Faith and Fly Balls

Of Gold, Gooses and Eggs

2009-01-24T21:28:00.005-05:00

Late to the party as always, but I'm blogging today about the Yankees huge off-season coup in which they acquired the 3 best players that are going to be available in what might be the next half-decade. Matt Holliday is going to free agency next year and he can expect a true Boston-New York bidding war for his services while Albert Pujols would only leave St. Louis through the management's gross incompetency.

But I find that anyone who has whined about the Yankees using their financial might has also unquestionably demonstrated an immature understanding of the nature of the world. By this, I don't mean to say (in a thick Brooklyn brogue whilst chomping on a cigar and wearing a fedora and overcoat) "That's just the way the world is kid. Deal with it." No, I'm referring to the very nature of the world in which we live; a world that operates on the principle of "equivalent exchange."

I don't believe in accidents. I believe in intelligent design. Poorly designed teams do not win World Series. Teams aren't formed by random collisions of human beings, maple bats and buffalo hide. There's a grand architect who's paid up to $2m per annum to take an abyss of possibilities and speak into existence a team to play 162 games between April and September.

Winning teams don't appear by accident. They have to be designed.

Don't misunderstand the point though. Winning can happen on a budget. Florida in 2003, the Rays this past year or Oakland in every other year are excellent examples of winning poor. Then there are the teams who have won with enormous payrolls. The scrappy Boston Red Sox, the blue-collar champions of every downtrodden Sully, Smitty and Patty have the distinction of fielding the most expensive (2007) and second most expensive (2004) teams to ever win the World Series. Boston fans, however rarely remember this fact when they complain about the Yankees' spending habits.

At any rate, the principle of equivalent exchange applies. Florida built their teams through devastating fire sales that alienated the city they played in. They traded away popular players for talented prospects that would lead them to their next championship. Meanwhile, the Rays paid for their trip to the World Series by fielding fifth place teams for a decade. Being a terrible team for so long has allowed them to amass players with the dazzling upside of B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli and Evan Longoria. They also selected Delmon Young who was sent over to Minnesota in a trade for Matt Garza, a critical piece of the 2008 puzzle. The world operates on equivalent exchange, value for value.

Let's take a moment to understand how baseball operates. Most teams receive a welfare check from the Yankees as a result of MLB's luxury tax. This was instituted to make teams more competitive. Let me say it another way: the Yankees are paying other teams to be better. But the majority of these teams do not put the money back into their baseball product. That $40m the Yankees pay typically lines the owners pockets and fans see not a penny of it. Who is to blame there?

The Yankees do not operate on the same business model that other teams operate on. For perhaps most baseball teams, there's not a big difference between winning 70 games a year or winning 90 games a year if the miss the playoffs. The Yankees however only turn a profit once they make the post-season. Their business model requires winning.

This is why I love the Yankees. Their team is their integrity and value. I don't mean some idiotic amorphous idea like "steroids" or "the love of the game," but the hard fact and truth that the Yankees dedication to fielding the best team that they can is directly related to their survival as a business enterprise. The same holds true for the Boston Red Sox and a few other teams.

If you want to see a disingenuous team, look at Minnesota's Carl Pohlad whose net worth is estimated to be triple that of the Steinbrenner family. He doesn't invest in making a better product, and it doesn't stem from a lack of ability, but a deficiency in desire. Owners like that don't care about Joe SportsFan who watches every year hoping that Kansas City (owned by Walmart) or Seattle (Nintendo) can contend.

Baseball, like all of life, operates on the principle of equivalent exchange. Brian Cashman is the highest paid General Manager for a reason. He's expected to create the best team in the major leagues. He doesn't have the option of holding a fire sale (the contracts are largely immovable), or being the worst team in baseball for a decade, but he does have his owner's incredible wealth. More than that, he has the city of New York which subsidized their new Stadium which is an incredible headwater of revenue streams. He prepared his team and business for a recession. The Steinbrenners offered him opportunity and wealth in exchange for his skills. Isn't that a fair trade and the basis of all good?

I love the fact that the Steinbrenner family owns the Yankees. It's the same love I have for a favorite food vendor or clothing manufacturer. When you find someone who cares about their product and is consistently dedicated to putting the best that they have on the market, doesn't that merit, hasn't that earned the customer's appreciation and loyalty? Why should the fact that the Yankees consistently win be a mark of shame? Each team has their own path to fielding a winning team. There are costs involved with fielding a low-salaried team, whether it's being at the bottom for a decade or destroying your team every 5 years. Why shouldn't Yankee dollars be looked at as the best option? There is no fruit that grows apart from the root. Teams must be built and costs must be paid. The Yankees pay in dollars and other teams pay in loyalty. Choose your currency.

The Joy And Misery

2008-12-25T22:59:00.002-05:00

"The higher we soar the smaller we seem to those that cannot fly."
-- Nietzsche

I wrote in a previous post that escaping boredom permanently required tremendous amounts of pain and sacrifice. Why, someone might ask, would I pay that cost to escape boredom?

It's because it's not painful and we don't see it as a sacrifice. Just a price.

It doesn't truly hurt when I squat 400 lbs. or when I spend my 5th hour writing. I have the strange sensation of burning in my thighs and soreness in my lower back and surely, I'll get light-headed when I write that much, but it doesn't hurt. It's not painful. It's just a bothersome sensation that happens to a weak body. All I need to do is become stronger so I can go further without being bothered by it. It's not a sacrifice anymore than it's a sacrifice when I purchase clothing or food. It's simply an exchange. My effort for my joy. Value for value.

I believe that my effort could procure many things. If it is procuring for me joy, then why should I begrudge it's payment? Hard work is the toll collected at the entrance to Atlantis, home of heroes.

My life finally has value because I have claimed its value. If all I did was see my life as a way to collect entertainment, sense perceptions, or endorphins, then I could not see the value in living. But when I acknowledged its value, then I began to live as if it held its own value. And that has made all the difference. Someone else's misery is my deepest joy.

On the other hand, could someone honestly describe 2 hours in front of a glowing box as "joy?" I cannot imagine that happening. More than that, I will do all that I can to keep such a thought far from my worldview.

Training Video

2008-12-22T07:49:00.001-05:00

Always a sucker for a good training video.

I've decided to focus on training for the triathlon. No more screwing around trying to become the best home run hitter Flushing churches have ever seen. A straight line, a narrow way, that's all I ask for.

10,000

2008-12-16T09:17:00.013-05:00

This is >>why you suck<< according to TC.

The most surprising thing was that they really couldn't find any "naturals." Nor could they find any grinders, people who just worked harder than everybody else but just didn't have the talent to become elite.

The thing that distinguished one from another was simply hard work, nothing else.

But the weird thing is that 10,000 hours — roughly the amount of practice a truly committed devotee could accrue over 10 year — keeps popping up in different fields. Whether you're a writer, a concert pianist, a basketball player, computer programmer, or chess master, true greatness seems to pivot on that magic number.

And later on,

There it was again, hours of practice accrued equates to success. Nothing magical. The more psychologists in Gladwell's book looked at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

And finally,

One can't help but wonder how many Gretzkys, A-Rods, or Ronaldos got left behind because of the calendar. One wonders how many Einsteins, Steve Jobses, or Bill Gateses got lumped in with the "less mature" students because they had the bad luck to be Sagittarius instead of Aquarius.

Gladwell encapsulates the problem thusly:

"Because we so profoundly, personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those that succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail."

The answer might be that often, your perceived failures might not be so much genetic as they are sociological, might not be so physiological as the are psychological, and armed with that knowledge, maybe you're not necessarily destined to be the loser society thought you were.

How long would it take me to make my 10,000?

1 year = 27 hours a day of practice, a mathematical impossibility

3 years = 9 hours a day of practice, possible under unlikely circumstances

6 years = 4.5 hours a day of practice, now entering the outer limits of possibility

9 years = 3 hours a day of practice, frankly this is do-able

Mind you, this is every day. This is after 8 hours of work, I would come home and push relentlessly at bettering myself in a skill for 3 hours. It wouldn't be wise to say something absurd like "sleep less" because sleep is where all that training solidifies and grows. Never demean rest.

There should be micro-rest, like sleep, and then macro-rest, where for a week or so, the volume and intensity is severely cut back so that the body and mind can recuperate and adjust. That doesn't count towards the 10,000, which means I would have to work a lot more than 3 hours a day or that it will take me more than 10 years. Keep in mind also that there exists a limit to how much a person can practice. How many piano players suffer from tendinitis? There's a reason a certain elbow condition is called a "tennis elbow." Overtraining is no myth. How will you make up for lost time? How will I make up for lost time.

At 25, I feel like life has left me behind like a broken down car on the side of the highway. It was the same feeling I got when during the Brooklyn Half-Marathon, my legs broke down and refused to carry me. Slow runners, fat runners, children runners were passing me.

"I was thinking, damn, these niggas that much better than me?" -- Kanye, Touch the Sky

But at the Brooklyn, I refused to allow my legs to refuse me. If I had to crawl on my hands and knees, if my immaterial spirit had to burst from its earthly coil and drag what amounts to the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and minerals across the finish line, it would have.

3 hours a day is a tremendous price-tag. You know what you can't do if you're spending 3 hours a day practicing. You can't go to parties, play video games, fantasy sports or go out for drinks with some buddies from work. It means going home to a cold bed, waking up to a cold morning to eat cold cereal and training in the cold.

But think about what you're buying with 3 hours a day. It means never being bored. Think about that for a moment. A bored person. Who talks in such terms? A person who believes their life is a pain and a bother. Entertainment for that person exists to distract from the painfulness of living. If you pay the cost, your life will be fundamentally different from a person who is capable of being bored. They will not understand you and soon you will not understand them. Think about your average high school or college student and how much of a waste their life is. They are less than dogs and rodents. They are worms, the sponges that live on the bottom of the sea. They go through life absent-mindedly running into barely enough processed, machine waste to fuel their rotting, barely erect corpses while accumulating a vast horde of useless cultural trivia. I ask you, if you knew that there was a way to escape that kind of life, would you pay the cost?

Your thirst for entertainment and distraction is only a band-aid. Your life is miserable and worthless. I offer you a cure. Hard work, pain, sacrifice in the beneficent, magnificent sense and you will escape that life.

Hear me, Christians. Do not reduce my words to allegory. Accepting Christ is not the way to spin it. Look around at the vast stretch of Christendom and acknowledge the truth. There are just as many Christians who live worthless lives as there are non-Christians. Do not have it mistaken. I REJECT the claims that so many preachers have made in my youth: "Accept Christ and you will live a passionate life." And if they fail to live a passionate life, then they must not have accepted Christ. This is the dirty deceit of a fortune-teller.

The hand has written on the wall and it has written

1 0 , 0 0 0

On Occasion Of A Celebration

2008-12-07T08:11:00.001-05:00

Francisco's speech in AS is my favorite passage ever written on love. On occasion of Anna and James' wedding, I couldn't help but remember that love is a response to our highest values. And can be nothing else.

“Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self- esteem from sexual adventures–which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.”

“You’d better explain that.”

“Did it ever occur to you that it’s the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from the material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think–for the same reason–that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of ones mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he’s taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment–just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!–an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience–or to fake–a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer — because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to . . . what’s the matter?” he asked, seeing the look on Rearden’s face, a look of intensity much beyond mere interest in an abstract discussion.

“Go on,” said Rearden tensely.

“He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises–because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the morel code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives–and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values–and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws–and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex–nothing but shame.”

Rearden said slowly, looking off, not realizing that he was thinking aloud, “At least . . . I’ve never accepted that other tenet . . . I’ve never felt guilty about making money.”

Francisco missed the significance of the first two words; he smiled and said eagerly, “You do see that it’s the same issue? No, you’d never accept any part of their vicious creed. You wouldn’t be able to force it upon yourself. If you tried to damn sex as evil, you’d still find yourself, against your will, acting on the proper moral premise. You’d be attracted to the highest woman you met. You’d always want a heroine. You’d be incapable of self-contempt. You’d be unable to believe that existence is evil and that you’re a helpless creature caught in an impossible universe. You’re the man who’s spent his life shaping matter to the purpose of his mind. You’re the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love–and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool’s self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one’s code of values. Its’ the same issue, and you would know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised. Only the man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love. But observe that most people are creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one side or to the other. One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and his claim of virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the woman he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistible passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist. The other kind of half is the man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence– and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose or their source. He expects them to give him pleasure– and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself. He will not acknowledge his need of self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing that he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him– and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgment nor standard of value. he tells himself that all he’s after is physical pleasure– but observe that he tires of his woman in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling of achievement that he seeks and never finds. What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body? Now that is your woman chaser. Does the description fit me?

“God, no!”

“Then you can judge, without asking my word for it, how much chasing of women I’ve done in my life.”

426

2008-12-01T11:36:00.001-05:00

My favorite character always:

Redux

2008-11-25T15:08:00.006-05:00

I know I posted it before but I just can't stop thinking about it:

The year after Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, TWELVE people did the same thing. TWELVE.

A feat that scientists had thought beyond the realm of human achievement, a feat whose attempt jeopardizes human life. The heart, these experts thought, would explode if anyone tried to break that record.

TWELVE people, the next year.

To date, the record has been lowered by 17 seconds, an enormous gulf in the world of professional athletes. That mark, once revered as the pinnacle of human achievement is now the standard for any Tom, Dick and Mikey who wants to run middle-distance. To go on further, that mark has been bested by a man in his 40's. It's been doubled-up by Daniel Komen of Kenya who ran 2 miles in under 8 minutes. No woman has done it yet. Someone will. And I'd like to buy her a drink in gratitude.

Impossible?

Bonhoeffer wrote about the hypocrisy that's possible with Catholic Sainthood in "The Cost of Discipleship." Sainthood, you see, allows rank and file Christians to believe that these people were a special breed; it creates a double-standard.

"Oh, I couldn't be like THAT."
"God just chooses SOME people to do great things."
"That's for a saint to do. I'm just a normal human being."

Screw. That.

I choose not to see the Augustines, Calvins, Luthers, Theresa's and who-have-you's as anything special. Roger Bannister was a man. Usain Bolt is a man. Michael Phelps is a man. Lance Armstrong, Neil Armstrong, Louie Armstrong, all just men. Stanley Lee is a man.

This is not to bring them down. By stating the facts of reality, I find that I've elevated myself up. I too, am a man. I breathe. I live. I can destroy my muscles like they did, and they will rebuild themselves just as theirs did. I can destroy my limiting beliefs like they did. And I will live within the framework of possibility, conquest and joy. Will I ever accomplish anything remotely comparable? Who knows? I don't even have a goal on that level yet. But that doesn't matter. I'll never stop pushing the envelope of my capacity. And I'll never stop being surprised at how much further this envelope goes.

To some, there may be such a heinous stench when a person raises himself up. I believe that we should never have considered ourselves so low. I hope that as I climb up, others might have a small spark of sentiment, a warming or thawing of spirit and realize that no... it's not impossible.

Impossible is nothing.

Zenith

2008-11-14T11:52:00.004-05:00

Within 10 years...

And this story HERE makes me think that my goals need to be set even higher. Thank you, David for having already gone where I want to go. I know I can go further. I certainly know I cannot aim at anything less.

Ascent

2008-11-06T10:40:00.000-05:00

I really wanted to, in what may be my last year in NY, see the Halloween parade in the West Village. But in retrospect, it's better that I didn't. I found something better, a challenge, a task beyond what I can handle right now: the 2009 NYC Triathlon.

Registration sold out in 22 minutes. I took 8 minutes to do it. Not much of a margin for error. I wonder at how much margin of error there exists in training. You see, I don't believe a person can accidentally finish a triathlon or a marathon. You don't wake up the morning of one of these challenges and luck your way into your goal.

It's exactly what draws me to these insane endurance challenges. No one lucks into them. It's highly unlikely but a person can be said to luck into winning a 100m race or throwing a shot put. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No. There the unseen power of the central-nervous-system coordinates a vast array of neurons and muscles to act in a fraction of a second. The training is demanding and the athletes are amazing. By no means am I belittling the great achievements that they've done.

But those goals belong to them. My pursuit has another target. No one can luck themselves into a marathon or triathlon. I would say it's impossible to be genetically made for one. No, these require training, constant, relentless pushing and perfecting of the human body to prepare itself for this test.

How long does an athlete run to finish a marathon? 26.2 miles? Absurd. An athlete has logged hundreds of miles for the purpose of finishing 26.2 miles. How many weeks of two-a-days will I have to put in to finish this triathlon? How much research will I have to do on my own time? How much dedication and heart will it take to push myself forward in spite of pain? How much can a man and his body endure?

More than we think possible.

I am certain that any athlete who loves himself and loves his sport knows what I am talking about. The true love is a love for self and for capability.

If someone could wave a magic wand and make me triathlon ready tomorrow morning, I would undoubtedly fall into a deep depression and listlessness. I've been working hard so that I can see my 6-pack for the first time in my life. Right now, I have a rough outline of 4 of them. If someone could use sorcery and make the body-fat vanish, I would be really disappointed.

The point was the difficulty, in the struggle and the overcoming.

I remember reading a devotional very early on in my Christian life that spoke on the beautiful deaths of

Ambition

2008-10-28T19:38:00.003-04:00

Goal: 4 Deserts in 5 years.

"To build a city at the bottom of the sea... insanity. But where else could we be free from the clutching hands of the parasites? ... It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea. It was impossible to build it anywhere else." -- Andrew Ryan

Further Thoughts On Attraction

2008-10-26T21:33:00.002-04:00

After speaking with Shanella for the past few days on the nature of attraction, I've come to realize something.

As humans, by and large, and by that I mean that this is a generalization about the population and that there are expected to be numerous deviations and exceptions, but by and large we are only attracted to what our egos allow for us.

We cannot be attracted by someone of too low a status. They would drag us down and dim our candle. Yet, they cannot be of a higher status for we would be outshone. No, they must be of a slightly lower status as much as possible for then we would have the perfect accessory.

There are a number of errors here in this line of thinking:
1- It's reductive. People are reduced to accessories of ego.
2- It stems from low self-esteem and a fragile psyche. The mark of a second-rater is someone who resents the accomplishments of others for fear that it would demean their own. People who have truly accomplished something by their own ability don't worry about the accomplishments of others. In fact, the achiever is often very lonely. How few people understand that capable people yearn for the companionship of other capable persons.
3- It assumes people are static elements never growing, incapable of regressing. What happens when a person grows old, the firm, soft skin sags and grows coarse? Abandonment? Or what happens if the inferior partner suddenly finds enough self-esteem to rise beyond?

Decisions made with this kind of ego are doomed to endless strife and probably failure. I'm not sure if I can come up with 10 pairings that I know where this is not the case. I can likely think of 6-8, but I doubt if I can think of 10.

The Kindest Cut

2008-10-16T08:01:00.002-04:00

"People fail in direct proportion to their willingness to accept socially acceptable excuses for failure. Being a victim gives you a claim on the sympathy of others, and it means you're not responsible for what happens, and therefore escapes responsibility for your own failure. " -- 13 fatal errors managers make and how to avoid them

I remember years back a friend had told me that given the weight that I lost I was extremely good looking. She said that I should stop right there because at that point, I was perfect. That was 40 lbs. ago. A big reason why I was able to lose these last two bags of rice was that her comment meant nothing to me. She was a good friend, yes. It was ostensibly a compliment, yes. But I did not believe her. I look in the mirror and I see areas for improvement.

I suppose I was rather lucky. Back then, her comment meant nothing because I couldn't understand it. Now, I see differently. My current level of fitness carries with it a good amount of social currency. It opens doors, generates smiles and can get me a good way. A lot of my friends have no idea that I want to lose about 20 more lbs. Many women have recently remarked how "handsome," "strapping," and "gallant" I looked lately. To my shame, these comments are starting to get to me. Why shame? It is shameful because I am letting them slow down my progress. I have missed 3 workouts in the past 2 weeks. I've abbreviated God knows how many more of them. The weight is still dropping, but how long can that be sustained with a overdrawn diet? I've had 2 beers in the last 2 weeks.

Reader, do you understand what I'm saying? I've done this in the past. I bemoan my current failures because they are what many people would consider extraordinary success. What does it say when my shameful failure is something that you could not achieve at your best? I've done that in the past, but this is not what I am here to do. I am not here to inflate my ego.

This blog is for me. It's for my progress and growth in life. It's a record and testament to the world of who I am... no, not who I am; who I am going to be. I am going to be someone who is unaffected by compliments. I will not allow them to increase my self-esteem or influence my worldview. I must insulate my soul against the happiness that they bring.

Why?

Because they will slow me down.

