My colleague Tom and I ran the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 18, 2005. This was his first time and my sixth. Tom's wife and kids also made the journey to Boston and they had a great time sightseeing.
Tom is, and always has been, an excellent and dedicated distance runner. He is also as old as me (45). Were it not for our friendly rivalry, I probably would have given up marathoning a long time ago. And had he not been there on Monday, I would not have done as well as I did.
We started the race side by side, way up front in the first corral amongst the world's elite marathon runners. That in and of itself is a huge accomplishment for people our age. Although our results differed by a mere 16 minutes, the accomplishment was the same. After the race, he sent me the following message. I think I owe him the graditude, not the other way around. Tom, thanks for the inspiration.
From: XXXXX, Tom
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 8:25 AM
To: Trost, Chris
Subject: RE: Boston Splits
Thanks Chris. We all had a blast. As humbling as the run was, it was great. You are my hero. I cannot see how you could maintain your pace the entire race. Very gutsy performance. Thanks for the magnet too.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Boston Over ...
The Boston Marathon is over. I managed a 2:53:50 time. It was hot. It's a cruel course. But all is fogotten today and I nurse the blisters and the minor aches. Now I can relax for a few days. Life is good.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
One day to go ....
Tomorrow at this time I will be running the Boston Marathon. Nerves are not too jittery. It's another beautiful day here. Looks like it will be a nice day tomorrow as well. A bunch of people from Milwaukee are at the same hotel I'm at. We were also on the same flight. I haven't hooked up with my colleague yet. Probably later today though. Marilyn from my Egypt trip (had dinner with her and husband Jim last night) are dropping off an underwater camera case that I will use on my dive of the Great Barrier Reef next week while in Australia. People are hovering to use Internet while the guy on the other terminal hogs it, so will sign off here.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
So here I am in Boston ...
It's a beautiful day. My flight arrived on time. I took a cab to my hotel instead of the subway. I was in a hurry to get to the Marathon Expo and my race number and just walk around town. This city rivals Milwaukee in terms of hard core drinkers. But Bostonians are much dumber. Add a little east coast arrogance and you have a really ugly scene. The Expo was a madhouse. I have never seen so many people. I saw a lot of people pushing stollers through the crowd. What gluttons for punishment. I bought my usual installment of PowerGel and a new running tank top. Also picked up one of the marathon posters, which has my name etched in it along with the other 20,000 runners. For dinner, I'm going to Legal Seafood over at Long Wharf with friends I met on my Egypt vacation back in November 2003 (they live in the burbs here). I'm not psyched up for the marathon yet. Maybe anther day to ruminate will do the trick. There are people waiting to use this free terminal at my hotel, so I will be courteous, unlike some people, and sign off here.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Boston Marathon Malais
Well, it's off to Boston tomorrow. My ankle still hurts even after a few days off. Hopefully a heavy coating of Ben-Gay and the usual competitive adrenalin rush will mask the dull ache. Otherwise I'll just put my head down and shuffle through the motions on Monday. The weather promises to be nice--not the 85 degrees we had last year. My colleague from Milwaukee is also running. He and I are about the same speed, so I'll have someone to run with in case I need some inspiration. I have to pick up my race number and meet friends for dinner on Saturday. Then there's Sunday to do with as I please, and the carb load dinner in the evening. Then the big race on Monday, starting at noon eastern time. I come home Monday night, followed by four chaotic days at work. Then I leave for three weeks of vacation (Australia, New Zealand and Fiji) from April 23-may 15. Can't wait for the marathon and work to be over so I can enjoy some needed R&R.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
John Paul the Great proved a study in contrasts and a man of contagious courage
KAROL Wojtyla's position as the world's leading statesman in the last quarter of the 20th century is unchallenged. He has been the leader of one billion Catholics and Christianity's best-known spokesman. His story is extraordinary, his gifts many and various. While he is above all a man of faith whose ambitions have been overwhelmingly religious, the political consequences of his leadership have been greater than those of any other religious leader since Mohammed.
His life has been a study in contrasts and the verdicts inside and outside the church on his achievements will continue to conflict.
