Hurdles

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up
his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles,
but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.
Theodore Roosevelt

(St Kevin’s Tower / St Kevin’s Monastery, Gleandalough, Co Wicklow, Ireland/ Julie Cook / 2015)

****(I’m off to fetch the Mayor and Sheriff for the weekend…
and thus any posting will be few and far between–
but I wanted to offer something I found while digging in past posts.
It is a timely post for my current race in this thing we call life—-
so here is a look back to 2016—through the lens of Ireland and track)

At some point or other during the course of living,
difficulties and trying times will engulf each one of us.

No one is exempt from the various hurdles Life places in our paths.
We will be faced with two options…

Either we just keep running and jumping or
we stop.

We can stop before each hurdle,
pondering the height and possibility of clearing each safely,
opting to drop out of the race all together…or
we can decide to simply keep going.

Some days the prospect of continuing the race,
with all of the hurdles needing to be cleared, seems more than we can bear.
We may actually even trip over the hurdles, temporally losing our balance…
stumbling wildly while trying to recover…Or
We may actually fall, crashing down onto the track scraping up knees,
elbows and even damaging muscles and bones.

Then the choice will be…

Do we just lay there bleeding while grimacing in pain,
bemoaning that the hurdles are simply too high and have just beaten us…or
do we pick ourselves up, bruised and bleeding,
and continue on with the race?

As I ccurretnly find myself laying on the track grimacing in the pain and bleeding,
having stumbled over Life’s most recent hurdle…
I received some very wise counsel…

“God always hears [sees] you.
You are just seeing things from the perspective of this moment,
while He is looking from the perspective of resolution of all these issues.
He is busy getting you to that point, too.”

So as my perspective, while having tripped over life’s latest hurdle
with me now being down for the count on a track that has just torn me to pieces,
is limited.
I’m holding onto bruised, bleeding and broken limbs while staring upward at
something that seems nearly impossible to clear…
through clenched teeth I pray…albeit it frustratingly.

Yet what I can’t see from my perspective on the ground,
is that God is already seeing the finish line…
He knows the outcome…
I just need to get back up to finish the race….

With your help I can advance against a troop;
with my God I can scale a wall.
Psalm 18:29

Winners and losers

Winners embrace hard work.
They love the discipline of it, the trade-off they’re making to win.
Losers, on the other hand, see it as punishment.
And that’s the difference.
Lou Holtz

(Hammer throw: DeAnna Price (263-6), Brooke Andersen (255-0),
Gwendolyn Berry (241-2) )

Quick…
Who won the gold medal in this week’s US Track and Field trials
for the women’s hammer throw???

Yeah…
I thought so…you didn’t know.
And I confess, I didn’t either.

But chances are both you and I knew who came in 3rd.

And that is the real shame here.

We knew who came in 3rd because she created a stink.
A national televised stink.
All because she had to put her rear on her shoulder when hearing the
National Anthem being played.

Why is that you ask?
Well, it seems she’s an ‘activist athlete.’

Yeah, I didn’t know it was a thing either.

She’s not a fan of our patriotism.
She’s not a fan of our flag nor of our Nation’s anthem nor of our
Nation in general.

And yet she wants to represent said Nation…
the same Nation she’s not so much a fan
of in the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo.
Go figure.

Once upon a time I ran high school track, I was a captain of our team
and later, once I was teaching, I was a high school girl’s track coach.

I understand sports and I understand training and I understand
being on and being part of a team.

Team is bigger than self.
What one represents is greater than self and sometimes,
it’s even greater than team.

Self is all about just that, self.
It’s a ‘look at me’ mentality.
It’s a ‘I’m going to use this platform to express my personal agenda.”
Personal agendas on a team tend to make things really crowded.

But you know what…folks don’t care so much about an athlete’s personal agenda
as much as they care about that athlete’s individual ability and skills.

Recently, I was watching a show about college sports.

A sportscaster was waxing poetic over the allure that college sports
seems to hold over those who follow it.
That of both students and fans.

The sportscaster was focusing on college football since that was what
the program was about, college football.

He spoke in terms of a religious sort of draw that college sports holds
over folks.

Be that good or bad, I got it.
I understood what he was talking about.

He explained that we all need and want something greater than ourselves
in order to bring us together…we yearn for something to unify us.
That’s an underlying human desire.

In an increasingly secular society, this sportscaster noted that
college sports often fills that bill.

As society moves further away from its religious roots, it seeks
something else to fill that void…something tangible to cling to.

And so again, for good or bad, our sport teams draw us in.

They unite us in ways that other things can’t.
We find ourselves having a common focus with a common goal.

It matters not our color, gender or creed, nor of our bank account
degree, GPA or political affiliation…
our team is our unifying focus.

We get behind said team in solidarity as we cheer it on.
We pine when it loses and we may even cuss it, but when it wins,
we win.

