HAVING COMPLETED THE BOSTON MARATHON…

Tomorrow will make two weeks since I completed the Boston Marathon. I hesitate to use the word “run” because although I did run some, I also jogged, skipped (trying to release a cramp), walked, and just about crawled. Because of a nerve being pinched by a herniated disc my left leg was numb and I was in serious pain before I even began the race. And because of my back and leg issue, I actually did not even run ONE mile in training. Not even ONE! I only did weight training and some stationary bike work. Having completed 3 Boston Marathons before this one (1998, 2001, 2009), I knew that coming into the ten mile mark without distance training, my legs were going to burn like hell, so I burned them with weight training. It must have worked, because although I suffered greatly and cramped horribly (my legs totally seized up on mile 11), I ultimately made it.

The purpose of this blog post is to send a message: we can do whatever we set our minds to!. Grind through it! Plow through it! DO NOT accept defeat under any condition! Do what you set out to do, or die trying!

I have a lot of things to get done. I WILL GET THEM DONE!

You do too!

Dig deep, my friends. The reserves you have to get through the tough times will amaze you! Persevere and WIN!

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FINISHED BOSTON MARATHON!

I did it! I finished the Boston Marathon yesterday! It was brutal. The heat was was intense. I had not trained because of nerve issues with my spine that produced a numb left leg. But I made it. On will and spirit.. I did it to raise money for children’s cancer at the Mass General Hospital. Please help if you can. Thank you.

Read my story:

http://www.crowdrise.com/massgeneralmarathon/fundraiser/johnfeloni

BOSTON MARATHON

I am running the Boston Marathon a week from Monday on the 16th. It will be the fourth Marathon for me as part of the Mass General Hospital Marathon Team. I am raising money for the children’s cancer oncology program. Please check out my story :

www.crowdrise.com/massgeneralmarathon/fundraiser/johnfeloni

ONE OF THE FOUR AGREEMENTS

In 1997, Don Miguel Ruiz came out with a wonderful book that is now a classic in self help literature, The Four Agreements. These agreements are based upon ancient Toltec wisdom. They are a code of conduct to live lives of freedom, happiness and love.

Agreement #2: Don’t Take Anything Personally

“Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Read and re-read those words. We constantly subject ourselves to people’s opinions and sometimes live n hell because of it. If we can only understand that none of those opinions has anything o do with us then we can forgive and walk in love and bliss. That is a noble goal to say the least.

POINTS TO PONDER

A couple of weeks ago I sat with a good friend on his birthday. It was a relaxing Saturday morning in a nice Italian coffee shop. Within the space of two cappuccinos we had solved a few of the world’s problems (that was the easy part) and had come to note a few maxims to live by as we went out into the world caffeine-enriched. We were both wrestling with some issues regarding ducks in our lives—you know, those that are continuously quacking no matter what…all you hear from them is “quack, quack, quack.” Quite annoying.

Here’s what we came up with:

1) Take nothing personally
2) Everyone has their own story
3) Forgive, forgive, forgive…they know not what they do
4) To change actions, change beliefs

Sounds simple. Do it!

THE DARK SHADOW OF LUCIFER

Lucifer (aka Satan)  has been in the news lately.

Well, lets take a look at him.

There is currently, for the first time ever, a couple in the process of being made saints. The French intellectual married couple, Jacques and Raissa Maritain are currently in the beatification process. They met in 1900 in Paris. She was a Russian Jewish emigre. Together they searched for truth, the truth of God. They considered themselves atheists for a while and considered committing suicide together, until they discovered St. Thomas Aquinas. They then both converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1929, in the midst of a European rise of fascism/totalitarianism/authoritarianism (namely, Stalin in the USSR, Hitler in Germany,  Mussolini in Italy, and Franco in Spain), she wrote an essay called The Prince of This World. In it she she writes:

“Lucifer has cast the strong though invisible net of illusion upon us. He makes one love the passing moment above eternity, uncertainty above truth. He persuades us that we can only love creatures by making Gods of them. He lulls us to sleep (and he interprets our dreams); he makes us work. He then does the spirit of man brood over stagnant waters. Not the least of the devil’s victories is to have convinced artists and poets that he is their necessary, inevitable collaborator and the guardian of their greatness. Grant him that, and soon you will grant him that Christianity is unpracticable. Thus does he reign in this world.”

Now clearly, you do not have to believe in the devil to understand the philosophical worth of what is being said in this essay. There is darkness, there is evil…even if you only consider it as the absence of light and the absence of love. The world is immersed in darkness on many levels: war, terrorism, genocide, and hatred of any faces. Even here in the U.S. we are purposely being thrown at each other in unnecessary class warfare, religious freedoms are being abolished by our government and we are being told that Jesus wants our taxes raised. Not pretty, for sure. But, and of this I am sure—light and love will prevail, and the darkness (including its Prince, if in fact he does exist) will be defeated. Keep the faith.

Godspeed!

WHERE ARE WE, THEN?

“Where are we, then?
The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and the most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, while men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence.
Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded are our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are not in their proper relationships, where all virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confused with a taste for oppression, and the holy cult of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true?
I cannot believe that the Creator made man to leave him in an endless struggle with the intellectual wretchedness that surrounds us.”

Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

Kinda says it all, doesn’t it?