The Race That Must Be Run...

When Job queried God about the many troubles that had come to rest upon his life, knitting his brow and dulling his heart…God spoke thus…

Do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?

Do you make him leap like a locust, striking terror with his proud snorting?

He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength, and charges into the fray.

He laughs at fear… afraid of nothing.

He does not shy away from the sword, the quiver rattles against his side along with the flashing spear and lance.

In frenzied excitement he eats up the ground, he cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.

“Do you give the horse his strength, or clothe him”? God is asking Job about his hubris, about his love of control and his illusory belief that he is the captain of his destiny and that his hand should, or even could, be upon the tiller.

The horses proud snorting, his fierce pawing, and the joy he takes in his strength these too are made by God, gifted by God, allowed by God…

Given this divine inheritance the mighty horse fears nothing, does not shy away from the sword, eats up the ground and cannot stand still when the trumpet is sounding.

Here in this ageless metaphor we find our right relationship with the Divine in us, with the Beingness that animates our limbs and restores our breath.

We have not made our life possible, nor our birth, and despite our believing so, not our daily lives either. Our every moment is a gift from the mysterious and the Divine. It is our role to rejoice in the strength that is ours to meet our life with, to become fearless, to eat up the distance and collapse the space, between the conditioned mind and the open heart.

If we spend our days in outward pursuits, yearning for the false and the temporary, if we come to believe that we are worthy of having all of our desires, and desires yet unborn, to be provided us, if we grasp and cling, wish and hope…then we have squandered the great gifts that the Divine has so lavished upon us.

If we remove from the allegory the notion that God - (as the other) - was punishing Job by causing the losses that populated his life; the loss of his fortune, family, standing in the community, his home…then we can see more clearly that it was the divine in Job himself, that was testing him. Testing to see if he had the will, the strength, the constancy and the commitment to the stay the course, to teach himself fearlessness …to teach himself, that when the trumpet sounds… the race must be run.

The goal of your life and mine is not to discover our egoic passions, or to pursue outer rewards and accolades. Choices such as these add complexity to the human drama, but little or no depth. Changes of this sort are superficial at best, an author whose name I can no longer recall said, “We once killed each other with rocks and sticks, now we can kill millions with a touch of a button…no one could rightly claim that as substantive change.”

Real change, substantive change, is developing the will and courage to live life in the only place it really occurs… inside your own heart, mind, and perceptions. William Blake said, “We look through a glass darkly”, in his poetic and revelatory manner he was trying to turn our attention from the clouded view of the external, to the crystalline pure stream of inner attention.

In my early forties I began taking dressage lessons from an exemplary teacher, her capacity to understand the animals and to teach me that same understanding, was quite extraordinary.

We started with a tiny, (by horse standards), speckled gray mare. I could ride her with ease and comfort, and easily progressed in my skill level to cantering and even running. I developed quite effortlessly a “good seat”, which is to say I began to ride her with no space between my bottom and the saddle; matching my rhythms to hers we found union and cohesion.

But she was “barn sour” and each time I tried to put her in the cross latches to groom her, (a non-negotiable responsibility of every rider), she would rear and kick, snorting and pawing at the ground and soon my teacher no longer wanted to bear the burden of liability, for an animal who might well become dangerous.

So one day I appeared for my lesson to find myself with an introduction to a new horse…the largest I had every laid my eyes upon. She was supposed to have been a thoroughbred, but who is kidding whom here, she was a Goliath in a red horse suit.

Getting on her back and looking down to the ground was like standing on a three-story window ledge with nothing to hold onto. She wasn’t just tall… she was gargantuan, and then some. And she scared me into next Thursday…

I lost my “seat” entirely. Sitting on her back even at the walk, I bobbed up and down like a buoy in fast moving water, at the trot my teeth slapped and rattled together, and my knuckles turned white from grasping the pommel. With the, I now realized, Lilliputian grey mare…I had come so far that my hands were loose on the reins, my thighs relaxed against her breath, my seat “stuck” to her saddle…I didn’t know how good it had been, until Goliath’s wife came my way. (Even her owner was afraid of her height and would not even trot her.)

Soon the lessons that had become the bright spot of my week, became so foreboding that only my having given my word that I would show up, got me in my car each week.

On the long drive into the countryside, past the golden and waving grass, with the bright blue California sky above me and the old and weathered railing to keep me company running along side, I spent my drive not in harmony with my surroundings, marveling at the beauty that was mine to drink freely from…no, I spent my time imaging the many ways in which my Goliath in a red thoroughbred suit could kill me.

I have an unusually strong and visually capable imagination and I could literally see my broken and bleeding body, lying in the dusty and yeasty smelling ground, of the riding arena. Maimed and broken beyond repair…

So after about four of these nail biting and gut wrenching rides to the stable, my teacher welcomed me on this one particular day, with a somewhat uncharacteristic query about what I wanted to practice that day. Like most good teachers she was used to holding the reins, and it was rare indeed, for her to solicit my opinion.

And without so much as a moment worth of forethought I said, “Quitting would be my first choice.” She looked up at me with mild surprise on her face, and her sudden teeth clench made her jaw muscle protrude as she said with clear assertion…”Well, that’s not going to happen, and why would you even entertain the idea?” And so I made my small confession…

I told her of my colorful and imaginative scenes of death and dismemberment, of broken backs and collapsed skulls, of limbs askew and chests caved in, and I told her I didn’t think I could continue riding the three story building that was pretending to be a horse.

“Oh”…she said…”is that all that’s wrong”? All, I thought…isn’t that enough? Good grief, I can barely breathe when I am astride Miss-So- Large-I-Could-Squash-A-V-Dub-By-Just-Sitting-On-It, (in truth this horse could take on a Dodge Ram Fifty with ease).

“Ok, we are going to trot next” my teacher said, “give me the reins, try to relax your thighs so you can stick the seat, slow your breathing…and close your eyes.” You-have-got-to-be-kidding-right?

“I cannot, no, I will not do that”, was my only response. I didn’t so much mind giving over the reins, although that would not have been my first choice, but give over the control stick and close my eyes as well…not a snowball’s chance in hell, as they say.

But my teacher was steadfast in her resolve, you can, you will, and this is non-negotiable.

My teacher holding tight to the reins and her resolve, described how she was going to run along side us while we trotted forward, with my eyes closed and my immanent death at hand, or so I presumed. Thankfully it didn’t take but a few seconds of feeling the horses movement, so entirely like my little gray mare’s - smoother even than hers because of the longer gate and the better footfall - before I understood in my depths, that my eyes and visual perception had been lying to me, that I was as safe on my three story building as I had been on my horse the size of a large St. Bernard dog.

You see, it is never what you believe…ever. It is what you are willing to trust that counts.

This horse became a beloved friend, as time went by I would often rest my forehead in the curve of her flank and tell her my, (at the time), many woes. She would listen with patience and kindness, and sometimes look back at me with deep and mysterious tenderness in her eyes, while munching on the hay I always provided when it was time to curry her and care for her hooves.

Twice more, before we parted, she taught me deep trust and willingness. One winter’s night separated from my teacher by the entire length of the arena, the storm that was still passing over head caused a lightening strike somewhere between us and the electricity generators, and plunged the arena into the pitch blackness that you can only experience in the deep countryside and with a roof overhead, to shut out the moon light.

Suddenly blind and deeply afraid, I did not know what to do. It was not possible for me to dismount my building-cum-horse without mounting steps and I would not have been capable of finding them in the deep blackness.

Just then, from so far away it sounded disembodied, came the voice of my teacher…”do not worry, she can see, even if you cannot”…

And sure enough my large friend carried me right to the arena exit with her tail swishing lazily in the background, glad that the lesson was over and she could look forward to brushing and oats.

The last time this large animal taught and informed my soul, was the only time I ever saw fear or concern on my teacher’s face. She, my teacher, had been pestering me to get a pair of boots for a very long time but I preferred to wear tennis shoes, for the comfort and ease they provided. My teacher never really explained the reasoning behind boots as necessary footgear, she would just cluck and complain every time I showed up in a pair of tennis shoes. But one fine day, I came to understand that boots were not a fashion accessory, but a potentially life saving tool.

I was climbing the mounting block, the only possible way to get astride my giantess and with my foot in the stirrup and preparing to swing my other leg up and over…my foot, sans the necessary heel of a boot, slipped straight through the stirrup hole and slid under my horse’s belly, tossing me over backwards onto the stairs with a decided thump. Almost any horse, no matter how tame, careful, or kind they might be, would have bolted from the spot taking me, and my now very vulnerable head, for a badly bumpy and very possibly deadly ride. My teacher knowing that horses can sense your fear when it is so small even you do not know it is there, began moving toward me as slowly as she could endure it with her face mottled with concern.

And the horse…

Well she merely turned her giant of a red head, and looked down at me with my foot pressed against her soft and exposed belly, as though to say…you look quite ridiculous like that you know, do get up now if you can…

I loved that animal.

And so much more importantly, I am grateful to her…for helping to continue teaching me to trust in the process of my life, and more, to know that trust is a non-negotiable lesson.

You and I do not get to decide if we are willing to trust life or not.

We do not get to test the water with our toes, determining whether or not it is safe to jump. One fine day, your badly dressed foot just slips through the hole and could cause your horse to believe you are a snake, or your cancer comes back, or your company closes it’s doors in the middle of an economic meltdown, or your sister begins to see you as a life raft, rather than a financially struggling survivor…and you must trust or sink.

In hardier days when life was a near constant struggle, the wisest among us knew that we must forge ahead, must trust and move, must accept and open…

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all have confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained”. - Marie Curie

So that finally, and with open awareness and a glad heart, we can come to the sure and certain knowledge that…”Self trust is the essence of heroism”. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am moved and inspired by the heroic among us that exercise their courage in the external, for all to see and take part in…but it is the singular soul, that sets out upon the “path less traveled”, to which I bow my head in wonder, reverence, and respect. The adventurer who becomes the hero of his own internal landscape, where no one sees but himself, where no one applauds but himself, and no rewards save the invisible ones are attained.

May you find in yourself the hero, who in complete trust, lays down his external weapons and takes up the race that must be run.

Adayre R. Miller

1/31/11

photo courtesy of h.ludens and flickr photo sharing to view additional images please follow this linkwww.flickr.com/photos/40157801@N02/3722555856/in/photostream/