We don our school colors, we carry our flags, we sing our school’s song.
We lock arms with complete strangers as we chant our team to victory.
And we cry upon one another’s shoulders when we lose.

We feel the same way about our Olympians.
They are the best of our best.
They are the pride of our Nation
And in turn they unify our Nation.
They help us to forget the bad in the country and in the world.
They give us all something greater than our worries and misery
they give us a new focus and something we can cheer for.

It’s as if we can forget the reality around us for two weeks every four years.
(two years if when we count both Summer and Winter Olympics)
We band together while we huddle around a television at home, school, at work,
or in a bar.

It is that famous thrill of victory and that painful agony of defeat
all of which we viscerally and collectively feel…together.

So when an athlete opts to veer away from the focus of the game,
we have a hard time getting on board.
Our focus is of the timing, the height, the length, the speed, the execution,
the millisecond of time that separates gold from silver, or bronze from
loss.

We try desperately to will our athletes on to victory.
In part because they represent each one of us.
Theirs are our own vicarious goals and hopes.

So I have very little patience with an athlete who opts to use an athletic
platform as a political platform—in the the most recent case, it
was a literal matter of a podium.

There is a time and a place.
Standing on a podium is not the place for one’s personal agenda..
it is not the time for a raised fist or a turned back.

It is a time of respect.
Respect for something much greater than self.

It is a time for a nation to celebrate and not a time for one to snub
that very nation nor the very people who have cheered said athlete on to
that platform.

Winners or losers—I suppose we all choose.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.
And this is the victory that has overcome the world—-our faith.
Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that
Jesus is the Son of God?
1 John 5:4-5

Herschel for President!!!

“Not to question you, Mark, but do you know what the organization stands for?
Besides saying, Black Lives Matter.
Because I say one of the things that we have to address is Americans’ lives matter.”
Herschel Walker

(Herschel Walker circa 1981/82 / UGA / Julie (Nichols) Cook)

HERSCHEL WALKER FOR PRESIDENT!!!
It was a chant often heard ringing throughout Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia on any
given fall Saturday during the early 1980s.
It was a time when both football and Herschel were each king in my small world.

I actually took that rather grainy little picture of Herschel…
it was either the spring of 1981 or 1982, I can’t exactly remember.

My sorority was hosting a 24-hour rock-a-thon in order to raise money for
the international medical organization Project Hope.
We were rocking all night, having raised various pledges for our time and effort spent rocking.
Campus celebrity Herschel Walker came by to sit and rock awhile in hopes of boosting our pledges.
Hence the picture.

If you’re any sort of college football fan, then you know the name
Herschel Walker.

His time playing football for the University of Georgia is the stuff
of legends.
He won the Heisman Trophy his junior year and he helped the college
win a National Championship in 1980.

Athletically, Herschel was a track star, a football player, an NFL player,
a United States Football league player, an Olympic bobsledder as well as a boxer…
and it should be known, he’s still not finished.

So I won’t go into his lengthy and legendary biography here, but just know that
I have the utmost respect for Herschel.

And I have that respect not because he’s from my home state.
Nor because we went to college together.
Nor because he was and is an incredible athlete.
But because Herschel, like many of us, had demons.
Herschel fought those demons through his faith in Jesus Christ–
he has been very public about his battle and his victory through Christ.

I caught a news story yesterday that Herschel and Mark Cuban had got into a bit
of a tit for tat the other evening during a FOX news special hosted by Harris Faulkner.

Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and has been very
vocal in that he will paint Black Lives Matters on his basketball court
and will allow and support his players in expressing themselves however they may
so choose during the coming season.

Herschel, however, questions the logic behind such as he wonders if Cuban,
as well as many others, truly understand what Black Lives Matters actually represents.

Herschel noted that “One of the problems I think that we have
is a lot of these sensitive topics we don’t want to address,
you know, we don’t want to address these sensitive topics
so what we try to do is water them down and try to shout people down,”
Walker told host Harris Faulkner on the special
“The Fight for America” on Sunday night.

“To say that you’re going to put BLM [Black Lives Matter] on the field or on a jersey,
well some people may not believe in BLM,” the Heisman Trophy winner continued.

“For myself … there’s no doubt BLM is important,
but American lives are important. …
The organization of BLM, I’m not sure what they stand for.
And so how could an NFL say we want to support BLM or we’re going to do this here
without having the players to say what they want?
Because you cannot put that on a player who may disagree with it.”

Cuban disagreed with Walker but I for one agree with Herschel.
Do those such a Cuban, who are jumping on the bandwagon, truly know and
understand what BLM means or what it stands for?
Do they realize it is a violent organization rooted in Marxism?
Or do they really care?
Is placating the mob more important than exercising real knowledge?