Elected at age 58 in 1978, John Paul II was young by papal standards, energetic, virile, a striking figure who used his theatrical gifts to startling effect in his public appearances. Listening in Ballarat to the sermon at his inaugural Mass in St Peter's Square, I was so heartened, indeed thrilled, by his message and style that I turned off the radio and went to sleep. I needed to hear no more. We were in good hands. In Rome they sold more pictures of him in six months than they sold in the entire pontificate of Paul VI.
Later in his life the images were different. The rich baritone voice was replaced by an often unintelligible slur, the fine features by an expressionless, podgy mask of a face. He found it increasingly difficult to breathe; finally he could not walk, even if the hand tremors subsided. He dribbled. He has not been afraid to let the world see him suffering to exemplify the constant Christian teaching that all humans have an intrinsic dignity. But the love and devotion of young Catholics for this old, sick man has been greater in the past few months than in the days of his prime more than 20 years earlier.
Wojtyla was not born with any silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a soldier, his mother died when he was eight and his only brother when was 12. He was 19 when the Nazis invaded Poland, and was condemned to forced labour in a chemical factory and a quarry during the war years. He was knocked down by a German truck in 1944. Nazi tyranny was replaced by communist oppression. As Pope he was shot in 1981 and had an intestinal tumour removed in 1992. All of this before Parkinson's disease took hold.
Many would have been destroyed by such a set of misfortunes.
Because of the miracles of contemporary travel and communications, the Pope has been seen by more people than any other person in history. No pope has enjoyed such a mass following with many enthusiasts outside the Catholic flock. But he has had many critics within the church, too. Unlike the false prophets, he has not worked to universal acclaim.
He wrote of Christ as a sign of contradiction and on many occasions the pope has had to sail into the wind. He is hated by the hardline liberal secularists. Some of his critics claim that his pontificate has been a failure, at least in the Western world, because he hasn't been able to halt the decline of religious practice. They never add the fact that where his directions have been followed Catholic life has fared much better. Whenever militant liberalism took over the church, Catholic life was devastated, as in the Netherlands and Quebec. In Australian dioceses, where most clergy admire John Paul II, Catholic life is stronger. In fact, there are no militant liberals among young Australian Catholics.
For the Pope, the person of Christ has been central to his life and to his teaching. He has echoed Christ's call to repent and believe, called again and again for prayer and sacrifice. He might be a mystic. This primary interest in following Christ explains why he canonised 500 saints to emphasise the importance of holiness today among many local traditions. Saints do not belong only in ancient, distant cultures.
Yet this religious figure played a pivotal role in the collapse of European and Russian communism, an achievement recognised more by the communists than by many of their secular Western opponents. Leonid Brezhnev objected to General Wojciech Jaruzelski when the Polish government was issuing permits for new churches. The church was the enemy. "Sooner or later it would gag in our throats, it would suffocate us" he warned. He was right.
As a priest, bishop and Pope, John Paul II has lived his life unmarried and childless, following the example of Christ. He has also been the most effective spokesman in the world for the causes of life and love; certainly the most formidable opponent of the culture of death (a phrase he coined) exemplified by the collapse of the birthrate in the Western world below replacement levels, the pandemic of abortions and the push to legalise euthanasia.
He was right to continue mandatory celibacy for the clergy. It was the enforcement of celibacy of the parish clergy under a reinvigorated papacy, the Cluniac reform of the Benedictine monks and the new orders of Franciscans and Dominicans (all unmarried) that brought western Europe out of the Dark Ages. Just as it was the celibate priests, nuns and brothers who transformed civically and religiously the Irish-Australians during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
But no pope has written so eloquently in defence of marriage and the family, while his theology of the body, probably his most important theological contribution, has provided spiritual sustenance for tens of thousands of young Catholics struggling to follow Christian sexual ideals in an age that regards them as foolish and anachronistic.
The Second Vatican Council document on the church in the modern world urged Catholics to engage in a dialogue with the surrounding cultures. No bishop has been more assiduous on this score than this Pope. He has been in constant dialogue with modernity, even as he never compromised essential elements of faith and morals. He has continued to defend moral truths rather than a fashionable relativism, repeated that the ordination of women is impossible, insisted that sexual activity is legitimate only within the institution of heterosexual marriage. Both abortion and euthanasia have been constantly rejected. He has defended reason as well as faith.