How can I continue to push myself if I think I've already made it? What kind of runner keeps running at full bore past the finish line? How can I push the envelope when I believe I've already burst through it?

In the beginning, the difficulty lay in insulating my soul from the pain that the nay-sayers gave me. You can't do it. You're nobody. Diets never work. You're not seriously thinking of losing 100 lbs. Actually, I didn't have a plan for how many pounds I would lose. I just kept going because no one was strong enough to stop me. Now the difficulty lies in insulating my soul from pleasure that my friends want to give me. Stanley, you look so strapping. That suit fits you wonderfully! What got me here, will not get me there. I cannot allow the word "enough" to enter my vocabulary. I cannot allow myself to feel contentment. I can give myself a few moments to breathe before I get back to the grind, but never more than a few.

There is the poison of a scorpion whose mythology says that should the victim ever stop moving, that victim will die. We've all been stung. Contentment, pleasure, retirement is the poison. Keep your ass moving.

Gehenna

2008-10-15T21:50:00.003-04:00

New workout: "Burn in Hell"

40x5 kneeling ab-wheel roll-outs

then

20 extended arm push-ups
20 crunches
20 bicycle crunches
for 5 rounds, 30 seconds rest between rounds

then

100 turkish get-ups

finish with

66 second plank hold

Total: 600 reps, 66 second plank

I have a couple of special workouts designed for nights like these. Internalize the pain, don't dull it. Don't do what others do, drinking away their pain, trying their best to forget. No, be awake. Feel it. Intensify it. Do what you can to make it hurt more. Use the special playlist you've saved for this occasion. Let the pressure build.

"Self-improvement is masturbation. Self-destruction on the other hand..." - Tyler Durden

Design

2008-10-14T22:34:00.003-04:00

The parasite sees the product and divorces it from the means of production. It is not the inventor nor the work that brings forth a light bulb, a computer or a space ship, it is merely metal and minerals come together by chance.

The parasite sees a rich man in fine clothes driving around town in a foreign car with a beautiful woman. How rare it is to think that it was that man's mind which secured that life! No, the first inclination was that it was inherited, a gift, the next, that it was achieved through unscrupulous means, and the last begrudging one, he was just luckier than me.

Are there any who have seen past this illusion? Who? The truest, most honest of women, the gold-digger. She dispenses with the deception that other women foist upon the world. Her purpose is naked before the world: she is nature's way of dispensing righteous justice upon one-dimensional men. She divorces the man's wealth from the man who is incapable of controlling his emotions to defend it.

One must not only be smart enough to win his life. One need also use his mind to defend it.

Ghosts and Corpses

2008-10-12T22:35:00.003-04:00

The religionists would have us believe that we are nothing but ghosts, spirits trapped in a delusion of physicality.

Their mechanism-worshipping counterparts would have you believe that we are nothing but corpses waiting to fall, bodies moving by nothing more than conditioning and instinct.

I believe I am neither. I am more. I am a man.

A Reformation of Choice

2008-10-10T06:59:00.003-04:00

"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice—and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice: he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice." -- excerpted from John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged

A Christian must be a Christian by choice. I have only now realized this fact. Be careful in reading these words and thinking that you know what I'm writing.

A Christian does not become a Christian by choice. It is not his decision making that produces conversion, a change in acknowledged beliefs and allegiances, it is merely one of the first signs of it. But a Christian must be a Christian by choice. It cannot be sustained by habit. Neither can it be sustained by fear of hell, of social shunning, of parental disapproval, of God knows what.

A Christian must be a Christian because he values his existence as a Christian, as someone who holds his allegiance to the God described in his Scriptures, as someone who understands and chooses to obey, as someone who understands what set of values he is acquiring.

I didn't understand this before now. As far back as I can remember, people have always called me "smart," "precocious," "intelligent," and a million other empty flattering phrases. But I never felt that they were accurate. It was a self-esteem issue, yes, but I believe there was more. It was an issue of the conscious ownership of my own mind.

Only in the last 2 years have I begun reclaiming my mind from the world. Before then I was only a curator of facts to which anyone with any illusion of competence or confidence could deposit their thoughts. But reader, do you know what you call a system with no standards? It is a sewer. And we should greet a sewer-like mind with the same convulsed face of disgust that we use for an open manhole cover. My mind was such a thing.

But now, I have acquired a powerful talisman to ward off the world and to protect value, the word 'No.' No, I think that is a stupid idea. No, I do not understand what you are saying. No, I will not for the sake of being polite, acquiesce to your irrational claims.

And most importantly: No, I will not keep quiet on questions I've long held to myself. I've shuttled all my concerns and worries to the basement of my mind. No one else would understand. No one else even thinks in the same categories that I do! I have to protect them from my own thoughts!

What was I wishing for? What was I waiting for? Was I hoping that someone more intelligent than me, someone whose reason was trustworthy could come along, wave their magic wand and banish these thoughts from my mind? What an infinitely depraved desire! It's the equivalent of wishing to win a mental-spiritual lottery! If I have incurred these debts with my extravagant thinking then why should I expect any way to pay them off except through my effort and my exercise of rationality? I despise compulsive lottery-players and gamblers as one of the lowest forms of existence. I have damned myself by my own values.

No gallant knight is going to gallop in on a white horse to save my mind. But that's OK. I am no damsel in distress.

This is MY mind. This is MY life. I must choose. What will my values be? What life will those values produce? I can hear the cries of some of my friends already.

"But man is so limited! He can only reason so much! God is bigger than man! You can't put God in a box! Stanley, you just have to stop thinking and believe!"

Then what is my alternative? It is my reason or it is the judgment of another, and how do I know what that person may have in his mind? I know what I have in my own.

There is a good reason I stopped listening to Christian music by and large. I will not go wherever someone tells me. I will not do whatever someone tells me. I will not speak another person's words in place of my own. I began, instinctively at first, consciously later, to realize that so much of what I saw in Christianity was a negation of identity. Not me, but God.

This is the exact disaster of thought that I escaped from in Buddhism. My ideological reason for leaving Buddhism was the fact that I wanted to live and exist, as Stanley, not as Brahman. As Atman approached Brahman, I would wake up from the illusion and realize that we were never separate entities at all. I began to sense a similar strain in Christianity, that my existence was evil and that it should be exterminated by God's grandeur.

The sloppy reader will think that I have thrown in the towel. I have not. Absence of proof is not proof of an absence. I do not have the answers, but what I do have is questions. These, I think, are worthwhile questions. They need to be answered.

What kind of integrity would I have if I did not endeavor to answer them. What kind of integrity would I have if I threw away God's gift of rationality and thought and instead plugged my ears and screamed "SATAN YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET ME I BELIEVE IN GOD NYAHNYAHNYAH." If that is what it takes to continue in faith, I will not continue in faith. If what it takes to continue in faith is a moving set of songs in a dimly lit church, a preacher's fervent pleas to the congregation to come back to the Father who loves so much as the Spirit moves through the piano subtly playing in the background (it's hilarious how when this is done at church, it is the movement of the Spirit, the very Hand of God, and when it's done on a TV show, it's only emotional manipulation)... if that is what I need to continue in faith, then I will drop everything and not continue.

I value my mind. This is the battleground. I must choose. I must value. I.

My existence is an inarguable premise and I will not surrender it.

Roots and Seeds

2008-10-09T10:32:00.001-04:00

Why is it that the love of money is the root of all evil?

Impossible

2008-10-06T23:09:00.003-04:00

"Many experts thought it impossible for a man to run a mile in under four minutes. Many even thought it would cause instant death from over-exertion. Then, of course Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes. In the next year, TWELVE more people broke the four-minute barrier." -- DD

Forget what you know.
Believe what you'll see.

"And to all the people who tell me I'll never make it, keep on talking. It only gives me more motivation." -- Dallas Robinson

A = A

2008-10-05T22:41:00.003-04:00

"To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, , the man who was - no matter what his errors - the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification."

This is the answer to all the years of soul-searching and asking "Who am I?" The answer is "I am the person asking that question." In quite a different way, I am who I am. I can be nothing else. Maybe I'll write a blog on the tetragrammaton one day and how it links to that specific part of the John Galt speech. It's fecundity intrigues me. But not enough and not today. Today I want to talk about me because I've come to realize my identity.

Or rather, I've realized it awhile ago but the thought needs to sublimate and become words.

A is A.

Stanley is Stanley.

Who I am is who I am. Who I will be is not necessarily who I am. Who I was is not necessarily who I am. Who I was is not necessarily who I will be. I exist, but only in the present. The past exists only in memory, the future does not exist until it comes to be. I exist, now and only ever now.

The linguistic turn "I existed." is a contradiction. Existence is only ever in the present. The past is not who I am. It's who I was. It is contributory not determinative. I exist and I choose to exist. I choose how I exist. I create the future.

And we all do. But how many people, how few people realize this truth. How many people see their lives as nothing but machinery set on course and forgotten. How many people are truly nothing more than animals trying to scratch various itches of food, sex, sleep, shelter? But that is not for me? I was not born to scratch itches. I was born with a mind and a mind that chooses.

But what are my choices?

"Saul, Saul! Why must you kick against the prick?"

Moose X-ing

2008-09-29T14:14:00.002-04:00

Thanks for making this season watchable every 5 days, Moose.
Thanks for all the great pitching duels you had with Pedro back in the day.

The Name Of The Best Within Us...

2008-09-27T09:39:00.003-04:00

And there it is, Atlas Shrugged is crossed off my list.

A lot of people have seen me reading it on the train, at work, at school. I talk about the book pretty often to those I think that will listen. I think I'm one of 2, possibly 3, people that enjoyed it.

"It's too long! I skipped all the big speeches."
"It's too dense! I don't care about the philosophy. I just want to see what happens next."
"LOL. I LIEK HAAAAARRY POTTTERRR!!!!!1!1!1!"

But for me, reading it was nothing short of joyous. It was a celebration of values and of goodness, of what is best in a person: integrity.

In fact, that's probably the reason why I've been toying with the idea of turning my back on Christianity as I've been reading it. I don't expect this to cause a big stir. That's primarily because only 2 or 3 people seem to read this anymore. That's fine.

Notice that I didn't say I would stop believing in God. No, I think the preponderance of evidence is too heavy to be dismissed outright at this point. It's that I am thinking about knowingly turning my back. There are several reasons for this and I'll be happy to speak with anyone at just about any convenient time about them. I only have one rule in any conversation: you must never ask me to shut off my mind at any time.

If someone says to me: "You can't know everything, Stanley. Sometimes you just have to believe." I will never acknowledge that person's existence again. That person will have made themselves a non-entity in that world. I will immediately cease any communication and without anything as polite as a "Thank you" or "good-bye" I will end the conversation and leave.

There are many ways to ask me to shut off my mind:
"You just have to have faith."
"Some things are just unknowable."
"You have to let your heart lead you."
"How can you put God in a box?"
"Do you think you can understand God?"
"Logic can't give you every answer."

You see, I think many of those statements have factual value. If anyone says them in the context of a conversation to me, it will not be stated as fact but as a plea and a request. I do not believe I can understand God the way I can understand Newtonian gravity, calculus or a car. But why would someone say that to me unless they wanted me to give up trying to understand God? Or why would someone say that unless they believe my understanding of God is irrelevant? Those are not arguments to believe in God, they are arguments for pneumatic suicide.

And then there are ways to ask me to subjugate my rational faculty to another authority:
"What about all the people that depend on you, Stanley?"
"Don't you care about all the people you teach?"
"Why don't you stop being so selfish?"

If anyone lays one of those claims upon me, they will also become a non-entity in my life. Look, I know my education and intelligence intimidates a lot of people. I don't demand you talk to me. I think that prayer often works. Pray for me if you are scared to talk to me. And if you do talk to me, don't be afraid to say you don't know something. I don't know a lot of things. But I know when someone is twisting Scripture inappropriately to show me something that's not there, and I know when someone is clutching at straws to find some purchase. If you don't know, don't be afraid to say it. I won't think less of you for it.

I'm not at a point where I definitely want to leave behind all that I've invested. I've given about two-thirds of my life in service to God. I had dreams of giving God the rest of it. But there are some issues that demand resolution before I go forward. I will decide one way or the other whether I should.

This is the way things should be. The only way to go is forward. I would have truly died if I did not come to this point. Stagnation is death. Mediocrity is death. Think about all of life. What is it? Movement. Goals. Progress. What is truly still? The inanimate. The corpse. I am thinking about destroying everything that I've spent the past 10 years building but I think I'm in a better position than the church goer who never questions, never asks, never wonders, never grows in anything but the number of Christian songs learned and aphorisms memorized. In fact, looking back on my spiritual biography, I believe it was only the vitality of my walk that could bring me to this point. I only write because I care and I want to know.

But there are a lot of things that trouble me. For anyone that wishes to speak to me about this, the following, in no particular order, are the major issues:

Grace: If I cannot earn it, why should I be happy to have it. The idea of grace troubles me deeply. Why is it considered a good thing? It's like becoming part of the great herd of imbeciles who think that winning the lottery is a good thing. It destroys lives. If I cannot earn it, then I cannot earn it. I say this fully understanding that I am a sinner, that I have indeed sinned and that I deserve all the wrath that an omnipotent God can inflict on me.
Charity and duty: I remember as a child watching a commercial on TV for the Christian Children's Fund. I felt terrible that I had so much while others had so little. Now I ask the question, "Why?" Why should their need become guilt for my capacity? I do not blame them for their condition. And I acknowledge that they have very few options available to them to change it. I also acknowledge that they might benefit from my spare change and scraps. But why are they entitled to it? If they are not entitled to it, why should I feel guilt about witholding my support?

I think specifically about my service in church and various fellowships as well. Why is it that the more I have to give, the more I am asked to give? This is the 20/80 rule. 20% of any given group will do 80% of it's work. I look at many groups I've been involved in. Why is it that people with less capability can live their lives in happy stupor while the capable and the skilled must live to serve them? If one is strong, must there be a yoke to tie him down? If the strong enjoys himself, is he not vile and wicked for not spending more time to give to the rest of us. And who is it that gives to him? Why he does not need so very much to survive on, does he? Take some more away from him. Everyone seems to be an excellent judge of how little he needs and how much he can give, but he is a poor judge himself!

No, that's not exactly right. He may choose for himself. But should he ever choose his own pleasure, he is a wicked man for not sharing it with everyone else.

The widow and her tithe. I do not understand this story. Are you telling me if a homeless man tithes $50, he is much loved for his generosity but if a millionaire gives $5,000,000 he is a loathsome robber-baron because he did not give $10m? What would be enough? $20m? Everything he had? Why is 'everything' demanded of the rich but not demanded of the poor?
Glory: What is glory? Why should God want it? Why should I give it?
Pride: Why should someone feel horrible at the fact of his own existence? What kind of anti-life is this?
Humility: Related to the above. If someone has a talent, they should never feel joy in it because that is boastful and wrong. When someone compliments me saying: "Stanley you're so smart!" why is it wrong for me to answer, "I know." Or "Stanley you're so strong!", "Stanley, you're such a good teacher!" People tell me that these are gifts from God. And I acknowledge that I have started off well ahead of many other people. But who was it that wakes up at 6:30 every morning to begin his work out. Who is it that works out twice a day, 6 days a week? Who is it that goes online and spends hours researching training methods? Who is it that takes the initiative to educate himself, to take classes, to do homework, to lose sleep and friends? I put in the work and... and I am evil for receiving the credit? What kind of depraved income tax is this?

"For the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the cattle on a thousand hills are his..."

To which I ask, then why bother living? Can a man not own the work of his hands?
Salvation: We, God's creation, are saved from God because God has sacrificed himself substitutionally, to pay the penalty that he decided for us, without our asking for it, so that we can return to God and live our lives as God's slaves? Did I get the story right?
Sacrifice: The more it hurts, the more it's worth. What? Is our suffering a sign of our goodness?

I think that's enough to begin. It's not the total sum and substance. There's more, but those are the big ones. Like I said previously, God's existence isn't something I truly doubt. It's something that I may end up forgetting. These roadblocks have been years in the making and reading Rand has convicted me of how disingenous it was to continue forward while still holding these many doubts, and in fact these kinds of doubts in my heart.

Truly, it's also a result of burnout. No one expects a marathoner to keep running without water or rest for very long. 4 hours? 6? 8? And then what? Death. Car engines, while much more capable, are the same way. How long can you leave an engine at the redline before the thing destroys itself. How long did you all expect to ride this horse? The horse says 'No. Get off my back.' What I am considering is a strike, a work stoppage.

But I can endure these questions a little longer. I don't know how long. I'm still asking them myself. I haven't changed much. The only thing that's changed is that I now want to be a person of integrity. If I have a question, I will ask it. If something troubles me, I will not ignore it.

And really, there's nowhere to go but forward.

This Is John Galt Speaking...

2008-09-26T16:32:00.001-04:00

I just got to the section of the book where he begins his speech.

How can a person live, really LIVE, without having read Rand? I feel like scales are falling from my eyes with every turn of the page.

Yankee Stadium Memory: my first game

2008-09-21T20:13:00.004-04:00

As tonight marks the end of an era, I'm going to write about the beginning of one in my life.

In my earlier years, I was a fat kid for two reasons. I didn't like exercise or sports and I really liked eating. The two put together was a terrible combination. So I'm not quite sure how it came to be that my friends had decided to take me to a game at Yankee Stadium in the fall of 2000. The Yankees were playing either the Indians or the Braves. I have a feeling it was the Braves, but it doesn't make sense for an interleague game to be so late in the year and I doubt that it was a playoff game.

Just like this year, the starting pitching stunk and put the team in an early hole. I noticed that crowds were booing and leaving the stadium. But what do you know, the 7th inning came around and the Yankee offense came alive and home run after home run left the park. Even with less than full capacity, the energy on a weekday night was nothing less than unbelievable. We eventually came back and won that game and the Yankees made themselves a fan for life.

So as I think back to all the great memories that Stadium has given me, I think the only appropriate honor is to carry an invincible optimism into the future that the new Stadium will produce many more amazing memories to cherish.

Iron Mike Mussina, Baddest Pitcher On The Yankees

2008-09-19T21:34:00.002-04:00

<3
Big Moose Love.
The only watchable part of this season is your chase for 20.
I hope you make it, Moose.

God Opposes The ...

2008-09-19T21:24:00.003-04:00

An honest question for any reader:

What is pride? Specifically, what is the kind of pride that the Bible speaks about in such reprobate terms?

I am proud of myself. I am proud of the fact that I am proud.

What I mean by this is that when I consider who I am, my existence, I feel a tremendous sense of uplift and... joy. I love my life. I love the fact that I am alive. I am strong, smart, capable and after a little empirical testing, I look good. I am socially calibrated, economically secure, and internally strong. I am young and have a world of possibilities unfolding before me, like flowers before the sun of my capacity.

What should I feel in regards to this besides good?

I am happy that I have this set of circumstances with which to engage the world. Many of them are not of my own doing or action. I make no claim as such. Many have been handed to me. Others I have taken by force of will and action.

I have dignity. There are some things that I will not do. I will not beg, I will not chase, I will not ask anyone for mercy.

I often get the word "arrogant" attached to me. It's because people have this notion that I always think I'm right. That is true. When I speak or make any assertion, claim or statement, I have nothing but the utmost confidence in being correct and any contradictory statement being wrong. If I didn't believe in what I was saying, why would I have said it?

Is this the sort of opprobrium that Scripture condemns? Am I a sinner for living and believing this about myself and about how I should act?

These are honest and open, non-rhetorical questions.

By Our Love

2008-09-18T14:45:00.005-04:00

"Love is a response to our highest values and can be nothing else."

If so, then wouldn't it be madness for me to even think about any long-term relationships at this point? I have goals in my life. One of my goals is to never be at a place in my life where I have no higher goals for which to reach. My greatest fear in life is not death, loneliness, abandonment, any imagined torture but rather to stop living and yet continue to exist.

I look at the great herd of humanity and I am beyond disgusted. Christian, non-Christian, it doesn't matter. I look at the lives they live and find them contemptible, an insult to the gift that they've been given.

"Only I think that it's a sin to sit down and let your life go, without making a try for it."

They stumble and meander through life without any idea what they are doing or why they are doing. They never stop the ceaseless motion of life to consider whether they are actually moving towards anything. My greatest fear is to regress into one of 'those' people.

At this point, my goals are not so very high. I believe that at this point, I am too egalitarian, too generous, too free with what I will accept in other people. I do not demand enough, do not expect enough out of other people. And what can this mean but that I do not yet love myself sufficiently?

Some have told me that with wives and the important women of our lives, we must be gentle and kind. Perhaps, at some stage. But in the stage where I am at, the stage of selection, where I winnow out all my possibilities, it would be best to be brutally selective of what I desire in a woman.

