2sparrows

I finished the last ultra running book too far before my own attempt at an Ultra (Uhwarrie 40 miler — tomorrow!), so I searched around to find another and found this book by Dean Karnazes.  Dean ran as a freshman in high school but pretty much gave it up after that until he was 30.  While feeling unfulfilled, though successful in terms of career and salary, he decided to go for a run after getting home from his 30th birthday celebration (which included Tequila!).  And he didn’t stop running all night — in fact he has been running ever since.

At first it was fairly “normal” running of 5 or 6 miles after work, but then he came across two guys training for the Western States 100.  He felt called to attempt that challenge, and eventually moved on to race Badwater (135 miles starting in Death Valley ascending to the top of Mt Whitney), to completing the 1st marathon run to the South Pole, and finally, the book culminates in running a 199 mile relay race solo!

In some ways the stories are like race reports, but they are woven around his metamorphosis into one of the greatest endurance runners ever.  Fascinating read, good writing, and just what I needed with my race tomorrow!

Here are a few quotes… I highlighted much more than this, but many are about training or things I wanted to look into further…

• He who suffers remembers. —Fortune cookie
• The cross-country guys hung out in late-night coffee shops and read books by Kafka and Kerouac.  [ as compared to the track guys...]
• “Don’t run with your legs. Run with your heart.” On some level, even as a high school freshman, I got his meaning: the human body has limitations; the human spirit is boundless.
• At that moment I realized that my life was being wasted. Disillusioned with the trappings of the corporate scene, the things that really mattered—friendship and exploration, personal expansion and a sense of meaning—had gotten all twisted around making a lot of money and buying stuff. I hungered for a place where I could explore nature and my capabilities, away from a corporate office in a corporate building in a big city with crowded supermalls and people judging me by the car I drove (which, of course, was a new Lexus).
• As I limped around my office, trying to appear natural, I reminded myself that pain and suffering are often the catalysts for life’s most profound lessons. A passion I’d ignored for half my existence had been serendipitously reignited in one all-night thirty-mile hullabaloo.
• You’ve got to bundle up self-doubt and fear and stuff them in your shoe, cutting loose your rational mind as your body is pushed to inconceivable levels of endurance.
• As Lily Tomlin said, “Exercise is for people who can’t handle drugs and alcohol.”
• Long-distance running requires a certain discretion and reserve. It’s easy to let your ego get the better of you early on and run beyond your means.
• Most dreams die a slow death. They’re conceived in a moment of passion, with the prospect of endless possibility, but often languish and are not pursued with the same heartfelt intensity as when first born. Slowly, subtly, a dream becomes elusive and ephemeral. People who’ve let their own dreams die become pessimists and cynics.
• Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. —T. S. Eliot
• Start slow, then taper off. —Walt Stack, Bay Area running legend
• People think I’m crazy to put myself through such torture, though I would argue otherwise. Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness. I’ve now come to believe that quite the opposite is the case. Dostoyevsky had it right: “Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.” Never are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in. There is magic in misery.
• But life didn’t seem as vibrant without coffee, so I went back to my morning ritual (okay, maybe I am totally addicted after all). [ sounds like me, though I haven't even tried to give it up!  :-) ]

Location:

You can park at US 64 and the Haw River “intersection” on the West side of the river, and hike north or south; or park at the Robeson Creek Canoe Access point off Hanks Chapel Road and hike north.

View Larger Map

Level: moderate to strenuous depending on water conditions and how far off trail/river you have to go…  South of 64 there are some “cliffs” you may have to climb up and over depending on route selection

Description: unofficial and unmaintained, or at best “semi” maintained by the boaters and fishermen that use this section… (And you will occasionally run in to hikers, but not often in my experience.)  No markers on the trails, and while most sections are obvious, some are not.  Just keep the river on the East and don’t wander too far west and you should not get lost.

North and South (partial) GPS markers:

Here are GPS tracks on both the north and south side.  The south side is only a partial as the water level was too high (10 feet, just under flood level, on the USGS Bynum Gauge) to make it all the way to Gabriel’s Bend.  (Well, at least with the two kids with me!)