While he is acknowledged as the champion of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in the Western culture wars, he has always expounded his case with courtesy and restraint, and refused the role of crusader-in-chief. Unlike some of his medieval predecessors, he has refused to call the West to arms against Islamic terrorists and extremists. He has opposed the use of force and refused to commend not only the second Iraq war but the first as well.
While dialogue between the Vatican and communist intellectuals continued until after the fall of the Berlin Wall (with the communists increasingly open about their disbelief in basic Marxism), the Pope consistently opposed communism in Europe and Asia, and in Latin America, where it had infiltrated the church as liberation theology.
As a central European, the Pope has been typically clear-headed about the beguiling charms of Western life. He dislikes our philistine materialism and individualism, as well as what he has called consumerism and pervasive sexual irresponsibility, which we Westerners tend to take as givens, unchangeables, even when regretted.
He has been outspoken for social justice, explicitly condemnatory of capitalist excess, but no previous pope so explicitly recognised the capacity of free markets to increase prosperity or praised democratic governments for their fostering of the good life. He has resisted enculturation, or accommodation with the prevailing secularism that would have eased the Catholic Church's disappearance into the liberal consensus. But he has been truly a great bridge builder (the literal meaning of pontifex maximus) to all Christian denominations and to the great non-Christian religious traditions. His work with the Jewish people was groundbreaking, while the lack of progress in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue and negotiations has been a sadness and disappointment. He has not been able to visit Russia or China.
John Paul II has brought courage to all those who are oppressed and compassion to those who are suffering. He has defended human rights. After the liberation, Czech president and poet Vaclav Havel welcomed him as a messenger of love "in a country devastated by the ideology of hatred".
He has been a genuine man of the spirit, a true priest. His example and teaching have encouraged orthodox Catholics everywhere to persevere. I personally can vouch for that. He has inspired thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, into the priesthood and religious life.
Even in the West he has steadied the ship. If many were still resolved to be irresolute, solid only for drift, there has been no doubt about where he is heading. He has never lacked courage and courage is contagious.
History will know him as John Paul the Great. He has earned that distinction.
His life has been a study in contrasts and the verdicts inside and outside the church on his achievements will continue to conflict.
Elected at age 58 in 1978, John Paul II was young by papal standards, energetic, virile, a striking figure who used his theatrical gifts to startling effect in his public appearances. Listening in Ballarat to the sermon at his inaugural Mass in St Peter's Square, I was so heartened, indeed thrilled, by his message and style that I turned off the radio and went to sleep. I needed to hear no more. We were in good hands. In Rome they sold more pictures of him in six months than they sold in the entire pontificate of Paul VI.
Later in his life the images were different. The rich baritone voice was replaced by an often unintelligible slur, the fine features by an expressionless, podgy mask of a face. He found it increasingly difficult to breathe; finally he could not walk, even if the hand tremors subsided. He dribbled. He has not been afraid to let the world see him suffering to exemplify the constant Christian teaching that all humans have an intrinsic dignity. But the love and devotion of young Catholics for this old, sick man has been greater in the past few months than in the days of his prime more than 20 years earlier.
Wojtyla was not born with any silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a soldier, his mother died when he was eight and his only brother when was 12. He was 19 when the Nazis invaded Poland, and was condemned to forced labour in a chemical factory and a quarry during the war years. He was knocked down by a German truck in 1944. Nazi tyranny was replaced by communist oppression. As Pope he was shot in 1981 and had an intestinal tumour removed in 1992. All of this before Parkinson's disease took hold.
Many would have been destroyed by such a set of misfortunes.
Because of the miracles of contemporary travel and communications, the Pope has been seen by more people than any other person in history. No pope has enjoyed such a mass following with many enthusiasts outside the Catholic flock. But he has had many critics within the church, too. Unlike the false prophets, he has not worked to universal acclaim.
He wrote of Christ as a sign of contradiction and on many occasions the pope has had to sail into the wind. He is hated by the hardline liberal secularists. Some of his critics claim that his pontificate has been a failure, at least in the Western world, because he hasn't been able to halt the decline of religious practice. They never add the fact that where his directions have been followed Catholic life has fared much better. Whenever militant liberalism took over the church, Catholic life was devastated, as in the Netherlands and Quebec. In Australian dioceses, where most clergy admire John Paul II, Catholic life is stronger. In fact, there are no militant liberals among young Australian Catholics.
