforcement seems an obvious fact of life. One wonders how could it not exist? Individuals belong to groups, and groups have demographic characteristics that are materially manifest in the most conspicuous ways, such as fashion.
Much debate goes on about who is racist and how they are racist. I’ve wondered a lot about what entails racism, and how and why it occurs.
One has a negative perception of a community inasmuch as one primarily identifies a group by a negative characteristic.
I grew up in a city well-known as wealthier than surrounding cities, as a city infamous for conspicuous consumption. There was some truth behind the perception. The city has extravagant shopping malls, and every citizen was guilty by association of the conspicuous consumption practiced by those mall shoppers. We were reluctant to say where we lived, because we knew we would be considered to be a type of people we were not.
One hears about a group of people notorious as thieves. Cher had a big hit with a particular song: “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” Well-meaning as it might have been, what most impressed itself on an impressionable young mind is that people think Gypsies are thieves, and if all these people think that– why would they, if there was not some truth to it?
Italians suffer the perception that they have something to do with the Mafia. People think the Irish are inordinately fond of liquor, and if we think Vietnamese people, with all the pho soup restaurants hereabouts, really love pho soup, with all the Irish bars, it’s hard not to think the Irish don’t really like spending a lot of time drinking in pubs. (Some people think that’s a bad thing.)
Blacks in the United States suffer the curse of slavery. When I think on their situation in the US today, I think one has to go back to slavery, because that’s how they got here. That’s why they were, against their wills, brought here. It’s impossible to not think about that and wonder how it was ever morally permissible. One thinks about how and why that happened, and what were the enduring consequences. As a white person, I have to think that a history such as that needs a few centuries to fade into the background and not be a major, unhealthy factor in the community psyche. In the history of humanity, 100 years, 200 years is about as recent as yesterday. And still we have debates over civil rights, discrimination, voting rights, cities with black majorities and white police forces.
I have Irish and Jewish blood. I see the Jews as a people who will always be held suspect. When a group of people has been reviled by so many for so long, it’s all too easy to think, “There must be a reason why people have thought that,” and then latch onto a few self-serving anecdotes as proof that they are guilty of whatever they happen to have been charged with, or are being charged with.
It’s easier to think of people as belonging to groups who can be dealt with in terms of stereotypes. People even think of themselves as stereotypes, when convenient. “I’m a man, so I leave the toilet seat down.” “I’m white, so I don’t have to worry about mistreatment by the police.”
Few things offend people more than being labeled as a type, whether it’s according to something relatively superficial, such as the city where where one grew up, or something more substantial, such as skin color and gender.
We belong to bigger communities: we are brothers and sisters; each others’ keepers; children of God; citizens of Earth. As human beings, to follow the heroic, unimaginable courage and bravery and most excellent example of Dr. King, and promote those overarching realities, is our responsibility and high calling.

A humbler, January, and, humble.
The fog gets bright enough sometimes, my eyes hurt, then the fog is strengthened, or weakened, into more of a drizzle than a mist, but by 3:30, we are in the sunset hour of another sunless day.
The day began three hours before the 7:55 sunrise, early enough for a couple of cups of coffee and an hour around the house before going out for a 10-mile run among tall trees gray in the fog up from Lake Washington.
Back home during the middle of the sunrise hour, forehead wet with sweat and mist, long sleeves rolled back out after they’d been rolled up during the run after I’d warmed up a bit.
Thirty-two laps around the track with no one seen the whole time. A soccer ball was on the artificial turf field so I took ten penalty kicks, attempting to place the kicks as I had decades ago, as I had run with the technique I’ve had the last 15 years, instead of a round of golf, reliving the dramas of boyhood, struggling to compensate with technique for the loss of power I might once have had.
After today, two more Sundays of long-distance training runs before a 25K on the 31st. The strategy is the same as usual: no competition, no attempt at a specific result. The older runner is mature enough to enjoy the experience of running a little slower a little longer, becoming a more perfect runner, running in a style that exemplifies the athlete and person he has become and is now for this moment.
Next January, God willing, might include these same training runs, these same reflections on the last holiday season with a child still not aware of the season’s weighty expectations, the same hope for another Seahawks Super Bowl win.
The debt I now face will have been managed, and might be smaller than what I’ll have accumulated then.
The health I have now might be compromised by illness, injury.
The time I have for a few things, I might not have for anything.
Silent, head down, back to work.
What will the year bring?
Fog.

