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Happiness

Happiness

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A piece written this morning for the Deer Isle Writers Group …

Happiness lives in the space created by all-consuming beauty, all-consuming because in that space, in that moment, the beauty itself, whether perceived by eye or ear or nose or mouth or hand, or somehow, simply, strangely known, is everything. The beauty is, is all the world to me in that moment, and I am happy, though it is not even exactly true to say that I am happy, because, in that place, in that moment, I have no awareness of “I,” the beauty, the overwhelming beauty simply is, and I am somehow gifted with briefly being in the same place and moment as the happiness that is, with or without me.

The stone, the rock, the enormous erratic, perched on the granite ledges extending into the water from McGlathery’s eastern shore, seemingly out of place, is very much in its place. It defines, commands the place, but would be other were it not in that place, that numinous space, surrounded by human activity, but regardless of it, ledges washed by the tides, visited by ermine and gulls, islands emerging near and far from the ever-restless sea. When I turn the corner and see it, when it is not just that I see it, but that in that space and in that moment it becomes the world, all the world, there is happiness.

The frenzied, but careful and ecstatic, interplay of cello and violin and piano, creates its an irresistible gravity that draws me, draws everything, into its orbit. The ears are piqued, are pleased, by the sounds, but it is the heart, the loins, the stuff of being itself, and of my being in so far as I may share being itself, that is moved, deeply stirred, transported, transformed, awash with happiness.

The waters of the creek run clear and cold and powerful, iridescent, translucent, an uncanny green, flowing, rushing, ceaselessly careening down the rock-strewn river bed bearing waters from glaciers high above on the flanks of Mt. Baker into the the ever-burgeoning Skagit River. I watch, I look, I become the looking, there is only the looking, the flowing, the sparkling, the cavorting, the dancing, dancing, dancing of the waters. And there is happiness.

I hold the two broken halves of the crusty bread in my hands and I say the words, “This is my body,” but it is not my body and not my words, and, though it is my hands, it is not my hands that offer this bread. I am, in that space, in that moment, consumed by a giving, an inviting, an all-consuming, but all-creating loving, that is so much beyond what I can give, beyond whom I can invite, beyond what I can create. I am invited into that space, into that moment, along with all who surround me in that sanctuary, and, indeed, with all who surround us in the sanctuary that is the earth. There is in that space, in that moment, a being, a loving, a beauty that fills us and binds us to each other and to the One from whom flows all the beauty and all the love and all being. And there is happiness.

Katahdin

Katahdin

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Katahdin looms — imposing, intimidating, unnerving — its implausibly enormous bulk dominating the skyline.  Katahdin is no singularly outstanding feature of this wild landscape; it is the landscape, and all the rest — forest, stream, foothill, me — we all lurk in its shadows.

The enchanting voice of my Maine muse, Carolyn Currie, cantillates from the speakers of my Santa Fe: “Red hawk’s rising on the back of the wind and she’s circling with an answer and I finally understand how to begin.”  Red hawk’s rising.  I play the song again and again as I make my resolute approach to the campground and trailhead at the base of the mountain.  Red hawk’s rising.  It is my mantra, my rallying cry, my anthem, as I steel mind and body for the quest that awaits me.  I will not soar like a hawk on the back of the wind, but I do intend to rise.  If it will allow me, I intend to rise to the top of this fabled mountain.

Fabled, renowned, iconic, Katahdin surely is, but, today, none of that matters to me.  Today, Katahdin is not Pamola’s mountain or Thoreau’s mountain or even the mountain of innumerable Appalachian Trail thru-hikers celebrating the denouement of a two thousand mile odyssey.  Today, it is my mountain.  Even surrounded by dozens and dozens of other hopeful summiteers, I climb alone — not to conquer an adversary or meet a challenge or check off an achievement on some life list.  No, any such motive would demean, demystify, devalue the majesty of this mountain.  I climb not to overcome Katahdin, but to be deemed worthy of meeting it, of learning some of its secrets, of being welcomed for a few unforgettable moments into its numinous space.

The trail begins, beguilingly beautiful, following dazzling Katahdin Stream as it ascends gently among birch and spruce and hemlock until reaching fifty-foot Katahdin Stream Falls cascading over a series of granite ledges.  The impressive cataract is well worth the mile and a quarter hike from the trailhead.  Undoubtedly, many a casual Baxter visitor ends the journey here, contented with traversing this splendid wilderness path and rewarded by the spectacular visage of the falls.

