Meditation and a Seven-Minute Mile

When I re-enlisted in the Army a dozen years ago, I had a goal of scoring 300, the maximum score, on the Army fitness test.  The test consists of pushups, situps and a two-mile run.  To score the maximum at 55 years old I needed to run two consecutive seven-minute miles.  I could run 7:30 but I wanted to run seven flat or even in the high sixes. 

I was a bicyclist and had not run for years, so I had lots of problems with my form.  The way I fixed my form, as well as I could, and got to my target speed was by running on a treadmill facing a full-length mirror. 

Unlike spot correction by a coach, watching my arms, legs, shoulders and torso for most of the run showed me deficiencies and allowed me to practice running as I should. 

Three years ago after I left the Army I started meditating. I am not sure what silly objections I had to meditating for the first six decades of my life, but now it is a daily habit. When I meditate, I am very aware there is no moment but now. Whatever my plans or memories, the only moment I can live in is this one.  This very moment. 

During meditation, when I leave this moment in my mind, my breath brings me back. And I am in the present, alive to now.  Meditation, in that way, is like that running mirror for my spiritual life.  I start running and see my torso tilt to the left or my right knee moving laterally or my elbows swinging out. 

As I run, I straighten my back, I pull in the stray elbow, I focus on making my stride straight as my speed increases. 

And I breath.

Meditation pulls my mind into alignment with my spirit. The animal/spirit amphibian that is my daily reality comes closest to unity when I focus on my breath and am aware that there is no other moment than this one. 

The mirror for running and meditation as a mirror for my spirit came late in my life, but not too late.

The Difference of a Decade: Soldier in Iraq to Street Protester

At the beginning of 2010 I was a soldier on active duty with the United States Army deployed to Iraq.  As this decade ends I am a Democratic activist who has participated in more than 100 protests since November of 2016. 

In 2010, I was a member of a Church. In 2018, after Jews were massacred in a Pittsburgh, I joined a synagogue.

In 2010 I was 56 years old—old enough to cause problems with an adoption that ultimately did not work out. But we did adopt two more kids in the years after I returned from Iraq. 

At the beginning of 2010, I had traveled to almost 30 countries on five continents, but had never traveled outside America unless on business or Army deployment. In 2011, we went to Haiti to meet a boy we hoped to adopt. It did not work out but we are still supporting him in Haiti.  After that trip to Haiti, I traveled to more than 30 countries just to travel, not on business, civilian or military.

At the beginning of the decade I could read French and Ancient Greek and knew a few phrases in German.  In 2015, I started learning Russian. I took four semesters and reached my limit of fluency--I forget the vocabulary very quickly, but I remember the grammar.  Then in 2017, I started learning Hebrew. That was even more difficult. Adding two alphabets is a big change. 

In June 2015 I retired at age 62. I had worked weekends and summers since I was 12 and had not taken more than two weeks off since 1965 and ever since I had a laptop and a cell phone, often worked during my vacations. Since retiring I have not worked at all. 

The year after I retired in November 2016, I made the abrupt transition from former soldier to political activist.  I had never protested in my life. I enlisted during the Vietnam War and re-enlisted during the Iraq War.  But the I could see the end of democracy in the failed casino owner in the White House. I have been in the street protesting most weeks since 2016, more than 150 times.

At the beginning of this decade, I had never swam the length of a pool. In 2013, I started learning to swim. In 2014 I swam 2.4 miles in the Ohio River at the beginning of an Ironman Triathlon I finished in 17 hours and 36 minutes.

After I retired, I tried meditation and yoga. I now do yoga weekly and meditate daily. 

In 2010 I had never been to Israel or a Holocaust site. My third trip to Israel will be in the February of next year. I have visited Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buchenwald and many Holocaust museums and memorials in Israel and across Europe. 

Life remains a crazy adventure. 

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Fifty Books for 2019: 50/50 Learning and Entertainment

The first of 20 books in the Master and Commander series

Every year begins with a list of books and a stack of books I want to read and every year ends carrying much of that list and stack into next year, because I discovered something new and delightful and went off in another direction.  The last book in this list predicts I would do that.

The best example of seeing something new and changing my reading happened this year with the "Master and Commander" series by Patrick O'Brien. I watched the movie based on the books more than a decade ago. I liked the movie. This year I watched the movie again, mentioned it to a friend who said he really liked the books. So I bought Book 1 in June.

Russell Crowe stars as Captain Jack Aubrey in the movie

Master and Commander

A few days ago, I finished book 12 in the series and will keep reading about the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Steven Mathurin next year. There are 20 books in the series, so I have lots more sailing ahead. I have learned so much about sailing ships during the Napoleonic Wars and about the British Navy.  The books are not only letter perfect about the details of sailing, but show how friendship develops between men and how that friendship grows over time. The movie couldn't possibly do more than give the sense of the books, but it is a very good movie and very true to the characters of Aubrey and Mathurin.

Jewish American Novels
The next group of books is part of a list I asked for from Danny Anderson, a literature professor who specializes in Jewish-American fiction in the 20th Century. He gave me a list of ten books. I have read four this year, after reading three last year:

Herzog by Saul Bellow
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
All Other Nights by Dara Horn
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

I really loved "All Other Nights" and "The Plot Against America." "Foreign Bodies" was good.  "Herzog" was not for me.

Books About or Inspiring Video
Another small group is connected to video. I read "Catch-22" after watching the new series on Hulu.  I read "All the Pieces Matter" about the making of "The Wire." After watching the video series and not liking it, I read "The Man in the High Castle." I really liked the book, but after reading it, I have a hard time thinking the book and the video are related.  The book is so clear. The video is murky.

In the Plus-Size category were two books:
"Stalingrad" by Vasily Grossman at 1063 pages
Stalingrad is the first volume of a 2-Volume 1,943-page novel about the battle for Stalingrad.  It is "War and Peace" set in the most important battle of World War II--it was the first major defeat of the German Army and the turning point of the war. While "Stalingrad" has great moments, particularly the German air attack that started the battle and the battle for the Railway Station that marked the limit of the German advance, the second volume "Life and Fate" is a much more compelling story. Even though it is 880 pages it has a rapid pace.
"A Tale of Love and Darkness" a memoir by Amos Oz

I have only read one other short book by Oz, but I wanted to read his life which wove through so much of 20th Century Israeli history.  It's a good memoir.  It would also be a good memoir at 250 pages, but worth reading.  

Philosophy and Politics form a group of three books. I reread "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt and "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder. I also read "How Fascism Works" by Jason Stanley.  I heard both Stanley and Snyder speak last year and went to a conference on anti-Semitism at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College this year.  All three books point with dread to authoritarian governments.

Four more novels that don't fit in the categories above:

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie--the first book I read by him. It's very sadly funny and a good homage to the original. I read the unabridged Don Quixote in 2005 and was delighted. 

"Slowness" is the third novel I read by Milan Kundera and my least favorite. "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Identity" were brilliant. "Slowness" lived up to its name.

I re-read my two favorite novels by Mark Helprin "Paris in the Present Tense" and "Winters Tale." I have read everything Helprin has written. Re-reading Paris before I returned to the City of Light was pure delight. I love the story. Re-reading "Winters Tale" was more vivid because I have read more Magical Realism.  When I first read "Winters Tale" 30years ago, I did not even know it was in this category but loved it for its crazy imagery and blurred time.  Now it is even more vivid. 

I read five books loosely under language including a couple of Hebrew textbooks, an abridged "D'Artagnan" in French, a Russian verb prefix book, and a memoir about French immersion by a 50-year-old student. I also read a dual-language book in Greek and English of some of the best passages of Thucydides on War.  

Two memoirs of war:

"Pumpkinflowers" by Matti Friedman, an Israeli soldier about the war in Lebanon.

"The Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer a French teenager from Alsace who fought in the German Army for the entire war on the Easter Front. For anyone who doubts how terrible war can be, this memoir says war is Hell more clearly than any other I have read.

I re-read "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Hariri just because it is so good.  

Finally, I read a book called "The Sacred Enneagram" that explains the concept of the Enneagram. I have taken Meyers Briggs and Strengths Finders as part of two of my jobs, but the Enneagram I read on the recommendation of a friend. 

The Enneagram looks at personality in a more integrated way than the other methods I used.  Whether it works for everyone, I could see myself in a painfully clear way as an Enneagram Type 7--an enthusiast. So I delight in making plans, or lists of books, then see something new and changing the plans or lists.  I am going to read another book about it next year.