Holidays try too hard, so we’re often glad when they’re over. After the new year, the buses, banks, post offices and trash collectors get back on their regular schedules and we can finally get back to the semblance of normalcy craved by us, working people, who don’t get weeks off, who have to squeeze the holiday festivities into the rest of our lives which go on regardless in the quotidian cycles of work, debt, paycheck, crisis, crushed dreams, debt, work, paycheck, toothache, dentist, debt, car problems, short paycheck, hope, debt, miscellaneous crisis, a happy moment when we inexplicably transcend all the tiresome, useless, everyday crap and have a vision of the miracle it is to be alive on “this fortress built by Nature for herself, this precious stone set in the silver sea, this blessed plot, this Earth, this realm (Shakespeare!),” this Emerald Isle of a planet.
There’s a word for that– one of the great Christian words in our vocabulary– Epiphany.
When you have not just a good idea, not just a great idea, but a life-clarifying insight, one hauls out that particular, unique, special word for a special experience– epiphany.
In my life, I’ve had white epiphanies, and black epiphanies. Plus the Feast Of The Epiphany every year, “We Three Kings,” one of the great Christmas songs. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh– the good ol’ days. Tenzing Momo in the Pike Place Market has a nice frankincense and myrrh incense stick, by the way.
But it tries too hard. It’s too deconstructionist and reengineered. The songbooks have songs about it in which the three maji, the three kings, the three wise men, went out in search of the Jesus we know and love in all His theological complexity.
The Gospel says these three saw the star that heralded the king of the Jews. So much is read into that phrase– “the king of the Jews.” Historically, it’s a tremendously sad phrase. It’s the sign above Jesus’ head on the cross. “What I have written, I have written,” Pilate said.
Is this a King for a people who suffered the Shoah in practically our own lifetime? I don’t know who else could be.
What do we have at the Epiphany? Three men who had the astrological kung fu to somehow figure out that a star had emerged in the night sky that proclaimed the birth of the King of the Jews. Kings are arbitrary figures, aren’t they? A family makes alliances, hires mercenaries, prevails over enemies, proclaim themselves royalty, and so they remain until they’re replaced by a more powerful family.
But when an impartial star appears in the heavens and anoints an infant born to powerless people of a powerless tribe in the hinterlands of an occupied people, something irresistibly powerful is afoot, and don’t we want to think that the universe is a good place, ruled by an omnipotent Deity Who desires not our destruction, but our salvation? Wouldn’t we then welcome this child-king, declared by the most profound mechanisms of the Universe, this crucial step forward in the reconciliation of God and His children?
The maji rejoiced at the birth of this King. They rushed to welcome Him, because they must have believed that this was a most excellent thing that was happening. Whether the Christ child never cried after He was born, never evinced any infantile distress, whether the maji were centuries ahead of their time in their theological instincts– no matter.
Their Epiphany was, perhaps, that they were witnesses to something special, something unique, not to be taken for granted.
Something to be admired by us who tend to take Christmas and the King of the Jews for granted!

What were the shepherds expecting with the birth of Jesus, I wonder.

Did the multitude of the heavenly host have a better idea?

Joseph and Mary were bewildered by the whole experience. Elizabeth and Zechariah must have been at least equally short on specifics.

The maji came to honor a King who was born to be a king, although he had no more claim to being a “son of David” than any other boy born into that tribe.

Herod had a hunch, and a slaughter ensued. The boy Jesus was prophesied to be a King, and a King isn’t a shy, retiring type. A King doesn’t suffer rivals to his throne.

The shepherds were told that a Savior was born, not a king, but people get sloppy with their logic.

When the Pope said something to the effect that all creatures have a place in Paradise, some said he said that animals have souls. Reminds me of the “stumbling block” spoken of in the Bible.

Does every type of creature in Heaven have to have a soul? I accept that if by “soul” is meant some type of durable essence that can be unique to the creature as a creation of God, which is probably not always going to be what we think of as a “soul.”

Is Heaven somehow tarnished because there’s something there that doesn’t have a “soul?” At a concert last week, a song had lyrics about how when this guy gets to Heaven, the first thing he’ll do is call his dog, and of course his dog will have been there waiting for him all along.

“No!” the hairsplitters will object. “First you will have to perform various and sundry rituals of contrition and obeisance and worship and then you shall be fitted into garments and assigned a place.” The listener is distracted with amusement over wondering how these people know this stuff, why they get so worked up about it, and how hilarious it would be if they were proven wrong.