Beyond the falls, the climb begins in earnest, ascending four thousand feet in five miles.  The trail is relentlessly steep, up and up and up, not walking a steady incline, but scrambling over ledges and boulders among scattered glacial erratics.  I feel strong and stronger yet as the path grows steeper, taking some pride as my sixty-something body overtakes more than a few twenty-something or thirty-something bodies along the way.

I emerge from the trees at the base of the Hunt Spur, the crux of a Katahdin ascent via the Hunt Trail which also serves as the terminus of the Appalachian Trail.  Steep and long and difficult, the Hunt Spur is a naked ridge of jumbled boulders — car-sized, bus-sized, boxcar-sized.  Though marked by blue blazes painted on the granite, the way up is not always clear; every step must be carefully puzzled out, clambering over and around and between the massive boulders.  The climb is physically demanding, but even more mentally exhausting.  The immensity of the mountain, the unsettling exposure, the demanding route-finding, and the unrelenting steepness make an ascent of the Hunt Spur a daunting endeavor.

And a profoundly satisfying endeavor.  I crest the top of the ridge and step out onto the Tablelands, a wide, flattish, tundra-like landscape.  I walk steadily, part of the long procession of hikers following the trail roped off on both sides to protect the fragile alpine ecosystem.  We wind our way over the plateau, pass Thoreau Spring, mount the short summit ridge, and we are there.

I am there, standing atop Baxter Peak, surrounded by dozens of other happy climbers, but still very much alone, alone surveying the breathtaking panorama — Pamola and the Knife Edge, Chimney Pond and the Cathedrals, alone steeped in the joy of this moment, alone celebrating this mountain which has now become a part of my story and I a part of its story, Katahdin, my mountain.

home

home

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As soon as I cleared the last of the spruces and stepped from the needle strewn path out onto the granite ledge and scanned the panorama stretched out before me, green and grey and blue, I knew I was home. There were Cadillac and Newbury Neck, Long Island and Naskeag Point, Isle au Haut and Eggemoggin Reach and the Camden Hills. I could name them all, but it was not the naming that made this home. No, it was this space without edges, beautiful and mysterious, readily seen but not readily known, a space so much bigger than me, so much uncareful of me, yet unquestioningly including me, that made itself home. This is no house built of human hands, no hall or office where I strive to prove myself worthy. No, this is a home so much older, so much wilder, so much truer, a space, a place, where stripped of the need to perform, shorn of the need to prove or to be approved, that I remember, that I remember what I am, that I remember who I am, that I am home.

One hundred and seventy-three

One hundred and seventy-three

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Suppose you were to meet a stranger today and suppose that stranger were to speak to you and say, “One hundred and seventy-three.” Suppose he were to say just that, nothing more, nothing less, just “One hundred and seventy-three.” What would you make of it?

Perhaps he was thinking of days, perhaps of June 22, the one hundred and seventy-third day of the year. Was he thinking of his birthday or the birthday of another? Of his anniversary, or maybe of the day on the stream he caught the two-pound salmon on a Barnes Special early in the morning before the sun had cleared the tops of the spruces?

Or perhaps he was thinking of one hundred and seventy-three days ago or one hundred and seventy-three days hence. What happened then? Or what will happen then? Does he have one hundred and seventy-three days yet to live? But how could he know that with that kind of precision, or, if he did, would knowing it be a blessing or a curse? If you happened to meet him again tomorrow, would he say to you, “One hundred and seventy-two?” And would it break your heart to know his days were so quickly slipping through his fingers, slipping away faster and faster with each sunset? Or would it make you glad to know he was counting the days, prizing each one, fully open to the wonders each day brings?

Or maybe it is not days, but years, one hundred and seventy-three years. Why would he want to remember one hundred and seventy-three years past? Why does he hold the year 1848 in his mind? Was that the year his great-great-great grandfather stepped onto the dock at Ellis Island, debarking the ship that had brought him from Markinch to a new and unknown life yet to unfold, the great-great-great grandfather whose burgeoning family would make home in Vermont and Michigan, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, and now Maine?

Or maybe he has one hundred and seventy-three dollars in his wallet. Or is impertinent enough to ask if you have one hundred seventy-three dollars in yours. Or maybe it is a price, the cost of a gift, a Christmas gift, a tourmaline necklace for his wife or a remote control sailboat for his grandson.

Or maybe it is not days or years or dollars, but people, the number of people in his high school class. Was he reminded of them by the reunion he was unable to attend, remembering not just the number but the faces, the faces so dear but now fading in memory, the faces held in memory as they were: eager and ambitious and curious and hopeful and delighted, full of the unrepeatable delight of youth?