And why shouldn't I be exceptionally picky? I know what I bring to the table. I demand equal value. My love is not pity or charity-based. It is not an act of goodwill. It is an act of supreme self-esteem, confidence and dare I say, the right kind of selfishness.

And so I can *afford* to be selective. What would I do in baseball if I knew that I could take as many strikes as I wanted without striking out? Why, I'd wait for my perfect pitch. I'd be the most patient hitter in the world. I'd wait for a pitch that I could put all my heart, all my guts, all my conviction and confidence in and drive that ball a country mile. Isn't that the same situation I face now? Why settle?

No, love is the response to our highest values. Everyday I feel it in my soul, an itch on the inside of my skull; my values grow daily. I am more today than I was yesterday. And I will be more tomorrow than today. Why end that now? Why make a decision based on my current value set?

Because it's Sunday night

2008-09-14T21:21:00.002-04:00

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On Sexual Choices, a corollary

2008-09-11T12:56:00.003-04:00

The following phrases:

"You can't choose who you fall in love with."
"The heart wants what the heart wants."
"I just didn't feel anything for him/her."
"... just wasn't the one."
"... didn't make me happy."

are phrases that when said seriously, with full conviction in the verity of the words, to another person are the unquestionable hallmarks of a truly contemptible person.

I fully believe in what Rand said. Our sexual choice is the sum and substance of our highest values. Who are we? Well, the answer to that is found in who we look for, who we are willing to partner with.

Any view of love that excludes rationality from the picture, that makes it nothing more than a sentiment or an outflow and indwelling of emotion, that makes it nothing more than animal instinct draped in the ill-fitting clothes of civilization, is a deficient view of love, and only deficient people will have deficient views of love.

People who persist and will not change that belief absolutely deserve the misery of togetherness that is coming towards them. If you make your bed, you better be ready to lie in it.

On Chasing Women, by Ayn Rand

2008-09-08T16:14:00.004-04:00

"Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?"
"Good God, no!"
"Only that kind of man spends his life running after women."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures -- which can't be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man's sense of his own value."
"You'd better explain that"
"Did it ever occur to you that it's the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think -- for the same reason -- that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one's mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment -- just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! -- an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience -- or to fake -- a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer -- because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to ... gain his value he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises -- because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives -- and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values -- and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him professthat love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws -- and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex -- nothing but shame."

One step closer

2008-09-06T16:47:00.001-04:00

Not much more to go now.

Parable

2008-09-04T14:01:00.003-04:00

Gather around and hear ye the parable of the man with a stick in his butt. (Tale reconstructed from memory. Not original work. Paraphrased from the HBI.)

In a time not too long ago, and in a place not too far away, there was a man without a spine. Because he had no spine, he could not stand as others did. As you may imagine, he was often stepped on and overlooked, much like a worm. People, when they found him, found him pleasant enough as a person for having no spine, he could take on any form or shape they wished. If his friends were smart, he could twist himself into the shape of smart. Or if they were trendy, he could twist himself into that shape too. But this man without a spine could not find love.

You see, when he found someone interesting he would try to wrap himself around them. What a suffocating situation! The women could not stand such clinginess. With much struggle and hardship, they pulled this man off and left him on the floor weeping and bemoaning his existence.

After having been thrown aside enough times, this man decided that he must have a spine for himself if he wanted to know what love was like. But no one was willing to give him their own spine! "If I gave you my spine, how would I stand up?" they cried. Oh, the poor, little spineless man! What would he do?

He did the only thing he could do. He shoved a stick up his butt. It was very painful. And it didn't look quite right. No one stands like that. And people with spines could bend sometimes. Not so, the spineless man now. He was rigid. Stiff. And people didn't like him as much anymore. Before, he could wrap himself around any idea or shape. Now, he would not bend to anyone's wishes. He was much lonelier now. And much colder now.

But no one stepped on him.

So as lonely and as cold as things were, this was an improvement. Having the imitation of a spine was much preferable to having nothing to hold him up.

No one stepped on this man anymore. Before others would walk all over him without even knowing about it. He realized that no one heard his cries for help. They simply thought, when they thought of him, that he was just another worm in the ground. "Plenty of worms!", they thought.

Yet the man with the stick up his butt still could not find love. He looked here and he looked there, but who could love such a rigid, unbending man? He was certainly more respected. And he certainly thought that this was better than before but he was still miserable.

So he lost hope. Perhaps God hates those who have no spines. "God, why did you make me like this?" cried the man. "God, am I doomed to be alone forever?" he asked an empty sky.

But one day, he found the greatest woman in the world. She was beautiful, yes, but you see, beauty is common. This man lived in New York City, where many women believe they are princesses and dress accordingly. He had seen beauty before. But this woman was also intelligent, kind-hearted, strong and not intimidated by any man. Being such an amazing woman, she could not tolerate most men who lost their spines in the presence of her capability and became placating, appeasing slimes like the man before.

Did God send this woman to torment the man? Is God's humor blacker than the Devil's? These thoughts raced through the man's mind. The man would not be mocked by anyone, not even God himself! "Not even God will laugh at me!" screamed the man in the vast expanse of his interior world.

"Would you like to have coffee with me?" asked the man to the woman.

Over a battlefield of combat-ready coffee cups, barbed-wire biscottis and heat-seeking scones the two launched salvos of opinions and ideas.

This woman had reduced many a man's spine to mush before. She wondered how this man could be so firm in his convictions and sincere in his passions. From where did all this prodigious resilience originate? Men had by this time, offered to buy drinks or expensive gifts for her. He had not bent an inch!

But the man too wondered at the woman. He could not understand how this woman could withstand the force of his personality. Other women were driven away by his rigidity. He had learned to love and care about himself. The women wanted someone to think of them and worship them only. But he grew wise and saw that such women were cannibals who consumed such men. This woman knew who she was and needed no worshippers, but his mind could not grasp such a thought.

And so he tried to bend again. Oh, it was very hard for you see the soul becomes quite stiff when it stays still. And it becomes quite formless when it continually moves. But he tried to bend again and suddenly, he did. What had happened to the stick?

The stick was the first thing that ever gave this man's body a true shape. It was not perfect, but it did the job. The body, you see, is a marvelous thing. It grows and it adapts. It took what the stick started and worked around it. Soon enough, the body grew its own spine, and the stick was no longer.

But it was just as strong as the stick. And the woman saw this. Finally, the man found love. He did not find it when he found the woman. The woman found it in him when he finally found his own strength.

You see children, a man without a spine cannot be loved. He can be liked quite easily enough. Everyone likes dogs. But who sees a dog as an equal and a partner in life? Who can trust a dog with their heart, soul, mind, children, dreams, expectations, hurts, fears, failures, tears? What can a dog do for a person besides stare up with dumb, uncomprehending eyes? To be liked is far different than to be loved.

Children, do you know who the man in the story is?

Lately

2008-09-02T13:42:00.002-04:00

For anyone visiting my blog lately, this blog is principally about 2 things:
#1 - my faith and life
#2 - the Yankees.

I have been, and for the forseeable future will not talk about the Yankees that much because they're not doing anything worthwhile. Currently, I hope they do nothing but lose for the remainder of the season so we can get better (and protected) draft picks for next year while we go hard at C.C., Sheets and Tex.

Welcome.

On Shame and Sexuality, in a Christian context

2008-08-30T18:42:00.003-04:00

I love breasts. I'm referring to the breasts of human women here.

I also love (in no particular order) their butts, legs, lips, hips, fingertips, skin, hair, eyes, scent, posture, poise, feet, hands, waist, neck, nose, ears, smile and... I'm not sure there's a particular body part I don't like.

Aw hell, what did I just say? Should I repent? I'm not going to do so. Did I cause a brother or sister to stumble? Well actually, I wrote this particularly for the brother or sister who would stumble at such a phrase.

You see, I have this very strange, this very queer theory in my head. I believe that there is not to be a hint of sexual immorality amongst Christians. But I see it everywhere!

I see it when men are to be somber and stifle their appreciation of how a woman keeps herself healthy and vital. I see it when women are forced to wear long skirts and told that pants are sinful. I see it when spaghetti string and tube tops are forbidden. I see it when a man is told to don his shirt on a sweltering day, while he's playing sport, because it... it... it is attractive to others? Because it is beautiful? Because women so rarely see a man who keeps himself in top athletic shape? Because men want to try and shield their ego? Oh he is that way because of genetics! Genetics! Any excuse besides hard work!

If a person attends to their physical appearance, there must be no other reason than a superficiality of taste! Truly spiritual persons enjoy the wasting away of their flesh!

Immoral idiocy, all of this. And the Christian church is filled with it.

Reformata Semper Reformandum, no?

I think there are 2 big things the Church can do to address its sexual immorality:
#1 - Stop sleeping around and being hypocrites.
#2 - Stop covering people up and being hypocrites.

Who made this body of mine? Was it Satan? Only if you are caught in the throes of a gnostic heresy. God made this body. He made it and gave it to me to steward. I am strong and fast. The testosterone flowing through my blood makes me content and joyous. It helps me recover faster. It makes me aggressive and passionate. It is a blessing from God Almighty. If I fill myself with cakes, cookies, cola, cheeseburgers, chips and cholesterol, I will spit on the vessel of God's image. If I train it vigorously, if I push it relentlessly, I can see God's beauty, live that beauty more deeply.

Christians, end the nonsense.
God gave you a body. Love it.

There's an easy strawman trap. Don't be dumb and fall into it.

Impossible

2008-08-21T12:14:00.001-04:00

From Gym Jones':

"Limitations and Impossibilities": At every Olympics there is an athlete whose
performance is so incredible that it transcends greatness. A performance so
magnificent that it shatters our notion of what we previously thought was
possible. In this Olympics there have been two athletes of note who have
challenged the very limits of human performance. Usain Bolt absolutely destroyed his competition in both the
100-meter and 200-meter dash. He set a world record in both events and was so
far ahead of his competition in each that he looked like he was running a
different race. In the 100-meter he ran a world record 9.69 but started
celebrating at the 70-meter mark. In the 200-meter he broke Michael Johnson’s 12
year old record that people said would stand for a lifetime. Bolt’s margin of
victory over his closest competitor was an astonishing .52 seconds in that
event. Michael Phelps is another story. He brought home 8 gold medals,
a new Olympic record for one games and now has a total of 14 Olympic Golds (16
medals in all). What is more unbelievable is that on his way to his gold medal
haul this year he set seven world records and one Olympic record, doing a
personal best time in every event. Serious Athletes plan every aspect of their
lives to ensure that they peak for that special event. To ensure that they are
at the pinnacle of their career when they compete on the world’s stage. Michael
Phelps had indeed peaked for this year’s Olympics and he did what no one thought
was possible. Not a Herculean performance but rather as one reporter stated, a
“Phelpsian” performance. People are already saying that we will never see
performances like these again in our lifetime. People are saying that we have
witnessed the “impossible”. If this years Olympics has taught us anything it is
that there are no limits to what the human animal can do. The only limits are
those which are self imposed. Limits that the human mind places on itself.

-Maximus

The Bucket List

2008-08-18T16:17:00.004-04:00

Rule of life: Never apologize for being honest.

100 things I Want To Do Before I Die

001- Have amazing, unbelievable, cry out to God great sex.
002- raise a son and watch him start his own family
003- play catch with my son
004- tell my wife "I love you" on our 50th anniversary
005- watch the sunset over the Pacific
006- watch the sunrise over the Atlantic
007- trek in the Alaskan wilderness
008- climb Mt. Everest
009- see the Grand Canyon
010- have someone honestly compliment my dancing
011- spontaneously dance with a stranger on the street
012- make love by moonlight on the beach
013- vacation in Nice, France
014- swim in each of the 5 Oceans
015- have Argentinian barbeque in Argentina
016- lead someone to Christ
017- be a missionary for 2-3 years
018- have a family vacation where I have to drive for 8+ hours
019- raise a happy, healthy Rhodesian Ridgeback or Black lab
020- get 2 numbers in the same night
021- dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop
022- deadlift 3x bodyweight
023- finish an ultramarathon
024- skydive
025- bungy jump
026- swim in the Nile
027- qualify for the IronMan
028- fly an airplane
029- ride a motorcycle
030- write a novel
031- publish a book
032- speak (and think) nothing but Spanish for a week
033- write fluently in Chinese
034- lead someone to Christ in a foreign language
035- play and sing an entire song on the guitar
036- have another farm animal as a pet
037- take my family camping for a weekend
038- get a degree from a good seminary
039- juggle 3 objects for 1 minute
040- whistle a radio song
041- do street magic
042- drive 100 mph+
043- bake a cake
044- start a fire from scratch in the wild
045- teach my daughter how to throw a punch
046- win a fight that someone else started
047- become a kru in Muay Thai
048- become a sensei in karate
049- visit India
050- visit Antarctica
051- skinny dip in the Arctic Ocean
052- hike and camp in Yosemite with my family
053- hike and camp alone in Grand Teton
054- see wolves in the wild
055- fire a rifle
056- teach my kids their times tables
057- adopt a child
058- step on the field at Yankee Stadium
059- deliver a eulogy for someone I'm not related to
060- deliver a best man's speech
061- take care of my grandkids for a summer
062- grow bitter-melon in my garden
063- honestly enjoy the taste of bitter-melon
064- single-handedly make a Thanksgiving feast
065- have a race on horseback
066- visit Israel and touch the Wailing Wall
067- visit Milan and be complimented on my style
068- run a marathon on each continent
069- visit Charles in Brazil
070- see the Aurora Borealis
071- eat Rocky Mountain Oysters, scrapple, haggis and fugu
072- do the running of the bulls
073- do a walkabout
074- return to China alone for a month
075- fill up every box in my passport
076- share the Gospel in a foreign language
077- lead a bible study series in a foreign language
078- climb a 20' rope, 2" thickness
079- hit a bullseye in darts
080- get a tattoo
081- run a mile in under 5 minutes
082- see a fight in Lumpinee stadium
083- eat sashimi at the Tokyo Fish Market
084- do a handstand pushup
085- see a solar eclipse
086- read the entire Bible from cover to cover with my wife and kids
087- see the stars from outer space
088- hit the bell in the sledgehammer carnival game
089- visit an European vineyard and buy a bottle of wine
090- hike in Romania at night under a full moon
091- get a kiss from a girl who previously rejected me
092- stay under 200 lbs.
093- bench press 2x my bodyweight
094- see my 6 pack
095- jump rope
096- play a real song people would actually care to listen to on the piano
097- order flowers delivered to a girl "just because"
098- eat a steak at Peter Luger's
099- honestly say on my deathbed "I've run the race, I've fought the good fight. I never gave up."
100- love someone for who they are and not what they can do for me

Nietzsche in a new context

2008-08-13T00:30:00.002-04:00

"It is by being 'natural' that one best recovers from one's 'unnaturalness,' from one's spirituality..."
-- Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

I hate Confucius. I hate that I am, by culture if not by choice, his descendant. I despise his teachings. I hope that he and the whole disaster of a culture he spawned would fall screaming into the pit of Hell.

Don said a few months ago that I was 'very Chinese.' Perhaps he thought it was a value-neutral remark, a throw-away statement. I however, took it as if he drew attention to a scar or missing limb on my body. It was an embarrassment.

More and more I realize that my Confucian tendencies are spiritual tumors to be cut out of my soul by any means necessary; veritable sicknesses in need of attention.

You see, Nietzsche criticized Christianity on the grounds that it was primarily a slave religion born out of worthless Jewish rabble straining under Pharaoh's yoke. As slaves, they could do nothing but make new slaves out of any proselyte. Upon turning to Christianity, the word 'freedom' was introduced, a spiritual freedom, which in reality was nothing but a more elaborately concealed yoke of slavery.

What would he have said about Confucianism? Such a deformed, depraved culture... but yet it has produced great things! Has it? Who produced the great wall? Emperors commanding thousands of obedient, dutiful, stupid and helpless peasants. Who produced the oldest continuous civilization? The powerful preying on Confucianally indoctrinated rabble. And who is hosting the Olympics this year, throwing the greatest international show ever displayed? A small group of powerful pulling on the string of national duty. Confucian slaves are perhaps more complete and useful than the slaves that Christianity produces.

Very Chinese? Yes, yes I am. And I hate it. And I will most certainly be rid of it.

Riddle me this

2008-08-12T19:01:00.002-04:00

Someone help me out here.

What does a slave, who has been nothing but a slave all his life, think when he hears the word 'freedom'? Can such a word have any meaning for him? Yet he knows he wants it. Why? What does a worm dream of when he dreams of flying?

: )

2008-07-23T11:21:00.000-04:00

Easy

2008-07-14T10:25:00.002-04:00

This entry is inspired by two entries on Ross' blog, a rather recent one touching on steroids and the one that contains the above video.

Also coming to mind right now is the Maya Angelou poem. Might we indeed be greater than we can imagine? I dread living a certain type of life, a pedantic, sort of meaningless existence. I dread the possibility that come judgement day Christ the Prosecutor will call to the stand as his witness, a me that could have been.

"Stanley, what have you done with all that I've given you?"

And what would I say? How would I respond?
"Lord, it's not my fault. The work was too hard. You asked too much. I loved my entertainments too much. I was too afraid that if I tried and failed, then everyone would see!"

It is from this sort of coward soul that I have no doubt many would point to those who are truly great, the Pujols', A-Rod's and Armstrongs in the sporting world and say that they doped and juiced because there's no way anyone can be great without juicing. We can only be at best a Torii Hunter or Richie Sexson. If anyone becomes great they must certainly be cheaters.

And even in Christendom, it sickens me to no end that this same double standard exists. Pastors and missionaries who seem to make huge impacts in the world only do so because they've been called. It's not because they wake up at 5:30 and pray with tears for those that they serve. It's not because they have God on their mind every moment of every day that they can deliver such insight. It must certainly because they're a certain kind of special. Thus, said Bonhoeffer, was the hypocrisy of monasticism. They are holy men and that's what they do. We are not holy, so we don't have to try and live like them.

Of all the people I'm pointing this finger at, I belong at the forefront. Sometimes it's hard to keep pushing. There's a very real soul-weariness that comes with this kind of psycho-emotional expenditure. Giving from your heart means you have less for yourself. But that, I suppose, is what "drive" and "dedication," "commitment" mean.

"Only acts undertaken with commitment have any meaning." -- Mark Twight

Soul! What is it that you are so afraid of? Commit! Dare!

Pursuit, revisited

2008-07-11T21:18:00.003-04:00

I don't know what the other blogs I titled "Pursuit" mean. I'm too lazy to look it up. This might be a total non-sequitur. So be it.

The Yankees and Red Sox rivalry was perhaps, destined to have unfolded the way it did. Both had excellent teams in 2003 and the Yankees won the AL Championship Series in what was purely luck. In 2004, the Red Sox fielded an excellent team while the Yankees had degraded by the year's end quite a bit. Inexplicably though, they ran a 3-0 lead in that year's ALCS. However, it was primarily due to Torre's imbecilic management that the Yankees collapsed and handed the Red Sox a free trip to the World Series.

The Red Sox were going to get there one year or another. They had been continually improving their team while the Yankees were mired in expensive mediocrity and skippered by a senile manager. Terry Francona came in having something to prove. Torre was too busy drinking green tea and picking his nose to realize that the game had passed him by.

I heard the Rivalry used as an analogy to compare Rafael Nadal's recent upset. Let me just say this up front. I don't care about tennis. I'm surprised I didn't write out Rafael Federer or Bjorn Nadal something like that. I do know that the two have had a one-sided duel for what seems like years now. I know that Federer's the senior player here by a substantial tennis margin.

With my admittedly poor knowledge, it seems to me that Rafael was destined to win. To be so close of a #2 and to have the advantage of time, it was inevitable that he would win one of these days. That he did so in dramatic fashion is impressive and makes for a terrific story but he hasn't defied the odds. He proved them.

It's like the lottery. If you buy a ticket, the chance that you will win is incredibly small (even with "little bit o' luck" on your side). However the chance that someone out there will win is pretty significant.

Coming out of this painful segment of life I realize that the odds in this particular instance were heavily stacked against me. However, in the long view of life the opposite is true; I am favored to win. Even disregarding issues of sovereignty, providence and divine fiat, the simple theological application of math sacrosanct tells me that I will find someone out there. I'm still young, vital, and possessed of numerous advantages over most of humanity. And what may play into my favor more than anything else is my willingness to risk and make mistakes and then be driven to learn from them.

I look at the vast, lowing herd of bovine humanity and feel an uplifting sense of relief. What must it be like to be amongst their number? What must it be like to hurtle through life senseless and dumb, feeling, never thinking, never comprehending, never considering that they have within their capacity, the ability to make things better? What would life be like if I never took responsibility for my own living?

