MILES FOR MCC: PART 1
“And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” — From Chariots of Fire
JEREMY WALTNER – PUBLISHER
Corey Miller wasn’t more than a third grader when, one day while motoring to school on the family’s 1940s-era Doodlebug with his older brother Craig, the belt on the 5-horsepower scooter with a John Deere seat broke and the two boys were left stranded well short of Hillside Country School, District 92 located about 2 ½ miles as the crow flies from the family farm.
Craig ended up hitching a ride with a passing bicyclist to get help.
Corey?
Well, he continued to school by foot — running all the way.
“I didn’t think I’d be abandoned,” he says today, “but I thought, ‘Well, I’m only a mile-and-a-half from the country school; why not jog it in?’ And as I was running, I remember thinking, ‘This running thing is pretty cool.’ It didn’t feel off-putting at all; it felt energizing.”
That early love for running is what led Corey to an uncanny appreciation for crossing distances by foot, so much so that, after enrolling at Freeman Public several years later, he even trained for Rally Day.
“Who does that?” he laughs. “Those races are 25-yard dashes — they’re sprints — and here I was running out the driveway to the end of the section, half-a-mile one way and then a half-a-mile back.
There’s something about me and running long distances that has been engrained in me since I was a kid.”
Today Corey is 56 years old and, since February of 2017, he has been the pastor at the Salem-Zion Mennonite Church — a sister congregation to his home church, Salem Mennonite, located 2½ miles to the south. He lives on a farm with his wife, Nancy, one mile south of Salem-Zion and across the road from the farm on which he grew up with brothers Craig and Charles and younger sister Jody, where their parents, Florence and Arlen, nurtured the children to good health, in body, mind and soul.
Corey’s journey through life has taken him from Freeman Academy to Freeman Junior College — he was part of the final graduating class of 1986 — to Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kan. Following his graduation from Tabor in 1988 he went on to serve at Trinity and First Mennonite in Hillsboro; Tabor Mennonite in Newton, Kan.; and then West Union Mennonite near Iowa City, Iowa, where daughters Hannah and Rachel came of age, before accepting the call at Salem-Zion.
Throughout that journey, running has been a part of it, whether through cross-country and track at Freeman Academy, road races in his early adult years or through marathons, the first of which he ran when he was in his 30s.
Running. There’s just something about it.
“There’s something about the breathing, the moving, and I’ve never ever worn music,” he says. “I know that there’s inspirational songs, I know there are great podcasts, but this is prayer time. This is time for listening — deep listening to God’s creation, God’s spirit, and you wouldn’t believe how many ideas have come into my mind, sermon ideas or ministry ideas or the needs of the people. I credit that to being out there in that rhythm — of listening and letting the heart do its thing, the lungs do their thing and God’s spirit do its thing.”
Corey doesn’t know if he had those same thoughts when he ran from the scooter to his school as a boy all those years ago, but he doesn’t dismiss it, either.
“I don’t know how else to explain why that one day of running to the country school was so exhilarating,” he says. “I felt the crispness of the cool morning and sensed the goodness of God in that. I think there’s something about that that hooked me early on.”
From Corey’s Facebook page, Sept. 5, 2022:
Mennonite Central Committee has been providing relief and hope to people all over the world for 102 years. MCC’s ministry continues to bear witness to Christ’s healing love to all who are in need. This is the Gospel or Good News of Jesus.
To honor MCC’s ongoing ministry, I am attempting to run 100 miles this week to raise awareness and encourage people to consider contributing to MCC. If you want to join me in this endeavor, you can give directly to MCC. Go to https://donate.mcc.org. As of this morning, I’ve already run 12 miles and more this evening. Every morning and evening at 6:30, I will be running
I’ll give a little update each day so you can stay tuned this week. Grace and Peace….
Corey’s seven-day, 100-mile journey as a tribute to MCC, which he completed last Sunday, was actually years in the making and only came to be through a confluence of events outside of his control.
Corey first got the idea in the late 1990s after running a marathon in Goessell, Kan., and seeing runners with the Goessell High School cross-country team wearing blue shirts that read, simply, 100 miles.
“What is that?” Corey thought.