Or is it not one hundred and seventy-three people, but one hundred and seventy-three whales, one hundred and seventy-three known right whales still swimming the Atlantic, one hundred and seventy-three right whales bearing amongst so few the destiny of their species? Does he worry about them, so much that he broods on their number, speaking their number aloud so that speaking it may declare their existence, declare their right to exist, declare their need to exist?

Or perhaps it is mountains. Perhaps he counts the mountains he has climbed, remembering them as a group, but remembering each one too: the scramble up the Hunt Trail on Katahdin, intimidating and exhilarating, breathtaking and soul-filling, or the day on the Traveler Loop, the unforgettable day summiting Peak of the Ridges and The Traveler and North Traveler that he replays in his mind again and again and again, the steep and bouldery climb up Center Ridge, the brave and thrilling traverse of Little Knife Edge, the cliffside views of South Branch Pond just before the steep descent back to camp, the exhaustion and the satisfaction and the sheer joy.

Or maybe one hundred and seventy-three means nothing at all. Maybe it is something he chooses to say just because he chooses to say it. Maybe it is nothing but a number, a number that follows one hundred and seventy-two and precedes one hundred and seventy-four.

And yet, it is not one hundred and seventy-two and it is not one hundred and seventy-four. It is more then one and less than the other, not anything else other than itself. And it implies abundance. It is more than one, more than two. It is many. A world in which one hundred and seventy-three may be spoken is a world of abundance, of complexity, surely of variety, a world where if one hundred and seventy-three is possible, one hundred and seventy-four or even one hundred and seventy-five is possible!

And you, the one to whom one hundred and seventy-three is spoken: you live in this world where one hundred and seventy-three is, and where you are, more of this than some and less of that than some, not anything else other than yourself., a world where you hold dear your own memories of days and years and people and places … and possibilities. The next time you meet this stranger, what do you think you will say?

Waterfront

Waterfront

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Cedar Campus is a thin place.  A “thin place” is what George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, called the Isle of Iona, a place, he said, where the separation between earth and heaven, between things material and things spiritual, is tissue paper thin.

Iona is what it is because of its long spiritual history, fifteen hundred years of intentional Christian presence on the island marked by the now restored abbey dating from the 15th century and a carved stone cross that has stood in place since 700 CE.  But Iona is what is it as much because of the island itself, the landscape, the white sand beaches and steep-sided coves, the boggy moors and heather-covered rocks, and the sea.  And the sea, the ever-moving, ever-changing, ever-present sea: blowing winds, crashing waves, dazzling sunlight piercing deep green waters.  God speaks through the wind and waves and the light.

Cedar Campus is a such a place.  Cedar Campus has its own “long” spiritual history.  For seven decades, people have come — university students and lecturers and InterVarsity staff members, site managers and summer work crew members and families, all of them drawn by the promise of a transformative experience of God’s presence, in song and Bible study and meditation and prayer, but equally in simply being in this “thin” place.  Like Iona, Cedar Campus is what it is, not as much by what people have made of it, but by what God has made of it, a kingdom of cedar and rock, awesome sunsets and amazing night lights, stars and galaxies and the shimmering aurora borealis.  And the water, the waters of Lake Huron, deep and wide and wild, only slightly tamed by the encircling shores of Prentiss Bay.  God speaks at Cedar Campus too through wind and wave and light.

The agenda for a time spent at Cedar Campus, whether a week or a month or all summer long, is communion, communion with God and with brothers and sisters, and the spiritual growth that communion may yield.  That is the agenda, but woods and bays and shoreline are the arena where that growth is nurtured.  So it is that hours spent in the water or on the water or by the water are not incidental, but vital, to the mission of Cedar Campus.  Time on the waterfront is time for communion, too.

The ultimate purpose of the waterfront program — getting campers in and on the water — is that communion with God that comes by immersion in a space of God’s own making, a space that exhibits God’s extraordinary artistry, a space that is filled with God’s own presence.  To make that experience profitable, the work of waterfront staff focuses on safety and proficiency and joy.  If you can be safe on the water and make your way with some knowledge and skill, you will find joy!

