Running As Prayer

In her 1999 essay on the running and writing connection, Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “On days when I can’t run, I don’t feel ‘myself;’ and whoever the self is I feel, I don’t like nearly so much as the other.” Some days, knowing that this applies to me is the only thing that gets me out the door. That said, I know what a runner’s high feels like; it’s a wonderful and addictive sensation.

For me, however, the high is only the topmost layer in the addiction cocktail—an admittedly pleasurable state I actually have to move through to get to what’s beneath. My sister and I used to talk about the second layer, how one of the most embarrassing byproducts of the endorphin hit—but also one of the most enjoyable—is the accompanying delusions of grandeur: visions of the Self at moments of glory. Hers involve saving entire villages of starving children, mine standing in front of applauding audiences. I don’t want to probe too deeply into what this says about me, but I’ve wondered: are those delusions only manifestations of the ego, the prideful self that wishes to become something more, someone bigger? Or are they related, somehow, to one’s true “calling,” vocation in the original sense (vocare)? A medical professional or anthropologist would likely tell me the visions are the result of the chemical stimulus acting on the brain, an atavistic byproduct of our ancestral hunters who had to perceive themselves as invincible in order to survive.

But there’s a third layer. I’ve heard other runners who are religious say that they do their best praying while in motion. But what is prayer? When St. Paul exhorted the Thessalonian church to “pray without ceasing,” surely he didn’t mean they should go about their days verbally talking to God? Though prayer in one form is certainly verbal, it can’t only be that.

In my own case, the allure of distance running involves sinking through the first two layers and emerging into a third, a state of prayerlike consciousness. Past the feel-good vibes, past the delusions, my attention moves outward: I’m intensely aware of the cadence of a bird’s song, cherry blossoms weighted-down after a rain. Things light up and I experience an interior stillness that somehow syncs me more profoundly with the exterior world. It’s a paradox: only when I’m fully present in my body do I begin to experience the absence of myself. It’s a lesson yoga can teach as well: the more aware we become of only the breath flowing through and supporting the body, the less the stories of the self, created in our heads, seem to matter.

It’s here, in the third layer, where I experience God in prayer. It’s a very different thing than forming words, and involves a deep gratitude that has nothing to do with myself. I have a wide universal sense, to quote Lady Julian of Norwich, that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” The Christ in the gospels said “Whoever loses his life shall find it.” It’s a truth so difficult to access it sounds like a platitude—but when I’m running I feel the truth of those words, even if my conscious mind doesn’t understand them. In the end, it’s more than enough to keep me on the road.

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