Sonnet I (October 2012)

By Rick | Published November 16, 2012

I wrote this for a reason, but that reason evaporated earlier this week so I decided simply to post it here so at least someone could enjoy it. This is my first attempt at a sonnet. Be gentle with me. – R

Through a furiously wild, tangled wood,
I wander, alone and moon-lit by night.
The path long-gone, I have now understood,
A lone man can be blinded by the light.

Up, up, up the tree-covered crag I climb.
Then I see, in silver, a doe dances.
I approach, heedless in my haste, in time
She flees, stops ahead, turns around, glances.

I slow my pace, willing myself patience,
Carefully picking her steps, she draws near.
I know the dance and the tune is ancient,
As my heart pounds, she puts aside her fear.

By a brook, a tree, she dances softly.
She dances alone: does she dance for me?

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Ending Afghanistan’s Culture of Rape

By Rick | Published December 11, 2011

The Good Men Project was kind enough to post a piece of mine here: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/ending-afghanistan%E2%80%99s-culture-of-rape/

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Brief Thought on Rick Perry

By Rick | Published December 11, 2011

Some friends and I were discussing Rick Perry’s newest ad, complaining about the “war on religion.” This is part of one of my responses. I’ll write a longer response for the blog later:

…People, atheists or otherwise, engage me seriously all the time about my Christianity without insulting me. And, either way, someone insulting me for being a Christian is just laughable. So what if they do? That’s my point. If God is for us, who can be against us? That some Christians feel “persecuted” because someone makes fun of them is humiliating for those of us who thank God that he has given us the chance to love him in peace.

Obama doesn’t feel the need to trot out his Christianity or belief in God at every turn to stir up the base. I seem to recall Jesus saying something about the hypocrites doing this, actually. And I consider Jesus to be a more useful authority on Christianity than Fox & Friends. Instead we have ass-clowns like Rick Perry pissing all over Americans risking their lives for this country to score political points with buck-toothed, bow-legged, inbred hicks who can’t simply let it be. I think repealing DADT was a dumb idea, too, but I also think that insulting men and women risking their lives for their country (while his flabby ass sits back and can’t even be bothered to learn his own talking points) is a kind of classless scarcely equaled by a major presidential candidate in this country. Or douchebags like Donald Trump awkwardly trying to insist that they’re Christian in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Because they know that the mindless hordes will vote for a fellow Christian tribesman, no matter how morally contemptible.

Christians are not supposed to be in power. We are supposed to be speaking up for the voiceless, the poor, the weak, the sick, the tired, the lame. Instead Christians have greedily grasped at earthly power, thoughtlessly selling away our immortal souls for temporal riches and tribal glory. We are supposed to be the conscience of the system, not the system itself.

Posted in Christianity, Theology | Leave a comment

Justice and Mercy…Not The Same Thing

By Rick | Published November 14, 2011

I’ll often read people speaking of how they desire “peace and justice.” This always strikes me as peculiar, because usually these people are angry about something and I wonder at their conflation of those two concepts. Not to say that peace is never just or that justice never entails a return to peace, but I generally conceive of justice, quite simply, as people getting what they deserve. (Today, we’ll leave aside the philosophical hassle of determining who decides what people deserve.) Sometimes this includes great rewards. Sometimes it involves punishment. So, a thief receiving justice would receive what he deserves: some sort of punishment. Many argue that rather than punishment in prison, the thief should receive counseling, job training, and other such things in order to reduce the risk of recidivism and give him a better chance in life. I agree with this. The same people will then argue that this is true justice.

There, I must take issue. This is not justice, it’s mercy. Mercy is grace; it’s given but undeserved. Thief does not deserve our help, but it sure is corking of us to provide it to him anyway. Mercy may be the most practical decision; I think mercy is often is a better choice than vengeance-centered justice. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that it’s still mercy, and therefore undeserved.

Since I generally agree with the recommendations of those who call mercy justice, why am I picking a semantic argument? After all, it’s human nature to use words without philosophical precision. I do it on this blog, I’m sure. But I generally recommend against such imprecision in these sorts of philosophical debates, and I include non-academic discussions in the public forum in this recommendation.

