The Universe Inside

I don’t remember when it was that I stopped my morning runs and segued into walking. Walking? The “thrill is gone,” as the song says. But I’ve just discovered ultrawalking. And how it “makes me quiver,” as another song says.

Ultrawalking has taken a place among hiking, racewalking, and ultrarunning, and it's been quietly gaining momentum. There's no single governing body for ultrawalking, but ultrawalking events are happening globally, at distances ranging from forty miles to 100 kilometers and more.

It seems like a natural progression for me, as someone who once crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon. Many ultrarunners walk portions of their races anyway, which included me.

But I’m wondering why. Why, when many of my friends are undergoing knee and hip replacements, am I yearning to engage in a young person’s sport?

There is something in my DNA, I know. Whenever I would set out on some new endeavor, I would always go for broke. A morning run wasn’t enough. I had to do a marathon.

My wife said more times than I counted, “Peter, you always go too far.” 

It has something to do with my addictive personality. It also has to do with our species’ yearning for spaciousness.

We want to live where there is an expansive panorama – by the sea, on a mountain, at the top of a high-rise with a bird’s-eye view of the city below. 

Even in America’s flat mid-west, the landscape is as vast and open as the sky. Isn’t it Montana whose license plates brand it as “Big Sky Country?”

Out-and-back running used to answer my need for spaciousness. I could lace up my trainers and transport myself five miles from my house  -- and be back home before breakfast. 

Catherine of Sienna described God as “a mystery as deep as the sea” as well as the “highest good,” contradictory qualifiers combining for a spot-on description.

Refer to the Hebrew scriptures to learn of “God’s mountain” where Moses accepted the Ten Commandments, as well as the ocean abyss where Jonah idled for three days in the belly of a whale.

It seems obvious that humankind has a fascination with heights and depths, breadths and widths.

My hunch is that this impulse has an inner dimension as well as an exterior one.

This inner spaciousness we typically call imagination. I prefer to think of it as my soul.

All I need to do, for example, is shut my eyes to transport myself to Florence or Bangkok or the wreck of the Titanic. This sure is easier than a ten-mile jog before breakfast.

I’m beginning to think this is where theoretical physics meets metaphysical philosophy.

Several prominent scientists, too, are putting forth the idea that our internal experience (a.k.a soul) and external reality (the universe) are governed by the same fundamental laws.

Put all this together and maybe understand why mystic Thomas Merton said God can be found deep at the very center of our soul. And maybe understand why sometimes I feel like the universe is housed inside me.