(North zoomed in)

A bit more detail on the north end…   There are some sections that may be a bit of a bushwhack depending on conditions.  Just keep the river on the east side of you and you can’t get lost.  I.e. don’t wander too far to the west.  I think I could make it all the way to 15/501 on this path and hope to try it some day.   There is a split just north of 64 that leads you up and over/around a section of the river that will not be passible in high water (perhaps 6-7 feet on the gauge).  I went both ways so both routes would be visible in the GPS track, but again, the lower section is much less defined and at points you are on rocks on the edge of the river.

South (partial) zoomed in…

Again, could not make it all the way to US 64 this day, but I will update this the next time I make the whole route.    Normally when you park at Robeson creek you do not have to head as far away from the river as the image below shows, but the water was very high this day, just under 11 feet or flood level on the Bynum Gauge. (Of course the water level is not shown in this satellite image)… When the water is is high, the section near the parking lot is under water.  Due to the high water there was a lot of off trail hiking as you can tell from the two slightly different routes on the out and back.

Photos (North of 64):

Some of the sites you will see on

If you choose to go the “low” route, or the route closer to the river than up and over, it becomes much less of a trail, and in some places more of a bushwhack and/or scramble.  If the water is high, this section would not be passible.  Check the USGS Bynum Guage.  Anything over 6 ft and your probably will need to swim it.  I.e. don’t do it!

This is what I call a “wash up,” which is where all the trash that comes down river on a big rain ends up.  I’d like to go back and clean this up one day.

This is what I wore out when I took the GPS on the north section..  It was a bit muddy!

Photos (south of 64):

South of 64 is the most popular white water rafting section of the Haw, though you will see some on the section north of the river as well.

After reading “The Chosen” a few weeks ago, I had to follow with another Potok book, and of course went with “The Promise,” which is somewhat of a sequel.  (More just a follow-on book with the same characters later in life than a sequel.)

Two main points stuck me:

1. the portrayal of different father-son relationships. (How one was so close, at least in terms of studying Talmud but additionally in seeking each other out for guidance and discussion in the struggles of life, while others were strained in various ways.)
2. the amazing study of their faith as part of a lifelong journey — but so much more dedicated and in depth than what is typical today, at least in the part of society I see around me

Some quotes that are all mostly self explanatory (And I’ve bolded one I that has resonated with me the most recently):

• “What energies we waste fighting one another…”
• “It’s always easier to learn something than to use what you’ve learned.”
• “You understand what it is to make a choice…?  A choice tells the world what is most important to a human being.  When a man has a choice to make he chooses what is most important to him, and that choice tells the world what kind of man he is.”
• “A person must know who he is.  A person must understand himself, improve himself, learn his weaknesses in order to overcome them.  It is hard for a person to understand hi own weaknesses…”
• “The Master of the Universe has so created the world that everything that can be good can also be evil.  It is mankind that makes a thing good or evil … depending on how we use the wonders we have been given.”
• “…men hesitate to talk to their fathers.  A boy always wishes to be able to talk to his father.  And a father waits for the boy to become a man so they can talk as men.  And then the boy becomes a man and no longer needs the father.  It is a strange thing.”
• “That is the way the world is… Each generation thinks it fights new battles.  But the battles are the same.  Only the people are different.”

I stumbled across the link to The Deep Church on the Inter-webs, and the words on the front page struck a chord…

Feel caught between the traditional church and the emerging church? Discover a third way: deep church. C. S. Lewis used the phrase “deep church” to describe the body of believers committed to mere Christianity. Unfortunately church in our postmodern era has been marked by a certain shallowness.

After reading it, I feel like I have found what I have been looking for, even though I could not pinpoint exactly what it was I was looking before before having read it.  (Does that make sense?)  In several recent posts I have lamented the fact of apparent shallowness in the area in terms of doctrine, so the words above definitely caught my attention.

What is funny is that my pre-conception of “The Emerging Church”was way off.  I had assumed it was the large, mega-church movement with contemporary worship services.  However, that is not it at all… It is a movement that criticizes the traditional church in seven key areas (Captivity to Enlightenment rationalism, a narrow view of salvation, belief before belonging, uncontextualized worship, ineffective preaching, weak ecclesiology, and Tribalism). I will not get into those seven criticisms here — you should read the book for that — other than to say that I found, as I read the details of each, that I shared some aspects of the criticisms myself.

Belcher takes the time to expand on each criticism thoroughly, but then points out where he feels the emerging church (sometimes) goes too far.  I again found myself agreeing with him on many many points — while I share the views of the issues the emerging folks see with the traditional church, I also agree with Belcher’s view on just about every point where he thinks they over do it.

The main purpose of the book is to define a third way, beyond traditional and emerging.  Of course there is no way to summarize the entire book, but one of the basic tenets  is agreeing on the foundations of the faith as outlined in the early creeds, and letting everything else slide a little.  We have tried to follow this principle of primary vs. secondary doctrine with Haw River Christian Academy, and I strongly feel it is always the way to go.

I have started using Evernote to keep my reading notebook (it’s a great service!  keeps my notes synced to the cloud and I can get to them via any computer or my phone, changes sync automagically, etc.)  I have a tremendous amount of notes from this book.  That means a couple of things — there are either great quotes or there are passages that really make me think, and I want to be able to come back to them.

Both fit here…

• “There is a depth in the ancient church that is very up to date.”  [ and therefore it is worth honoring the tradition of the old church...\
• "The Enlightenment quest for certainty based on unassailable reason and science is a dead end... It cannot be pulled off.  It has never been done."  [We (those of us currently alive) are all children of the Enlightenment, and therefore Children of Reason, and that is so difficult to put aside..  But it needs to be in questions of faith.  Not that you can't use logic and reasoning in apologetic argumentation, but that there are sometimes things that go beyond just that...]
• “the next day I contacted the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) … I enquired about church planting.”  [this one stands out because so many CCS schools are backed by PCA churches!  And PCA just keeps coming up in strange places, yet there is no PCA church here...  :-/ ]
• “oh you are describing Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC…”  [This also stood out as I had just read two Tim Keller books, and his church is also PCA...]
• “We train our members to read discerningly, to think for themselves and to be enriched by other traditions even as they dig deep in the soil of their own tradition.”   [ nice to hear! ]
• “Hermeneutical Circle”  truth neither starts with knowledge that leads to faith nor with faith that leads to knowledge.  How do we get into this circle?  The starting point lies beyond us, with the Holy Spirit who places us inside the faith – knowledge circle…

I guess that is good for now.  I highly recommend the book for anyone that has never felt 100% at home at their church, and even if you do feel at home, I think this book could provide growth opportunities none-the-less.

I saw this mentioned on another blog as a good adventure story, and felt like I needed a break from my non-fiction reading.  Not a bad yarn, but what is up with so many stories using prior knowledge of solar eclipses as escape mechanisms or shows of superiority?

Anyway, some quotes (as there’s not much more to say):

…there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not take if he sets his heart to it.  There is nothing … that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or lose it as Heaven above may order.”

What is life?  Tell me … [ you ] who are wise, who know the secrets of the world, and of the world of stars, and the world that lies above and around the stars; who flash your words from afar without a voice; tell me … the secret of our life — whither it goes and whence it comes!  You cannot answer me; you know not.  Listen, I will answer.  Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go.  Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are see in the light of the fire, and lo!we are gone again into the Nowhere.  Life is nothing.  Life is all.  It is the Hand with which we hold off Death.  It is the glow-worm that shines in the nighttime and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter, it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.”

Our future was so completely unknown, and I think that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.”

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains.  His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited today; his passions are our cause of life;  the joys and sorrows he knew are our familiar friends — the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!”

… how little we think of others when our own safety, pride, or reputation is in questions…”

After finishing The Book of Lights, I wanted to read another Potok book, and I chose “The Chosen” as it is the one that was sitting on the coffee table at a friends house that toggled my desire to read him again to begin with.  I read this book in one day as I flew back from CA to NC, and thought it was absolutely great.  In fact, I liked it better than The Book of Lights, which is odd because I had thought I remembered liking that book the most of all the Potok books when I read nearly everything he wrote 10-12 years ago.

I think I’ll just have a bunch of quotes in this entry…

First is the quote that started the book, by Karl Menninger:

When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape.  Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him.

In the same way, the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him.  Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too tough for him.  His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them.  It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.

Now on to some quotes from the book:

…when a person comes to talk to you, you should be patient and listen.  Especially if that person has hurt you in any way.  [Note he doesn't say it will be easy!]

He told me once he wishes everyone could speak in silence…  [this is a key concept in the book, but I won't go into it here...]

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate… [I don't fully agree... We can know we are blessed/fortunate, though we may not understand it fully without having something taken away...]

The Talmud says everyone should do two things for himself.  One is to acquire a teacher….  The other is to choose a friend.

… the most mysterious thing in the universe to man is man himself.

Honest difference of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship.

This one needs its own quotes:

Human beings do not live forever… We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure against eternity.  So it may be asked what value is there to a human life.  There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?…  I learned a long time ago … that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing.  But the eye that blinks, that is something.  A span of life is nothing.  But the man who lives that span, he is something.  He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.  …  A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.  It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning.

And one more:

A man is born into this world with only a tiny spark of goodness in him.  The spark is God, it is the soul; the rest is ugliness and evil, a shell.  The spark must be guarded like a treasure, it must be nurtured, it must be fanned into a flame.  It must learn to seek out other sparks, it must dominate the shell.  [ This one is perhaps must deeper theologically than what you think at first read...]

In the past 12-24 months, I have had a growing sense of a lack of depth with the level of theology being discussed, taught, and preached in this area (the South in general ) and in Baptist churches in particular.   This feeling has grown as I have read more books, many of which I have read due to the Classical Christian School we have worked so hard to start.   A quote from The Paideia of God by Douglas Wilson hit the nail on the head:

. . . many of those who are involved in starting up classical and Christian schools are on their own pilgrimage.  They do not have any settled doctrinal convictions but are unsettled by that fact.  They feel rootless and unequipped to teach their children.  They have begun the process regardless, and they have constantly come up against what may be described as a fundamental theological reason why their studies seem so fruitless.  They are trying to be faithful but cannot seem to get any traction.  I have seen numerous such individuals who have begun to investigate Reformed theology precisely because their previous theology (or, more likely, lack of theology) provided an inadequate foundation for the kind of eduction they wanted to provide for their children.

But even before that, I have always been drawn to theology books and had even started reading books such as What is Reformed Theology (RC Sproul) and Systematic Theology (Gruden), as well as listening to Systematic Theology courses Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) makes available on iTunes.  Just in the past month I have heard speakers at ACCS mention the “superficiality” of the south, and I have begun asking a few local pastors their thoughts on the topic.

At any rate, I came across the following three podcasts which do a really good job of going through the history of the SBC and touch on what I would consider much deeper theology than what we typically see in today’s SBC churches.

http://www.ncbaptist.org/index.php?id=audio_koinonia

I highly recommend listening to these, especially if you are a member of a Southern Baptist Church and if you have been searching for deeper things.   For example, one point that was brought up was the submerging of doctrine to a more pragmatic and experiential view of faith took over.  Another example is how they show the root of Baptists is a combination of English Separatists, dissatisfied Anglicans, and a desire to get back to the basics of what is taught in the Bible.  They go on to say that in every way Baptists are Protestant except in their view of Baptisms (age of accountability vs. infant), and that we can in general be called “Evangelical Calvinists” (though they point out some differences in sub-aspects of what that means.  Each of these points is discussed by leading Baptist Theologians of our day.  (I may have thought that term was an oxymoron until listening to these guys talk!  ;-) )  A general sense I got is that Baptists tried to be as broad in their theology as possible while maintaining primary doctrine as taught in the Bible, but let some of the more subtle differences be settled at the family or local church level.  For example, Evangelical Calvinist as a broad term does not just mean Reformed Baptist.  (I’m still trying to get my head around all of these terms and doctrines, so if I have mischaracterized anything, I apologize!)

Even if you have not felt the same lack of depth, the podcasts are worth listening to so you can get a feel for the history of the SBC — where the organization came from (and why), some foundational beliefs, and what issues it is currently facing.

And finally, they mentioned the SBC Confession of faith, which is worth a read through as well…

Recently, someone I have known less than a year, but have grown to respect quite a bit, said this to me in an email:

You know, one of the best books on leadership I’ve ever read (although its really a narrative about rabbits) is Watership Down by Richard Adams. It’s a great summer-beach read. Check it out if you’ve not read it.

I had just recently given him a copy of “Leading with a Limp,” one of my new favorite non-fiction books.

My interest was piqued, so I headed over to Amazon to check it out.  What struck me there was the following chart of ratings:

I have never seen a book with that many 5 star ratings, so I immediately ordered it.  (Amazon Prime is such a bad thing!!!  Or a good thing depending on how you look at it.    )

It was really an excellent read — a great story; and there are great examples of leadership:

• a leader that uses his resources wisely — by having those that follow him do tasks they are well suited to
• a leader that is not afraid to take on risk himself when necessary
• a leader that speaks what is appropriate to the appropriate rabbits (people) at the appropriate times
  
• a leader that shows courage on the outside even when unsure on the inside
• a leader that knows when to discuss his uncertainty with key rabbits (people) when necessary
• a leader that “thinks outside the box” to solve problems or while facing difficult situations
• a leader that is humble and recognizes his weaknesses, but is able to work around those weakness (often by using others around him that are strong in that area)

Of course, I was looking for leadership qualities and you may not notice all of those if you have just picked it up as a fun summer read.  But it is both fun and thought provoking as a leadership study if you want that too.

Only a few quotes:

• “Besides, he was not particularly impressive in appearance or as a speaker.”  This one is somewhat surprising since most leaders are at some level attractive and almost always good speakers.  This was in reference to a particular situation where a delegate that was impressive in both appearance and as a speaker was very much warranted.
• “For what is is what must be.”
• “Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.  For them there is no winter food problem.  They have fires and warm clothes.  The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security.”

Sixteen years ago, on May 8th, 1993, Kelly and I got married.  I am so blessed to have her in my life, and I thank God for her every day.  In many ways, we have grown up together, and each of us is who we are because of the other.  I would not have done it any other way.  We have truly lived a dream.

Here is a relatively recent picture of the two of us.  (You can clearly see I married way above myself! )

I am no poet — never have been and never will be (so please don’t make fun of me!) — but here is something I wrote a few months after we started dating:

Kelly’s Poem

The rings of the moon, and Heaven’s Star,

Will never be as beautiful to me as you are.

Gold and Riches may one day be mine,

But their value will never be as thine.

The longer we are together,

The more I love you;

I hope that this is forever,

And I hope you hope it too.

Love is ours to explore –

We can have so much more — we just have to be willing to try,

To never say goodbye.

– 1988

(The “rings of the moon” is from a night in October 1987, about 3 weeks after we started dating, where there were two “rings” of light around the moon — a beautiful sight indeed, and one I have never seen since.)

Happy anniversary Kelly!  I love you with all my heart.

Sunday, March 15th, there was a Backwoods Orienteering Klub meet at Schenck Forrest.  Schenck is a little too small for anything above a brown level course, so normally BOK tries to do something more interesting.  This time, they had a snooker-o.

Normally orienteering courses are run in a given order of controls for each given course.  Then there are score-o’s in which you choose the order, and each control is worth a different number of points.  So you create a strategy to get the most number of points in the given time.  (Rogaines are just long score-o’s — as much as 24 hours, of which I’ve done one.)

A snooker-o was a new concept, which is similar to a score-0, but with the added caveats that:

1. you must start with a control worth 1
2. you must finish with a control worth 1
3. whenever you get control worth more than 1, you must follow with a control worth 1

To expand on 3, you are allowed to get as many controls worth 1 in a row as you want.  But you have to be careful to not use up all the 1 pointers!

It was really an interesting concept, and made for a fun event.  Below is the map, with my scribbled strategy on the side of which order I was going to go in:

I wanted to save 46 as a safety, since it was so near the start and finish.  And most of the multi-point controls were towards the west, with several across the stream.  Since it had been raining for a couple days and was still raining, the creek was a little crazy, and several people opted not to cross it at all.  I got control 68.  The stream crossing on the way out was not too bad.  The water was high and moving fast, but I judged it well and came out on a nice beach/shore right were I wanted to.  But returning was a little scary.  The rush water pushed me a lot further than expected, and all of a sudden I was in chest deep water being pushed into a 5 foot high bank.  I did a strong scissor kick and grabbed a tree, and pulled myself out.  Did I mention the water was VERY cold?  But a couple minutes later after running, I didn’t feel it at all.

I thought I did better than the results show.  I had trouble with 51 but abandoned it quickly so I don’t think that affected me much.  And I ran almost the full hour I was out.  Oh well, it was fun, and each time out, I am getting closer to my old form!

Riley drew a picture of me orienteering out in the rain, that I had to include here!