The reason is that people will use the same word as shorthand for related but different concepts and then, in an unconscious verbal sleight-of-hand, will treat the concepts as identical. This gives the new definition the appeal of the old definition (because it’s the same word), while totally changing the meaning. It also leads to awkward protests insisting on “justice” rather than punishment for criminals and dictators, when really mercy is what the protester desires to see implemented. I am perfectly fine debating the merits of justice vs. mercy, but I think that trying to conflate the terms ultimately has the effect of making debate impossible by silencing one side — the side which is checkmated by their opponents’ appropriation of all terms in the debate. How is one even to argue when two concepts are given the same name?

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Persistence Seeking

By Rick | Published November 6, 2011

“He did evil because he had not set his heart on seeking the LORD.” (2 Chronicles 12:14)

Today I’ll talk a little bit about this whole “persistence seeking” thing which I mention periodically: what it means, why it matters. If Celtic Christianity is the why of my life, then persistence seeking is the how.

I draw the name primarily from persistence hunting, an ancient practice in which early humans — a natural running animal and an apex predator, according to some biologists — would capture their prey by forcing the prey to keep running until it collapsed of exhaustion. Humans played to their incredible powers of endurance and thus overcame significant disadvantages of size and speed. Our ancestors would trot along, keeping the prey in sight. When the animal would attempt to rest, Fred Flintstone would put on a burst of speed to push the animal back into a run until it could no longer run. A human who simply chased the animal and tried to capture it would be unsuccessful, but a human who hung in the chase at a moderate pace would have food that night.

Many new Christians take off at a sprint in pursuit of Christ, and this is good. But eventually, nearly everyone must slow down. Everyone will hit a spiritual dry spell. What do you do when this happens? I admit that sometimes I’ve simply sat down and quit. At times in the chase, I’ve seen a patch of tasty-looking but poisonous berries, and stopped to enjoy something that seemed easier and more pleasant (only to receive a rude surprise). Of course, the berries have a residual effect that keeps me from getting back on the trail despite my best efforts, and I am compelled to heal. Sometimes this has kept me off the trail of the White Stag well past the point where I was fit to continue. Naturally, once I continued the pursuit, I found that the Stag had not gone nearly as far as I’d feared and that getting back onto the trail was the hardest part.

Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy (an incredible book which changed my whole outlook on life and faith), wrote about how not sinning often replaced knowing God as the goal of Christian life. Willard points out that not sinning does not guarantee knowing God any more than not going to Rome guarantees arriving in Paris. But if you go to Paris, that implies not ending up in Rome. So by continuing to strive to know God — by continually pursuing the Stag — we end up not sinning. (Or at least, sinning less.) Neat!

So the race is not always to the swift; rather, we must simply stay in it. This is why I use the metaphor of persistence hunting. I refer to seeking in the same sense that we normally do in the church: constantly pursuing the heart of God and trying to know him better. In a broader sense of the word, an attitude of seeking will help us to realize that we’ve never reached the destination until we’ve gone on to Elysium. Whether you’re the Pope or the chief of sinners (or both), you will have to seek for your whole life. Sometimes great bursts of speed and effort will be necessary, but mostly you will simply have to hang in. Remember Paul: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

I anticipate an obvious question: what does it even mean to seek after God? How do we do this? Of course, even in a regenerate state we will never truly catch the Stag, but we can continually draw closer. Time and again, I find value in participation in a Christian community of like-minded seekers who are not merely resting on their redeemed laurels but instead are continuing to pursue greater intimacy with His Highest. Wherever two or three gather in his name, there he is with them. Seek out things which, for you, make you reflect on his majesty. For me, this is spending time in nature — a reminder of the spectacular power of God which cannot help but drive me to my knees. Learn the things he has tried to tell you: through the Bible, through the words of other Christians (spoken or written), through the words and actions of other people. Finally, seek the presence of God in prayer. As Moses only saw the presence of God once in his whole life, so you may not directly know God’s presence. But some day you will: this side or the other.

Posted in Pensees, Theology | Leave a comment

Bloody but Unbowed

By Rick | Published October 29, 2011

So the Good Men Project was recently kind enough to publish a piece I wrote on Stoic philosophy and how it applies to modern life. Check it out here. Thanks to GMP.

Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Rick’s Rules For The Gym; Or, How Not To Waste Your Time While Not Forcing Me To Bite My Tongue Off

By Rick | Published June 19, 2011

 “Strong people are harder to kill, and more useful generally.” — Mark Rippetoe in Starting Strength

If you do nothing else, follow the CrossFit prescription for “World-Class Fitness in 100 Words”: “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports. “ 

1. First: determine your goals. If you have no goals, how can you figure out how to accomplish them? You need a mission before you can complete it. As in war, so in peace. So figure out what your priorities are. Are you just trying to look better? What does “better” mean to you? Skinny? Muscular? “Toned”? (Dumbest word in the universe.) Not-as-fat? Or are you trying to get in better condition? If so, what do you want to be better at? Staying on your feet all day at work? Running a mile? Picking up your kid? Playing football with friends? You must figure out your goals. And none of these are goals, by the way. They’re only goals once you put numbers to them: “I want to lose 10 pounds.” “I want to drop 5% of my body fat.” “I want to run a mile in seven minutes.” “I want to bench press 225 pounds.” Have follow-on goals for once you accomplish your initial goals. Have a long-term goal and intermediate goals.   

2.  Being skinny: if you’re just trying to be as skinny as possible, starve yourself or throw up all your food and run yourself to death. You’ll get skinny. You’ll also be weak and useless, though, and terribly unhealthy. So please don’t do this unless vanity is all that matters to you. In which case you and I have basically nothing in common.

 3. Weight loss vs. fat loss: having a relatively low body fat percentage (maybe 10-15% for men, 20%ish for women) is great. It keeps your heart and joints from killing themselves because of all that dead weight. It helps you stay healthier. It makes it easier for you to do stuff: chase your kids around the house, move your own furniture, carry groceries, play sports, etc. Losing weight in many cases entails fat loss, but sometimes it’s a loss of muscle and fat. I lost five pounds in August 2010. My body looked roughly the same (maybe a little smaller). I was not more ripped. I was measurably weaker. I just lost muscle. Weight loss is not always good. Fat loss is almost always good.

4. Form follows function. If your body gets strong and capable, it will look really really good. Anyone who’d like — ask me and I’ll send you the pictures of CrossFit athletes from the 09 CrossFit Games.

 5. Diet. This is 80-90% of your body composition. If you are living off of grains — particularly the refined kind — and have snacks of potatoes and corn, you are going to destroy your ability to recover, much less improve. Eventually you will destroy your body. Avoid processed food. Try to eat organic fruits and vegetables, grass-fed beef, etc. Take a fish oil supplement which is USP certified. Stick to foods that cavemen had; it’s what you evolved to eat. If you are looking to work out so you can keep eating cupcakes, you’re only going to be frustrated about how you “can’t” lose the weight. You can. You just don’t want it bad enough. I know, I know, you insist you really do want it but you just can’t. But you really don’t. It’s like any other addiction; you have to figure out a way to break its hold on you. It may take years – decades, even. Better that than to give up. 

6.       More on sugar: sugar alters your mood. It’s a drug, and it’s addictive. Your body eventually becomes insensitive to insulin (which causes the changes after you ingest sugar). Insulin insensitivity is really, really bad. And dangerous. It may be at least partially to blame for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s. Eat more fat and more protein. You’ll feel full longer and your body will use it more effectively. Also: sugar-free/zero-calorie shit will probably give you cancer, and will often cause the same insulin spikes as eating actual sugar. The metabolic changes caused by insulin are what will make you fat rather than fit; calorie-counting is unnecessary.  Avoid “fat-free” foods. Fat is generally good, and usually “fat-free” means “tons of sugar added so it doesn’t taste like absolute crap.” (Read Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories. It’s a huge project but it’s worth every second.)

 7.       Stop using the elliptical. If you’re injured and cannot run at all, do what you have to do. But otherwise stop using the elliptical. It screws up your running form; it makes running appear way easier than it actually is; it inhibits developing greater muscular endurance and cardiorespiratory fitness. Want something “low-impact”? Get some Vibram Fivefingers or other minimalist shoes and practice running basically barefoot. Your body will absorb the impact the way it evolved to instead of the way Nike and your high school gym coach told you to. (Read Born to Run by Chris MacDougall.) 

Additionally, you can get faster at running without running all the time. You can improve VO2 max (cardiorespiratory fitness) with Tabata intervals of box jumps, body weight squats, heavy bag work, or just about anything else: 20 seconds of all-out intensity followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated eight times for a total of four minutes. (All-out means all-out, by the way, not “as hard as you feel like.” As hard as you CAN.) If you’re like me, you may need to do extra muscular conditioning to keep your legs and feet functioning. I’ve found that bodyweight calf raises (toes in and toes out) work wonders.

