The Reason for God. Tim Keller.

Posted on November 13, 2009 by seanb724

After a friend gave me The Prodigal God and I read it in a couple of nights, I thought I should read more from Tim Keller — afterall, he is the pastor of a PCA church, as is Jim Belcher, author of Deep Church, and PCA just seems to keep popping up in much of my recent reading and in local conversations.

The Reason for God is at times much more apologetic than I typically care for, but at other times really spoke to me in ways I did not expect. Two primary areas that it makes me want to investigate further are the Doctrine of Hell, especially in light of recent discussions surrounding hell as portrayed in Judgement House, and the Kingdom of God as described in Deep Church and other recent readings as a renewed and restored “creation,” here on Earth.

I think, because there is so much to this book, that I will just copy and paste the bulleted list of quotes from my EverNote notebook:
Quotes:

The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didn’t seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world.
As a child, the plausibility of faith can rest on the authority of others, but when we reach adulthood there is a need for personal, firsthand experience as well.
… faith journeys are never simply intellectual exercises. [emphasis mine]
Each side should accept that both religious belief and skepticism are on the rise. [ Two sides are religious and non-religious, believers and skeptics. ]
A faith without some doubts is like a body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions from a smart skeptic. A Person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.
Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts — not only their own but their friends’ and neighbors’. It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you have inherited them. Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous or offensive.
But even as believers should learn to look for reasons behind their faith, skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning.
It would be inconsistent to require more justification for Christian belief than you do for your own.
The reality is that we all make truth claims of some sort and it is very hard to weigh them responsibly, but we have no alternative but to try to do so.
What is religion then? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing.
Redeemer lacked the pompous and highly sentimental language they found emotionally manipulative in other churches..
[The] resistance to authority in moral matters is now a deep current in our culture. [not just moral, but all matters!]
In our society many people have worked extremely hard to pursue careers that pay well rather than fit their talents and interests. Such careers are straightjackets that in the long run stifle and dehumanize us.
Disciplines and constraints, then, liberate us only when they fit with the reality of our nature and capacities. A fish, because it absorbs oxygen from the water rather than the air, is only free if it is restricted and limited to water.
Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints, but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us.
When people have done injustice in the name of Christ they are not being true to the spirt of the one who himself died as a victim of injustice and who called for the forgiveness of his enemies.
Instead of trying to shape our desires to fit reality, we now seek to control and shape reality to fit our desires.
Our peer group and and primary relationships shape our beliefs much more than we want to admit.
Christians who accept the Bible’s authority agree that the primary goal of Biblical interpretation is to discover the Biblical author’s original meaning as he sought to be understood by his audience. This has always meant interpreting a text according to its literary genre.
“Genesis 1 has the earmarks of poetry and is therefore a song about the wonder and meaning of God’s creation. Genesis 2 is an account of how it happened.
We come to every individual evaluation with all sorts of experiences and background beliefs that strongly influence our thinking and the way our reason works.
CS Lewis: I believe the son has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
He looked at one argument for God after another, though many of them had a great deal of merit, he found that ultimately every one of them was rationally avoidable at some point… He was assuming “strong rationalism” which itself has not airtight proof… Then we went back to review the lines of reasoning and instead of calling the proofs looked at them as clues…
Science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith.
… innate desires correspond to real objects that can satisfy them…
.. Dawkins admits that since we are the product of natural selection, we can’t completely trust our own senses. After all, evolution is interested only in preserving adaptive behavior, not true belief…
Even when we believe with all our minds that life is meaningless, we can’t simply live that way.
pride is the enemy of hope
“Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God… Faith is: that the self in being itself is grounded transparently in God.” — Kierkegaard
Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially deify.
Every person must find some way to justify their existence…. Every one is building their identity on something.
Sin is not simply doing bad things… It is putting good things in the pace of God.
“Your father has defeated you, as long as you hate him. You will stay trapped in your anger unless you forgive him thoroughly from the heart and begin to love him.”
If you don’t allow your children to hinder your freedom in work and play at all, and if you only get to your children when it doesn’t inconvenience you, your children will grow up physically only. In all sorts of other ways they will remain emotionally needy, troubled, and over dependent.
All life-changing love toward people with serious needs is a substitutional sacrifice. If you become personally involved with them, in some way, their weaknesses flow toward you as our strengths flow toward them.
We should repent not only for what we have done wrong, but our motivations behind our good works…
It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that saves you.