A swimming test is the entry point for all waterfront activity.  To get on the water, you first must get in the water.  The test itself is not demanding: a twenty-five yard swim, treading water for one minute, then swimming the twenty-five yards back to the starting point.  Easy, right?  Except that you must factor in the nature of the water in which you are swimming.  You are swimming in Lake Huron, a Great Lake, with waters deep and cold.  Water temperatures in the mile-long, half-mile wide inner Prentiss Bay around which the camp is situated vary widely, as cold as 48º F and as warm as 72º F depending on weather and wind direction, but most commonly between 56º and 62º F.  That’s cold!  58º is bracing, 54º takes your breath away and 50º hurts!  But that is the point of the swim test.  Waterfront staff want to make sure that if you do end up in the water while rowing or canoeing or sailing, you know what to expect and can take care of yourself without panicking.

Tests are offered at the start of each camp and are good for two years.  A member of the waterfront staff rows alongside each swimmer to be close by if needed.  Not a few swimmers have had to grab onto the gunwales of the rowboat, either too tired or too cold or too scared to continue.  As an extra incentive and reward, each camper who passes the swim test is entitled to an extra dessert at that evening’s supper. 

But the true reward of passing the swim test is access to Cedar Campus’ fleet of boats.  Cedar Campus maintains a large assembly of boats.  Several power boats are kept primarily for the use of staff: for monitoring and rescue during open waterfront times when many campers may be out on the bay; for transporting campers for overnights on Whitefish Point or Rover Island which sits between outer Prentiss Bay, two miles long and a mile wide, and Lake Huron itself; and for shuttling food and cooks to Sandy Cove for cookouts.

The boats available for campers include several rowboats, used for rowing or fishing, a half dozen or so canoes, used for exploring inner Prentiss Bay and Prentiss Creek at the end of the bay, and sailboats, fifteen foot, sloop-rigged, open cockpit sailboats.  Later, Cedar Campus added kayaks and Sunfish, small flat-hulled, single sail craft, and several larger daysailer sloops in the twenty-six foot range used by waterfront staff to give sailboat rides to campers and families.

Campers who have passed the swim test may take out any rowboat on their own or with other passengers who have also passed the test, all wearing PFD’s, of course.  These campers may also be passengers in a canoe or sailboat.  But to sign out a canoe, to paddle solo or to take out a companion, a camper must first pass a canoeing test, and to sign out a sailboat, a skipper’s test. 

To pass the canoeing test a camper, university student or family camper, must show a basic knowledge of canoe strokes — forward stroke, reverse stroke, “J” stroke or “C” stroke, be able to paddle the canoe in a straight line, and reenter a swamped canoe and paddle it to shore.  Again, the emphasis is on safety, proficiency, and joy.

The joy comes from paddling along the cedar-lined shores of Prentiss Bay on a sparkling summer day or a serene summer evening, perhaps exploring the creek at the head of the bay, drifting among yellow water lilies and navigating tight corners, or bringing along a pole to fish for perch and smallmouth along the shoreline or above underwater rock piles.  Some paddlers have even first met their future spouses in a Cedar Campus canoe!

Canoes, rowboats, kayaks, powerboats: all provide means to explore the magnificent coves and creeks, broad bays and rocky points of Prentiss Bay.  But the best way to enjoy the water and taste its wonders of wind and wave and light is by sailboat.  The power to move a sailboat does not come from any human effort, rowing or paddling, or from any human invention, outboard or inboard motor, but from God, from the wind itself.  The skipper of a sailboat must understand the wind, its direction and force; read the wind, see gusts, cat’s paws, roiling the surface of the water in their approach; anticipate the effects of land features on the wind; and always work with the wind, use the power of wind to propel the boat in the direction the skipper chooses.  Sailing is a science, but it is also very much an art, an art that requires not subduing the forces of nature, of God’s creation, but working in harmony with them.

To access the delights of sailing a boat at Cedar Campus, a prospective sailor must show the knowledge and skill to safely pilot a sailboat and demonstrate that by passing a skipper’s test.  The skipper’s test is more comprehensive than any other waterfront test at Cedar Campus, because the demands of sailing a boat on the open bays are greater and the stakes higher.  Weather may change quickly, winds shift suddenly, and, given the right conditions, the lake can generate large waves.  Waterfront staff carefully keep track of all boats when out on the bay, and have had to rescue many a sailing crew from a capsized sailboat.

The skipper’s test requires a sailor to know the names of the parts of the boat — bow and stern, starboard and port, stays and shrouds, rudder and tiller and centerboard; the names of the parts of the sails — leech and luff and foot, head and tack and clew; and the names of the lines on the sailboat — halyards and sheets and painters.  Knowing these names matters.  Shouting, “Grab that rope!” may be met be a look of bewilderment as your boat mate looks over all the lines draped around the boat.

