13.13. Book #5 2013
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And it gets better every time.
And it gets better every time.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves. (re-read)
One of my favorite passages from the book.
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason "I knew thee that thou wert a hard man." Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he as not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.
5 Rounds
15 pullups
20 situps
25 pushups
30 squats
12:10
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"I recently observed a man from whom I believe God wanted to rid the strength of the self nature. It is my perception that although what he says is true and comes from the inward work of the spirit upon his heart, his intellect is so powerful that it overpowers the gentle work of grace without his even knowing it. Therefore, some of the truth of what he says is lost. People are won more by the annointing that flows from a heart full of grace--by the weapon of love--than by powerful argument.
Aren't the truths that you speak analyzed too much by the intellect and further polished by the imagination? Their effect seems to be lost because they lack simplicity and directness. Like a song, they sound wonderful; but they do not substantially reach and touch the heart. There is no annointing.
Aren't you always looking for something clever or novel to say? Aren't you really showing off the power of your intellect rather than standing back and letting the simple truth speak for itself? Consider what I have said, and the light will reveal much to you. Am I speaking to simply? I only want to speak the truth and the truth alone."
[youtube www.youtube.com/watch
And I don’t care who knows it…
Most of the time, I do not feel 43. 34 maybe. 17 sometimes. 12, too. But far less often 43.
People who are younger than I am, often by a fair number of years, I still think of as my elders. Nearly all professional athletes, for instance. Why is that?
Today is my birthday, which may make it a day for sober reflection, as if every day isn’t already such a day. One day closer death, one day closer to my last basketball game, one day closer to retirement, one day closer to the bike crash I surely will one day have–because I don’t intend any time soon to quit biking, and if you bike long enough, you will fall off sometime–and so on.
In my 43rd year I’d like to eat more vegetables, especially those grown in my own garden. I’d like write more worthwhile blog posts, or at least funnier ones. I’d like to revisit Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play an afternoon game. I’d like spend more summer evenings strumming my uke by the campfire. I’d like to join a Sunday School class again (why, five years ago, did we move from a church that gave up on adult Sunday School to one that had given up on adult Sunday School?). I’d like like to dunk a basketball one more time–but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
I’m looking forward to it.
Dog-Heart by Diana McCaulay
June 8, Lord willing, J. and I will run in our first half-marathon together.
I probably won’t put one of those 13.1 stickers on my car, even though I’d kind of like to.
Maker of heaven and earth, space and time, entering this new year I put my hope in you, trusting that you will provide whatever I need for body and soul and turn to my good whatever adversity you send me. Thank you that you are able to do this because you are almighty God, and that you desire to do this because you are a faithful Father. Amen. (Heidelberg Catechism 26)
"It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile . . . That is not imagination. No, it kills it. . . . Your universities? Oh, yes, you have learned men who collect . . . facts, and facts, and empires of facts. But which of them will rekindle the light within?" (E.M. Forster, Howard's End, p. 30)
Strained or pulled or–who knows, maybe tore?–a calf muscle playing basketball yesterday. Nothing major, just a little painful pushing off and landing. Gonna go easy on it a little while. Still, there’s a lot of other body parts to exercise, so tonight’s workout will be:
P90X Chest and Back + ab ripper X
Shouldn’t cause any problems for my moderately sore calf.
We make up our own workouts patterned after actual crossfit workouts. This was Tuesday’s backyard workout for Jeanie and me.
Homegrown Filthy 50
50 wall ball shots
50 box jumps
50 push ups
50 squats
50 pull-ups (d.b. heavy pants for J)
50 double unders (100 regular jump ropes for J)
50 kb swings (25#/15#)
50 burpees
50 situps
J’s time= 22:02 R’s time= 17:24
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By now Penelope, Icarius' wise daughter,
Had set her chair across from the suitors
And heard the words of each man in the hall.
During all their laughter they had been busy
Preparing their dinner, a tasty meal
For which they had slaughtered many animals.
But no meal could be more graceless than the one
A goddess and a hero would serve to them soon.
After all, they started the whole ugly business.
Did p90x workout tonight–shoulders and arms.
Played basketball at noon for an hour. Won 4 lost 1.
Today’s physical exercise included:
14 mile bike ride in what I can only describe as perfect weather. (Ok, it was a little windy at times, but who cares, really?)
“Helen”
3 rounds of
400 meter run (3 laps in my back yard)
21 KB swings (30# dumbell for me, 20# for J)
12 pullups (12 chair dips for J)
My time: 7:15 (shaved 41 seconds off my time from 8/2)
J’s time: 8:30 (shaved 49 seconds off her time from 8/2)
“Perfect you are, beyond all change, and today does not reach its end in you, yet it does end in you, since all days are in you, nor could they have a course of transit not defined by you. But your years never run out, your years are a single today; and our days, no matter how many–not only our own but those of all before us–run their course through it, with their own being and identity, while you alone are identical with yourself, so every tomorrow to come, every yesterday gone, is made in your today."
Augustine, Confessions, 1.II (Garry Wills, trans.)
“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”
Spent fifteen minutes scrolling through Facebook feed, reading status updates and comments–something I almost never do.
What a colossal waste of time.
Being the day when we celebrate wordiness, redundancy, and general wastefulness in an effort to purge it from our souls and go back to living simple, economical, and celebratory lives. This would be the only day of the year Fox News and MSNBC would be allowed on the air, for instance.
