Running to Worship

I used to get looks (and oftentimes comments) as I walked from my dorm to the gym while everyone was outside of the chapel chatting before they went in to worship.

"Skipping chapel for the gym (again)?"
"Why don't you just run after chapel?" (As if I hadn't thought of that idea.)
"Your priorities seem off."

Don't get me wrong, sometimes I go to chapel then run afterwards. Sometimes I run as long as I can before chapel and then make it back in time to worship. I don't skip chapel everyday. (Not that I would give two hoots about it if someone never ever came to chapel- do what you do.)

I'm just saying this happens often enough that people notice when I walk to the gym.

A friend asked me why I don't just wait until after chapel has started if I don't want to hear people be rude about my habits. I could do that. But I think should be able to expect people to respect me enough to let me do my own thing without criticizing me.  I don't do it to get a rise out of people- I have other ways of doing that.  And maybe I should wait an extra ten or fifteen minutes to walk to the gym.  But that's not the point.  When I want to run, I should be able to walk across the quad and go run without people judging me.

Did you notice my first sentence says that I used to get looks from people?  Nope, it doesn't happen anymore.  Probably because of my "I don't give a shit" attitude, but maybe because I actually have my priorities straighter than people first thought.

Here's why I sometimes run instead of going to chapel:

It has nothing to do with not having enough time.
It has nothing to do with school work that I need to get done.

It has everything to do with the fact that I am able to worship God wherever I am, during whatever I am doing.  And for me, running helps me focus on God.
It has everything to do with the fact that I cannot attend to my spiritual health until my mental, emotional, and physical health is straight.

I don't think this isn't the same for everyone, but I'm not making it up either. According to Abraham Maslow, we need certain things as human beings before we are able to truly achieve any "self-actualization," which (right or wrong), I translate as my spiritual health.

Here is Maslow's pyramid of needs: 

I have come to realize that when I do to chapel just because people say I should, I don't want to be spiritual. I don't even really want to worship God. When I try to fulfill my spiritual needs before my bottom level physical need (health/exercise) or my emotional needs (esteem through feeling good about myself) or my mental needs (security that I am not running my mind into the ground), I cannot bring myself to be spiritually present. Everything else starts to break down.

I realize that this starts to sound weird when you talk about people who have had major tragedies and lost their homes and are fighting to legitimately fulfill their physiological needs. Most people find spirituality the only thing they can cling to in those situations.  But I'm not in that type of situation.

I live a relatively comfortable life. And should I be thanking God on an hourly, secondly basis? Yes, absolutely. And I worship like that. I thank God constantly. It's not a process or a checklist I go through in my brain: do I feel healthy? Am I mentally okay? How am I feeling emotionally? Good? Okay, now I can go worship God.  That's not how it works.  It is an ongoing process and some days I don't feel as if I can sufficiently worship God in a chapel the way I can on a treadmill.

An organized church service does not always feel like appropriate worship for me.  Sometimes disciplining myself to run nine miles feels more appropriate because I can focus on JUST Him, something I find hard to do when I am in chapel.

I understand that it is unconventional. I don't always worship in a chapel. I'm not always wearing dress shoes. But I worship God in the ways that feel appropriate and it doesn't feel right for other people to judge me for it. After all, it's my salvation and my relationship with God that is at risk not theirs, right?