A potential skipper must also demonstrate a knowledge of the points of sail — reach and run, broad reach and close reach and sailing close hauled — and explain how the sails would be deployed on each point of sail. 

This first part of the skipper’s test may be done on dry land or before casting off from the mooring, but the meat of the test comes, of course, in the sailing itself.  The prospective sailor must rig the boat, securing the mainsail to boom and mast, installing the battens and attaching the main halyard, clipping the jib onto the forestay and attaching the jib halyard, and raising the sails, then successfully casting off and moving away from the mooring.  Out on the water, the sailor must show competence in reading the wind and setting the tiller and trimming the sails accordingly, be able to execute both coming about and jibing, and be able to guide the boat to a standstill at its mooring.  The procedures for piloting a boat into the wind (in irons) at the mooring are the same for rescuing an overboard crew member. 

Some campers, not many, but some, come to Cedar Campus with considerable sailing experience.  But most who wish to know the joy of sailing must be taught.  Sailing classes are one of the highlights of the waterfront program during month-long discipleship training camps.  Eager university students spend time with a waterfront staff member, first in the recreation building learning sailing terminology and tactics, and then in the boats, carefully shepherded by staff either in the boat with them or following beside them in a powerboat.  Most advance quickly; learning to sail well is a lifetime enterprise, but it does not take long to develop good basic control of the boat, enough to be able to have a great time out on the water.

Sailing classes last one or two weeks.  Often, as a reward, sailing class graduates are permitted to sail a fleet of several boats out of Prentiss Bay and down the lake seven miles to Government Island, a state-owned reserve where the boats are landed and secured to pilings and a picnic lunch is enjoyed.  Sometimes, on the return trip, the boats might choose to circle a lighthouse situated in Lake Huron five miles beyond the mouth of Prentiss Bay.

Cedar Campus is a thin place.  Few leave Cedar Campus unchanged.  The spirit of God speaks here, through faithful teachers and dear companions, through quiet moments spent sitting or watching or praying, and through the powerful witness of its landscape and its waters.  Moments spent silently drifting through reeds in a canoe or slicing through waves on Prentiss Bay accompanied only by the whistling wind leave an indelible mark on the soul.  This thin place, its memories and its marks, remain a part of every person who comes here and a part of every place to which they go.

If only

If only

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Tuesday mornings, I meet with members of the Deer Isle Writers’ Group. We gather at 9:00 am at the home of one of our writers. We chat and catch up with each other for about a half hour and then spend an hour and a half writing, often in response to a suggested “prompt.” At eleven, we regather and read aloud what we have written, inviting comments and critique. The prompt for this last Tuesday was “if only …”

This what I wrote …

If only she had placed her foot just a little bit to the right …
If only she hadn’t been wearing the Birkenstocks …
If only she had agreed to switch places after she told me she couldn’t see her feet …
If only I had waited until our son could help me move the bridges into the woods …
If only COVID had not meant she was teaching her last semester remotely here in
Maine instead of in person in Iowa …

If only I had not built the bridges in the first place …
If only I had not the built the trail that required the bridges in the first place …
If only we had not bought the home in Blue Hill with seven acres on which to build a
trail in the first place …
If only we had never lived in Maine and would not be drawn back to it …
If only we had never lived …

“If only” is a rabbit hole of despair. Each “if only” wishes away a little piece of my life, a little piece of me. And as the “if only’s” multiply, gratitude gives way to bitterness, anticipation is overshadowed by regret, and my once hot-blooded life turns colorless and listless while my soul feeds only on itself.

She had the better idea. Almost immediately, she began making a list, a long list, of all the good things that resulted from her accident. It was not to ignore the loss or deny the grief, but to embrace her life as it is, as it now is, because of the accident. Her list includes Jeanine, the ICU nurse who lives on our road, and Jeanine’s parents who live on our road, too, and who are now, because of Jeanine and because of the accident, counted among our friends. Her list includes tangible expressions of care from new friends in our Deer Isle church and the Deer Isle writers’ group. Her list includes a September retirement party in Iowa with both of us now able to attend which would not have happened had the accident not cancelled her May Iowa trip.< And her list includes me, shopping and cooking and washing dishes, doing laundry and prepping her shower and managing her meds, loving her in new ways because this is what it is.

“It is what it is.” It’s one of our favorite phrases. “It is what it is” is an antidote to “if only,” said not with begrudging resignation, but with clear-eyed honesty and bold acceptance. “It is what it is” embraces the here and now because it is here and now and because it is the only here and now we will ever have.