8.       Stop doing bicep curls. They do almost nothing for you; they’re purely for vanity. If you want bigger guns, do chin-ups with a weighted belt or backpack on. Chin-ups will actually make you more fit, and they’ll still cause hypertrophy in your biceps.

 9.       STOP CHEATING. Nobody is impressed by you benching 315 if you stop six inches off your chest, have help coming off the rack, and bridge up onto your shoulders without keeping your butt on the bench. Do the exercise right. If you have to cheat to complete the exercise, then the weight is too heavy. Suck up your ego and go lighter. This makes it easier for you to measure progress, and it helps you to ensure progress by not allowing you to cheat when you don’t feel like doing things right. If you always do a proper bench, then you know that the improvement of your three-rep max from 215 to 225 is legitimate. If you cheat, you might have not gotten stronger at all. Be consistent in your form. 

10.   Squat deep. You will injure your knees if you squat shallow, because you will develop strength imbalances which put torque on your joints. (“Deep” means that the crease in your hip is lower than the knee cap, not “till it’s hard at this weight.”) 

11.   Have a program. You developed goals, right? Well now develop a program to reach those goals. Stick to it. RECORD YOUR WORK SO YOU CAN MEASURE YOUR PROGRESS. Have a plan. If you do not know exactly what you are planning on doing in the gym to improve the moment you walk in, you are not training seriously. Seriously. It’s fine to go into the gym and goof off sometimes because you need a break or you want to fiddle with some new equipment they have. But if you just walk into the gym and sort of aimlessly pick up stuff that’s free, I promise you with absolute certainty that you will make zero long term progress. 

12.   “Do hard stuff” is not a program. Yes, sometimes you should do extremely challenging workouts as a gut check. But regularly running for three hours or lifting till muscle failure is not only unnecessarily miserable, it’s counterproductive. Your body simply cannot handle the volume of training; so it starts cannibalizing muscle. Yes, if you overtrain you can get weaker. 

13.   Weigh yourself daily. I say this because it’s much easier to understand changes in your workout or diet if you’re at least tracking your bodyweight.  If on Monday #1 you weigh 175 and you weigh the same on Monday #2, while trying to work out and eat right all week, then you know very little. It’s easy to become discouraged. But if you weigh 175 on Monday #1, 174 on Tuesday #1 and Wednesday #1, 173 on Thursday #1, and 172 on Friday #1, then you know your weight was probably affected by your weekend binge on nachos. More importantly, though, you know that you CAN MAKE PROGRESS. It’s much easier to give up those nachos if you see clearly that they were what undid your gains. The more information you have, the less of a “black box” your body is and the more able you are to use it well.

14.   Make sacrifices. If your excuse for being weak/fat/whatever is that you are too tired after work to work out, and you don’t like to work out in the morning because you don’t want to have to get up that early, and you can’t work out on your lunch break because it makes you sweaty and you can’t shower at home, and plus what if somebody saw you working out and thought you looked funny, then you don’t want it bad enough. Getting fit may entail giving up things that are important to you: time with friends or family, favorite foods, time to read, etc. (Notice I did not say sleep. Sleep is not optional. SLEEP.) You have to decide if you want to make these sacrifices. Understand, also, that you may not get where you want to be right away. Maybe you can’t afford anything but cheap refined pasta and mystery meat. Do what you can with what you have. You can always do something.

15.   BE PERSISTENT. I know some people cry or get self-destructive when they see their weight is still too high, or when they can’t complete a lift, or just have a lousyworkout. We’re not that kind of people, though, right? We’re DOERS. We do not lie around feeling sorry for ourselves, or at least we don’t for long. If we get knocked out of the saddle by eating a box of donuts or a whole pizza or not working out for a couple of weeks, we stand right back up, dust ourselves off, and ride on. Right? Right!

Posted in Fitness/Nutrition | Leave a comment

Ahoy.

By Rick | Published April 26, 2011

Hi, I’m Rick. I’m an emergent Christian currently living in California. My interests include philosophy, military history, food, culture, Christianity, theology, exercise and fitness, nutrition, science, gender studies, and martial arts. This blog is an ad hoc collection of my thoughts on these and other subjects. I also include links I find interesting and books, movies, and art I find thought-provoking.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment