The Day of Alternative Churches - updated

Yesterday, I went to the gym with Turdles.
I usually go for 'free' exercise, like running, dancing or surfing, but it was an opportunity to hang with my girl, and she wanted me to come and gave me one of her passes, I was staying at her place for the night.
So, with grokky eyes at 6 am I pulled on her leggings and t-shirt, and faced a roomful of machinery.




Uh oh.
A bit confronting for an old hippy soul surfer.
Turdles hopped on the treadmill, so I followed, but it took me a while to get the thing to go, lol. I didn't know my weight or height, so much technical info was too much for early morning without coffee, so I found the 'quick start' button, and was soon walking up an incline with no hill in sight.

It took a while, because I am fit from my runs on the beach, and dancing, but then the sweat started to roll :)
There was this hushed atmosphere, despite the music, a sense of simple human camaraderie, unobtrusive, yet palpable.
A temple, the body.
Its maintenance a daily task, its beautification a lifelong devotion.
Never perfect, no-one is, not even the Most Beautiful in the whole world.
Looking around at the imperfections around me, it struck me anew that imperfection striving for a more complete perfection is the glorious part, like sinners casting their hearts onto a God who melts their faults
in a furnace of love.

The view from the big windows was quite nice, a tree-studded hill with the beginnings of
Cummings' the blue true dream of sky

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)




Amen to that

 :)


When I left, I left feeling elated and satisfied, and even if it is not a religion I would devote my entire life to,
I think working out is a great response to the situation of slavery we are currently in.

As is my other alternative,

The Beach.