I don't know. I don't want to know.

I know I'll get there. It's just a matter of time.

Possessions

2008-07-07T14:14:00.003-04:00

Because so much of ordinary life is built on small failures and frustrations,
therapists see among this patient group a great disenchantment. The therapists
cited familiar tropes of the new gilded age: the three-year renovation of a
country house that becomes its own “infrastructure of entrapment,” as one
therapist put it; the man so accustomed to travel by private jet and chauffeur
that he develops a fear of airports and taxis. “It results in a fear of chaos
and vulnerability” Dr. Aidinoff said. -NYTimes

The things we own eventually end up owning us. When I read about issues like these my mind can't help but go back to one of my favorite excerpt of Mark Twight's:

"You ask about security? What you need is uncertainty. What you need is
confusion; something that forces you to reinvent yourself, a whip to
drive you harder."

And what about what Jesus says?

When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to
drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the
kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them: "Take nothing for the
journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them." So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and
healing people everywhere.

Less is more.

Chicken

2008-07-02T14:04:00.003-04:00

Giving God an ultimatum is like being on a bicycle and playing chicken with a train.

I just can't give up the sense that God wants me to put this down. And I can't find it in me to do anything but call his bluff.

What a disaster.

All This Time

2008-06-28T19:29:00.005-04:00

My heart has been heavy for the past few days, and driving home today the rain began to come down. Little at first, then thick, fat drops, then sheets of rain heavy as sin. Lightning flashed all around the only confirmation I had that the world existed outside of my car. This song was playing on my CD player.

From somewhere, I began first whispering, then saying, then screaming the word "trust."

trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, trust, T R U S T!

Stanley! Trust! Believe!

God, I believe! Help thou my unbelief!

Invictus

2008-06-27T05:50:00.003-04:00

Another poem before I go out for my long run this morning. (10 miler) This time, it's William Ernest Henley and this is one of my favorites.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of Circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of Chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Crucible

2008-06-26T05:45:00.005-04:00

Some morning thoughts as I'm about to go do my hill sprints (Thanks for reading, Charles!):

Safety is the enemy of progress. How will a ship find the other shore when it never leaves the first one? Do not be safe, do not long for stability. Accept the danger, the thrill and exhilaration of the fact that you may very well die in this endeavor, that you may fail and that there may be disaster. If death and disaster come, smile and endure. Smile because you attempted something worth attempting and endure because you are a man, a cosmic being.

There is salvation only in extremes. Jesus was a lot of things but he was not well-adjusted, upper middle class with a safe and secure environment from where his emotionally-balanced approach to life helped him to actualize himself. No, Jesus was man perfected. His mission was to live perfectly, yet endure hatred from insects, vermin and rabble and die at their filthy hands. He went through with it. Mission accomplished.

My mission is to be Jesus-like. You may also read that as "God-like" if you wish. A man that protects, like he did when he confronted the power of the Pharisees and protected the woman caught in adultery, a man who provides, and a man who fights as he did in the temple driving out the moneychangers. Perhaps it may simply be my own eisegetical perspective but I cannot help but read Jesus as a hot-blooded, passsionate man. I reject any view of him that makes him a serene, mountaintop yogi castrado. No, he is not soft. As C.S. Lewis said of Aslan, "He is not a tame lion." He's not a safe lion. But he's a good lion.

Salvation only in extremes. My rebellion is against the seething cesspool of mediocrity that we call 21st century America. Salvation in extremes. What are people doing with their lives? They pour their (very-marginal) efforts into trying to secure as much safety and security for their futures as they can. They want to entertain themselves into oblivion. No, NO,

HELL NO.

Plunge myself into danger, discomfort. Throw myself into an unknown, stressful environment. Feel the fear, feel it course through your veins. The heart pounds faster, the head spins, non-vital functions shut off. You know why people who are terrified pee uncontrollably? It's because the body doesn't need to hold urine now. It's moving all the blood to the heart and muscles so that you can fight off a wolf or run away from a bear. Let my soul do the same. Jettison the useless portions. Move blood, fire, peauvoir to the vital areas.

A soft bed to come home to? Do not need.
Softball every Sunday? Do not need.
Stable, quiet job where I can be left alone? Do not need.
World's finest cuisine in a 20-minute radius? Do not need.
Contact with friends and family? Do not need.

And let me shock you now:
Watching my favorite team in their beautiful new stadium? Do. Not. Need.

What do I need?

A spiritual crucible.

Raw material, freshly ripped from the earth's womb is thrown in and a masterpiece emerges. Hard. Cold. Strong and beautiful as steel. Something to make man ashamed of their existence.

You only see what a man is like when you push him beyond his abilities; when you break him. Will I be the man that I hope I'll be? Will I be a quivering coward running back to his mother's skirt? Talk is cheap. We will see how much my soul is worth.

I will leave this country in less than a year. I will not come back soon.

Thank you, Jack

2008-06-25T16:15:00.001-04:00

Link

More today than yesterday.
More tomorrow than today.

Keep on trucking.

No Coward Soul Is Mine

2008-06-25T08:14:00.002-04:00

Ah, how did I come across this again? Emily, you were always my favorite.

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the worlds storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heavens glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast.
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life -- that in me has rest,
As I -- Undying Life -- have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move mens hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast Rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou -- Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

The Reality Bath

2008-06-24T10:46:00.003-04:00

All I really know about this title is that Mark Twight used it in his book "Kiss or Kill" and that it's the name of, if I recall correctly, a frozen waterfall.

That's beautiful.

I think waterfalls are awesome places of power, fury and constancy. I loved visiting Niagra with Peter and some Buffalo people a few years ago. I wish they didn't have those ridiculous lights turning the waterfall, pink, green, blue, purple, chartreuse. Instead, I would've loved to be on a very small boat or skiff at the basin, full moon turning those million gallons of rushing water into beautiful mirrors. I wish I could be in my small sliver of wood or tin, deafened by Niagra's fury. I am on a quest to forge my body into its most perfect form, lean, powerful, strong, enduring. But no matter what heights I achieve, I will never compare to these cataracts. Awesome. AWESOME! I want to float tremulously in that small boat, shouting and laughing. What amazing power!

Now imagine it frozen. Stark, perfect beauty. I picture it in my mind's eye. The lines, the movement, the suggestion of speed, the suggestion of power, the form of fury and expressed in the cold, statuesque elegance of ice.

Beautiful.

I remember in Twight's essay, how as he climbed that waterfall alone, he thought how suited this name was for the waterfall. Reality Bath. If you had any delusions about your beauty, they were stripped away when you climbed this high-grade mountain of slick, ice. Winds whipping around you, flaying you alive as they find their way through every crevice of clothing, hands numb from gripping onto nothing but ice and steel. As you look down, I suppose, you can only imagine what it must be like to fall hundreds of feet onto the hard, unforgiving ice. I wonder if anyone will have the courage to imagine their skull being sundered in an explosion of blood. The reality bath.

The reality bath.

I imagine the reality bath is going to be the very opposite of a bubble bath. Not warm. But freezing. Not comforting. But agonizing. I imagine it to be like a full body immersion in freezing acid. First the nerves and system are shocked. Then everything dissolves, layer by layer. The deceptions that we wrap ourselves in, the comfortable things we say to ourselves to repair and shield our egos from the terrible TRUTH, these things are dissolved. And each shell of lies comes off painfully until even the very structure of our lives, the bones, are nothing more than dust and scum on the surface.

The reality bath.

The truth is rarely going to be pleasant, particularly when it is about who we are. But like Twight and Bruce Lee, men who I admire in many respects, it is about progress and it is about becoming who we are and finding who we were that we take these reality baths. It is about the reality of our very existence.

Don't be afraid of pain.

Psalm 46

2008-06-21T12:29:00.002-04:00

To the Choirmaster.
Of the Sons of Korah.
According to Alamoth.

A song.

God is our refuge and strength
a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear though
the earth give way,
though the mountains be moved into
the heart of the sea
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble
at its swelling. Selah

There is a river whose streams
make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most
High.

God is in the midst of her; she
shall not be moved.
God will help her when
morning dawns.

The nations rage, the kingdoms
totter;
he utters his voice, the earth
melts.

The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our
fortress. Selah

Come, behold the works of the
Lord,
how he has brought desolations on the earth.

He makes the wars cease to the end of
the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters
the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.

Be still, and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the earth!

The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Selah

Progress

2008-06-20T10:22:00.003-04:00

"I just can't go heavy."

You can always get medium sets of medium reps with medium weights. It's like what Socrates tells Dan Millman; basically, this is like lukewarm tea, "the Devil's brew!" Medium is the death song for training. You can train medium (also known as "crappy") for years and years while making no progress. Let's be honest, go find average in everything. Buy the damn pale green, four-door Ford Escort of your dreams and go wave at hot babes. Get all C's and then ask your counselor, "What's my skill set?"

In other words, training a lot at lousy is still lousy. If you "can't go heavy," back off until you can!

From Dan John in this article.

Synapse to synapse

2008-06-19T00:21:00.010-04:00

"And if his chest were a cannon, he would have shot his heart at her."

-- Melville, Moby Dick

Perfect Timing

2008-06-11T16:33:00.002-04:00

God's timing is funny.

LINK to a New Yorker Article on God and suffering, the question of theodicy.

My initial thoughts.

The author gets the particulars right until just about the end of page 4.

I, Stanley Lee, declare myself to be a Christian. I also think heaven is no big deal and not the answer to my suffering. Will probably write more another time.

God Of Our Sorrows

2008-06-11T13:37:00.004-04:00

This entry grew out of an e-mail I prepared for my NYU Bible Study group last Thursday morning. That evening we discussed suffering, and many suffering related topics. On the train ride home, I couldn't stop thinking about it because as anyone (any one of the 3 maybe 4 regular readers that I have that is) can attest, it's a subject near and dear to my heart.

Without further ado,

If we're talking about suffering, we would be remiss if we did not discuss the role perspective plays in the enduring and experiencing suffering.

Let me give an example. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, soon to be moved to my Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, I wake up at 5am to go out and do a running workout, hill sprints. It doesn't matter if it's -20 or 96 like this past Tuesday. The run must be done.

A sprint is an all-out effort. If you are keeping anything in reserve, if you are pacing yourself, if you are letting fear of death by heart failure hold you back, you are not sprinting. Hill sprints must be intense.

When I get home after this workout, I will lay on the floor and breathe heavily for 5-10 minutes, disoriented. Twice, I've vomitted after I finished running. Every single time, I feel like I should. When I finally get in the shower, I turn the water on its coldest setting and let it run over me. The cold is necessary to stop the lactic acid from burning through my muscles. It sometimes causes my body to spasm painfully.

Why am I describing in gruesome detail one of my workouts? I do it to illustrate a point. To understand suffering, we must understand its perspective and its purpose. Hill sprints are among my most painful workouts. But I plan out the previous day, sleeping at 10:30 to wake up at 5 so that I can perform this workout. As a matter of fact, I will be upset if I don't get this workout in.

Why? Because I have a goal in mind. I want to shave 3 minutes per mile off my 10k time by December. More than that, I do this because I have always been big and slow. I want to show the world, to show myself that I am no slave to genetics. It does not get to dictate to me how fast I can run. My soul and my character determine that.

Because I have that goal in mind, this pain and suffering is bearable. Enduring it becomes, dare I say? Easy.

How do we live our lives? Do not answer that question. Any spoken answer is worthless. The only answer of any value is the answer we live. Suffering is the crucible where our delusions and lies, the dross of an ethical life, beautifully lived, melts away. Suffering shows us as we are.

How do we live our lives? Or perhaps, why do we live our lives? What are our lives to us? I think for the vast portion of humanity, certainly Western and Westernized Civilization lives their lives to maximize a sensation of stupor and contentment. They don't want to live so much as they want to be sedated, to be numbed, put into a catatonic state by having things in life. What these things are makes no difference. The desire for another kilo of cocaine to snort or smoke and the desire to have a loving family and healthy children is no different here. The question is why? Most often people do these things because they believe it will make them happy. Anything that happens that upsets the future prospects of happiness is an abhorrence to them. Because it is written into the Constitution, it must be an ontological right of human beings.

No. Not really.

How, I wonder, would people, Christians, living for their own happiness read Ephesians 2:10? "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Or speaking of Christ in Colossians 1:16 "... all things were created by him and for him." Even last week in our study we read "To God's elect... chosen according to the foreknowledge of God... for the obedience to Jesus Christ..." And as it says elsewhere, we are not our own. We were bought at a price.

I think if we have this perspective on our suffering, that our lives are not centered on ourselves, it will have a profound impact on the particular way we approach the suffering, tragedies and disasters of our lives. If our ultimate concern is ourselves and the particular sensations of pain instead of its purpose, I think we will be deficient in our response to suffering. But if we understand that our life is only an instrument for God's glory, we can endure. What can the disastrous "Name it and Claim it" camp or the sickly saccarine positive thinking/ positive energy faction offer in competition with this? God has never promised a house for living, a job for earning, companions for loving or healing from dying but he has promised that he works in all things, for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. They may offer (false) promises of things to have in this life but do those hollow things compare with a God who not only knows our sorrows but is the Sovereing Lord who will use our pain and produce good; true, substantial, eternal good?

A word on feel-good pop Christianity for a moment. I hate every thing I have ever heard come out of Joel Osteen's program. I really cannot stand seeing his books in the Christian section of bookstores. The underlying premise of everything I have ever hear him say, of everything I have ever seen him write is that God wants to give you your best life now and just follow these positive principles and you can do it.

What would he say, pray tell, to a martyr of the faith? What would he say about a woman who after being brutally raped and beaten was then hacked to pieces by a mob of machetes because she would not deny Christ? What would he say about men imprisoned for decades because they had professed their faith? Positive thinking? No. There is no true, substantial similarity between the perspective of martyrs and the perspective of positivity. Martyrs have endured their suffering because I believe many of them have glimpsed the eternity that God has placed in their hearts. I have a conviction that many of them fixed their eyes on Jesus who endured much worse suffering than any of us will ever suffer and therein found comfort for their own struggles.

Perspective.

Martyrs endured beyond death. I believe they did it because they saw in their suffering God's enduring and sovereign hand moving towards the redemption of a broken world. And if I can work towards that, then any suffering I endure will be worth it.

Purpose.

A Tastier Fastball

2008-06-09T11:06:00.005-04:00

LINK

My God, I love baseball so much sometimes.

Stories

2008-06-05T09:57:00.002-04:00

"Everything is text. Everything has a story."

My mentor from undergrad told me that and that has always stuck with me.

Even for the few that do recognize this truth, how rare is it to find in that already small population, those who apply that knowledge to their body.

Every body has a story. Every part of the body has its own story as well. Those two, small, barely noticable discolorations on my left forearm? Those came from paintballing, when two Texans with their rifles surrounded me during a good friend's bachelor party. The chip on my front, right incisor came from being thrown over a fence in 6th grade. But there are more stories than just these tiny anecdotes.

My entire body tells a greater tale. My stature, 6' tall, broad shoulders, naturally pale skin say that I'm not a thorough-bred Cantonese boy. My paternal grandparents came from the North of China where they grow their boys country-big. My father, unfortunately, missed out on this genetic handout and looks like the more typically squat and swarthy farmer. Physically, I'm not particularly Chinese-looking until I wear sandals and show my elongated second toe, a trademark of the Han Chinese. I am a mixture. I am a story with a thousand beginnings, a million origins.

I am a story that crosses continents, lives, deaths, cultures, boundaries.

My story isn't particularly special or unique. Others have stories. They too have a thousand, ten-thousand beginnings and a million, a billion origins.

You can say that my story began as a faint, beating hope in my father's heart as he swam across the sea to Hong Kong, some of his family dying that night. Or you can say that I began as a fancy, a daydream in my mother's mind when that scruffy food-worker scribbled a poem to her on a greasy napkin. Or perhaps from before the beginning of time, from before spermatazoa, gonadotropins, nucleic acids, and life itself I began as a thought in the mind of game, an image from beyond eternity, one on whom the Almighty, the Infinite has set his heart and affection.

I'm not special. I just see things this way. In sharing this story, I had no real desire for anything other than to interact with the 2 or 3 people that do frequent this blog. Bodies are just one set of stories, but I like them because every change is recorded. Even attempts to mis-direct or mis-lead are part of the story. You can't delete or edit the story. It's a record of the soul itself.

I don't make any exceptions for those born with diseases, blind, lame, mute or those who have had amputations. The body's record then shows the person's true character better than my body does. My body has only battled against it's own soul, to try to forge itself. A person who has had an amputation or a disease, their body shows their grit, their courage, their true character. These are precious lifeboats of human history.

I have no idea what possessed me to write this entry this morning.

Every bird should get to fly

2008-06-04T15:38:00.001-04:00

More on the Mind-Body Complex

2008-06-02T14:24:00.000-04:00

Link (T-Nation interview with Mark Mahler)

The article was a worthwhile read, and of course anything involving Bruce Lee is pretty much guaranteed to be a worthwhile listen. Here's an excerpt from the article.

... Finally, the most important part of functional strength, the
part that's completely overlooked by most people, is this: It makes you a
stronger and tougher person overall, not just strong in the context of working
out.

I've seen many people that are training bad-asses, but are
complete pushovers in their personal and professional life. They avoid risks like the plague, don't have the courage to pursue the
lives they really want, and couldn't make a tough decision if their lives
depended on it.

They always go with the flow, never trust their instincts, and
constantly look to others to make decisions for them. They've completely
compartmentalized their strength and conditioning and don't carry it over to any
other aspect of their lives.

While they have strength and toughness in the context of physical
training, that strength doesn't carry over to where it really matters. It's
wasted. If you're strong and in shape when it comes to working out, but a wuss
everywhere else, then you're not a strong person overall and you've missed out
on the most important benefit of training.

Hard training teaches us how to push through when things aren't
easy and finish what we start. Transforming your body and building a
high level of strength takes a lot of discipline and hard work.
Physical accomplishments, whether it's losing 30 pounds of fat, adding 50 pounds
to your bench press, or running a marathon, teach you a lot about
yourself and help break mental barriers that hold you back in life.

It's a complete shame if we only have that strength and mental
toughness in the context of working out.
When you push through hard workouts and learn the discipline of training consistently in order to reach a goal, you have very powerful self-knowledge and skill sets which can help you push through in other important areas of life. However, if you compartmentalize who you are as a trainee from who you are in the rest of your life, the benefits won't carry over. That's a travesty!
Ironically, I see many people train the way they should be living their lives and many people live their lives the way they should be training!

One thing I love about Bruce Lee (and I said this about Lalanne as well) is that he doesn't bifurcate the spiritual and physical but he sees them as an indivisable unit. This is similar to Lalanne's belief that we are slaves to our own bodies. When our body is tired, we lay down. When we are hungry, we forage for food. It goes on and on.

Pursuit

2008-05-29T20:48:00.004-04:00

"Finished? It'll never be finished."

Kenpachi's speech between 2:15 and 3:45 is one of those anime moments that will stick with me for a long time.

"Everyone who searches for power, without exception, searches for battle."

I wrote in my last entry about the constant fear of regression that people feel once they've done what I've done. It is in my estimation, the exact fear that former inmates have when faced with the thought of going back to prison, the thought that your life is being taken away from you. Someone else will dictate when you go to sleep, when you rise, when you go to the bathroom, when you eat.

In my previous entry, I said that hatred and loathing paved the road to freedom for me and many others. This is true. It is a superior kind of hatred and loathing though. I experienced hatred and loathing every day while I rotted under the yoke of gluttony and sloth. Everything about the life that I lived in this weak, ineffective hatred was contemptible and low. Speaking in biological terms, that lifetime was the primordial slime from which higher life would develop. Hatred, pure and honest, intense as a stroke of lightning, fiery as the world's womb, scathing as acid rain, hatred transformed me from slime into something slightly more than slime.

I do not think I am much. In fact, I believe a great portion of who I am is still just slime. But it's not completely slime. Something, some little things here and there have changed, been transformed. That gives me much hope. If a little can change, a little more can change and then a little more after that.

The key I believe is to look forward. The worst thing someone can do is not look back, which I assume is the opposite of looking forward, but it is to look inward and feel contentment. Contentment in this regard leads to complacency and that will inevitably lead to regression.

In David's sin when he stole the wife of one of his men and then murdered him to cover his trail, one small detail has always stood out to me. He was at home watching women bathe while his soldiers were fighting his battles. He had ceased to go out to battle with his men long before. I wonder what David was like then. Was he, as I imagine him to be, fat, with his belly hanging loose making his armor unwearable, face red and flushed from enjoying the royal wine and the multitudes of wives, weakening his sword arm? What was David like then? Complacent, a disaster waiting to happen...

