All Yang no yin

Proclaim Hope and you are adored. 

Explain despair and you are ignored. 

Preach Meaning and be applauded. 

Examine meaninglessness and be criticized. 

The Beast Box: DIY Homemade Strongman Stone Simulator

For years I have wanted to create a homemade device that would simulate some of the heavy lifts that are popular in strongman competitions. Since I already have a selection of heavy barbells and dumbbells, it would seem like I would not need any other implements. And some strongman exercises, such as Farmer's Carries and Deadlifts and various kinds of Clean and Press movements, are fairly easy to duplicate with Dumbbells and Barbells. But other movements, such as the Husafell and other stone lifts, are impossible to simulate with even heavy barbells.

But I did not really want to purchase a $200-$700 metal stone simulator, such as the Titan loadable Atlas Stones, Husafell Simulator, or Husacross. They are expensive and single use. And if the steel gets dented or has a crease, it can easily create a nasty gash. Likewise, I did not want to mold my own stones, because they would be single use, non-adjustable, and take up lots of space (as well as time to make). Finally, while I like training with Sandbags, they are impossible to quickly change weights with. You have to pour them out, seal them up, and weigh them if you want to change weights.

So, basically, my design specifications included the following: I wanted something that was cheap; Something that I could make at home out of wood; Something that wouldn't rip my skin up; Something that offered a variety of hold and carry options; And something that was easily loadable for doing strongman conditioning work. So, after having the idea rattle around in my head for a couple of years, I developed the Beast Box. Here are the plans I created:

Durkheim’s Ghost

At this time of social distance, 

We need shared rituals 

Now more than ever

Even if they are shared 

At a distance 

Over an internet connection 

Or in a choppy livestream. 

.

In an age of 

Alacarte 

Individualized 

Atomized

Disconnected 

Consumerism

We have very few communal rituals 

To bind us together

To remind us

No one is an island

Separate from the main. 

.

And the ersatz rituals we do have

Seek to monetize us

Commodify the experience 

For passive consumption 

As a lifestyle product: 

A sportsball game 

A lackluster blockbuster

A concert of prerecorded audio loops. 

.

So let us embrace 

The communal

The collective

The old fashioned

The traditional

The ritual

The participatory 

As an act of resistance 

Against the totalitarian hedonism 

We are immersed in

And the nihilistic anomie 

It inspires.  

The Bodyweight Quotient -BWQ- A tool for lifelong lifting

Note: The material here has been incorporated and enlarged into my comprehensive Training Program and Principles, as well as my thoughts on the Spirituality of Physical Training. 

I first fell in love with lifting weights at age 12, when my dad enrolled me in a weight lifting course at our local community center. That followed with a summer in a non-air-conditioned hardcore gym near my mom's house on the coast. I was hooked. I felt awesome, I looked good, and I enjoyed the ability and resilience of my body. By the time I was 18, I was benching just less than 400 and squatting just less than 700. Weight lifting followed me through college football and into young adulthood.

Then, as often happens, life got in the way. Career. Marriage. Divorce. Marriage. Grad School. Child one. Job change. Child two. Move and job change. Child three. Keeping up with a busy family of five. I would hit the gym a few weeks a year. But for the most part, I lapsed completely, became very over weight, and generally uncomfortable in my own skin. Then, right before turning 40, and after my Dad was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes (like many others in my family), I decided I wanted to lose weight, and get in shape, and return to a habit that was as spiritually formative as it was physically helpful: Weight lifting.

A Textual Meditation on Theosis

This is mainly a collection of texts from across the first three centuries of the Church which speak about Theosis: Our destiny to be divinized by our Lord Jesus Christ working through the power of his Spirit, so that we may become godlike as Children of God. Theosis is typically an Eastern Orthodox way of describing salvation in Christ, but it is also taught under such ideas as Divinization, Deification, Apotheosis, Union with God, Communion, Sanctification, and even Glorification. While I have written several times about Theosis, I have never really made a catalogue of the main texts that inspire the concept. 