“It is what it is” is a conscious and even joyful choice for faith over despair, for hope over resignation, for life over something that may resemble life but is mere emptiness.

It is what it is … and it is good!

A different kind of communion

A different kind of communion

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This morning, in the meeting of our Deer Isle Writers’ Group, we were prompted to write about an animal encounter. This is what I wrote …

 

I was a boy.  I was a fish, swimming and diving, exploring the cerulean waters of the remote Catalina cove.

I was there because of my father.  He came to mentor university students in the way of following Jesus and brought his family of five with him.  We had driven five days from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, then taken an hour shuttle across the bay to Avalon, where we were taken by launch to Gallagher’s Bay and Campus by the Sea.

Campus by the Sea was one of several summer leadership camps developed by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  There was also Bear Trap Ranch in Colorado and Cedar Campus in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Campus in the Woods in Ontario.  I had been to them all with my father, but Campus by the Sea was my favorite.

Because it was rustic and primitive and wild.  We slept in tents, one-room half-walled wooden platforms with tattered canvas roofs and no amenities: no kitchen, no shower or toilet, no running water at all.  We used outhouses and ate in a common mess tent and had to keep watch for rattlesnakes and wild boar.  I loved it.

I was there because of my father.  And I was there, in the water, because of my father.  At the age of four, he taught me to swim and the waters — the clear and soothingly warm waters of Sebago or Winnepesaukee or Saturday Pond, or the clear and exhilaratingly frigid waters of Prentiss Bay on Lake Huron or Dog Lake in Ontario or Penobscot Bay — have been like a second home, another realm for me to live in and move in and be in, ever since.

I was a boy.  I was a fish, swimming and diving and exploring.  I spied something, something bright and shiny, maybe it was a bottle cap, on the bottom, five or six feet below me, and I dove for a closer look.  As I reached for that serendipitous treasure, I happened to look up.

And I saw and I was seen.

The truth of the matter was that I straightaway swam up and away in adrenaline-infused alarm, but that is not really the truth of the matter.  There was the moment of seeing and being seen, an almost timeless moment, sharing space, sharing consciousness, sharing being with something wild … almost endearing, almost a kind of communion, almost the making in that moment of a cross-species friendship, my face and its face just inches apart, I and the stingray.

Relay

Relay

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I had an epiphany this morning.

I was running on the treadmill, listening to Louise Connell and Andrea Von Kampen on my Nano, mind wandering among memories of summer hikes in Baxter State Park and New Hampshire’s White Mountains and Acadia, when a sudden recollection of another run, another race, came into my head.

It was the spring of my sophomore year in high school. It was the season-ending Cape Ann league track meet hosted by my school, Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School. It was the meet’s final and deciding event, the mile relay. And it was the highlight of my brief career as track and field athlete.

In the mile relay, each of four teammates run a quarter-mile, once around the four hundred forty yard oval, passing a short metal baton from one runner to the next. I was selected by our coach to run the second leg.

The first leg was run by Neil Smith, another sophomore, a distance specialist, a miler. He ran a brave race, hanging tough with the sprinters. When he passed me the baton, our team was in third place, three or four yards out of second.

I turned and threw myself into a dead sprint. I shot past the runner in second place and fixed my eyes on the back of the runner in the lead. For fifty-three seconds, I saw nothing the back of his singlet, straining with everything I had to catch him. I closed the gap to three yards, but no closer, and as we came off the final turn and headed down the home stretch to where the next racers awaited us, I could push no harder and he began to increase the distance between us.

I do not remember the name of our third runner, but he blew away the rest of the field. When Dave Belton, our senior anchor, took the baton, he had a thirty yard lead and by the time he finished his lap, it was fifty. We won the race! We won the meet! It was an exhilarating, intoxicating, most proud moment.

And yet, over the years, the sweetness of my recollection of that race has been tempered by some doubt and regret. We won, but it was our third and fourth runners that brought us the victory. I failed to pass the lead runner. I closed the gap so quickly, but could not finish the job.

But I held my ground. That was my epiphany this morning. I held my ground. I held my ground and did my best. I did my job and put my team in a position to win. I didn’t win the race, but my team would not have won without me.

History is a relay. This moment in our nation’s history is a relay and we are the runners. I do not win or lose on my own. You do not win or lose on your own. But we must, each of us, hold our ground, give our best, do our job.

When we do, when we keep our eyes fixed on the prize, when we run the race, each of us, with everything we have, not giving up, pushing hard until the end, we will win.

We will win.