I for one do not want sports to be so politized.
The National anthem and flag brouhaha was just the starting point…
now we have more anthem issues with the addition of a “black” anthem
and we have teams, players and owners who want to politize their
sport…

Sports in the US has always been a unifier and not a
divisive tool.
So now we might as well just say so much for simply loving the game
for the mere sake of the game.

The notion of games, fun, hard work, competition, bragging rights, etc have
been traded in for something much more sinister.

I’m just glad that we still have a few steadfast voices such as those of
Herschel, along with those other voices of average men and women,
each who question the bandwagons and the pushing of agendas down the throats
of both players and fans despite the fact that not all stand in agreement
with the current direction, we seem to be headed.

So yeah, thought-filled and thoughtful rather than angry, emotional, and reactionary.

Yep, Herschel for President…

https://www.foxnews.com/media/herschel-walker-mark-cuban-black-lives-matter-nfl-nba

The sting of Spring

“A work of arte; and yet no arte of man,
Can worke, this worke, these little creatures can”
– Geffrey Whitney, 1586

(a Carpenter bee who has seen better days / Julie Cook / 2014)

(a pen and pencil drawing of a Xylocopa Virginica (carpenter bee) / Julie Cook / 2000)

When I was in high school, many many years ago, I ran track both my 9th and 10th grade years. I was never really fast nor very good but there was just something about it that held me in place for those two pivotal teenage years. Maybe it was my glue during the turbulent life of adolescents. Maybe it was a good outlet for the often troublesome ooze of a teenage girl. A mishmash of emotions, hormones and a fertile battle ground of little girl, tomboy and young lady all colliding as one. In other words, a delightful distraction and master consumer of energy and time.

If you’ve ever seen me in person you know that I am a relatively short individual. What was once 5’4.5″ is now sadly 5’3″–ode to age and osteopenia, couple that with a medium build. No svelte, long legged gazelle here, maybe more like a hearty soccer player. But one look would pretty much tell you that I was not built to be a track star let alone a long jump queen. Yet it was indeed the long jump which held my oh so keen interest.

My short little legs, with the thighs of which I so fondly refer to as God having given me tree trunks instead of thighs, were not exactly rockets which could or would propel one up and over the length of a sand pit.
I, however, was not to be deterred.

One day, before practice our coach, who happened the be the coach of the boy’s team, as I was a pre Title IX athlete–(most everything we did was with the boy’s team—from lifting weights—this sending my mother into orbit as this too was pre knowledge that it was perfectly fine for girls, feminine girls,to lift weights without turning them into a bulky testosterone filled muscle mass or some East Russian weight lifter (no offense to East Russian weight lifters) —On this particular afternoon our coach offered both teams a little motivational encouragement.

He told us the story of the bumblebee.

Supposedly it is aerodynamically improbable (he used the word impossible) for a bumblebee to fly. It seems that because of the size and weight of their bodies, along with the size, the shape and the number of beats per wing makes the concept of flight, for the lowly bumblebee, not very practical. Simply put, they are too fat, too round, too heavy along with too small of a wing, of which do not flap fast enough to lift them, keeping their rotund frame aloft–let alone fly.

But fly they do.

I took this concept to heart. I also decided that I would workout each day with the boys–the two senior boys who long jumped and triple jumped. If they jumped the boxes, I jumped the boxes. If they skipped around the track doing high leg lifts, I did the same goofy leg lifts. I’d stand at the end of the runway, having marked, counted and numbered my steps, sprinting forward, looking upward, praying my foot planted perfectly at the tip of the white jump off board and soar, hopefully, upward and outward.

Now I never broke any records or racked up a room full of trophies but I did beat out the svelte gazelle who was our girl’s team top long jumper. I did come in 2nd place at Region. And I felt as if I had accomplished something that I really never should have accomplished. . .as I was not, am not, built to soar or fly.

The lesson here is not whether it is scientifically feasible that bumblebees can or cannot fly. Nor is this the place to discuss the difference between bumblebees and their obnoxious cousins the carpenter bees— better known as the wood bee—as in eat any and all exposed wood be it a deck, rocking chair or house eve. . . digressing. . .
This is, more accurately, a lesson in believing in the improbable, the unlikely, the impossible.
This is a story about reaching beyond the expected, about never settling for the predicted, and for believing that there is always a way to do what you never thought you could do or were told you couldn’t do–despite of or in spite of any and all obstacles or limitations.

Yes, there will be have to be work. . .lots of sweat, painful effort, long tiring hours, sacrifice of self–but in the end. . . medals, trophies and records aside. . .it will be you and you alone who will know the sweet satisfaction of accomplishment—because you shouldn’t or couldn’t, but in the end, you did. . .

We all can soar.

(the carpenter bee who has seen better days trying to fly away, not very successful / Julie Cook / 2014)

(pen and pencil drawing Megabombus Pennsylvanicus (bumblebee) / Julie Cook / 2000)