If you read my last blog entry, you know I’ve started a color series, where I pair my running and love for color together in some semblance of coherent thought, hopefully! It has felt so important, in these strange and crazy times, to make sure I am tuning in to my inner witness that can notice the things that need to be noticed. These are some of my practices to tune in. I’m glad to share them and hope that we all can adopt practices that help to ground ourselves to the earth, to God, to ourselves and to each other.

Last night, as I was running, I thought about what I was aware of feeling. I noticed how hot and sticky and muggy it was and how annoyed I was about being hot and sticky and muggy. Ewwww…. Tennessee in late July. It was the same feeling I had in December in Minnesota, when I stepped out of the car to run into the post office, and as my breath was stolen away into the frigid air, I wondered out loud, “Who would ever live here”, or I would’ve said that, if I could’ve moved my lips!

Going down further, I felt sluggish - in my run, in my life, in my paintings. I’ve had a recurring dream of running and not getting anywhere, that feeling of running in a shallow river of molasses. I haven’t had that dream in a while that I know of, but that dream came to mind as I became aware of feeling sluggish. My run was late in the day, as the sun was going down. I was supposed to have spent a good amount of the day painting. And while I did paint, I spent more time in extraneous activity that was more of a distraction from painting. I’ve been afraid of the painting I’m in the middle of; it is not resolved and perhaps doesn’t have a resolution. That’s what I’m afraid of, and it’s made me sluggish.

And, I noticed a determination. I may be sluggish, but I’m also determined. I almost talked myself out of this run. In the midst of feeling hot, sticky, muggy and sluggish, I did put one foot in front of the other and pounded the pavement to run 3 1/2 miles. I set out for a 5K run and did more than I set out to do. So, that’s something, right?

When Coach Bennett asked me what color I was, the answer was immediately orange, a deep russet orange, like the color of a gorgeous sunset. That’s one of my favorite colors. I noticed immediately that I didn’t feel submerged in it. It felt more like a longing, a deep desire to be saturated in the feeling and beauty of that color, but there was not that kind of solidarity with it, only a longing. To me, it means passion, compassion, heat and fire, justice, fierceness for love. And determination. So, I’m chasing it. I’m going to chase down orange by showing up. By painting. By running. By writing. By thinking. By loving. One day, I might catch up to it…