Trim Tram Donovan

Out of Commish

Two miles into an eighteen mile run and my gut flared up in acute pain. I have been sick with the flu the week preceding that run.

I was forced to do something I've never done before. I stopped my run and walked back to the car. In excruciating pain, I was limping back the place where our training group started. My left side throbbed and I was certain that I was going to die on the Capital City Trail. My appendix had burst or my liver was finally giving into all those harsh days of drinking. Who was to call emergency vehicles for me? Who would be there to hear me whisper my last words?

Sarah jogged by me with another girl, "Steve you ok?"

I look up and smile, "Yea, I'm fine."

OK, maybe I won't die but it's a hard walk. Just get me back to the car and I would be fine. After twenty-five minutes of walking, I made it to the car. I thought that I would wait for my good friend Stephanie to finish her run and she would take me to an urgent treatment center or the ER. I squeezed me eyes shut in the acute pain. I sat in the car and listened to music. She would arrive in about ten minutes and she would be able to help.

Five minutes pass and I think, "I can drive home." I start the car and drive home grunting in sharp sticks of pain to my left gut.

The coughing fits from the past few days had made some mild pain along my left side but never this bad. I came home to have Jeni help me assess the pain. We knew only two things: it wasn't the appendix and I needed ibuprofen since it felt muscle-oriented.

Browsing through Walgreen's on a Sunday morning in running shorts, I held my gut and browsed the pain relievers. I also found an ice pack that I could strap to my stomach. Got home and downed 600mg of Ibuprofen and strapped on an ice pack while I laid on the couch. This seemed to take the 'edge' off whatever pain this was.

I called Lauf who had an acute knowledge of the injured body. That is a valuable friend to have. She listened to what had transpired up until the pain. She suggested continuing on that regiment but also including some abdominal stretches on a stability ball for two or three times a day.

My rib muscles got injured. There's no treatment--only rest and rehab. I believe my running is out of commission for the next two weeks. I have an annual exam next week with my G.P. and if it's not better by that point, I will have to look into serious help for my ribs.

It's always the stupid stuff that mess up training.

Emergence

WNYC's production of "Radio Lab" had a podcast that faithfully introduced the science of Emergence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

Would it be fair to say that Emergence can be a bundle? It gives me the feeling that it's trying to connect the dots between God and Evolution?

Emergence, simply put, is the philosophy/science of random acts that combine to form a pattern. It's something like cooperation without intent. Radio Lab makes the example of ants who are not bright (understatement) but find method to survive and evolve through random acts. Their evolution and survival rate, according to this program, has exceeded those of humans.

On a personal level, they looked at the experience of the philosopher Francis Galton who believed that breeding had everything to do with class & society. Lower classes, he believed, had no voice in the important decisions in politics and policy making. Wisdom came only to those, he thought, who were bred by intelligent people.

Galton went to a stock & poultry exhibition (keep in mind he liked the topic of breeding and it was a historically boring era) where they were having a contest to guess the weight of a specific ox. After the contest among these so-called lower class individuals, Galton asked the man running it if he could have all the entries.

When Galton averaged out the entries, he found that collectively their guess (1,187) was only one pound away from the answer. This contradicted his thought that the average would show how way off this could be. This changed his philosophy slightly to hedge his view of the poorer population. He consigned in an idea where they could combine their talents to build a superior, logisitical system without leadership.

Or is it?

C.S. Lewis once claimed that the world shares a common morality. He calls this the Universal Morality of Natural Law. He also claims that people know what these law are and they break them. "Moral Law is simply a herd instinct." He claims that someone or something must be behind such a universe of principles. These principles (continuing this concept of Moral Absolutism) are inherent to the laws of the universe, the nature of humanity, the will or character of God or some other fundamental source.

Is Lewis hinting that the idea of Emergence clues us into what/who God is? The patterns that emerge from chaos evolve and make us moral beings? As a person or as a province, do patterns naturally emerge from chaos as part of a more holy process? Then should I look at chaos as the beginning of something very special?

If that's the case, then my poor swimming skills have a lot of God behind it.