Sloppy with logic, sloppy with lives. For us non-professional theologians, is it possible not to get a little sloppy when one is wondering about the great eschatological realities?

The shepherds were told that a Savior was born, and we take that for granted. It’s a word with a definition, and we know all about how faith in Jesus leads to eternal life.

But whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, some of us still struggle with the concept of Savior.

What do we pray for? What do people ask a King for?

We want justice, King! We want equality, compassion, mercy, a healthy environment. If you’re not predisposed to pursue these objectives, O King, kindly say so. Step aside for someone more to our liking

We want what we want, and we want it to be right for us to want those things.

We want a divine endorsement of our agendas.

We demand a Savior who will save us from ourselves.

We do not want a King who seems to leave us to our own devices, helpless, at the mercy of the wicked.

Christmas passes as a day of preoccupation with who gave what to who and who got what, as a day of loneliness and sadness, a day of memories, a day of joy, just another day.

What did God want for Christmas? Because, in Jesus, what He got for Himself was a mother, in Mary, a father, in Joseph, and sisters and brothers, in us.

If we have the truly human souls to want them, we have, for Christmas, a Father in God, a Mother in Mary, a Savior in Jesus, sisters and brothers in each other, and, in Heaven, a home.

The body is a great teacher of truths that are beyond dispute, because there is no arguing over whether you have a headache or not, or a toothache, an earache, a stuffy nose, or a cough. The body suffers real pains that can be medicated away. What did people do before aspirin was invented?

A parable that has always confused me concerns the person whose house was infested by a demon. The demon was expelled, and the house tidied up. When the demon saw the house tidied up, he invited seven even-worse demons to join him in reoccupying the house, and the man was worse off than ever.

Yesterday, during day four of a ravaging sickness, I discerned some insight into that parable.

Say you sprain your ankle while jogging. For the rest of your life, you will have suffered that sports injury, and at the first irregularity in that ankle, you’ll remember that sprain, aware that you always knew that ankle would henceforth be vulnerable. If you favor that ankle, your motion will be unnatural, with abnormal stress placed on other bodily parts, leaving them vulnerable to injury.

I had a bad tooth once that took a while to be handled. The dentist told me, until the tooth could be treated, I shouldn’t chew on that side of my mouth. I was rather shocked that the dentist would suggest in such cavalier fashion that I throw all those teeth under the bus. I had no choice but to follow his advice, which I had been doing anyway, of course, though I regretted having to do what was not in the long-term best interests of all those other teeth, many of which were probably just a hard malted milk ball away from cracking themselves.

Sickness enters in, and the body fights it off. But the germ thinks, I have beaten him before, and I can beat him again, so six days ago, he sneaks in and manifests his presence in the form of my sinus infection.

Preoccupied by that, the body focuses its defenses on the infected nostril, leaving the other nostril, the throat, etc., undefended. So here come the other seven demons. Both nostrils are infected, the throat becomes raw from coughing, the voice can hardly speak, the chest is full of the stuff flowing out of the sinuses, and that stuff then also runs rampant through the stomach. Instead of fighting one demon symptom, the body is embroiled in struggles against several demon symptoms.

Jesus made a career of expelling demons, rebuking fevers and such, and telling parables. That He would stir those elements together in compelling, sometimes-confusing fashion, is easily understood.

Maybe I don’t have the definitive explanation of the parable cited above, but as I lie awake coughing uncontrollably, trying to fight off this sickness, I can sincerely relate this experience to a battle against an invasion of demons!

Who were the leaders in the band? The dissenters, the mercenaries, the disgruntled, the true believers? When a band breaks up, the individuals come to the fore.

Genesis had members who fit all those molds, at any given time, and played different roles at different times.

After these five decades, mysteries remain, especially for us who choose not to seek out the stories, the lyrics we still can’t and don’t want to decipher.

Steve Hackett is a true believer. That is why he puts together a band to play the old Genesis songs worldwide in venues large and small.

Last night, Steve Hackett and his band played the Moore Theater in Seattle, Washington. Strange, to see a show and know by heart every song, to recognize songs before their second notes. To hear The Fountain Of Salmacis, that guitar sound one has loved for 40 years.

Strange to go back 40 years, to see a blue-lit stage that could have been the stage on the cover of Genesis “Live.” Could we, we would go back to that moment. “How many have longed to see what you see, and hear what you hear!” I thought, imagining the thoughts of a 20-year-old in 1973 being told that, in 2014, he would be hearing that music again in a small theater in Seattle. Last night’s show was, in that way, as special as those old shows with Genesis.