No, I will not go down the path. There is never to be rest in this life. There is no retirement. There is no backing down. I will go hard until I cannot go anymore. Ideally, Caleb from Scripture is one of my great heroes and I rank him over David for the fact that he kept it going late into his life. In his old age, his sword-arm was not weak nor was his eye-sight dim. I think that is due to the Lord's blessing, yes, but no more so than Jack LaLlane's fitness at age 93 is a blessing. Science has shown that if you keep pushing yourself, your body can and will adapt. Don't sell it short. Don't sell yourself short.

There will be no shaking throne. I will not be a slave to my body anymore. No desire will ever master me as it did before. Cupcakes, cookies, coke, candy... no, these are not OK. How dare I think about taking a step towards regression! Skip a workout? Slack off and not go through the full range-of-motion? No, we will pursue better things.

365 is my deadlift max. This week I'll try for 385. I'll attempt a 320 lb. squat. I'm going to realize my one-handed push-up and one-armed chin-up before the year is through. I'm going to run a mile in under 6. Then under 5. I will see how far I can go in everything. There will be no end. There will only be new markers.

And here... here is the next one.

26.2 miles. Double my previous high. A full marathon. 120 days to prepare.

Time to get to work.

Some explanations

2008-05-22T11:38:00.003-04:00

So of course this post is non-sequitur. It has to be.

Anyways, I just read an article over at one of the fitness (natch, bodybuilding and powerlifting) websites that I frequent and felt compelled to perhaps clarify some points in my own story.

Reading about Bartl's physical transformation struck a chord in me. No, I never did smoke, blow or drink. But I was pre-diabetic, grossly, morbidly obese and worse than all of those: I wished that I was something else. Here I use wish in a pejorative way. I hate wishing. I despise wishful thinking. People who preach "positive energy" and "positive thinking" make me want to throw things. But what is more damning than all the rest is that I wanted to protect my fragile ego. I would alternate between lying to myself and pretending I wasn't disgustingly fat or saying that I was fat but I was strong and thus it was OK. (I was not strong. Only among Asians would a bench-press of 350 pounds be considered strong.) My genetics didn't allow for me to be fit. Mom's food is too good. I have to go and eat with these people to fellowship with them. I'm fat for the cause of Christ!

Rationalization.

From where I am in 2008, I am most merciless, most brutal, unloving, unforgiving, unkind, rough and arrogant towards those who rationalize in my presence. I mock them. I belittle them. I shove them around and injure them. I am only describing. What I have done is not justifiable by any means. This is simply a statement of facts.

I act this way because I am a thousand times worse towards myself. I do not point to my mother's delicious cooking, the racial anguish of my earlier years, Satan, sunspots or generic geekiness as the cause of my struggles with insecurity and obesity. I point solely to my soul, a sick, twisted, hideous mass of rationalizations and softness.

If you have read Bartl's story on T-nation, then I can tell you I changed myself the same way; extreme hatred and anger. Towards myself. Towards the sick, disgusting bag of flesh that I carried every day. It is something that those who have always been or fit can understand. Those who have never wrestled with themselves can never understand. There is no possibility of that. They do not understand what it takes to stand before a mirror and grab a roll of fat and say:

"This is disgusting. This is fat. This is the sign of a sick and
trembling soul. Do not be gentle. Do not go easy. Indulge yourself in truth's
toxicity. Inhale it deeply. Let it kill you. Make it kill you. If it does not
kill you, then gorge on it until it hurts. And then take another bite. Make sure
you die. You like eating don't you, worm? You're nothing but a useless maggot, a
vile, spineless, worthless load of trash. If you love to eat so much, eat
TRUTH!"

I would do this nightly and make sure that any sense of ego I had was annihilated. It was not easy. It was painful. But it was the most worthwhile thing I have ever done in my life bar-none.

Hatred. When I ran my daily 4 miles in the morning, heaving and panting and flailing wildly at the air trying to drag myself through each step, would any of my readers understand what kind of things I would say to motivate myself? It was motivated from pure hatred. I imagined myself an overzealous lunatic monk of bygone eras whipping myself. When my sides hurt from stomach cramps, I imagined a fit, muscular, lean version of myself thrusting a spear into a fat, soft, quivering version with a face contorted in sadistic hatred. There will be no mercy. I want to hear the old, soft child in me squeal and cry out in pain and I wanted to tear that boy apart limb by limb as lions tear apart gazelles on the Discovery Channel. No mercy. Much pain.

And much fear. I wonder if my church-mates understand why it is that I do not join them for a post-church lunch anymore. It is an old hatred I have. And it is a very new fear. As Bartl said in his own words, so I say in mine. I think that many who have went through this same journey as I live with a constant fear of relapse. Perhaps it goes away after a space of years or decades but perhaps not. Who is to say? When I see a donut, a cookie, some cake, ice cream, there wells up in me a tremendous fear that I will taste and enjoy. That I will do so tomorrow. And the day after. And so on until I'm crying years later, enveloped in a sea of flesh asking how I could have let this happen.

Here I am no longer battling myself. I am fighting everybody. I am fighting a nation, a civilization. I am fighting the human instinct to gorge and gather. I love my parents but they are the worst. "Oh honey, why don't you enjoy yourself a little? Just be careful when you exercise. Be gentle and do it slow..." What do they know of reactive-strength, speed-strength, explosiveness or hypertrophy? Their concern is touching but I am always gruff in my response. And the eating habits of nearly everyone around me... Intolerable! How can you eat fast food and enjoy it? How can you ask me to partake? Did Daniel have to endure this in Babylon's embrace? No, I will never step inside a Panera, Uno's Chicago Grill again. No more.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a war against obesity that I am waging. This is a war against rationalization and excuse making. This is a war, an all-out, brutal, total war against softness and mediocrity. My rebellion is against these suffocating forces in society. My hate is for this and the way I see it in myself.

I will admit many sins here. I am not gracious when I find people who remind me of who I used to be. I will freely say that I do not always have a desire to help them. Very often if they are guys I will have an insane desire to hit them and beat them viciously. If they are female, I want to ignore them and trample over them as one may walk in gardens over the lives of ants and worms. Sometimes I want to reach out and help and rescue them from their lives of mediocrity and meaninglessness. It's a struggle I have. This is complete honesty. I am often ungodly and a sure sinner when confronted with people who are as I was.

Only in the past week or so have I realized that the pendulum has swung too far. I am too hard. There is no soil for love in this heart of mine. But now having seen the problem, I will work towards correcting this issue.

But it is not a reversal. The pendulum metaphor only has a limited application. It would be better to think of Hegelian aufhebung, sublation and synthesis. Hatred and hardness were the most important things I learned in the past half-decade. The pain I felt in my heart from that break-up stirred up much that had been waiting to explode. I am incredibly thankful for it. But now having hurt others I see the new direction to go in. The hatred and hardness cannot last forever. That season is coming to its close. I believe the hatred will at some point in the near future boil away and leave beautiful resolve in its place, sterner than steel, stronger than stone, steadfast. Steadfast. This fear of regression must be overcome. At some point, I will realize that I have not had a major setback these past 5 years and I must continue to push higher and onward without slackening my guard. Popeye's Fried Chicken and latte's should never again enter my allowed-to-consume list.

Enough talk. Talk is worthless. Get your ass in gear, Lee.

Relativity

2008-05-19T09:59:00.002-04:00

Interesting ontological question that occurred to me while running the Healthy Kidney 10K:

Is knowledge ever truly knowable?

Hold on a second there, pre-suppositionalist cowboy. I've been around so I know the tricks of the trade. I know all the dumb answers to that question:

"How do I know you actually said that? If I don't know, why
should I answer?"
Punk.
"Knowledge HAS TO BE knowable because that question
demonstrates a knowledge-base."
Inadmissable.
"42."
Patron Saint of Baseball.

But first the question came up as a question of relativity. As I was running, I'm passing by scores of runners. I love the feeling of the uphills because I've trained specifically for them. While other people look at hills and curse out loud or under their breath, I look at hills with a special exhiliration.

"I've trained for this. I've trained HARDER than this. This is
nothing." -- Roger Clemens

But I can't sustain that pace for the entire time. At the 5th or 6th miles, other runners started flying past me. These runners had a special store of power left in them for the final stretch. But then I noticed something. All throughout the race, other runners had been passing me by. Big runners, small runners, male runners, female runners, Achilles athletes... How fast was I truly going? I couldn't judge by my own senses. The world is relative and I had no fixed point of reference.

But thank God for the race-clock, right? That must surely be an objective point of reference to track my progress. But is it really? I've been reading other blogs and many other runners noted how their GPS watches gave them different split-times and distances than the official clock and course settings. The race chips on our feet logged different times as well.

"A man with one watch always knows the time. A man with two watches
never knows the time."

Which time is correct? Ultimately the chip-time was designated as the official time. That's a rather arbitrary ruling. Even so, does the concept of arbitrary expand so wide that it destroys even itself? What would be required in an objective measurement? (And of course it is only a few steps away before we can begin to speak of a moral relativity. But for now let us speak of tangible measurements of inches and meters.)

I'm not sure that objectivity is possible. Using the poor tool of my own imagination, I am unable to conceive of any situation or circumstance where one measurement system or method SHOULD be taken over another system or method. These all boil down to preferences and similarities/dissimilarities. The value of any given system is defined by its goal and context and I cannot conceive of any unifying goal or context.

Next post: The ramifications in a moral system

Truth, in an objective sense

2008-05-14T22:12:00.001-04:00

LINK

Were the words any truer, they would've been in the Bible.

A Thin Line

2008-05-12T09:33:00.004-04:00

"If I tell you I'm good you will think I am boasting. If I tell you I am no
good, you know I am lying." -- Bruce Lee

One of the struggles I have always had as a Christian is understanding the interplay between God and man in man's duty. This is particularly difficult for me as someone who subscribes to the Reformed beliefs of God's Sovereignty.

I think I have it worked it out in terms of regeneration and the ordo salutis. Regeneration first, belief afterwards. Regeneration is the principal cause of belief. No problem so far.

But what about sanctification?

This is where things become murky for me. Paul describes his spiritual regimen saying

"Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man
beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have
preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." -- 1Cor. 9:25-27

This resonates with me. I have a sense of what it means to train seriously. I understand that when everyone wants to go to some restaurant to eat their greasy, disgusting, face-stuffing food I have to say "Go and fatten yourselves up. I'm eating a can of tuna fish and an egg and washing it down with a protein shake." I understand that when everyone is at home watching T.V., that is the perfect time to go out in the pouring rain and run 6 cold, miserable miles.

And when I do that I also understand I'm purging my soul of any love for comfort and idleness. How much more for the eternal soul? Love of ease and idleness cannot, should not exist in my soul.

Yes! I understand this, Paul!

"We proclaim him admonishing and teaching with all wisdom, so that we may
present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with
all his energy, which so powerfully works in me." -- Colossians
1:28-29

This I do not understand. What energy? What power? I understand my power, my ability. I do not believe Paul is telling the Colossian church that there is some universal, prevenient capacity that is distributed to Christians generally which allows them to then strive and struggle and that without this prevenient sort of grace, we cannot do Gospel work.

As I understand the larger Biblical themes of redemptive history, atonement of particular individuals, etc., I understand God to be an active agent in each. He was the one that saw Israel's sin and drew up Assyria to take them into captivity. Hell also, is not a place where sinners "just happen to go." I believe that God actively consigns a person to their eternal fate after judging them for their works. For those punitive acts of secondary justice, I believe God is actively directing the universe. So when it comes to the issue of sanctification, I do not understand God's role.

It is the "I" that performs the action and understandably "I" am due some of the credit. I must make a choice to sin or not to sin. God does not override the will and make choices for me. Jesus does not do a pull-up and then impute growth to my latissimus dorsai muscle. I must work. If I don't do the pull-up my lats won't grow. If I don't discipline my soul and create situations to foster growth, don't take initiatives to stimulate growth, I will not progress.

Obviously, I see sanctification operating under different principles than regeneration. Jesus died on the cross, atoned for my sin and by the Holy Spirit imputed his righteousness-- put a stamp on me that said "Paid In Full." Regeneration operates independently of the will. There is no capacity to desire God or to love God in unregenerate man. A man can no more will himself to new life anymore than a cold, bloodless corpse can will itself to tapdance.

But I am alive now. I am no longer dead. That much is Biblically true. I am alive and I am doing things. If I do, I bear responsibility for my actions no matter the outcome. A baseball player says God's power makes him hit the home run. Does he say God made him ground into a double play?

Where is God, how is God working post-regeneration?

Paul works. But He also attributes his work to God. How? Where? I don't think it's just a rubber stamp he uses to Christ-ify his work. How is God working?

Open question. Looking for answers.

Personal Heroes: Jack LaLanne

2008-05-09T11:28:00.008-04:00

Quotes:

"The average person who is 70 or 80 is over the hill... They're fat,
they're racked with aches and pains. Then you get people over 90 who are running
marathons, because they worked at living. I have a lot of energy and you know
why? Because I use it. It's use it or lose it, and it's believing in something.
Most people just go through life existing, waiting for retirement. That's the
death knell."

"I train two hours every day. I do an hour and a half of weight training,
then maybe a swim or a walk. I like change. I change my program every 30 days.
You know, you get bored. The only thing I don't change is my wife."

"Sitting around on your big fat gluteus maximus talking about the good old
days. The good old days are right this second. You've got to exercise
VIG-OR-OUSLY! Life is tough. Life is a challenge. Life is a battlefield... .
Life is an athletic event, and you must train for it."

The first thing people notice about the blog is the title. Faith. Flyballs. Most of my posts fall into one of these two categories. I talk about baseball, maybe some of the other sports as well, and then I talk about my faith. Personally, I am somewhat torn by this bifurcation. I really believe the body is the soul and the soul is the body. It is useful to speak of the two separately in one sense and it is harmful in another sense.

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces
himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has
developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I
tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." Emil
Zatopek

This is what I mean! The body-soul is not a bar of iron. Iron rusts. Iron rusts to nothing in a sea of air. Iron melts under heat and shatters in the cold. The body-soul is not iron. Push your body, push your soul until it hurts, until it's crying out for you to stop, until it's pleading with you for mercy. Then watch. A little rest and it becomes stronger. Push it again, push it past the familiar, the things it knows it is capable of, thrust it mercilessly into the unknown. It becomes stronger still. Iron does not grow. Steel does not learn. What is a sword compared to the hand that wields it? Iron is not strong. This, this body, this soul, it is strong.

Running the Brooklyn Half-Marathon last week, I was in a world of agony as my hamstrings and calves on both legs started cramping up terribly at the 11th mile. 11 miles! What a worthless distance! But it was beyond the scope of what I had endured up to that point. I had never pushed myself that hard before. But I was pushing that morning. Overcast sky. Freezing wind. Wave after wave of swift, lithe, beautiful runners passing me by, mocking me with their easy pace. Was I pushing my body and training my soul? Was I pushing my soul to train my body? Both questions are misguided.

Stanley hobbled across 2 embarassing miles, 2 of the longest miles he's ever seen. He willed his body towards and then across the finish line. 2 hours 12 minutes 33 seconds.

Yet, it means nothing. I must take myself to that limit again, today, if at all possible. And then tomorrow. Excellence is a habit. Strength is a habit. Endurance is a habit.

My goal in life is perfection. I make no apologies for this brash statement. I want to be perfect in Christ-likeness. This goal serves only as a beacon, something to aim at, to focus and direct all my energies towards. I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, believe that I will achieve perfect Christ-likeness in the years that God allots to me on this earth. But I believe the Holy Spirit will bring me closer today than yesterday and closer still tomorrow than today. And I believe that I must keep pushing. I cannot, at any point, stop pushing.

Recently, I have injured a friend through my inattentiveness. Falling into complacency, I let something go unattended and it damaged our friendship. I am unsure what the final bill will be. Yet, if nothing else, I realize my error. So what do I do now? I must keep pushing forward. I cannot stop. I must keep going forward.

That is why Jack LaLanne is a hero of my mine. I do not think he believes in the Gospel but I know he believes in never having enough. I know he believes that he hasn't yet scratched his potential. I know he believes he can do better. That is what I can learn from him.

I am not the man that I should be or want to be. But I am getting closer. I am hobbling with cramped calves and hamstrings and every step is a world of agony, but I will cross that finish line.

Yukio Mishima Interview

2008-04-04T14:49:00.002-04:00

So lately, I've only been able to post videos. Life has just been a little too hectic to be able to write out full blogs. I have however made about 4 or 5 drafts that I'd like to finish up at some point.

But anyways regarding this above video, I posted it because it reflects a lot of my sentiments I brought up in a previous post. I don't agree with everything the Mishima says. For one, I disagree with his nationalistic sentiments.

But I fully endorse the idea of living for "principles" and "great causes." I do agree that any life lived for itself is absurd. I, in honesty, do not know how such a person can keep from suicide. Moreover, as a Christian who wants to defend the sanctity of life, I also do not think that I can not give any honest reason why a person should entitle themselves to life if their only aim is to search for more distraction. People who are eternally roaming about for entertainment, are in my view, no different than a worm crawling through the slime gorging itself to stupidity with filth.

But his worldview seems so nihilistic. I do not think that "great causes" should be pursued because the alternative is death-by-boredom. In such a case, the great cause becomes nothing more than lofty entertainment. A great cause is only great because it demands pursuit. I hope in my life to do something to fight sex trafficking. It's villiany is such that I would gladly die bleeding slowly from a stab wound to the stomach or a bullet through the lung if I could contribute to its end. It creates such a visceral reaction, such anger and rage, that would degrade humans to less than animals, that I believe the pursuit of its end is a great cause.

There are other great causes in the world. But I believe Mishima got it wrong.

A nation, I do not believe, is a great cause. It is only an expansion of self-centeredness. Here, it is only that the self expands to a larger community. Climbing a vast mountain is no great cause to me (here referencing one of my own personal hero-demons, Mark Twight) because in the end it is simply a fancier distraction.

Justice is no distraction. God is no distraction. I am the distraction in my own life. He is my life. God's nature is beyond any comparison to nations or states. Too often Christians and non-Christians alike treat my devotion to God as a dressed-up way of saying I am devoted to this group of people who verbally agree to certain principles, or to a building, or to a chain-of-history. It is not.

It is devotion to the only absolute being. Apart from that Absolute Being, all else could face annihilation and it would be still only a flicker at the edge of the horizon. It is only through the mediation, the interstitial presence, of this Absolute Being do things like church and family and individuals begin to matter. I think this is only right. First, they must be left. Then they must be revisited. And only then may the words 'love' and 'affection' and 'sacrificial' have any sense and meaning.

But yes, at its heart, I agree with Mishima. And I say with absolute conviction and no qualification whatsoever, that if my life ever becomes preoccupied with entertainment, accumulation and gross excess, then be a friend and a brother or sister and stop my heart from beating, my brain from producing any currents. You will be doing me a mercy for if I am ever reduced to such a person, the only 'me' that is worth a place among the living will have already died.

Awesome Video

2008-03-26T10:47:00.001-04:00

Stage 1: Clear the rubble

2008-03-20T11:42:00.007-04:00

So here I am going to begin the attempt of something that has eluded me time and time again: the creation of a personal ethos, or to be closer to what I'm trying to say, the Japanese do.

It's something that has been turning in my head for nearly a decade now.

Why am I doing this? I am doing this because I am someone that tends to pick up new hobbies and interests very quickly. This isn't a good thing. The nature of humanity, the nature of the world we lives in, shows that 5 specialists will always be superior to 5 generalists. This quote from one of my heroes, Bruce Lee, summarizes my sentiments well:

"Perfection is achieved when nothing more can be taken away, not when nothing more can be added."

The less I have in life, the better off I will be.

It occurs to me that civilization would be better off without television, for example. Think of how much information is accessible with the television. And more than that think of how much of it is absolutely useless. To take it one step further, think of how much actually makes one more foolish and contemptible for having acquired that information. Every reality show, every new drama, the vast majority of what I see is not worth watching. I do not care who was kicked off the Real World last week, I do not care who is left on American Idol, I do not care why there are polar bears and secret societies on some stupid Pacific island. All of that clogs up the pathways of my mind. Once again, this is only an example.

This path, ethos or do, should serve as a reminder to me and a standard for me. This is worthwhile. This is not worthwhile.

I know some things about life already. I know that it is not an accident. I know that I'm only going to get one pass through this tunnel. I should not waste it. I cringe when I gaze upon the section of humanity available to me. What waste! The covers of their magazines, the topics of conversation, their very existence crushes my spirit. It is as if they live life accidentally accumulating experiences and sentiments. I do not see how the life of the average human being is so far different from the life of a sponge on the sea floor. That is a tremendous tragedy given the capacity of a human being.

So this do is also a reaction and a response to humanity. I do not quite know what I want to be but I know some things that I do not want to be. I do not want to waste my life like the vast, stinking mass of American civilization. I have no desire to be a sponge.

As I intimated earlier, there is no tragedy in a sponge existing as a sponge. That is the limit of its abilities. Humanity is capable of so much more. I agree with Mark Twight in this article of his where he correctly states that

"Athletes are 'entertainers' rather than examples of mankind's potential."

To boldly go, to dare, to dream, to achieve, to accomplish great things in life should be applauded, but too often it is seen as the hubris of a pretentious individual. "Do you think you're better than us?", "So you think that I'm a bad person because I watch this or that T.V. show?" and so on and so forth.

I, honestly am sensitive to all those statements, and that is why I want to forge this ethos. I want to have my own aegis and proof against these barbs that soft and flaccid people hurl at me. I want to finish this race, to achieve my potential. I want to see the utmost limit of my capability. This is why I am going down this path.

Rolling Six Feet Deep

2008-03-08T17:03:00.003-05:00

R.I.P Gary Gygax
6/27/38 - 3/4/08

I want to blog about Dungeons and Dragons in honor of Gygax's life. It's not a typical Christian blog on D&D because I've already made my decision on its relation to Christian life and I believe it's OK. I find him a phenomenal genius who constructed amazing world building rules which are, honestly, very foundational to how I see the world in many ways. 3rd Edition more than 2nd Edition because I think THAC0 was a disaster just like 2nd Edition's multi-classing rules.

At any rate, I want to blog on an obscure element that rarely gets addressed and that is the construction of the alignment system. Game worlds operate in moral absolutes and I find that odd considering how game worlds are almost always polytheistic with any Uber-deity acting as a stand-offish clockmaker. AO in Faerun, for example, fits the bill.

Pelor, Correllon, Moradin, Yondalla and Garl Glittergold are deities on the side of "Good" while Nerull, Gruumsh, Kurtulmak and Llolth are evil-aligned deities. I wonder how they can make that judgment call in absolute terms given the lack of an Over-God in most gameworlds.

Gruumsh, god of Orcs for example could really be the result of bad press. As his mythos goes, the various racial deities drew lots and Gruumsh was left with no home for his people. He then stabbed his spear out and said that he would conquer other lands to make a home. Now, in this particular case, is this a particularly evil act? From an Orc perspective it is simply a matter of being able to self-determine a national destiny. An Orc, sociologically speaking, is lawful good or chaotic good in Orc society but chaotic evil in human lands.

The greater problem is any attempt to posit a morality without the existence of an active moral Uber-deity. As D&D clerics can draw power from "principles" like "Justice" (lawful neutral), "mercy" (neutral good), "freedom" (chaotic good), "tyranny" (lawful evil) and so on and so forth, it might be tempting to think that having mere "discoverable" moral absolutes would answer the question. It doesn't for morality posits, by necessity, a value system, namely that good is better than evil and should be chosen.

When morality is reduced to principles, randomness becomes the inescapable conclusion. They may be socially beneficial but that is just an opinion of science. Further studies may prove the opposite. Also, why should "socially beneficial" be privileged over "individually beneficial" and how do they interact with each other? Adam Smith has one answer and socialism another. Which is good and which is evil?

The Gygaxian world's morality is incapable of answering these deeper questions. Not that we should have expected it to but it is for me one of the great annoyances of the game (especially as my favored class is an Aasimar Paladin that puts all his points in CHA so that he can later take the Divine Might feat and then have the bonus apply to dual wielded weapons... but that's something else altogether.)

Back to morality.

As far as I can see morality cannot itself be supreme otherwise it becomes arbitrary. Morality itself must always be secondary to something else. In a Christian sense, I often wonder if anything is supreme, is it also arbitrary, in this case, God.

If God's supremacy serves as the basis of morality, his fiat being the sole determinant of what is good and what is sin (as I believe the Bible substantiates) then the question "Why follow God?" still applies doesn't it? It may offer a whole host of benefits such as "reconciliation with the Creator," and "living by the principles with which we were meant to live with," and "suffusing your life with the presence of a truly Omnipotent and Omnibenevolent being" and all that but that I don't think would be appealing (or even sensible) to vast tracts of humanity.

And these questions aren't asked in terms of apologetics or with an evangelistic purpose in mind. I am well aware that eventually God transforms the heart of the elect to believe and worship His person and that it is not cognitive decision-making that precedes regeneration.

The best answer I can have for this is that the most basic states of a dualist universe are best expressed in internet vernacular.

God = win
~God = fail

In the end God has all the win and everything opposed to God is the fail. You might even say it's Epic Fail.
All internet humor aside, I cannot think of any other possible metric which would make one system preferable to another. Even God's supremacy seems arguably arbitrary. His qualities may demand more respect, awe and adoration and all of that should factor into a person's calculus but aside from win-state or fail-state I can't see any other metric that would elevate a system or a being above arbitrary.

And I hope my readers, both of you, can see that even with win-state and fail-state logic, I have still have some reservations about its ability to separate anything out of arbitrariness.

So I guess this post = fail. : (

On Mediocrity In a Christian Sense

2008-03-07T21:51:00.003-05:00

I wonder what it is about Christianity that so many object to it on the basis of its mediocrity. Ayn Rand makes this objection in the form of one Ellsworth Toohey where lack of strength becomes a perverse strength. Nietzsche has a similar objection calling the faith an aberration grown out of a certain slave morality.

As a product of the Jewish culture, the slave morality objection cannot be avoided. It can only be endured. The Jews for a great part of their existence, wandering as vagrants with Abraham, enslaved in Egypt, lost in the desert with Moses, oppressed under the Judges, and eventually exiled in Assyria and Babylon. The Joshua eras, the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms seem to be the exception. Even after the Old Testament, whether that refers to the Maccabean rebellion or to Christians crawling through catacombs, little changes.

If the Jews were strong, they would not have been chosen. It was because they were a weak, miserable, worthless mess of a people that God chose them. It says as much in Deuteronomy.

Even Christian testimonies for the most part have much the same form:

"I couldn't do anything in life. I couldn't get good grades. I couldn't get a girlfriend. And that's when I found Jesus!"

"I had it all. I had money, power, respect, women but then I realized it was all worthless and that's when I found Jesus."

Christianity is for the most part predicated on failure.

And I can empathize with how Nietzsche and Rand feel. In fact, it's probably the front where I battle God the most. Other humans are only roadblocks to my true development as a person. That's what I get when I read Nietzsche and Rand. Other humans are rabble that want to feast on your individuality. They are only mobs of stupid and mediocre roaches that hate the light of genius and excellence.

Should this blog have a happy ending? Some twist at the end where I suddenly refute two great minds with one expert move? They wouldn't be great minds if I could do that. I'm not sure I can do that.

The best I have so far is that this is all seen from a human perspective. And that their anthropology is not particularly well done. Man was not made to live alone. Howard Roark, even married, is alone.

But that doesn't answer my deeper questions. Why is there such a tendency towards mediocrity and such an antipathy towards ambition and greatness? Why is it that so often the urges in me that I declare best and most worthy in me are crushed so violently in the vice-grip of church society?

There is an easy theological answer there too, but that doesn't much help. Easy answers never help.

Struggle and Strength

2008-03-03T23:55:00.005-05:00

Tonight was the first time I have ever heard Dr. Keller speak in person. I downloaded (but never finished) one of his sermons online. Needless to say, he has quickly gotten himself on the short list of pastors who I enjoy and freely respect.

One thing he said in particular tonight re-affirmed many deeply held convictions of mine; to paraphrase, doubt is a sign of a healthy spirituality. And in the limited sense he was referring to, he was correct. Doubt, certain kinds of doubt, indicate a vibrant and growing spirituality.

"Whether we immoralists do virtue any harm? -- As little as anarchists do princes. Only since they have been shot at do they again sit firmly upon their thrones. Moral: one must shoot at morals."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Doubt, when acknowledged and confronted, leads to struggle and all struggle that does not kill, makes strong. As an aside, this perhaps is the reason why no empire can last forever. Once an empire reaches the peak of its ability, the fullest extent of its dominance, it begins its decline. The sun at noon marks the descent into twilight. The people become fat and rich and worst of all, comfortable. Frivolity and entertainment become necessities as people look for ways to fill the time that was previously spent on survival. And this is a drug worse than any chemist has ever concocted. It not only degrades the body, it atrophies the soul. Eventually such a society will collapse under the impossible burden of a wasted people scavenging for fashion and status among the ruins.

As that is true of empires, so it is true of individuals. Stagnation is the phenomenon of rotting before dying. Beliefs, a faith, unquestioned, unchallenged, unprovoked ceases to be worthwhile faith.

"Some wish to live within sound of chapel bell. I wish to run
a rescue shop a yard from Hell."
-- C.T. Studd, missionary

I sometimes wonder how Christians can remain Christians in the South or the Midwest? How does one live as a Christian in areas where there are mostly Christians? How does one find relevance and meaning to Scripture in a place where it is not openly mocked?

"If it's 90 degrees with 80 percent humidity, Roger Clemens is
able to say 'So what? I've trained in that. I've trained for that.' Actually,
his program is harder than the games themselves."
-- Jeff Mangold, former Yankee Strength Coach

One of the reasons I love New York so much is that it never fails to present some kind of challenge to overcome in my faith. Whether it is the ever-present homeless that wander the subways begging for charity, the kids whose parents are strung-out on drugs, the teenage mother, the former convict or the transvestite prostitute, New York never stops asking me the question: "Do you really believe that?" What happens when you meet a genuinely interesting, loving, kind and wonderful person who happens to be homosexual? What if you looked up to and admired this person? Will such a person truly be sent to Hell by a God of Justice?

"For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work."
-- Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians

But these are only small and passing trials. The final trial will be far more telling. And when that final day comes, I know I'll have spent my whole life preparing for it.

Why Deuteronomy Is My Favorite Book of the Bible

2008-02-23T10:47:00.003-05:00

As I was doing my daily devotional on Friday, I read this passage:

"And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen..."
-- Deuteronomy 10:12-21

I could've thrown all of chapter 11 in there as well but I think this gets the point across. I love the book of Deuteronomy. To me, it always feels like a pep talk that a coach might give his players before a game. And in the context of the book, that's not too far off. Moses is preaching his final sermons to the nation of Israel, preparing them for battles that their parents weren't ready for. It's a book of encouragement.

But look at the nature of encouragement. Moses never talks about how good these people are or the good things they have done. He goes so far as to call them children of sinners, stubborn, disobedient and stupid in various ways. Moses does not puff up their egos, he deflates them. But he tells them to have confidence in God. And that I suppose is the big difference between feel-good psychotherapy and biblical encouragement. Psychotherapy invites us to look in and real, biblical encouragement invites us to look up.

In the passage above, Moses gives, what is to me, one of the greatest descriptions of God. God the just, the mighty and terrible. Too often, I believe the faith of modern Christians is weak and sickly because it lacks balance. God is only seen as doting Father or suffering Jesus. Where is the fierce wrath and anger? Where is the terror of justice? If the idea of God does not cause a part of us to tremble, to disintegrate in fear then I do not think we have a complete idea of God. But yet, Moses does maintain the balance. The mighty matchless God who is willing to slay every firstborn child, the God who smashes nations as if they were pottery, the great God of pure justice has set his heart on us, his love on us and the sojourner.

As small as the passage makes man, it also lifts him up. It sets a mountain of infinity before us and beckons us to climb. Only those who understand the beauty of the journey and the nearly-divine uplift of attempting great goals will understand why this unachievable task is uplifting.

This is real, authentic, meaty Biblical encouragement. This is what I need my friends to show me when I crawl through the darkness. This is my favorite book of the Bible.

Not A Bang But A Whimper

2008-02-17T18:23:00.001-05:00

"... An unleashed lust for wealth and power turned them into aggressors, resulting in reprisals, that required their cities to abandon vulnerable outlying fields and intensify production closer to home, eventually pushing land beyond its tolerance.

"Society had evolved too many elites, all demanding exotic baubles." He describes a culture wobbling under the weight of an excess of nobles, all needing quetzal feathers, jade, obsidian, fine chert, custom polychrome, fancy corbeled roofs, and animal furs. Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society's energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings.

...

It was a desperate society that had lost control... Its monuments were soon eaten by the forest: in a world relieved of its humans, man's attempts to make his own mountains quickly melt back into the ground.

When you examine societies just as self-confident as ours that unraveled and were eventually swallowed by the jungle," says Arthur Demarest, "you see that the balance between ecology and society is exquisitely delicate. If something throws that off, it all can end.

He stoops, picks up a shard from the moist ground. "Two thousand years later, someone will be squinting over the fragments, trying to find out what went wrong." -- Alan Weisman, in "The World Without Us"

As I'm reading this book, I'm more and more disgusted by humanity in general. Specifically, I'm disgusted by people living in poverty, the middle-class as well as the affluent. For the most part, I see our society as irrevocably doomed.

The above passage referenced Mayan civilization. Its affluence caused its destruction. Why should America think itself any different?

It should really come as no surprise that watching T.V. burns less calories than sleeping. Sleeping is useful. Watching T.V. is not.

I firmly believe our society will crumble to ruin around us not with Muslim radicals gassing us in the streets but as they watch from afar, horrified, as we eat cake and drink syrupy beverages rotting in front of glowing internet and T.V. screens. They will call Allah's judgment on America justice and poetic for they will believe that it must have been only by divine appointment that He used our greed to destroy us.

Will the Muslim world look on? I don't think it much matters. I actually don't think they will much outlast Western civilization. As Western civilization falls to ruin, would they grow affluent and follow our descent?

The key is this: comfort breeds contempt.

I am beginning to truly believe that if life's goal is comfort and ease then we are quite possibly sick beyond repair. If life is nothing more than accumulation and social status, life is probably not worth living in any sense of the word. What a useless blip on the historic map. Such a life as that is contemptible, worthy of equal consideration as that of a worm or insect. There would be no difference.

And personally, I find that this is the cause of my deepest spiritual struggles these days. I was fed from birth with the idea that life is accumulation, life is comfort. Give money to Darfur and then spend on a lavish vacation. Live longer. Be balanced. Retire early.

I believe all that.

And yet in my mind, I understand that life is only a resource as in time, as in money. Biblically, this is how I see life. But I do not believe the Bible on that point.

I would love to care more about starving children but I'm too preoccupied with my own entertainment. I, like the rest of this society, is doomed. And the fate is far worse than death, an apocalypse of flame or war... would that be preferable to death by clogged arteries and a soft mind thinking dull, worthless thoughts? Living a life of worth and meaning... shouldn't that be far more valuable than a life of comfort and ease? So why won't more people pursue it?

Oh, I know.

Because it's uncomfortable.

Steroids and Statistics

2008-02-09T22:28:00.000-05:00

I thought that this was a fantastic, articulate, well-thought out article that uses solid examples to show that Congress is incompetent.

Elation

2008-02-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

Hubris?

Miracle.

A New Golden Age

2008-01-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

Replacement Level Yankees is doing a great series on the greatest offensive Yankee seasons ever. The First Base one is particularly eye-popping as I am sure the Outfielders will be. If we look carefully at that list, we should realize that we're in one of the greatest Yankee periods, drought not with-standing. Looking at the line-up right now, Jeter and A-Rod are slam-dunk, first-ballot Hall of Famers and Posada will make it in if he puts up two more substantially good seasons.

Now for just one more ride down the Canyon of Heroes...

The Choices People Make...

2008-01-26T13:16:00.000-05:00

Let's take a look at two case studies, shall we?

Case 1 - Justin Morneau's recent contract extension
Case 2 - Robinson Cano's recent contract extension

This is a great example of people making wise and foolish baseball decisions.
Let's break these deals down point by point.

Defense
And although I mentioned it in another post, let's take a quick look at Bill James' defensive spectrum:

1B, RF, LF, 3B, CF/2B, SS, C

Once again, the positions on the left are the easiest to play and find offensively minded replacement players from and the positions on the right are skill positions that are difficult to find replacements.

This is the only reason why Alex Rodriguez can be mentioned in the same sentence as Barry Bonds when we're talking about the greatest player of all time. Alex, in his career year with the Texas Rangers hit a mind boggling 57 home runs AS A GOLD-GLOVE SHORTSTOP. Barry Bonds, while a gold-glover himself, plays left field. The difference in defensive value to the team is significant. If we considered offense only then Barry Bonds is on a level with Babe Ruth. No other players were nearly as good as those two. More on that another time.

Speaking of offense, let's move on to that now.

. BA OBP SLG EQA IsoPower IsoPatience AB/XBH
Morneau - .276 .340 .498 .288 .222 .064 11
Cano - .314 .346 .489 .290 .175 .032 11

This is the first time I have ever blogged in an attempt to use (and hopefully, better understand Iso- stats. I'm not sure if AB/XBH is actually a real stat or not, but I just did some quick math (total career ab divided by career xbh). I think that's worth some inquiry.

Morneau is what you would call your typical masher. The mediocre batting average, the better than average OBP, and the high SLG are all there. He has respectable, but not eye-popping Iso Power and Iso Patience.

Cano seems to be about on par with Morneau in terms of raw stats but loses out in the Iso Stats. Morneau will be less prone to slumps than Cano does based purely on skill sets. However, when it comes to physical fitness and conditioning, I'm willing to bet that Cano will stay relatively healthier throughout the course of both contracts. Cano's sole significant advantage is his glistening BA (which is no doubt inflated by his 2006 numbers).

Morneau may have a slight edge here (as well he should, being a first baseman) but I'd like to look at the next point before closing the book on offense. Actually, the book on defense will have an addendum after the next point as well.

Age.
The age factor is the most curious part of this contract to me. Cano will be 25 and Morneau will be 27. In real world terms, that doesn't have much significance. In baseball terms, this is enormous. If we follow the career tracks of great players, they have a great season from 23-25 and another truly great season between ages 26-28 before plateauing out until age 31 or 32 where they have a not-as-good-as-age-23-but-still-great season and then begin a steady decline before falling off the cliff completely at some point. That is the lifecycle of a great player. There are rare cases that fall outside the norm, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling and Barry Bonds have extremely unorthodox career arcs. Others are cut short by injury or disease, Lou Gehrig and Don Mattingly for example, and others inexplicably decline like Chuck Knoblauch.

But I've named maybe 5 exceptions to a principle that has lasted over a hundred years of baseball. I'm inclined that it is a combination of the demands of the game as well as the nature of human physiology.

Why is this important? For projectability.

Offensively, it's not unreasonable to expect no less than 4 of the 6 years in Cano's contract to be exceptional years. I would guess he might average a .320 .360 .520 line in those years. Quite simply, I believe he will carry the Yankee offense of the future and be regarded unequivocally as one of the best players in the game. My bold OBP is admittedly optimistic, but he has shown improvement in his walk rate every year. He already has an amazing batting average. If he can bring up his patience and pitch selectivity then Yankee fans may really be in for something very, very special in the near future.

Morneau on the other hand can expect to see a career surge next year or the year after before tapering off to be an above average player for the remainder of the contract. I don't see how his BB-rate can improve or how he can learn to hit for a higher average. There's not really a reasonable hope for growth with Morneau.

Baseball players play their best defense until age 24 or 25 and then plateau for 3-5 years before falling off a cliff. Infielders typically decline at a slower rate than outfielders and catchers decline precipitously quick. Morneau has never been regarded for his glove and it will only get worse with age. It's a good thing he's hidden at a position where that'll damage his team the least. Robbie is one of the best now, and he'll continue to be very good for the first half of his contract and just plain good in the last half. And all of that will be at a much more vital defensive position.

Money.
Justin Morneau - 6 years, $80m
Robinson Cano - 6 years, $58m
Final Analysis.
Robinson Cano is an unbelievable steal. Unbelievable. End of analysis. See you all next year.

Let me finish up with this quote from Rob Neyer of ESPN:

For me, the options are clear: If you're looking for a second baseman for the next five years, you must choose Utley's bat or Cano's youth, and all the rest is just fighting over table scraps.

I'll take Cano, because I don't think we've yet seen his best work and because he plays in the toughest division in the toughest league. So here's how I've got them, with (as usual) the last spot held open for the next great second baseman who hasn't established himself yet. Remember, we're talking about value over the next five seasons ...

1. Cano
2. Utley
3. The Beantown Napoleon

Oh, let me put up a picture so that this post is less boring.

Cano probably took a paycut in support of worker's rights around the world.
Hasta la victoria siempre!

Gunned Down Going For The Hall

2008-01-06T07:35:00.000-05:00

The NYTimes has a great article on Tim Raines' candidacy for the Hall.

It's a fresh article that deviates from the typical nonsense of "Jim Rice is the most feared hitter of his time! All 5 years!"

I do see some preliminary problems though. For starters, he doesn't mention at all how this helps his candidacy. It makes him a better ballplayer, but I am absolutely convinced that sportswriters, particularly those who vote for the Hall of Fame are so dense that they would sink to the bottom in a sea of lead. Sports writers, time and time again, have shown me nothing but pedagogy, herd instinct, cowardice, an aversion to taking responsibility for things they have said or written and an absolutely absurd unwillingness to consider how helpful statistics can be in both appreciating and understanding the game.

Tim Marchman of the NY Sun wrote an article on the absurdity of asking whether Tim Raines was worthy of the Hall. Tim Raines is one of the top 10 left fielders of all time. Yes, he has had a far better career than Manny Ramirez unless Manny has a 2001 Bonds' turnaround in his career.

This is a minority opinion. Buster Olney doesn't consider Tim Raines to be worthy of the honor. Neither does Peter Gammons. This is madness.

But things are not as they always were. From what I've seen in the professional blogosphere (a sphere that this blog is not included in), Tim Raines' candidacy is gaining more traction as I believe people proficient with the internet would be more likely to understand baseball from a sabermetric perspective.

Joe Posnanski is one such example.

Who knows? Perhaps there is a change in the wind. Or perhaps it's just a brief breath of fresh air in the fetid swamp of sports journalism.

Quantifying Conventional Wisdom

2008-01-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

Post from RLYW.

That post is fascinating. The science is imperfect (and admittedly so) but it leaves room for lots of productive speculation. As one of the commenters on that page said, it's basically quantifying conventional wisdom. If your pitcher is a sinkerballer, it makes sense to prepare extra hard for his day of the week.

Patrimony

2007-12-18T06:41:00.000-05:00

As my dad and I were walking back to the car after my grandfather's funeral dinner today, he gave me one of those father/son talks.

"You know you're really the man of the house now, right?"
"Yeah, I know."
"You can't say things like 'I'm too young.' or 'I want to stay a kid.' because you'll be a man before you know it."
"I know, dad."
"One day you'll have to make these arrangements for me too you know."
"Yes, dad."
"You'll be a good man."
"I know I will."

I really love my dad a lot more than I thought I would when I was in High School. The patrimony he's given me is so much more valuable that anything Astor's son could be chasing. He taught me what it is to endure and persevere. How many Bible Studies have failed at teaching that? How many children grow up without ever knowing that? But my father, a atheist limo-cab driver, weekend plumber, electrician, carpenter, has taught me that.

He taught me that there are times when costs must be paid. So many people fail that I talk to, so many people that I have considered mentors at one point or another, do not understand that. There are things that I would gladly pay for with health, career, even so much as life. There are things that are so much more important than any of those three and even all of those three together. My father helped me learn what it meant to be like Jesus.

As my discipleship group was talking this Sunday about the future, about becoming husbands and fathers, Dennis, newly-engaged to Cindy as he is, spoke about the worries he had about how his yet-to-be-children would turn out. Would they be Christians? Would they be faithful? Will too much church make them cynical?

Who knows? All we can do is be faithful ourselves. From my father, I see that for the things that truly matter in life, example is the best teacher. I saw how faithful he was to my mother all these years, how he always honored, respected and loved her. He taught me how to treat women well. He taught me how to spot thieves, crooks and scams. 20 years of being harassed for nothing more than being Chinese has given him sharp eyes and a sharp mind. He has given me such unimaginable wealth.

I'm confident that I will raise good kids one day too. But I want to give them even more than my father has given me. I want to teach them how to love Jesus, how to live for Him and if I have the privilege, how to die for Him.

My life is a resource, nothing more. It's not very liquid and it continually depreciates. If I do not use it, I will lose it. I am going to spend it wildly and wisely. I am going to pour all that I am into the work of the Gospel and Kingdom advancement.

In retrospect, I am not a typical Asian man because I did not have typical Asian parents. They told me that they would be fine if I were a pastor (anathema!), a missionary (blasphemy!) or if I never made a lot of money (apostasy!). My father never had an obsession of gadgets or things as so many Asian men are afflicted. He never felt the need to impress other people with fine clothes (not that he knows what fine clothes are) or cars. My father, surprisingly enough, gets along fine with the Mexicans and Pakistanis at the garage unlike I suppose the majority of Asians who cloister themselves in their own homogeneous communities. Looking back, I guess it should be no surprise at all that my closest friends come from the world over. IV-Baruch, I love you guys.

My father may still be living these days but sometimes I feel as if I'm a prodigal son already living out his portion of the inheritance. I am very blessed. I have some big shoes to fill.

Andy Pettitte: Yankee Hero

2007-12-15T18:28:00.000-05:00

He came out and admitted to HGH use today.

"Everything else written or said about me knowingly using illegal drugs is nonsense, wrong and hurtful," Pettitte said. "I have the utmost respect for baseball and have always tried to live my life in a way that would be honorable. I wasn't looking for an edge; I was looking to heal.

"If I have let down people that care about me, I am sorry, but I hope that you will listen to me carefully and understand that two days of perhaps bad judgment should not ruin a lifetime of hard work and dedication.

"I have tried to do things the right way my entire life, and, again, ask that you put those two days in the proper context. People that know me will know that what I say is true."

I hate the NY Sports media.

They've painted Andy Pettitte as a cheater, a liar and a hypocrite. What exactly did he lie about? HGH is not a steroid. The effects of the two drugs are worlds apart. The fact that they are often taken in conjunction with one another means little. That's like accusing someone who drinks Red Bull of being an alcoholic. Just because Red Bull and vodka is a popular drink doesn't make Red Bull the same thing as vodka. The NY media does not understand this.

Anabolic steroids are illegal drugs and to move them across states and to sell them for non-medicinal purposes is a federal offense. HGH is not illegal.

Andy Pettitte took HGH in 2002. HGH was banned in MLB in 2005. When did it become OK to retroactively say that someone cheated? The only advantage it can confer is shedding fat and possibly speeding up recovery time, although that has yet to be proven in clinical trials.

I hate the NY sports media.

Andy Pettitte, you'll always be my hero. You'll always be one of my favorite Yankees.

What A Joke.

2007-12-13T18:58:00.000-05:00

Not only are the inmates running the asylum. They're doing a pretty crappy job about it.

Bud Selig is a terrible commissioner of baseball. This is a case study in terrible leadership qualities. Hire one of your friends to use tax-payer dollars and baseball revenues to cover up your mistakes, play favorites, push your personal agenda...

What hurts a civilization more? Performance-enhancing drugs or poor character? I'd rather cut off my male organ than be a coward like Selig hiding behind the self-righteous pretense of an independent investigation. May as well have asked Soviet Russia to undertake an independent investigation into the presence of missiles in Cuba during the Cold War or have McDonald's conduct an independent investigation into the health effects of trans fats. Really? A Boston Red Sox director conducting an investigation? Really? What a joke.

I wish Babe Ruth would rise up out of the grave, walk up to Bud and demand that he step down from his position on national television.

Bud Selig, you are more of a disgrace to this game of baseball than the steroid era that you're fighting against.

The Beautiful

2007-12-09T07:19:00.000-05:00

On my Mac's dashboard I have the Astronomy Pic of the Day widget and that picture above is today's pic. Its description is as follows:

Explanation: The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

I've wondered for awhile whether there is such a thing as the "religion gene" or a "religious instinct." What is it that caused men to feel reverence and awe and then create a wood or stone object to encapsulate that feeling of humble smallness? When I think about those sublime moments that have seized me in wonder and admiration, speckles of cosmic light against a purple-black sky, the sun as it sets, the sun as it rises, wisps of frozen crimson clouds awash in the rays of a fading day, I imagine that's the most religious feeling a person can get.

I don't have the same emotions as others do during a loud and noisy service. It is my personal preference to avoid services that are advertised as "fiery," "energetic," "charismatic," etc.

I sense that the divine is nearest when things are quietest, least expected, stillest. It passes briefly but its impression is unforgettable, the lingering warmth of a meaning-rich embrace.

How, I wonder, is it possible to go from that sentiment of reverence to idolatry, I'm not sure. When the sublime, the Beautiful is near, the last thing on my mind are hawk-headed men or feathered serpents. I don't understand how visual portmanteau's of cows and goats, lions and men can express that feeling. In fact, if a priest or shaman unveiled even the best made figure of such I would only be able to feel a deep and bitter sense of anti-climax. What a buzz-kill.

The Romantics viewed art as the memory of beauty-long past, felt in an instant, composed in the future. I suppose that helps me understand a little better but those images are what they felt in that moment? Is it I that lack the religious instinct or they?

How could one image inspire such vastly different effects? I suppose that my positivist, hyper-rational, modernist sensibilities agree with my Judeo-Christian ideology. Don't mummify it. The more real, the more tangible, touch-able, a thing is the further it is from true beauty. Pictures are perhaps good but 3x5's rarely inspire heart-rending beauty. Words are better. Silence and awe is best, when beauty dwells in the camera obscura behind a lidded eye.

Taking out the trash.

2007-12-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

The above is my opinion of most sports journalism.

This is why.
Problem: This entire article is speculation. The whole piece is devoid of confirmed facts. It's completely predicated on hearsay.

This is another reason.
Problem: This is yellow journalism. Derek Jeter donated $2 million, less than 1% of his contract and an infinitesimally small sliver of his total net worth to his own foundation (which are for the most part, tax exemption schemes and goodwill events) but A-Rod gets reamed for $30,000? Derek Jeter commits tax fraud and it's swept under the rug but A-Rod is a slum lord and gets crucified. Populism and pedagogy.

An idiocracy in Sports News.
Problem: To write for ESPN you must 1- Hate objectivity, 2- produce an article a week even if there's nothing to report, 3- use terrible metaphors and tropes, 4- be as large a hypocrite as possible.

The worst offender of all. NoMaas nailed it with their 12/5/07 post.
Problem: Peter Gammons is the worst "homer" in all of sports journalism. He has always railed on the Yankees for their free-spending and economic bullying of the rest of baseball. The Red Sox added nearly $80m in payroll committments for 2007 to win the World Series. The Red Sox have the distinction of being the highest paid and second highest paid teams to win the World Series. Not a single mention of that fact. Not a single mention. After the aneurysm he had, I'm pretty sure he can barely pronounce the word "objective" anymore.

Ugh, what happens when the only well to draw water from is the sewer?

*edit*

And now this!

JO-BA, JO-BA, JO-BA

2007-12-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

Joba Chamberlain will be at the Circuit City in Midtown (43rd street and something) signing baseballs at 7:00pm. He's going to be on the cover of ESPN Magazine.

Great story, here.
Unbelievable track record, here.

The Cost of Greatness

2007-12-01T18:38:00.001-05:00

I want this guy so bad that I'm actually in an emotionally disturbed state right now.

Why is that? Because to get him, I might have to lose this guy.

Johan Santana may be the greatest pitcher of our generation. Phil Hughes may be the greatest pitcher of this coming generation. I want both on my team. I can't bear to be without either one. Phil Hughes represents to me, a new day in the Yankee Universe. He is the face of a new age in Yankee baseball, where we have dominant pitching for pennies. Johan Santana represents to me what is great about the Yankees. The need to have greatness no matter the cost. I wish I can have both. I want so badly to have both...

...

I feel so ashamed I could feel this intensely about a stupid game...

Please, Brian Cashman, find a way to have both Santana and Hughes pitch for the Yankees in 2008.

Good Sports Reporting? Too much to hope for?

2007-11-30T10:25:00.000-05:00

Can it be? Is it possible? An article from Sports Illustrated that I find intelligent, insightful and worthy of reading? I did not think I would see such a thing in my generation.

Read here.

But I was wondering recently. Why are baseball writers so terrified of new statistics? Second question, why are so many of them morbidly obese?

Writers who vote for the Hall of Fame typically use three statistics for hitters: hits, home runs and RBI's.

I think they've forgotten what the statistics are meant to indicate. Baseball's a team sport and these statistics are meant to evaluate how much an individual player contributes to the team's ability to win. I can understand in a simpler, more primitive age, why they chose statistics like RBI's, Wins and such. But there are patently superior statistics to these: VORP, WARP, Batting Runs, EqA, OPS+, SB%, OBP+, etc. that tell you much more clearly what each individual player is doing to help the team.

"Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not everything." -Toby Harrah, 1983

I want to amend that and say that the new baseball statistics are conceptual bikinis. For those who understand, you can't help but stare at the shapely, numerical beauty in each decimal place. The old statistics? Conceptual burkas that gave us a general shape, a rough, hazy idea but they obscured and misled as much as they showed.

Statistics aren't everything. I know that. There's so much more, the human element. Some things can only be expressed with words and human warmth. Courage. That is foremost among them.

The statistics tell me that Andy Pettitte, my favorite player probably, is a pretty decent pitcher. He's not great and probably shouldn't deserve the Hall of Fame. I can't argue with that. But don't for a second doubt his greatness as a man, a man of courage and tenacity.

Baseball should not mix the Human and the Objective. This has been acknowledged over and over. What continually puzzles me is why the hegemonistic baseball media refuse to use superior metrics, the things that would make them better at their job.

I have only one explanation.

They suck at math and they're insecure about it.

Hillsongs Out Of Tune?

2007-11-28T14:13:00.000-05:00

Justin Moffatt just posted an excellent entry.

Read here.

Grand Slam

2007-11-28T11:08:00.000-05:00

"I don't know, it's weird. I used to be so formal with God. Now I feel like I can talk to him as a friend."
-- something a friend told me on Monday

Prayer hits a Grand Slam to Center Field.
Patience scores. Perseverance scores. Hope scores. Prayer Scores.

Good guys lead 4-0.

No Crumbling Crown, Part III

2007-11-26T11:38:00.001-05:00

The future, in its manifest details, is by and large uncertain. We really can't know what to expect. Baseball is projectable. Replacement Level Yankees put up projections for the 2007 line-up a few weeks ago. There are probability charts and scatter plots. That's scientifically verifiable.

Personally, I think like a sabermetrician. I have an extreme adversion to mystical language and vague, ambiguous "prophecies" as "prophecies" go today. I believe movies and novels like Left Behind have probably set the advance of the Kingdom back a few hundred years in how primitive and ridiculous they are.

I don't know what the future holds.

But I do know that yesterday happened to turn out pretty well.

My main concern in Part I was that orthodoxy was eroding. The Economist article said this:

From a classical liberal point of view, this multiplicity of sects is a good thing. Freedom of conscience is an axiom of liberal thought. If man is a theotropic beast, inclined to believe in a hereafter, it is surely better that he chooses his faith, rather than follows the one his government orders.

Am I worried? Should I be worried?

In the 4th century when the Council of Nicaea met to regulate what was Christian and what was not, the bishops overwhelmingly annihilated the Arian heresy. As I recall, in a gathering of over 300 bishops from Spain to Asia Minor, the number of votes for Arianism did not reach the double digits. The canon was established and uniform. It was what had already been in place. None of the Gnostic texts were seriously considered. God had preserved his Church through a critical moment of history.

The next moments of history will be critical as well. The rate at which the world is changing is accelerating. New issues will continue to sprout up that would not have been prepared for, could not have been imagined. And you know what? I believe it's all going to be OK.

When I use the term "Roman Empire" even I tend to believe of Italians with Roman curls and tunics. In fact, it was as diverse enough to have Spaniard, Greek, Egyptian, Jew, Arab. How could all these people have had the same beliefs without any organization from above? It was the act of a Sovereign God keeping fast his church.

That's what has brought the Kingdom thus far and I believe that's what's going to bring this all home.

There will be no crumbling crown.

By the way, if anyone is curious about where I got the title from, it's actually from an anime I've been watching. The phrasing was really catchy.

No Crumbling Crown, Part II

2007-11-24T22:24:00.000-05:00

My last post was something of a thought experiment, a foray into what might be in the next 50 years. That was a very short hop away from this Church Relevance article. It was an interesting thought experiment but I wonder if there really is any projectability (that's baseball talk) in this world.

This world is not baseball. There aren't really the same tidy rules and contexts that there are in baseball.

Who knows if there isn't a Hitler in a Minneapolis school dreaming of hate crimes on an unprecedented scale? Or what if there's a St. Francis or Mother Teresa in Lebanon or Bangkok? These things can't be planned for or anticipated. In a very general sense, someone like that will arise but who knows where or when and to what impact?

Does it really matter?

We may not have a steady-fixed set of rules with a large sample size that consists of similar events but that's not to say we don't have any kind of history at all. From the Reformed tradition, we do have a very tangible teleology in redemptive history.

What is redemptive history? Redemptive history is quite simply, a belief in God being the principle actor throughout history and guiding it towards a specific end, that of ultimate redemption. To make it easier to understand, this is what appears to be a MS-Paint image that I found on Google image search.

I wonder if Christianity in its post-modern trendiness has begun to trend away from its teleological perspectives. American tent-revival Christianity ostensibly adheres to a sort of redemptive futurity in its religion/belief as life raft and escape themes. God is the savior of the world and you better get on his good side while the getting is good.

Recent trends in Christianity seem to move in another direction. I'm not sure if I can even come up with a witty line to encapsulate it at all. It defies encapsulation and reduction. (I'm such a good post-modern aren't I?) With such an emphasis on missions of mercy, diversity, reconciliation I wonder if there is some unspoken belief in God not coming back in the future. Of course, I also believe that a good deal of this emphasis stems from an accepting of social responsibility (and possibly Western hubris?) but I legitimately wonder if there is an eschatological aspect to this focus. Are we the new saviors of the world? I wonder what extent we are instruments and to what extent actors? More importantly, to what extent should we consider ourselves as such...

Torii Hunter? He's with stupid.

2007-11-23T18:07:00.000-05:00

“It isn't the high price of stars that's expensive, it's the high price of mediocrity.”
--Bill Veeck

News: Torii Hunter signs with the Angels for 5 years/$90m

First, let me say this. Taking both offense and defense into consideration, Torii Hunter is less valuable to a team than David Ortiz, Jorge Posada, Albert Pujols, Grady Sizemore and Miguel Cabrera. In simpler, schoolyard terms, Torii Hunter is not as good as they are. Yet, Torii Hunter will make more than all of them and significantly more than some of them.

Just what in the world were the Angels thinking? They remind me of Yankee teams past where they would penny-pinch on superior talents like Carlos Beltran but overspend on mediocre players like Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright. Two mediocre players have less value than one great player.

I thought that signing Johnny Damon was only going to be a good deal in the first two years and an absolute migraine to contend with the last two years. Torii Hunter changes all of that. Suddenly in light of market value, Johnny Damon looks like a fantastic bargain. Every member of the New York Yankees is an incredible bargain if a decidedly mediocre (and overrated) player like Torii Hunter commands $18 million a year.

What effect does this have? Suddenly teams in need of an outfielder are going to be much more open to trades. Any team in need of a center fielder or lead-off man will be interested in Johnny Damon. Teams looking for more power are going to inquire about Hideki Matsui or Bobby Abreu. Many teams have already inquired about Melky Cabrera. This puts the Yankees in the driver's seat in the off-season as they are going to have a resource that many other teams would be interested in.

This is a very poor deal but as a Yankee fan, I love it.

($90m would make me smile like this too.)

M-V-P

2007-11-21T17:05:00.001-05:00

"Rodriguez is the MVP - and the highest-paid player in baseball - for a reason: no player provides his team with a bigger head start toward winning a World Championship."

--Source

To Infinity and Beyond Two Dimensions

2007-11-21T08:08:00.000-05:00

Love me. I'm a geek.

No Crumbling Crown, Part I

2007-11-18T16:33:00.000-05:00

An Examination Of The Problem

When Rome finally legalized this new off-shoot of Judaism the Emperor Constantine called together bishops from all across the empire to codify Christian belief. The great heresy that was addressed in the council was that of Arianism, a belief regarding the fundamental nature of Jesus' existence.

These past two weeks, I've been wondering if the world, in the next 50 years or so, may be in need of another Council of Nicaea. To give you some background on my thought processes, last week, my church brought Adam Benner, missionary to the Hmong people of Southeast Asia .This week we invited a speaker from the FECAT, a graduate-level seminary servicing the Francophone nations of Sub-Saharan Africa.

After speaking with each of them it was interesting to see that the needs in Laos are similar to the needs of nations like Angola, Mali, Gabon. Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to just point at nations with histories of political and socio-economic strife. Let me include industrialized, modern nations like the China's on both sides of the strait for starters.

The need that they were expressing wasn't a need for evangelism. The problem seemed to be a lack of leadership and teaching at all levels. The typical pastor in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa pastors 5 churches. The typical church in America (I don't have stats, but I enjoy the parallelism) employs about 5 pastors.

