North Curtin Vets Handicap races. click to enlarge.
Leanne and Margaret
Gary
Katie
Jill and Catherine. Methinks Catherine should and will be be starting many groups further back!
Because running is, or can be, a completely individual sport, and because I have seen athletes turn up for a race, run, and disappear without interacting with anyone else, I am always interested in the subject areas of groups, teams, clubs, families, and other organisations where people obviously are meant to interact for mutual benefit and when they don’t, they suffer as a result.
Here is a good article about our culture of Individualism by Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury. Williams writes:
If you live in a world where everything encourages you to struggle for your own individual interest and success, you are encouraged to ignore the reality of other points of view – ultimately, to ignore the cost, or the pain of others. The result may be a world where people are articulate about their own feelings and pretty illiterate about those of others. An economic climate based on nothing but calculations of self-interest, fed by a distorted version of Darwinism, doesn’t build a habitat for human beings; at best it builds a sort of fortified box room for paranoiacs.
What is encouraging is how few people seem to want a society composed of people like this. We have, to some extent, looked into the abyss where individualism is concerned and we know that it won’t do. This is a moment when every possible agency in civil society needs to reinforce its commitment to a world where thoughtful empathy is a normal aspect of the mature man or woman. And of course without that, there will be no imaginative life, no thinking what might be different.
For myself, the roots of this view are deep in religious vision and commitment. From this viewpoint, the importance of the family isn’t a sentimental idealising of domestic life; it is about understanding that you grow in emotional intelligence and maturity because of a reality that is unconditionally faithful. In religious terms the unconditionality of family love is a faint mirror of God’s unconditional commitment to be there for us. Similarly, the importance of imaginative life is not a vague belief that we should all have our creative side encouraged but comes out of the notion that the world we live in is rooted in an infinite life, whose dimensions we shall never get hold of. As for the essential character of human mutuality, this connects for me with the Christian belief that if someone else is damaged, frustrated, offended or oppressed, everyone’s humanity is diminished.
Full article here.
When I run the Weston Creek Half Marathon this year, I am going to be competing with and challenging and encouraging the relay teams which participate in the event, as well as competing against the other runners and competing against myself. Relay teams add an exciting dimension to this race. Go the Geese!
Entries for the Weston Creek Half Marathon on 14 March close next Wednesday 10 March.
See http://westoncreekathletics.org.au/modules/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=half_marathon:half_marathon
Because running is, or can be, a completely individual sport, and because I have seen athletes turn up for a race, run, and disappear without interacting with anyone else, I am always interested in the subject areas of groups, teams, clubs, families, and other organisations where people obviously are meant to interact for mutual benefit and when they don’t, they suffer as a result.
Here is a good article about our culture of Individualism by Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury. Williams writes:
If you live in a world where everything encourages you to struggle for your own individual interest and success, you are encouraged to ignore the reality of other points of view – ultimately, to ignore the cost, or the pain of others. The result may be a world where people are articulate about their own feelings and pretty illiterate about those of others. An economic climate based on nothing but calculations of self-interest, fed by a distorted version of Darwinism, doesn’t build a habitat for human beings; at best it builds a sort of fortified box room for paranoiacs.
What is encouraging is how few people seem to want a society composed of people like this. We have, to some extent, looked into the abyss where individualism is concerned and we know that it won’t do. This is a moment when every possible agency in civil society needs to reinforce its commitment to a world where thoughtful empathy is a normal aspect of the mature man or woman. And of course without that, there will be no imaginative life, no thinking what might be different.
For myself, the roots of this view are deep in religious vision and commitment. From this viewpoint, the importance of the family isn’t a sentimental idealising of domestic life; it is about understanding that you grow in emotional intelligence and maturity because of a reality that is unconditionally faithful. In religious terms the unconditionality of family love is a faint mirror of God’s unconditional commitment to be there for us. Similarly, the importance of imaginative life is not a vague belief that we should all have our creative side encouraged but comes out of the notion that the world we live in is rooted in an infinite life, whose dimensions we shall never get hold of. As for the essential character of human mutuality, this connects for me with the Christian belief that if someone else is damaged, frustrated, offended or oppressed, everyone’s humanity is diminished.
Full article here.
When I run the Weston Creek Half Marathon this year, I am going to be competing with and challenging and encouraging the relay teams which participate in the event, as well as competing against the other runners and competing against myself. Relay teams add an exciting dimension to this race. Go the Geese!
Entries for the Weston Creek Half Marathon on 14 March close next Wednesday 10 March.
See http://westoncreekathletics.org.au/modules/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=half_marathon:half_marathon