Missing was what became the trademark sound of post-Gabriel Genesis: the wash of keyboards from Tony Banks. Hackett’s keyboardist Roger King ably plays Banks’ parts. One wonders, though– how has that old music evolved in the mind of Tony Banks? How would he play all that now, the author of the intro to Watcher Of The Skies ( no piece of music is dearer to me than that, and a thrill it was to hear it amid deep blue lights) and my favorite musician of all time? I would rather Mr. Banks play the music he hears now than the music he played then, sure that, as some of us think, perfection is a thing that evolves?

How would Peter Gabriel reimagine the old songs, and inhabit his old characters? The dashing young Moonlit Knight, the lecherous old man of The Musical Box, the Messiah of Supper’s Ready?

Phil Collins, were he able to play, might not be the hyperactive drummer of old. How would his advanced artistry inform his interpretations and technique?

Could Michael Rutherford strum a 12-string as fiercely as his counterpart Nick Beggs did last night? If he chose not to, what he chose to play instead would assure us that, all these years later, his musicianship will have evolved as we all have evolved in our artistry. What he would play, we couldn’t anticipate, but it would make sense.

That is why we long for a reunion of Gabriel, Banks, Hackett, Rutherford, and Collins– to see who they are now.

I didn’t wear my “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” shirt last night because I’m shy about it, but I live in hope that the band will reunite and go on a tour that features “The Lamb” played in its entirety.

Meanwhile, Steve Hackett makes good decisions. Multi-instrumentalist Rob Townsend complementing drummer Roger O’Toole’s percussion, playing flute and saxophone, is an excellent idea.

Steve’s emphasis on his guitar parts was to lovely effect, as he quietly strummed the conclusion to “Fly On A Windshield.”

Nad Sylvan had the unenviable task many of us would kill for– sing those songs! When I pass a room with a microphone and a podium, I always want to sing, “Walking across the sitting room….” I wouldn’t get much further than that.

In a tribute to long-time Seattle Post-Intelligencer rock critic Gene Stout, let it be noted that Mr. Hackett was draped in a fine scarf, black boots, and still has amazing hair. The crowd was old,  thunderous, and under the influence of cannabis.

What isn’t credited enough is that Genesis was a band that truly pummeled the audience. “The Return Of The Giant Hogweed,” to my knowledge, hasn’t been cited as an influence on heavy metal and such, but we saw last night that, especially in a live setting, much of Genesis isn’t for the delicate of hearing.

Thanks to Steve Hackett for remaining a true believer all these years, and for providing a special night for all of us true believers whose belief is that never has there been a better time to be alive than now, largely because we have so much music in our lives, and we have known a band the likes of which never have we seen anything close– Genesis!

Theoretically, I told my family of three, yes–by all means–absolutely and for sure we could hop into the minivan and go someplace to cut down a tree to be our Christmas tree.

But where are we going? Shall we pull onto some dark corner, scramble down a brambly hill, whack an unsuspecting tree and squeeze it into the van? No no no no no.

Let us begin with the Internet. Find a place nearby that is professional, where we shall not be overmatched by the elements, where we will be comforted by infrastructure and guided through the whole stinkin’ process of helping to lay bare brown a verdant green hillside or whatever.

Charlie Brown in that Christmas tree lot was ahead of his time. We still don’t have trees as spectacular as those giant aluminum trees, but today’s artificial Christmas tree is a fine piece of work. The changing LED lights are so enchanting that one can come to peace with the fact that he didn’t design and install these lights himself, but he did have sense enough to appreciate a well-lit tree and go with that, rather than look at his own lights, wondering why (knowing all too well why) he somehow cannot bring to fruition the dazzling vision in his head.

If one can find the storage space for it, one needn’t toss a tinsel wrapped spine of broken brown limbs onto the street for the garbage. Few artificial trees ever look as sad as those discarded Christmas trees awaiting collection. As someone who can’t throw away a pair of socks without a heartfelt farewell, it’s not in me to rush into that melancholia.

But the Mrs. wants a real tree, and her reasons are persuasive. A 2-year-old boy can have worse things at Christmas than a genuine tree acquired in a process of which he was a part, so I can explain how it works.

The Christmas tree farm is divided into four sections: Noble, Grand, Nordmann, Douglas Fir.

We did much the same, unscientific thing we did when we went to the shelter to get a dog– we saw one we liked and that sealed it.

The farm provides saws to cut down the trees, which, young trees as they are, are not dense enough to present a physical challenge. A machine allows two young men to stuff the tree into a sort of net, in which it is wrapped in plastic and carried to the owner’s vehicle. String is provided to tie the wrapped tree to the top of the van.

It was after tying the tree to the car that we set out to see the rest of the tree farm. I told my son that Santa might be hiding in the trees, so he went around yelling, “Santa! Where are you?”

Our Nordmann fir survived the trip home. We unwrapped it ad put it in the brand-new tree stand we bought at the local hardware store on our way up to the farm. The needles pushing out of its trunk all up the trunk is an odd feature, but it’s a handsome tree. Before we left, we measured the space so we could be sure the tree we brought home would fit into the available space, but we still had to trim off the top of it.

Our son now has for his first Christmas tree one that is almost three times his size, going all the way up to the roof.

He can enjoy that, and the ethical dilemmas can wait for later.

One type of children’s book tries to entertain both parents and kids, and isn’t as much fun as it purports to be for anyone. Another type doesn’t try to entertain adults at all. Another type manages to entertain both. Dr. Seuss comes to mind as preeminent in that field.
The Christmas season is the epic time of year for attempts to entertain both kids and adults.
Years ago, I decided I would put up Christmas lights in the window of my shabby little apartment. Not many people did that in the neighborhood, so there was the added discomfort of drawing attention to myself. And as a mere apartment renter, one can feel guilty of a bloated sense of self-importance in putting up Christmas lights, traditionally such a middle-class, suburban, home-owner thing to do.
That year, I decided I would get a small string of purple lights. After putting them up, I walked out in the street to see how they looked. I’ll never forget standing out in the street, shivering, with so much happiness in my heart as I looked up at those festive little purple lights!
As a husband and father, with a house, the opportunities are spectacular for decorating the yard and house. It’s a responsibility to our little boy, to provide him with moments of wide-eyed wonder, though there’s sadness too in trying to create memories that he might look back on someday with a wish that he could do something like it in circumstances that might not be as hospitable as ours now are, for however long.
Will he have a house with a fireplace? A tree in the front yard wrapped in colorful lights, and decorated with oversized gold, silver, red and green balls? Backyard trees wrapped in lights, decorated? Not things that cost a lot, or are difficult to set up, but having the family, and the house, and the family with the common tradition of Christmas? Good luck with that, kid.
I went three decades on my own before all these things fell into place, and I got lucky. Maybe my son won’t have the same good luck. It’s likely that what we have won’t seem special to him until long after it’s ended. Maybe he’ll be a happy, well-groomed, wholesome, faithful young man, with genuine reverence for the family traditions. Maybe not.
But that’s the faith of Christmas: the magic of the lights, trees, decorations, the traditions, the ceremonies, the memories; that parents believe we can create the atmosphere and experiences that will take root as reservoirs of happiness in children that they will cherish all through their lives.

This year, we’re calling Christ “King Of The Universe.” The idea is to be as all-encompassing as possible, but it doesn’t quite succeed.
The Christmas season celebrates what we often call God’s entrance into human history, which takes place in the physical context of the universe, or multiverse, as some of us are now wont to call it.
“King of the Universe” makes sense the way the winner of the World Cup can say they are the world champions. Authority over a certain physical space is what is in dispute, and what is claimed.
We can say “King of the Universe” and that includes all the stars and quasars and black holes and all those other things out there.
If Jesus suddenly found Himself in a black hole, for instance, He would not be subject to it the way anyone or anything else would be. It wouldn’t effect Him at all. Death has no more power over Him, and neither does a black hole or the immense pressure of the water at the bottom of the ocean. All of which seems pretty silly, because, who would expect those things to?
The idea of a virgin birth, however, strikes some people as so implausible that the whole issue isn’t worth any consideration, although, if a God is to exist, why wouldn’t that God choose to do something like that? God has the radical freedom of the artist to do whatever He wants with His own material.
Can God create a rock so heavy even He couldn’t lift it? No. He couldn’t.
God holds a press conference.
“Can You,” asks a reporter, “make a rock so heavy even You couldn’t lift it?” Excitedly, George W. Bush whispers into God’s Ear. “I’m not going to play ‘Gotcha!'” God says. In the stunned silence, God sneaks a puzzled sideways glance over at George W. who is grinning triumphantly at the reporters.
I guess we’ll never know. But my guess is “No.”
The “Jesus” book by Schillebeeckx thoroughly discusses the concept of “Messiah.” For Christians, in hindsight, it can seem self-explanatory that the Messiah is the Son Of God, and He rose from the dead, and faith in Him is the key to eternal life in Heaven, but before Christ came, and still today, of course, what people mean by “Messiah” (i.e., “Savior”) is extremely flexible.
The Jews thought of the Messiah in several ways: as a warrior, as a priest, as a king. Exactly how the Messiah would exert His authority wasn’t entirely certain.
We still live with the prophecy that Jesus will return and inaugurate His kingdom on Earth, but how exactly that is going to happen isn’t known. Jesus said, when He returns, people will go on with their daily lives, the way they did as Moses built the ark, the way they did in Jesus’ presence then. But He also said that His coming will be made known as clearly as lightning illumines the sky.
How will we know it’s really Him? What will He do to prove Himself? Valid questions. Burning questions.
As this segment of Ordinary Time ends with Advent arriving in a week, we are left with this feast of Christ The King.
Ezekiel and Psalm 23 present God and the Lord as shepherds in care of the flock. We fancy ourselves as powerful beings in the world, as we are, but our power is severely circumscribed. Faced with either the abyss or the guidance of an all-powerful shepherd, we are fortunate to have these shepherds, Who understand our limitations, and despise us not on account of our mortal, human foolishness.
We also have the image of Christ as King, the King Who will render final judgment upon our souls.
Do we want a King? Maybe not, at least not in terms of the vain kings of Earth and history, but we have a King. Not that He was made a King, not because He aspires to kingliness, not because He has competitors, but we have a King in the sense that we have an almighty Power above us and over us, Who has that power, and exercises that power, because love and justice are at work in these spiritual dimensions, and as things are a certain way, there is a certain way that things will eventually be, because they should be that way.
And how does the King refer to us– all of us, especially the lowliest among us? As His brothers.
Being human must have made a profound and lasting impression on Jesus. As our advocate with the Father, He remembers that experience, and identifies with us.
If we find it impossible to identify with our brothers and sisters in this life, we will not be able to identify ourselves with Jesus.
May the Holy Spirit open our eyes to the presence of the divine in all of us, lest we find ourselves without a shepherd when we need one most!

Decades ago, riding a bus across the floating bridge to work in Bellevue one rainy Sunday morning, I saw a lot of people running across the bridge. The bus driver told me that was the Seattle Marathon. We laughed over why a marathon would be held in Seattle in November, because November is a cold, rainy month.
It’s only become a colder, rainier month since, yet the Seattle Marathon is still held the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and that’s a big reason why the Seattle Marathon is harder than the Vancouver B.C marathon, in May, or the Portland, Oregon marathon or the Victoria B.C. marathon (both in October).
“How long is the marathon?” is the most common question I’ve gotten about them. Marathons are always 26.2 miles. Organizers and participants are exacting about that, so there’s a common standard for all the statistics.
Every marathon I’ve run has been outdoors, as well, and outdoors is where I’ve gone to train for marathons. There are hills out there, and weather, and one has to be ready for those factors in a marathon.
In Seattle, that means training outdoors in November. If you train before or after a day job, that means running in the darkness, sometimes without being able to see well at all. That means running through puddles of uncertain depth, puddles that could have sticks and rocks in them, puddles that will soak your shoes and weigh down your feet for the remainder of the run and keep the shoes wet all day and night so they’ll still be cold and wet when you put them on the next day for the next training run.
Running in November means the possibility of running in sub-freezing temperatures, needing to have some type of long pants to keep the legs warm, long-sleeved shirts and, for most, some type of jacket, and some type of hat. For the runner accustomed to short pants and a short-sleeve shirt, that’s an awful lot of clothing.
A few years ago, my last 28-mile training run took place in snowfall– eight laps around the outer path at Green Lake as the snow added up to a few inches and kids sledded down the little hills.
Up at 4 am, out the door by 4:30, two laps around Green Lake in a cold, windy rain, 15 minutes at home to shower and dress before the 15-minute walk to the bus stop to get downtown to start work at 7:30, in bed at 9 to try for seven hours of sleep before the next morning’s two laps in more wind, rain, and cold.
Then the last training run on Thanksgiving, with the day off from work, and the marathon on the first Sunday of Advent, remembering those hard training runs, with no training at all in December except for fun– that’s the Seattle Marathon!