Trails of Chatham County: Jordan Lake – New Hope Overlook

Posted on November 11, 2009 by seanb724

Location: The Jordan Lake New Hope Park can be reached via US 1, exit 81 at Pea Ridge road (head west after you exit) or via US 64 on the east side of the lake, by heading south on Beaver Creek and then taking a right on to Pea Ridge. Pass through the gate and take the 1st right towards the boat ramp. The trail head is at the beginning of the parking area on the far left.

Distance: 3-6 miles (two different loops, plus the out and backs to the primitive camp sites)

Difficulty: moderate to strenuous (there are a couple tough hills for this area, that make it seem a bit mountainous)

(The GPS tracker I am using tends to underestimate mileage on these kinds of trails, so the mileage on the map above is slightly off.)

Description: New Hope is my favorite hiking destination in Chatham County. It can be quite mountainous and is often secluded — it is rare that I see more than 1 or 2 other people out there, and typically I see none. (Though that can be said for many of the trails I plan on reviewing!)

About 100 meters from the trail head the trail splits. If you stay left, you start off on a tough little hill before settling into some easier running. After crossing a couple of gravel roads, you can take the out and back to primitive camp site B, or continue on. If you stay right at the beginning, you reach an inlet where you sometimes can catch beavers playing — look closely and you will see their den. Keep going and you will find a short 50 meter branch to a bench that overlooks the largest part of Jordan Lake. You can see all the boaters here on nice days.

The two trails form a bit of a figure 8, so whichever way you go, there is an option near the middle to cut back to the trail head.

If you take the trail up to primitive camp site B you reach a parking lot. From there you can get in another 1000 meters or so by running all the way down to the lastcamp site (where I have backpacked to before). I don’t have that shown on the GPS track but will add it when I have the time to complete the entire trail.

Note: This area has an “unofficial” but maintained grassy/gravel road to the Jordan Lake dam area. As you go up the gravel roads towards camp site B you can follow the grassy road towards the dam. And from there it loops back out towards Pea Ridge Road. I’ll include another map that shows that road, and while it doesn’t show an actual connection to the dam area, it would not be hard to trek it… This may get a bit long for most people for a hike but I have ridden a mountain bike on it.

Photos:

Just one, of the marque at the trail head showing the map:

Trails of Chatham County: Jordan Lake — Vista Point

Posted on November 2, 2009 by seanb724

Location: The Jordan Lake Vista Point trails are located in the Vista Point recreation area of Jordan Lake. On US 64 on the West side of the lake, turn South on to North Peak Ridge Road and drive approximately 3 miles to the park entrance.

Distance: blue loop: ~2.5 miles red loop: ~3 miles

Don’t go when: If the water levels are above 220 you will have to bushwhack some sections of both trails…

Difficulty: Easy

(The GPS tracker I am using tends to underestimate mileage on these kinds of trails, so the mileage on the map above is slightly off.)

Description: There are two loops, a red (~3 miles) and blue (~2.5 miles), which can easily be combined. The terrain in this area of Jordan Lake is quite flat with less than 70 feet of elevation difference throughout the entire trail system.

If you park at the ranger’s office just outside the gate, you can start on the blue trail, which loops around to an old tobacco barn before heading towards the group camp area. Just before the camp area is a large grass field. It is best to hike around this if the grass has not been mowed recently — it can be thick and slow going, and the chiggers are bad in the spring and summer. Just before the grass field the trail is a bit hard to follow as a few blazes are missing, but you can just keep the road on your left and the lake on your right and look towards the field. At the group camp area you have exit the camp area gate and cross the road to hit the red trail.

The red trail is about 3 miles long and first runs out along a long peninsula with views of the wide open area of Jordan Lake, eventually loops near the RV camp sites, before hitting one of the shelters. From the Shelter the trail either heads down to the beach, or you can cut through the parking lot, cross the road, head back towards the park entrance, and pick up the blue loop again at the group camp site. It actually continues when you cross the road but this section is not really maintained and doesn’t really go anywhere except back to the group camp area. I normally just take the road back to the came area instead.

Photos:

(I’ll try to add more as I go out each time.)

The trail head for the blue trail at the ranger’s office.

The marquee at the trail head.

Trails of Chatham County

Posted on November 2, 2009 by seanb724

Over the coming months, I’ll be working on a blog series of all the trails in Chatham County (at least the ones I know about!). I’ll be going out to hike or, more likely, run the trails, tracking them on a GPS, taking some pictures, and giving some comments. This post will be updated as I go and serve as a “home page” for this series.

(Click on a blue bubble to see the trail name.)

Links to specific trail posts:

Jordan Lake: Vista Point
Jordan Lake: New Hope
Jordan Lake: Sea Forth
Triangle Land Conservatory: White Pines
American Tobacco Trail
Haw River @ 64 West side
Haw River @ 64 East side
Haw River @ 15/501
Briar Chapel
Northwood Highschool Cross Country Trail

If I’m missing any, let me know and I’ll be sure to add them. I love to explore new places!

Music Monday: TSO’s Night Castle finally released…

Posted on October 26, 2009 by seanb724

Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s long awaited Night Castle is finally out! TSO is one of my favorite bands — they #4 in my “top played artist” lists on iTunes over the past 5+ years. Considering 3 of their 4 albums are Christmas stories, that is pretty impressive. If you like Rock Opera, go get it today, for $3.99 at amazon (today only at that price).

Backwoods Orienteering Blue 10/18

Posted on October 19, 2009 by seanb724

It was a blustery day, but never managed to rain. Joseph and Ruth set some very difficult courses including an 8.9K Blue course. We had a couple of injuries, Pat Downey got a severe cut on his leg requiring medical attention by stepping into a stump hole where someone discarded some broken glass, and Patrik Heuman tripped over some barbed wire and got a bloody nose when he fell. Pat, Jeff Eichman, and Don Childrey helped Patrik and then Jeff and Don helped Pat. For your sacrifice helping an injured comrade instead of being disqualified for not finishing (DNF) you get a “Sporting Withdrawal” (SPW) for being a good sport. Also thanks to Josef for setting out 24 controls early in the morning and helped with starts and finishes, to Joseph for teaching the class, and to Holly, Bill, Mihai, Vladimir, Artem, Bill, and Paul for retrieving controls after the event. (Please let me know if I forgot you).

Link to the official page…

Results show:

Blue Course: 21 KP 8.9 km 

  1 Brian Thompson               1:40:45
  2 Sean M Butler                1:40:55
  3 Artem Kazantsev              2:08:39
  4 Mihai Ibanescu               2:10:29
  5 Patrik Heuman                2:18:11
    Jeffrey Eichman                  SPW
    Donald Childrey                  SPW     
    Patrick Downie                   SPW
    Pierre Nyquist                   DNF
    Miriam Noren                     DNF
    Stanley Matsson                  DNF
    Daniel Varner & Daniel Byars     DNF

Ernie, Brian, and I ran the course together (so it is odd there is a 10s discrepancy!), and I have to say it would have been VERY tough solo. I likely would have been a DNF, there were so many tough controls! But with 3 of us, we were able to find almost all of them pretty quickly — only off on a couple which you can see in the split.

Brian pretty much dragged us through the course. 🙂

Bushwhack Adventure Race.

Posted on September 30, 2009 by seanb724

Team: Triangle Adventure Racing

Sean Butler, Brian Thompson

Pre-race

Check-in was set for 2:30 p.m. at Harris Lake, which was the remote start, so I met Brian there and we got our maps. They had actually published the UTM’s of the start, finish, and transition areas earlier in the day, so I had made a google map, which I will embed here. (Not sure how well it will work, but you should be able to click on each blue marker to see what the TA is…)

After we checked in and got the big map and UTMs, we drove a little away so we could plot the UTMs on a picnic table. We were given all of the TA UTM’s and a the 1st large section of CP UTM’s… After we plotted them we drove back to the start and put our gear together. We were using Frog Hollow’s paid support to move our bikes and boat around, and found that they would allow us one small bin of gear. We used that mostly for food.

My fuel strategy was to mainly use 4 20 oz. water bottles filled with a mixture of Hammer Nutrition products: sustained energy, perpetuem, and heed. I had mixed about 450 calories worth of those products in each bottle, and that was my main fuel that I supplemented with the following: peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and honey, combos, pringles, gels, cliff shots, bite sized candy bars etc. I had a lot more food than I needed as the Hammer Mix really kept me fueled well, but with the gear bin being carried by Frog Hollow, I never had too much food.

