Treadmilling home

One of the most decided down sides of my departure from Minneapolis is the personal loss of the running trails of the Twin Cities. I’ve logged thousands of miles on the Twin Cities running paths, mostly the River Road loops, Minnehaha Creek and the Minneapolis lakes.  I love the running paths and the scenic views.  The trails are beautiful in all seasons, and I enjoy running them throughout the year.  I usually run alone and I’ve come to know the trails so well - the distances and splits, the water fountains, shady loops for hot summer afternoons or sheltered stretches for windy winter days.

It has been over four years since I’ve run indoors and much longer since I’ve run on a treadmill.  The thought of running on a treadmill has so little appeal to me.  It takes so much more discipline to run on a treadmill in my opinion.  Outside, the natural world is so inviting that even on days when I have almost no motivation, if I can just get myself down the block and into a bit of rhythm, I’m very soon lost in the enjoyment of the run.   A treadmill seems like a foreboding prison guard, keeping me from the bright outdoors.

Nevertheless, with the travel schedule I now have, I’m forced to come to terms with the treadmill.  Not that I can really enjoy treadmilling, but I can tolerate it.  This morning, I was on the treadmill at the Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi.  The dull monotony of running on a treadmill was difficult to manage.  I started converting the kilometers to miles in my mind so I could gauge where I was in the run.  As the time wore on, I started to picture where I might be on my favorite running loop.  Most runners have a favorite loop, I suppose - sort of the go-to run or the bread-and-butter route.  Mine is the Ford-Lake Loop on the River Road system.  I typically run this loop 70 or so times each year.  Soon I was imagining myself crossing the Ford Bridge and heading north on the East River Road.  Kilometers would tick past and I’d do the conversion to find myself at Summit Avenue and then making my way onto the Lake Street Bridge.

Often when I’m running unfamiliar courses and having a difficult outing, I will count down the miles by imagining I am on a familiar course.  Since every treadmill run is unfamiliar and difficult for me, it seemed quite natural to find myself counting down the kilometers near the end of the run.  I crossed under 46^th Street and Minnehaha falls.  With one kilometer to go I was crossing over Hiawatha and ascending toward 34^th Avenue.  I sped the treadmill up a few notches for the final stretch.  Turning the corner at 34^th and crossing over Minnehaha Creek I often pick up the pace as I aim for the intersection of 47^th Street and 34^th Avenue.  I reach down and turn off my Garmin 305 as I walk the final block.  The hum of the treadmill disappears as I grasp the door handle.  My run is finished but imagination hasn’t.

Missing my house on 33^rd Avenue and missing my family… Wishing I were home.

Maize Lethal Necrosis

This past week I attended a CIMMYT-sponsored workshop on Maize Lethal Necrosis, a very serious disease that has developed rapidly in Eastern Africa over the past two years.  MLN involves infection with two different viruses which combine to severely reduce or completely eliminate crop yield in susceptible varieties.  The first documented case of MLN in Africa occurred in 2011, causing extensive crop loss in small pockets of western Kenya.  MLN has subsequently moved throughout much of the mid-altitude maize growing region of western Kenya and has also been identified in eastern Uganda and northern Tanzania.

The workshop included representatives from the national agricultural research centers, private seed companies, national phytosanitary regulatory agencies, universities and CIMMYT scientists from eastern and southern Africa.

On Wednesday, we drove two hours to visit a screening trial near Naivasha.  It is difficult to describe how devastating the disease is.  I have seen foliar and stalk diseases, but never anything like what I witnessed in Naivasha.  The most susceptible varieties were dying outright prior to flowering, the majority of the varieties were showing chlorotic symptoms and stunting, and the few relatively tolerant varieties were still suffering significant yield reduction.  Even plants that appeared to be developing normally often had cobs with no seed development.  It was a sobering day.

The disease is leading to a crisis for maize farmers and the seed companies who serve them.  Farmers with very limited resources have already incurred significant losses and are now unable to grow their most important crop.  Seed companies are left with inventory of lines and hybrids that they can no longer sell.  Reduced maize production in the region will invariably lead to price increases.  Since maize is the primary staple food in the region, higher prices will affect the poorest throughout eastern Africa.  It is a very serious situation.

Please remember the farmers of eastern Africa in prayer.  Many people are facing hardship because of this disease.

“He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.”  Psalm 102:17

 

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

Thomas Merton - Thoughts in Solitude

I wrote the above quotation out on a notecard and posted it above my desk in graduate school.  I used to read this on the long nights studying statistics or plant metabolism or quantitative genetics.  The thought that studying to be a plant breeder could be somehow connected to following God's will seemed so abstract at times, and I often wondered if I had taken a wrong turn somewhere.  

"But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing."  

Some nights this simple, desperate prayer seemed the only ray of hope in a confusing and exhausting journey, a road that seemed to be taking me far from the intended path of service I thought I had set out on.  So while I have thoroughly enjoyed the occupation of corn breeding and the outstanding colleagues I've been privileged to work with, and while I am also grateful to have been able to work for nearly twenty years on improving one of the most important cereal grain crops in the world, the opportunity to more directly contribute to poverty alleviation and food security for the most vulnerable seemed far distant.

"...you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost..."  

Nonetheless, what I could not envision, God had clearly in mind.  The road was taking me through experiences of critical professional development and invaluable personal growth far beyond the science and the day to day challenges of commercial corn breeding.  What appeared to me to be a career path far from what I had imagined was in reality a much more profound preparation than I could have comprehended.

Tonight I find myself at the end of an exhausting week - planning and strategizing to help a very talented group of maize breeders and researchers more efficiently develop stronger varieties for the world's poorest farmers.  It is a tremendously humbling task and I hope that I am able, by God's grace, to make a meaningful contribution toward this end.  Yet regardless the result, "... you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."  The outcome is beyond me, but the apprehension of God's grace is always at hand.

Grateful for the sovereign wisdom of God.

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"If you spend yourself on behalf of the hungry

and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

then shall your light rise in the darkness

and your gloom be as the noonday."  Isa 58:10

Cry, the Beloved Country

I recently finished reading, "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton, a book which immediately became a personal favorite.  The story is developed around an elderly Zulu pastor in rural South Africa, 1946, and his journey to Johannesburg in search of his son.  The story touches on several important social and environmental developments of the past century contributing to urbanization, poverty, crime, race relations and community fragmentation.  More importantly though, the story exposes the subtle beauty and stabilizing strength of humility and love.  It displays the power of forgiveness and culminates with a deeply personal commitment to faith in God and His goodness.  In the final pages, Pastor Kumalo is alone, praying in the pre-dawn hours of what will be a terribly sad and solemn day.  His prayer of thanksgiving reminds him of the myriad ways that God was present in his life and in his small community and leads him to contemplate the kindness of God:

"He pondered long over this, for might not another man, returning to another valley, have found none of these things?  Why was it given to one man to have his pain transmuted into gladness?  Why was it given to one man to have such an awareness of God?  And might not another, having no such awareness, live with pain that never ended?"

There are people in our lives who impact us profoundly for good, not so much by their words as by the simple, small actions of their lives - actions they are unaware of, actions reflexively sprung from a depth and beauty of character cultivated by a life of faith and love.  Pastor Kumalo is one of these people, and reading "Cry, the Beloved Country" through the eyes of humility and compassion certainly had this effect on me - it left me wanting to emulate this noble man and left me longing for a closer relationship with God.
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"More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces patience, and patience produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."  Romans 5:3-5
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