12.2

I have 64 days to get ready to ride the Wild Goose Chase. This is a one-day all-women bike ride in and around Blackwater Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County, Maryland.


Getting ready to ride the Seagull Century in 2009.

I got the cycling bug last year, when my friend, Anna, invited me to train with her to ride in the Seagull Century. For those of you who don’t speak cycling-ese, a century is a 100-mile bike ride. Before you get too impressed, there is also something called the metric century, which is 100 kilometers or 64 miles. I am a metric century cyclist. Or at least I was once last October. This year, I am training for a repeat of that distance when I ride the Wild Goose Chase on October 17. [Check out this fundraiser for the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge at http://www.terrybicycles.com/tours.]

I don’t brag about my riding stats. Between the heat and travel and just plain procrastination, my weekday morning rides have been a toodle this summer, averaging 15-16 miles. On Saturday morning, I have been gradually building my endurance so that I can actually walk without too much groaning after a 30-mile ride.

If you are impressed by my commitment to distance, do not put me on a pedestal quite yet. Another aspect of cycling is speed. I am a slow and steady cyclist. No matter how hard I push myself, my average is a modest 12.2 miles per hour. I’m not breaking any records. But I am having fun and testing my commitment to something other than red wine and Ben and Jerry’s Dublin Mudslide.

I wrote this poem to make peace with my average riding speed and to remind myself that sometimes being good enough is good enough



12.2

No matter how fast I pedal
I average 12.2 miles per hour.

Even when I push myself
spinning the wheels to 14, 15, 16 mph,
by the end of the ride
the bike computer registers an average speed of 12.2.

When I pump like hell
down a sloping country road,
and the speedometer peaks at a respectable 19 mph,
I end the ride with a score of 12.2.

With the wind at my back, my average never waivers.
Even with a boost from drafting the tail of a pace line
I still clock a modest 12.2.

When I end my days
and St. Peter tallies my good deeds and gaffs,
I hope I get a seat with the other average riders,
the ones, like me, who tried like the devil to be the best,
and ended the ride only to find that all it took
to get from birth to death
was to be good enough.

Preparing for Iona

PHOTO: Iona buttercups looking east to Mull

One of the guides I turned to when I was preparing for my pilgrimage to Iona was John O'Donohue. One morning, I opened his book of poetry, Conamara Blues, and I found one of my favorites, "Inner Circle." In that poem, he refers to life as "a festival of vivid presence." I thought that this is a lovely way to describe the day to day journey of the body, the heart and the soul. He suggests that the heart holds the wisdom we tend to look for in God, scripture, even in time and the reward - and the consequences - of our doing-ness. Instead, the poet suggests that we lighten the burdens of mind and body by being still and listening. By practicing "vivid presence," we learn to hear what is true.

Here is John O'Donohue's "Inner Circle" followed by a poem I wrote that was inspired by his vision.

Inner Circle
John O’Donohue (from Conamara Blues)

Stranger sometimes than the yellow crochet (*)
Of glimpses that civilize the dark, or the
Shelter of voices who stall the dead
Silence that longs to return to stone,
Stranger is the heart, a different scripture,
Weighed down by thoughts of gods
Who will never emerge, to recommend
One way above another to anywhere,
Lest they distract from the festival
Of vivid presence, where journeys are not
Stretched over distance, and time
Is beyond the fatality of before and
After, and elsewhere and otherwise
Do not intrude on day or night.

*crochet: a small hook; an odd, whimsical or stubborn notion


Vivid Presence
Linda Mastro, March 4, 2010

There are no vendors
or carnival rides
at the festival of vivid presence.

In the hush of the cornfield,
flattened by amusements
come and gone,
another image shimmers
on the horizon.

Down the gravel lane
a man walks toward the
setting sun
unafraid of the red glow
at the end of the day.
He welcomes the solitude
and the graying darkness
on the shoulder of the quiet country road
where no traffic disturbs the stillness.

The man turns east and walks
to a new day.
One step then the next
marks the present.
The psalms of each heart beat
carry him home.

What to Remember When Waking

~ David Whyte (House of Belonging)

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

The Opening of Eyes

David Whyte


That day I saw beneath dark clouds
The passing light over the water
And I heard the voice of the world speak out
I knew then as I have before
Life is no passing memory of what has been
Nor the remaining pages of a great book
Waiting to be read

It is the opening of eyes long closed
It is the vision of far off things
Seen for the silence they hold
It is the heart after years of secret conversing
Speaking out loud in the clear air

It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees
Before the lit bush
It is the man throwing away his shoes
As if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished
Opened at last
Fallen in love
With Solid Ground

To wonder anew

Linda Mastro

To wake each day as if reborn
To sleep each night as if life is over
Then everything in between sleeping and waking
is a grateful gift, to be cherished
for its unexpected ordinariness
and praised for its sublime surprise.

No molecule is a mistake.
The simplest gesture changes the world.
- Give that smile freely
- Accept the hug generously
In the giving and in the taking
wonder anew, each, time,
at the grace bestowed in
the waking and the sleeping and the waking again.