For the Pope, the person of Christ has been central to his life and to his teaching. He has echoed Christ's call to repent and believe, called again and again for prayer and sacrifice. He might be a mystic. This primary interest in following Christ explains why he canonised 500 saints to emphasise the importance of holiness today among many local traditions. Saints do not belong only in ancient, distant cultures.
Yet this religious figure played a pivotal role in the collapse of European and Russian communism, an achievement recognised more by the communists than by many of their secular Western opponents. Leonid Brezhnev objected to General Wojciech Jaruzelski when the Polish government was issuing permits for new churches. The church was the enemy. "Sooner or later it would gag in our throats, it would suffocate us" he warned. He was right.
As a priest, bishop and Pope, John Paul II has lived his life unmarried and childless, following the example of Christ. He has also been the most effective spokesman in the world for the causes of life and love; certainly the most formidable opponent of the culture of death (a phrase he coined) exemplified by the collapse of the birthrate in the Western world below replacement levels, the pandemic of abortions and the push to legalise euthanasia.
He was right to continue mandatory celibacy for the clergy. It was the enforcement of celibacy of the parish clergy under a reinvigorated papacy, the Cluniac reform of the Benedictine monks and the new orders of Franciscans and Dominicans (all unmarried) that brought western Europe out of the Dark Ages. Just as it was the celibate priests, nuns and brothers who transformed civically and religiously the Irish-Australians during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
But no pope has written so eloquently in defence of marriage and the family, while his theology of the body, probably his most important theological contribution, has provided spiritual sustenance for tens of thousands of young Catholics struggling to follow Christian sexual ideals in an age that regards them as foolish and anachronistic.
The Second Vatican Council document on the church in the modern world urged Catholics to engage in a dialogue with the surrounding cultures. No bishop has been more assiduous on this score than this Pope. He has been in constant dialogue with modernity, even as he never compromised essential elements of faith and morals. He has continued to defend moral truths rather than a fashionable relativism, repeated that the ordination of women is impossible, insisted that sexual activity is legitimate only within the institution of heterosexual marriage. Both abortion and euthanasia have been constantly rejected. He has defended reason as well as faith.
While he is acknowledged as the champion of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in the Western culture wars, he has always expounded his case with courtesy and restraint, and refused the role of crusader-in-chief. Unlike some of his medieval predecessors, he has refused to call the West to arms against Islamic terrorists and extremists. He has opposed the use of force and refused to commend not only the second Iraq war but the first as well.
While dialogue between the Vatican and communist intellectuals continued until after the fall of the Berlin Wall (with the communists increasingly open about their disbelief in basic Marxism), the Pope consistently opposed communism in Europe and Asia, and in Latin America, where it had infiltrated the church as liberation theology.
As a central European, the Pope has been typically clear-headed about the beguiling charms of Western life. He dislikes our philistine materialism and individualism, as well as what he has called consumerism and pervasive sexual irresponsibility, which we Westerners tend to take as givens, unchangeables, even when regretted.
He has been outspoken for social justice, explicitly condemnatory of capitalist excess, but no previous pope so explicitly recognised the capacity of free markets to increase prosperity or praised democratic governments for their fostering of the good life. He has resisted enculturation, or accommodation with the prevailing secularism that would have eased the Catholic Church's disappearance into the liberal consensus. But he has been truly a great bridge builder (the literal meaning of pontifex maximus) to all Christian denominations and to the great non-Christian religious traditions. His work with the Jewish people was groundbreaking, while the lack of progress in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue and negotiations has been a sadness and disappointment. He has not been able to visit Russia or China.
John Paul II has brought courage to all those who are oppressed and compassion to those who are suffering. He has defended human rights. After the liberation, Czech president and poet Vaclav Havel welcomed him as a messenger of love "in a country devastated by the ideology of hatred".
He has been a genuine man of the spirit, a true priest. His example and teaching have encouraged orthodox Catholics everywhere to persevere. I personally can vouch for that. He has inspired thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, into the priesthood and religious life.
Even in the West he has steadied the ship. If many were still resolved to be irresolute, solid only for drift, there has been no doubt about where he is heading. He has never lacked courage and courage is contagious.
History will know him as John Paul the Great. He has earned that distinction.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