Turns out the cross-country coach there had challenged his runners to put in 100 miles in exchange for the T-shirt, and Corey remembers thinking, “That would be something and I wondered about it for a while, but time goes on.”
Indeed, it wasn’t until 20 years later, when MCC was observing its 100-year anniversary, that the idea came full circle.
“I thought this would be the perfect time to do something,” he said, but Covid and a heel injury nixed the plans for the time being. No, it wasn’t until he was granted a three-month sabbatical by Salem-Zion that he realized the time had come at last.
And so the journey began, with training beginning in the first months of the year that led to a marathon run in Osage, Iowa on Aug. 20 — a race that went “amazingly well” despite a pulled muscle a few weeks prior.
“I thought, ‘We’re going to go for it,’” Cory said. “‘We’re going to do this thing.’”
Facebook, Sept. 6
Day 2 of my 100 mile week is going well. By this evening, (and with God’s grace) I will have covered 30 miles! A little sore but still going!
As I ran this morning, soybean fields surrounded me and I recalled the first time I heard about Mennonite Central Committee: On a Sunday evening program at Salem Mennonite Church (Freeman, SD), Lee Brockmueller shared stories and slides of the time he spent in Bangladesh where he shared his knowledge of growing soybeans in that area. As a young person, I marveled at how far Lee traveled to talk about a crop that was so common in South Dakota.
MCC continues to look for and listen to the needs of those in the world and respond with God’s love and compassion for all. Learn more about all the ways that MCC is working for peace and justice on the MCC website.
I will keep you updated on my 100 mile adventure as we all pray and work for peace.
Corey covered the same route every day — the section that encompasses his home, his church and its cemetery, farms of members of the congregation who have been lost and that traces the route that he and brother Craig took up until that Doodlebug broke down on the way to school.
That’s what he experienced every day at 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. — the same route, over and over.
“Monotony is highly underrated,” he says. “Some people look at it and think, ‘That’s so boring.’ No, there’s something about that. What exhausts some people actually exhilarates me.
“It’s me being a little rebellious of glitz and glamor.”
Every time, Corey set out with a custom T-shirt made by his oldest daughter Hannah — a blue, moisture-absorbing Dry-Fit job that reads “Run for Relief” on the front and “100 miles” on the back. Because of its style and the rush with which it had to be shipped in time for that first run, it set him back a few bucks.
“This is an $80 shirt,” he laughs. “But I’m getting my money’s worth out of it.”
Facebook: Sept. 7
Day 3 of the 100 mile challenge for MCC. While I was able to run 12 miles this morning, it was a physical and mental grind. 42 total miles in the books as of this morning! Thanks for your prayers and support!
I’m including this picture of an old plow that my father had. I’m reminded that when MCC got started in 1920, Mennonites in North America sent food and aid to those suffering in Russia. In addition to the food, several Fordson tractors and Oliver plows were also given to help farmers whose horses were taken or stolen because of the political unrest.
MCC models what it means to look around and see how we can help alleviate suffering. Thank you for supporting this Good News ministry!
Corey set out every time from the south driveway at Salem-Zion, headed north to the mile, back east, then to the south, back west and then north again toward the church. Sometimes he put in more miles than others, and always ran more in the morning than in the evening.
He had his hydration and his “goo” — 100 calories of a peanut butter substance he took every four miles — and ice and Aspirin were always at the ready.
“Finish strong but leave a little in the tank because 6:30 is always coming around again,” he said. “It comes in the morning much too soon and then it comes in the afternoon much too soon. It was a mental and physical drain.
“I never felt pain,” Corey says. “But I felt the heavy legs.”
Facebook: Sept. 8
Day 4 of the 100 run challenge for MCC! Early this morning “a great cloud of witnesses”gathered with me to do some running. Members of the Freeman Academy/Marion cross country team joined me for a few miles and it reminded me that strength comes with numbers.
Over the past 100 years, thousands of servants have raised millions of dollars for MCC to provide relief, aid, and hope to hurting people. This is why I run and this is why we serve.
I finished the morning running 10 miles around the section. 56 miles done so ONLY 44 to go!
Corey’s journey continues — and ends — in next week’s edition of The Courier.