Noah's Flood and God's Justice

Lots of people have lots of questions about the flood of Noah in Genesis 6-9. Why did it happen? How did it happen? And who were those pesky Nephilim? I have answered many of these questions in another article. But another perennial question is how does the God of Wrath displayed in the Flood story relate to the God of Love seen in Jesus Christ. How can the evil of the Flood be justified in the light of the Goodness of God? Although I have touched on this in other articles on Divine Violence and Divine Sorrow, I would like to write more here on how the Flood connects with the larger problem of God and Evil.

On Grace and Faith and Works

There seems to be a great deal of interest and controversy parsing the exact position and proportion and progression of the roles of grace and faith and works in accomplishing and maintaining and completing our salvation. So what is the role of human effort in solving the human plight? Does salvation come entirely from God, or is human belief or action necessary to complete God's work of salvation? The Christian Scriptures offer perspectives such as the following:

Is a Politics of Life possible in a culture of death?

The LORD of Love is the God of Life. God’s Love is shown precisely in healing broken lives, and protecting vulnerable lives, and elevating endangered lives so they find abundant life. The Glory of God is humanity fully alive, and the fullest human life is revealed in God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, who overcame death by the power of his undying Love. And it is Christ who healed and fed and taught so that all might partake in his Life. Therefore it is incumbent upon those of us who claim to serve the God of Love, revealed in the Life of Christ, to actually do what he taught, and live as he lived: By healing and feeding and teaching others his Way of Life. 

This entails a number or commitments personally, ethically, societally, and even politically...

Is Christianity Political?

As we gallop into yet another conflicted election cycle, it is inevitable that people will ask the question of whether Christianity is political. Well, if by politics we mean a cohesive vision of Society which a group of people strive to implement, then yes. Christianity is deeply political. In the synoptic Gospels the core message of Jesus was the immanent arrival of the Kingdom of God. Kingdom is a politically charged word. It is a place ruled by a King. You don't get more political than that. And the phrase "Kingdom of God" occurs 66 times in the New Testament. "Kingdom of Heaven" occurs 31 times, mostly in Matthew. And other than that, Kingdom occurs over 50 more times. If that is not political, I do not know what is. Not only that, but Jesus came to call a community of people into communion with the Living God. And wherever there are people, there are politics. It is simply unavoidable.

Is Social Justice merely a Leftist Talking Point?

We've heard a lot about Social Justice lately. When used in a positive way, it is often connected with the move toward public recognition and equal treatment for historically disenfranchised peoples, including Blacks, Latinx, and Queer persons. When used in a negative way, Social Justice is portrayed as a kind of Leftist "trojan horse" to inflict good hearted people with guilt and shame and even debt because of historic policies and events they had nothing directly to do with. So, is "social justice" just some kind of newly devised left-wing catch phrase designed to browbeat Americans into policies which are at odds with the foundational principles of our civilization?

Deuteronomy Five Seventeen

A didactic poem

Hope in a Hollow Culture

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” (Ecclesiastes 1.2) 

It is easy to lose Hope in a counterfeit Consumer Culture like ours. Outwardly, we appear to have every resource and luxury, but inwardly so many of us are hollow and empty...

A Squandered Jubilee

It seems God has given us what could be a Jubilee year. But we are squandering it. 

“You will make the fiftieth year holy, proclaiming freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be a Jubilee year for you: each of you must return to your family property and to your extended family. The fiftieth year will be a Jubilee year for you. Do not plant, do not harvest the secondary growth, and do not gather from the freely growing vines... The land will give its fruit so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it... The LORD says: The land must not be permanently sold because the land is mine. You are just immigrants and foreign guests of mine.” (Leviticus 25:10–11, 19, 23) 

Sam Harris’ Monstrous Moral Landscape

I recently picked up Michael Brooks’ book about the “Intellectual Dark Web” in which he critiques the views of several “renegade” intellectuals, including the famous secular crusader Sam Harris. This was one of those instances where I was reminded of something I intended to write, but never got around to. In particular, around 2013 I read through Harris’ 2010 book entitled “The Moral Landscape”. In it, Harris advocates the idea that Moral Values can be derived from empirical observation alone. While this thesis is problematic on its own, what makes it especially problematic for Harris is an incendiary moral claim that he made six years prior in an earlier book: 

A Mediation on James Three

Words are a gift

An intimate gift

A holy gift

From the Word

Through the words

By our words 

We are invited 

To climb into someone else’s soul

To think their thoughts alongside them

To see through their eyes

To feel with their heart

To imagine their imaginations

And dream their dreams

Such is the sacred power of words. 

