The new day

The Rev Ruth Halley offers a reflection on her morning run.

IT is early in the morning. Gradually, you surface from a night’s sleep. Disjointed disquiets, and dreamlike fancies, float just out of reach of recall. Deep down inside you the gut memory of unnamed emotion lingers. Did you sleep well? Maybe.

With one deep breath, and a yawn that opens your ears, you rise from the bed and, unbidden by you, in a gentle gift which you do not yet understand, your soul gives thanks to God for the new day and the promise of a sunrise run.

Habit prompts you to dress yourself drowsily. Feel the warmth of the thick gym socks in your trainers, the tight running trousers on your legs, the soft fleece zipped up to the neck to keep out the cold. Instinctively, you push earbuds into your ears and fill the bag tied around your waist with the essentials – keys, tissues and phone with music. What will you listen to this morning? You choose the playlist that you have been compiling for months now, an eclectic mix of classical and popular. Music for running to – yes – but also evoking familiar and comforting memories of the past and hopes for the future and lifting your spirit.

The most cherished melody begins. Its sweet, birthing waters flow overyour head, drenching you, and then in a momentary stillness, like a sacramental mystery, you are plunged into a healing immersion which saturates through even to your dry bones and you say to yourself, ‘ah yes, I remember this’. The front door bangs behind you, the permission of a starter’s pistol. You lift your face to the morning light and the race of life set before you. Left and right, left and right, your body begins. Your feet responding to nature’s drum beat of the very earth beneath you and your heart within.

Left and right, left and right, and in the healing rhythm you sense an echo of the Father’s feet running to greet a prodigal. Receiving the longed for embrace of outstretched arms you give yourself willingly to the kiss of the tender breeze. Left and right, left and right your journey goes on beating out a prayerful path of contemplation. Where will it lead you today, you wonder?

Down to the end of the quiet street and across the car-less road you head out of town on the pavement you know so well. On the horizon ahead a burning gold crucible of God’s good creation spills over, thankful birds wing gracefully in praise and in the fragrant bushes beside the path two goldfinches frolic – a sure sign that spring has arrived.

Meanwhile, on the brutal tarmac of the indifferent road a solitary and crushed frog lies leathery and shrivelled, splayed like Saint Andrew on his cross. Wistful wonderings arrive with you. A darkly shadow of the brokenness of this world with its destructions, oppressions and cold injustices. The losses and traumas of your own life, the grief and sadnesses, painful hurts and emptiness. Things said and unsaid, regrets and ‘what ifs’. You let these come, and you let them go, rising with the birds into the skies like a prayer for forgiveness for which there are no words. And in the granting of pardon – the insistent affirmation and love which will not let you go, the holy wind – the ruach – catches your legs and spurs them on to pick up the pace, urging and empowering you to choose life in all its fullness.

Left and right, left and right you journey on into the morning and as you turn at the junction your eyes are dazzled for a moment by the glorious sea waiting patiently for you, rainbow streaked and wild. It just being there is a blessing beyond what you can bear. You ponder the unimaginable, formless void of the Beginning and the Word of God speaking all things into being. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ (John 1.1)

Left and right, left and right, your whole body expands as your lungs savour the sea air – breathing into you new life and hope. A wild deer has come to drink from the reservoir in the old quarry. Seemingly fearless, it watches as you approach closer and closer. Its body still with only its ears twitching. Meeting its steady gaze with your own you offer it a greeting. “Good morning beautiful one”, you say and it bounds elegantly off with a flash of its white rump. The blessing of its companionship is not lost on you and you run on with gratitude. Comforted and emboldened you ask, ‘What does it mean O God?’ What does it mean when the deer comes to greet me and gazes into my eyes? Why do I sing within me, and shout – sometimes howl – to the wind? Why does the poor frog lie splayed on the road, the latest victim? What does it mean when the birds sing and the wind blows?

“ With one deep breath, and a yawn that opens your ears, you rise from the bed and, unbidden by you, in a gentle gift which you do not yet understand, your soul gives thanks to God for the new day and the promise of a sunrise run."

And then you reach that midway point, and turning head back home, surprised as ever by all you experience on the way. How can the path be so different when run in this direction? Just as heartbreakingly beautiful though – the vibrant greenery of the hills ahead and the majesty of cotton-clad skies above with their latent stars waiting to be revealed. The teeming fields patinated by light and shade; the forest trees lit from below by the rising sun; the geese resting on the ground. You look forward to seeing them fly in formation as the seasons turn but for now, one solitary goose flies laboriously over your head and you find yourself looking up to say to it, ‘farewell’.

Left and right, left and right the housing comes into view and you know you are on the home straight. You ask yourself where God has been in your run this morning and the answer comes – that the Creator is all around you and the Sustainer deep within – that Christ the redeemer goes ahead of you showing the way – always with you – never leaving you – in the suffering with you, and in the goodness, the truth and the beauty. Glimpsing home ahead a last burst of energy lengthens your stride. Left and right, left and right, your body burns with fire and dances to the music of the cosmos. And your soul gives thanks to God for the new day.