My high school cross-country coach was not a runner. He was a sixty-something, cigarette-smoking man with a body that closely resembled a prune held up by two toothpicks.
Each fall, on the first day of practice, he'd explain about muscles. "Some of you have more fast-twitch muscles, and some of you have more slow-twitch muscles." Then, in a voice as dry as ash, he'd add, "As you can see, I have only no-twitch muscles."
It was ironic, I suppose, a nearly immobile running coach. His age and condition, though, served him -- and us -- well. Mr. Brush was not coaching because of a need for competition. He wasn't there to build his resume. And it surely wasn't about keeping himself in shape. It was about us.
Mr. Brush taught me how to run and breathe at the same time. "Focus on the exhale," he said. "Push that dead air out. Your body will remember to inhale on its own."
I don't run as much as I used to, but the advice remains useful. God the Holy Spirit -- like the breath it is so often compared to -- fills us quite effortlessly when we make the space. But when our days become 5k races, over hill and dale, around roots and rocks, we leave little room for that capital "I," Inspiration. Sometimes, on those days, the image will come to my mind of a loving little prune of a man, barking "Breathe out! Breathe out!"
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