.

And yet we live in World

Deaf to words

And blind to the Word

Because we spew words frantically and frenetically 

We fire them like bullets to slay our enemies

We use words to lure and trap and ensnare

We prostitute our words

We whore them out for power and praise

We use them to manipulate and infiltrate

And desecrate

The Temple of the Soul

Using our many many many words

For anything

For everything 

Except communication and communion

Our use of words is to the Gift of the Word

What pornography is to the Marriage Bed. 

.

Words are a gift

Words are a weapon

Words are a tool

Words are a lure

Words can be signposts 

Pointing to the creative Word of Love and Light

Or they can be directions

Leading us to the depths of Hell

So take care how you use them. 

.

A poem on the occasion 

Of my 500th post to this blog

May my words be part of the solution

And not part of the problem

28 Summers

28 summers ago I fell in love with Jesus

Not all at once

But a growing awareness

Starting with a desperate deal

Heal my life Jesus!

And I will live that life for you!

Little did I know what that would entail

But Jesus was faithful when I was faithless

And so unfolding over several months

This new love became real

Until one late night

On a Christmas break

At a Taco Bell

I knew I belonged to Jesus

Deep down in my gut

And it wasn’t just bean and cheese tacos talking. 

Christ and the Cosmos: A Review and Proposal for Trinitarianism

Recently I finished reading "Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine" by Keith Ward. It is a stunning and masterful restatement of the idea of the Trinity in light of the findings of modern science and the philosophy of personal idealism. In it, he lays out a powerful case for why the Trinity should be conceived as three Intersubjective Relations within One Divine Self, rather than as three Independent Persons in a Community of Three Divine Selves. I have written before about the difference between this "One Self" or "One Consciousness" view of the Trinity versus a "Three Self" or "Three Consciousness" view of the Trinity. 

Social Collapse and Divine Judgment

The LORD says: Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O children of Israel? Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir? (Amos 9:7)

The history of Israel is given as a Pattern of how God works with all people groups through all time. From the oppression and enslavement that led to the liberation of God’s people in the the Exodus, to the idolatry and injustice that led to the discipline of God’s people in the Exile: It reveals the Pattern God follows in dealing with peoples and nations. What God has done in the history of Israel, God has also done in the history of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians and the Philistines and the Arameans. And what God has done in those nations, God also does in all other nations and peoples and cultures. 

Here's how that works out...

A Provocation on Irony and Cynicism

Novelist David Foster Wallace once observed: “Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.” From newscaster comedians to blockbuster movies to social media, we are drenched in irony and sarcasm and cynicism that pretends to complain about the way things are. But secretly many don’t want to change anything about it. They get too much profit and popularity from the dysfunctional and destructive system we live in. Irony has become the song of the caged bird who is secretly scared to death of leaving its cage. Irony is merely ersatz resistance: It makes us feel like we are rejecting the system and rebelling against injustice, when in fact constant irony imprisons our imaginations to “what is possible” and adjusts our behavior to the “the way things are”. Using irony, we complain as we obey. But we still obey nonetheless. And when irony and cynicism become orthodoxy, then sincerity and hope become subversion of what is “realistic”. So let’s really become realists and demand the impossible with sincerity and hope. 

Flawed Biblical Heroes and Racist Monuments

Recently the WSJ published a deeply flawed argument for keeping racist monuments in public spaces. Basically, the argument is that since churches celebrate flawed saints, then public land should be used to celebrate racist heroes of a racist rebel cause (and if we don't, we are forsaking our "history"). Some points of contradiction: