Every step a prayer

The Earth speaks to me through my body. Always.

Greetings from Maryland, where after a cool, rainy period, it’s seasonably hot and humid (groan). This post is about an amazing recent reminder that the physical world (including my body) is but a tiny slice of reality. There is so much more to this marvelous mystery we call life. As I was writing this, I saw an Osprey dive forty feet out of a tree to catch a fish, then fight back airborne on powerful wings—empty-clawed. I thought running half-marathons was cool, but Ospreys are truly badass.

Full blue moonrise over Dayspring, photo by Catalina Conneally-Salazar

I’m recovering from acute Achilles tendonitis, my first sports-related injury. It’s been a slow, methodical process that has increased my admiration for the wonders of human anatomy and physiology. This is the story of how, at the depth of my frustration and discouragement, something amazing happened. It’s not as boring as a complete pain-free cure, no. This is far better.

For the first five decades of my life, I ran only in dreams.¹ In waking life, I preferred cycling, which you can do sitting down. And weight training in an air-conditioned gym. And yoga for the savasana nap at the end (duh).

But in 2018, I set aside good judgment and joined a 10k training group. Between the camaraderie of running buddies, the euphoria of endorphins, and the ready excuse to buy new shoes every year, I was hooked. Events are the most fun: the festive vibe, crowds holding funny signs, crossing the finish line, getting a sweet medal hung around your neck, the party at the end. It’s all the best!

Last March, I struggled through DC’s Rock-n-roll Half Marathon with my worst time by far out of the ten that I’ve run. What did I expect? I was busy and for the first time lacked the discipline to stick with my training program. Injury was a natural consequence. Following my eventual abysmal finish, my right heel was so painful, I could barely walk.

My physical therapist is an angel. She gets me. Though she may be half my age, she doesn’t dumb it down. She’s challenging me to rebuild my stride, body position, and strength from the literal ground up. I now do crazy bodyweight exercises on my tiptoes—like split stance lunges, posterior slider lunges, and heel-raise wall sits.² We’re working on my torso rotation for esoteric reasons I won’t bore you with here.

Now for the amazing part. I’ve been entirely focused on the physical aspects of my injury and slow recovery, which has led, I admit, to some discouragement. The French word for heart, coeur, beats within our word courage, and still I forget that dis-courage-ment is a literal disconnection from my heart. Fortunately, last weekend, I was reminded that there is so much more than the physical to my experience of life in a body.

The Earth loves us

This happened on the final day of our annual Heroine’s Journey retreat at a beautiful land trust of over 200 acres in the DC suburbs. It’s a special place—fields, ponds, forests, and streams surrounded by McMansions and strip malls. In this time of motherlessness and unravelling, many of us long to renew our lost groundedness. We gathered to reconnect with the earth and with each other, and to nourish our mythic imaginations.

Dayspring labyrinth, photo by the author

My co-leaders and I offered stories, poetry, drumming, sacred circle dance, intimate conversations, and wandering the land to encounter marvels. Together with twenty-five women, we made spirals and origami butterflies, shared a powerful retelling of Ariadne’s story, and drummed around a fire circle to welcome the rising full moon.

She Told Me the Earth Loves Us

She said it softly, without a need 
for conviction or romance.
After everything? I asked, ashamed. 

That's not the kind of love she meant.
She walked through a field of gray 
beetle-pored pine, snags branching

like polished bone. I forget sometimes
how trees look at me with the generosity 
of water. I forget all the other 

breath I'm breathing in. 
Today I learned that trees can't sleep
with our lights on. That they knit 

a forest in their language, their feelings. 
This is not a metaphor. 
Like seeing a face across a crowd, 

we are learning all the old things, 
newly shined and numbered. 
I'm always looking 

for a place to lie down
and cry. Green, mossed, shaded. 
Or rock-quiet, empty. Somewhere

to hush and start over. 
I put on my antlers in the sun. 
I walk through the dark gates of the trees. 

Grief waters my footsteps, leaving 
a trail that glistens. 
 
Copyright © 2020 by Anne Haven McDonnell. 
From All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (One World, 2020), edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson.
 

On the final day, we held a group walk through a lovely labyrinth of cobblestones and moss, serenaded by birds and witnessed by poplars, oaks, maples, and other kin. My friend Lisa drummed the beat of our hearts, our footfalls. My heel was tight and complaining about the miles of hiking I’d done the day before. As I walked, discouraged and fretting, to the rhythm of the drum, I heard the Earth’s voice.

Step on my body. Pour out your pain and grief through your feet.

I was suddenly aware of all that I’d bottled up for months. All that I’d been holding in, stewing and raging. My horror and fear had knotted into tight despair. The Earth said:

Release release let go. I will heal you with each step. Each step a prayer.

Move, swing, spiral. Each step a prayer.

As I walked, my pain dissolved. As we passed each other, the women in the labyrinth hugged, grasped hands, smiled, wept. Sacred tears of sisterhood. Of recognition. Of suffering shared and held.

We go into the labyrinth to be remade

Ariadne was known in ancient Crete as the Lady of the Labyrinth. Her story is an invitation to go into the labyrinth to be remade. My injury, my pain is physical, yes. And it’s also a spiritual wound of pent-up panic, grief, alarm, and outrage.

I left the labyrinth with a promise. Every step I take back to health will be a prayer. Running is how I love my body, and now, more consciously, how I love the Earth. Running is my offering. My gratitude to the Earth, my mother, who loves me. My physical body may be flawed or limited, but it’s also precious as the conduit to feel-hear-experience the Earth’s many voices. Always.

Since that time a week ago, my heel pain has been at most a 2 out of 10, where for months it has hovered between 3 and 8. Best of all, I have a new training mantra, as I prepare for the Chicago Half Marathon in late September.

Every step a prayer.

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Thanks for reading. I love and appreciate you all. If you enjoyed this, please share and comment. It’s always wonderful to hear from you. Stay safe and take good care.

1. Scary ones where my feet barely touch the ground and I can’t get enough purchase to make any progress. What’s up with that?

2. Yes, they’re all perfectly awful.