Globalization and the exposure to popular Western Christian media, here I'm referring to Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn and their ilk, has probably worsened the need for teachers and leadership by introducing historically bad theology and teaching into the church. I'll firmly hold the line to my daying day that the health & wealth gospel that they're teaching, what they are exporting to the rest of the world is a calamity and disaster that we will be judged for in Heaven. The crusades that these guys held are probably doing about as much ostensible damage to the Kingdom that the crusades of the Middle Ages did for Christian reputation among Muslims.

I personally wonder how many untrained teachers there are rising up around this world teaching a syncretic Christianity? That's how Candomble, Hudu and Santeria started. Christianity is rapidly spreading to every corner of the world. It's not a Christianity that we're used to. In 100 years, China may be the largest Christian nation in the world. It may also surpass Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest growing region of Christian advancement in the world. What happens when that region surpasses China? What if India surpasses Africa? What will it mean to be a Christian in 2050?

Will we need a new Nicaea to sort things out?

In the first one the bishops voted overwhelmingly to defeat Arianism, prohibited self-castration and created a uniform date to celebrate the Resurrection that was separate from the Jewish passover. What would happen if a new one was held in 2050?

Pentecostalism is the fastest growing denomination in Christianity.
America is increasingly in favor of women pastors.
There is an increasing trend away from evangelism and towards discipleship oriented programs.
Many Christians are increasingly concerned about social justice.
Fewer Christians today believe in Hell than 50 years ago.
Many Christians believe that "belief in Jesus" is not required for "salvation."
Several denominations have changed their stance on homosexuality.
A huge number of Christians do not hold the Bible as actually having come from God.

What would happen at a new Nicaea?

Why I prefer Joe Girardi, Reason #325

2007-11-16T09:27:00.000-05:00

"Yankees manager Joe Girardi is down in the Dominican Republic this week. He had dinner with Yankees senior Latin staff and visited the coaches on Tuesday. This morning (Wednesday) at the Yankees Latin Beisbol Academy, he gave a speech to the Latin coaches and staff followed by an interactive talk with 55 Latin players and eight players from the ‘06 and ‘07 draft. He then watched a Dominican Instructional League game against Toronto and viewed tryouts."
--Source.

Please, if you will, contrast that with the following.

"Joe Torre never spent hours poring over statistics or videotape like a lot of young managers do these days. He wasn't a workaholic type who obsessed about getting to work earlier than his peers. He would have a nice lunch, and then he would shave cleanly after games -- wins or losses -- as he prepared for a late dinner at a restaurant.

It has never been his style to simmer in the aftermath of success or failure, after all. In an era when managers seem to put in more hours than first-year lawyers or hospital residents, Torre might've put in the fewest office hours of any manager in the game."
--Source

At this point last year, I believe Joe Torre was in Hawaii filming Subway commercials. As I explained to Diana Mao when she interviewed me, the Yankee organizational philosophy is shifting. They are not going to be a development exclusive club like the Oakland A's and they aren't emptying their vaults the same way the Dodgers are. The Yankees are committed to one thing: World Series Championship #27 to be followed by #28, #29 and #30, etc. They realize that with their resources they have far more leverage and capacity to do things than any other club.

I believe that they only began to truly realize that in 2003 when they let Andy Pettitte leave for Houston. That draft pick turned into one very special Philip Hughes. They let Tom Gordon leave for Philadelphia. Tom Gordon was a type A free agent and netted two players, Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain. You may have heard of them. In this year's draft they exclusively "swung for the fences" in selecting only for talent regardless of signability or health concerns. As an organization the Yankees have the most ability to withstand draft choices that are injury risks or have college commitments. Andrew Brackman, Austin Romine, Brad Suttle and Carmen Angelini all say hello. But they still flex their financial muscle in signing Roger Clemens and trading for Bobby Abreu, the move that knocked Boston out of playoff contention in 2006.

Joe Torre didn't see that the organizational winds are changing. Joe Girardi understands what's going on and he wants to be a part of it. The season is still about half a year away but by getting rid of Joe Torre, this organization has already seen massive improvement.

Baseball and Phenomenology

2007-11-15T09:51:00.000-05:00

Insert "Relationship With Crazy Psycho Girlfriend Joke" here. (I mean seriously people, no one can think of new material?)

News Item: A-Rod back to the Yankees?
Commentary: Yes, do it. Do it now. A-Rod is worth at least 5 Wins Above Replacement Player by any projection method. His bat is irreplacable. Miguel Cabrera will cost the future. A-Rod costs only greenbacks. Do it.

Blogging:

Murray Chass awhile ago wrote that:

""I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that’s their prerogative. But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein.

People play baseball. Numbers don’t."

First of all, I believe the average sports fan is not a mathematically inclined person. I believe most of them watch professional wrestling, eats pork rinds and is intimidated by the word "algorithm."

Second of all, I believe they are afraid of change. "My daddy believed in RBI's and WINS so I believe in RBI's too! I'm never EVAH gonna change! Nuh uh!"

Third of all, I believe that there is a lot more going on here than even the average sports fan, in all his deep-seated wisdom understands.

The enjoyment of sports lies in the human factor. It lies in having waited a week to see A-Rod hit #500. It's in the incredible heart-pounding tension that we feel when we see Mariano battle against David Ortiz in a 14-pitch at-bat that ends up in a fly ball caught on the right-field warning track. That is the human element. That is where sports writers excel. They excel in commemorating the past, celebrating heroes, honoring them with the immortality of words. That is the realm of phenomenological living.

Sabermetric baseball analysis does not attempt to go there. Objective, rational, scientific analysis does not tell you to join "Grady's Ladies" and squeal everytime Grady Sizemore comes up to bat. I sat next to a girl from Cleveland who did this once and that is totally her perogative. The sports writers are good at that, at the human element.

Where they are so god-awful terrible is that they have no concept of how the game "works" as far as what factors contribute to victory is concerned. Baseball writers and a good number of fans are obsessed with National League Baseball. If they enjoy that, so be it. Different strokes for different folks.

What makes them hate sabermetric analysis though is the fact that it has proven time and time again that "small-ball" is by and large the absolute dumbest way to play the game. Bunt for a hit. Steal a base. Sacrifice bunt to move the runner to third. Sacrifice fly to right field for the run. This is the least efficient way to play the game, the way that scores the least amount of runs. It is a recipe for losing teams. Old-time baseball fans fight this revelation as much as they can.

What the typical fan of the National League ballpark goes for is to watch a circus. They want to see lots of jumping, lots of diving and dirty uniforms and lots of meaningless running. If that is what they want to see then by all means, they can go there.

I am glad that the Yankees don't play a small ball kind of game. Small ball, bunting, sacrifices, stealing bases is the exclusive realm of players who are just not very good. Players like Scott Podsednik, Chone Figgins, Juan Pierre, and so on. Yes, even Phil Rizzuto. Phil Rizzuto, based on accomplishments alone, should not be in the Hall of Fame.

Sabermetric analysis reveals the truth of the game. It is an invaluable tool for understanding what is actually happening, what has happened and what will happen. The way that the fans react to it is more of an indication about what kind of fan that person is rather than what these numbers are and mean.

Personally, I'm a fan who wants victory. I want to see Jorge Posada run out to Mariano Rivera at about this time next year, hoisting him up crying tears of joy for bringing the 27th championship back to the Bronx. This past summer, as I took my little sis out to the Stadium, I sat next to this old African-American gentleman. He was a great fan to sit next to. He told me about the sound of the ball in air as George Brett hit that home run in the pine tar game. He described the whizzing sound it made right before it caromed off the Stadium facade. It was like I was sitting next to history itself. But then A-Rod came up to bat.

"Boy, look at all that space there. He could easily drag bunt for a hit right there."
"But he's A-ROD. The guy's on pace for 65 home runs! Don't you want this team to win?"
"Son, I've been around this game long enough. I've seen them hoist plenty trophies. I came tonight for a show."
"I'm not there yet, old man, I want to see them hoist the Commisioner's cup."
"Hahaha, give it time kid."

And then A-Rod hit a go-ahead double to rescue Moose out of a jam. I smirked at the old man and he just kind of shrugged. To each his own, I suppose. As it is, I love the Yankees for what they represent: the unending thirst for improvement, for progress, for victory. It's the only organizational philosophy that befits a city like New York. There is no success outside of the World Series. We are not the Mets, we are not the Red Sox, Dodgers, Rockies or Brewers. No pennnant means no success. This is why I love the Yankees. This is why I'm a fan.

A Conversation Recalled

2007-11-14T10:10:00.000-05:00

This month has been "Missions Month" at my church. To date, all of the speakers and the workshops that they've led have been excellent. There was this one particular conversation that I had with Adam Benner, missionary to the Hmong that got me thinking.

I forgot where I read this, (Diana's blog? Economist article? Something else she linked over to me?) but a singular line stood out to me which was something to the effect of: "American Revivalist Christianity has always seen life as something to be escaped from, something to be rescued from." Well, I'm pretty sure that was me just talking out of my butt there but the sentiment remains the same.

American Revivalist Christianity
Premise 1: This world sucks.
Premise 2: If you believe in Jesus, this world will still suck but there's heaven after you die.

It's debatable what degree of correctness there are in those statements, but the fact that these premises undergird the majority of American Christianity is undeniable. Even the traditional Western form of evangelism popularized by Billy Graham but used by everyone from Jehovah's Witnesses to the Pentecostal church down the street: "If you were to die tonight, do you know where you'd end up?"

Look at typical informational sessions that short-term missionaries present to the average American church: "We went to such and such a poor, impoverished, dirty people, we gave them the Gospel, 500 people accepted Christ into their hearts and now we're back! Let's go get some tacos."

Now when I was speaking with the missionary this past Sunday he leaned in close and told me:

"Now actually, the tough part is not "people coming to Christ." That's relatively easy. You give them some Western medicine and you tell them about Jesus and *boom* they believe in Jesus. The real trouble is when things get tough again, they go back to sacrificing to the old gods, the idols."

Now from a Western standpoint we may legitimately ask the question: "What just happened?" Depending on your particular theology (I'm a 5-point Calvinist myself) you could say that they lost their salvation when they went back to the idols or that they were never really Christians in the first place or some other way to fit that event into a ready-made worldview.

I think both explanations suck.

The truth of the matter is that the categories are stupid and insufficient for going through this life. American Revivalist Christianity has conditioned us to see salvation as a black and white issue. We may give concessions and say that "Yeah, you could be saved over a period of years...." but by and large that is not what is really believed. ARC works off of the punctiliar moment, the prayer of faith (Dear Jesus, I know I'm a sinner...), the altar call, the laying on of hands, the weeping, the decision card that's been filled out, etc. Even Christian movies (poorly made as most of them are) condition the audience to think this way with the rising leitmotifs, the glow, the change in expression on a person's face, etc.

So if this conception of "salvation" is poor, then where can we go from here?
Maybe that'll be my next entry.

Posada re-signs, 4 years $52.4m

2007-11-13T09:53:00.000-05:00

The Yankees had 2 critical needs this off-season.

Critical Need #1- Don't let Alex Rodriguez leave.
Critical Need #2- Don't let Jorge Posada leave.

We weren't able to keep Alex but we did keep Jorge. (Shown here with his smoking hot wife, Laura Posada.)

Any other move was nice but not fully necessary. If Pettitte retired, if Mo went to the Phillies (what a horrible thought), if they didn't bring over Kosuke Fukudome from Japan, if they didn't resurrect the cold, still bones of Lou Gehrig to play first base, it would be OK. It would not be OK if A-Rod left or if Jorge Posada left.

I'm not going to talk about heart, grit or intangibles here even though Posada's grit+ was off the charts, second only to Dustin Pedroia's in 2007. But the Beantown Napoleon is about 3 feet tall so there was no competition anyways. Anyways, when it comes to baseball my true colors show. I'm a positivist and a believer in material causality.

We don't put winning teams on the field by getting 25 good "clubhouse guys" who "know how to win" and "play the game the right way." I actually have nothing but contempt for those phrases. We win because at the end of the day we outscored the other team, whether our clubhouse was full of selfish, obnoxious Nazi's or saints and martyrs.

To understand why a commitment of 4 years and $52m to a player in his decline is still a great idea, it would be helpful to look at Bill James' spectrum of defensive difficulty and importance.

1B, RF, LF, 3B, CF/2B, SS, C

To break it down, the right-side is hard to play and hard to find players who excel at offense while the converse is true of the left-side. There are a lot of ways to look at this hierarchy. It's also how involved in the game each position is. The catcher has the most work to do and his work is the most difficult. First base has the least to do and his defense affects the team the least. Boston fans and Bill Buckner disagree, but then again they probably would, the whiny slime that they are.

Yahoo sports, incidentally, allows you to compare any player with the typical production of other players in the same league, which is about exactly what statistics like VORP and WARP3 do, but the pictures make it easier for most sports fans to understand.

The reason the Yankees were so good during their dynasty years was that they were unbelievably blessed with talent at those positions. Posada/Girardi at catcher, Jeter at shortstop and Bernie Williams manning center field during each of their peak years. It was not "clutch hitting," it was VORP.

And given the absolute lack of other options available at catcher, the Yankees had no leverage in this situation. Who else was available? Clubhouse cancer, Michael Barrett with his sparkling .322 career OBP? Posada's career average is about even with Barrett's career best. Everything after Barrett is atrocious.

So ultimately, this is a deal the Yankees had to make, all $52.4m of it. The $13.1m is a lot less than I was expecting (I was expecting 3 years at $15 or $16m in Average Annual Value) but I'm not complaining. He'll play first or DH in the final year of his contract and then walk into the Hall of Fame as a life-long Yankee and have his number hanging in Monument Park the following year.

This is good. Hip Hip Jorge!

Manhood and Mysticism, Part 2: Retractions

2007-11-11T18:35:00.000-05:00

OK, so my typical modus operandi is as follows:

Phase 1: Make broad, sweeping statements of such forcefulness and cocksure-ty.
Phase 2: Think better of it and start apologizing and making retractions.

So with that said, onto Phase 2.

Is it mysticism that I have a beef with? Probably not. It just happens to be part of the collateral damage.

What is it that I have a beef with?
1- The exclusive portrayal of God in his soft, likable form.
Is it politically incorrect to say that God is angry? That he is pretty damn pissed off and that his anger results in sending people to Hell? It may be crudely expressed in such terms but it is Biblical to express it this way. Mystical writings like the one quoted in my previous entry almost always present God as friend, as lover, and so on and so forth. It's correct, don't get me wrong, but it is incomplete. What is lacking is the portrayal of God as Judge, as Executioner, as King, as the Sovereign Lawgiver. What does the word "majesty" mean? "Awesome"? What do those words really mean? Where is God's grandeur? God

2- Mysticism is not for the tough.
Mystical writings all too often leave me with the sense that there is little grit or toughness, little meat to the soul of a mystic. I get the sense of a soul that's been fed with cookies, fruit tarts and ice cream. So much of mysticism is "God, I wuv you lots and lots and lots. Aww, you wuv me too?" That strain of thought does appear in the Bible but in particular places and portions, a few Psalms, an allegorical reading of the Song of Songs, and a few more. But the kind of religion, the kind of faith that I want is Pauline, Jesus-ist. I want a gritty, hard-nosed, dirty faith. I want a Rocky Balboa, "It ain't about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep on going." kind of faith.

I see that kind of faith in Paul. "I've fought the good fight. I've run the race." I see that faith in Jesus. "Father, not my will but thy will be done." I see that faith in missionaries like Jim Elliot.

What mystic tells me that? I have no interest in a soft, contemplative life.

Reading Ayn Rand completely overturned my idea of the heroic. Even before I started this blog, I've been planning for awhile to write about "heroes." I don't have a single hero who is considered a literary figure, even though I'm a lit major. I find nothing worthy of emulation in them. What is heroic? I agree with Rand, the capitalist, the corporate tyrant, the entrepreneur, the inventor, the pioneer, that is heroic. Personally, the athlete is heroic in his endurance of pain, of strife, of his ability to work on days he doesn't feel like it, to rise to the occasion and perform when others would crumple and fail. Those are on my list. And to me nothing is more heroic among men than the figure of the father, the patriarch and provider, the one who is willing to endure and tough out any situation for his family.

I don't find that in mysticism. I find softness. I find a lot of navel-gazing and crying. There's no crying in baseball.

Now, I wonder how much of my distaste for the mystical is influenced by my gender. Do I believe that sentiment and feeling are the realm of the feminine and that the realm of action and doing is masculine? No, I don't particularly feel that way though observation may hint at that, I don't think it is anything intrinsic but rather cultural and learned.

I do believe in male responsibility though. I believe men have a responsibility to rise up and lead by example and by word and that it is biblically mandated. Men, I believe, will be held responsible for their actions or inactions in fulfilling their duties come judgment. Adam was punished for Eve's deception because that was his jurisdiction. He was to guard her and protect her from that. He had no one to blame but himself.

How does mysticism fit into all that?

Well, I don't believe I've ever read a mystic talk about responsibility. And if I believe that men are defined primarily by responsibility, well I guess then that makes mysticism at best, non-masculine and at worst, emasculating.

Man up!

Manhood and Mysticism Part 1

2007-11-09T10:42:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday our campus bible study group had a time of "centering prayer." The next morning when I check my e-mail at work, I find a couple excerpts from a book called "Practicing the Presence of God." Here's an excerpt:

"… Since that time, I have been serving God simply, in humility and faith. Out of love, I try not to say, do, or think anything that might offend Him. My only request is that He does whatever He pleases with me.

I feel unable to express what is going on inside me right now. I'm not anxious about my purpose in life because I only want to do God's will. I wouldn't even lift a straw from the ground against His order or for any other motive than love for Him. Pure love of Him is all that keeps me going.

I have given up all but my intercessory prayers to focus my attention on remaining in His Holy presence. I keep my attention on God in a simple, loving way. This is my soul's secret experience of the actual, unceasing presence of God. It gives me such contentment and joy that I sometimes feel compelled to do rather childish things to control it."

Wow. My first thought? "It sounds like a eunuch wrote that."

No joke.

I'm thankful to God for a lot of things. I thank God for my salvation, that I may be found in Christ, that he has redeemed a sinner and adopted him as a son. Beyond that there is an endless list of other things I'm grateful for. Baseball is one of them.

Baseball has been my salvation from the hell of mystical thinking. I abhor mysticism and "soft" philosophies. I hate their language use which includes but is not limited to images and various types of metaphors. I detest vague and ambiguous language. There is no phrase that will send me into a rage like "...putting God in a box." It is a statement without a referent, an absurd arrangement of grammatical symbols. I refuse to use metaphors in serious situations. Metaphors are toys. With the things that are important to me, with love, with faith, with life, I do not use toys. I do not use metaphors.

I don't have the work in front of me but I remember that Nietzsche called Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation of Christ" as possibly the most effeminate and decadent work that he had ever read. Amen, brother man. Amen. I refuse to be emasculated.

I do not like monks. I do not like cloisters. I do like their beer though. I tried trappist ale and it was pretty good.

But I really like Jesus. He strikes me as the anti-mystic. He had his times of solitude and prayer, but was the anti-recluse. He went to the people. Forgive my metaphorical language here but He assaulted the gates of Hell with a bloody, splintered, urine and feces stained cross where criminals hung to die. And he battered down those gates and drew out a host of captives. He was a person who did not just feel things, but he went and did things. He gave of himself. He gave of himself to people that were too stupid and blind to understand the greatness of his person. In his distress he was able to say "Father, not my will but your will be done."

Hero. That is a real man.

Jesus would've made a great center-fielder.

Baseball has taught me a lot. It gave me the categories that I needed to think in and approach pain. Mystical writings drip with sentiment and feeling. "Oh God! Oh God! Waaa Waaa Waaa! God, heal me! God, my life is a barren abyss of swirling darkness! God, you are my light! Waa! Waa! Waa!" I'm not advocating playing through all injuries and hurts. Carlos Beltran playing with a sore quadriceps muscle this year probably cost the Mets the division. (Actually there's a lot that cost them the division race, but a healthy Beltran might've made the difference.) I find no grit, no toughness, no endurance in mysticism. I find that in baseball. And I find that Scripture has called for endurance in my soul.

So God? Thank you for baseball.

In Part 2, I hope I can tackle some of the following:
* Why I believe mysticism emasculates a man.
* Gender differences and the practices of faith?
* Retractions

2007-11-08T19:19:00.000-05:00

First dilemma of the blog: What should I write about? The Economist article that Diana sent to me earlier this week or the A-Rod opt out situation?

Well, if I chose to write about the Economist article then at least I might've had the more interesting option of titling this blog: "Home runs and Holy Wars." ... Actually, that idea's not half bad.