There was a pre-race meeting at 6 p.m., and we had to get our cars to the finish line from the remote start, about an hour round trip drive. So we drove to Camp Agape and got a ride back from Jeff who was racing the 8 hour race the next day. The RD’s went over the rules and answered questions at the meeting, and told us to be back at 6:45 p.m. for final instructions.

Bushwhack adventures tend to do rogaine style races, where there are many controls in each section, each worth varying points. This allows both fast teams and slow teams to be on the course for nearly the same amount of time, as you can decide to not go after some controls if you start to run short on time…. This means that it does not matter who reaches the finish 1st — it matters who has the most points. Finish time only comes into play if there is a tie in pioints.

Prologue

At the final instructions, they told us we would have a prologue, which turned out to be a short orienteering course of 3 check points on either an A or B course, where each control was located at a small pond in the park. I had to run get our running shoes since we had been prepared to bike first. We got the maps at 18:59, had to hold them down until the RD yelled “go” at 19:00.

We looked at the map, chose to go with course A, and took off running. We arrived at the 1st control just behind team Checkpoint Zero (CP0), the current leader in the national points standings for the Innov8 race series. Brian graciously walked out into the pond, which was really more a swamp. As he came out he said “I just took one for the team!” It was pretty mucky and it did stink!

We raced on to CP2 which was relatively easy, and the on to CP3. We found the pond and circled it, but there was no control. We saw team CP0 again, and they said they could not find it. We circled the pond several times but had no luck, and a couple other teams came up as well. Eventually we all decided to bail and tell the RD’s they were off, but on the way back we all decided to circle another pond we had to pass, and there it was. We still think the control was misplaced.

We raced back to the start and were 1st back, only a couple of seconds ahead of CP0. There are no splits for the prologue, but we were the 1st team back.

I think the prologue was a good idea, as otherwise there would have been a ton of congestion on the early parts of the 1st bike leg…

Section 1: Bike

We jumped on our bikes and head out on the single track. I immediately knew I was going to be in trouble. The lights I had for my helmet and handle bars were nowhere near good enough for this kind of single track riding. They were fine on paved roads, gravel roads, and jeep trails, but not here. I was terribly slow on all single track and I bet we lost at least 30 minutes throughout the race because of that. I need to get back to riding more single track, and I need better lights!CP0 passed us just before we got our 1st control…. Our strategy was to go across the main road outside of the park and pick up all the jeep trail controls, while CP 0 apparently decided to get all the single track inside the park 1st, as they took off in a different direction from us.

Across the road on the jeep trails, our navigation was not quite as crisp and we did overshoot a couple, but we eventually got them all and headed back to the rest of the single track. Once we cleared those, we headed back to the TA and jumped in the boats to head out on the water.

The splits show this section took us 4 hours and 30 minutes, though that includes the prologue time. That was about 4th place but there were about 4 or 5 other teams that all came in right after us. CP0 had checked in well over an hour before. It was now 23:30.

Section 2: Paddle Harris Lake

Night navigation on water can be pretty tough, and we had a pretty long kayak section. All controls were somewhere on the shore, except one which was mysteriously in the middle of the water according to the map. Our plan was to paddle to the 1st control, then back track a little to a boat ramp, and portage across the peninsula to save some time. We did that, and while the portage was slow as we had some issues with the wheels we had borrowed, it still saved a lot of time.

We found the control in the “middle of the water” easily — turns out there was a small island there. We continued to knock out all the controls here pretty easily. It was amusing to see lights in the woods on the shore looking for controls, when Brian would say they were off by several hundred meters.

After the last control we paddled to the next TA. I ran around trying to find the folks manning the CP, and finally did. We were surprised to discover we were in 1st place! But CP0 came out just a few seconds later. Our time on this section was 3 hours 13 minutes, 27 minutes faster than any other team and well over an hour faster than CP0 (who had cleared the bike course way ahead of us!)

We quickly transitioned from boat to bikes, but CP0 was a few seconds faster. They had a real support crew, which certainly helped. While we had to re-fuel and refill water, they did not.

Section 3: Bike San Lee

We had about an hour road bike to the bike trails at San Lee Park, with just a couple turns and one CP to find on the way. We arrived at SanLee five minutes behind CP0 in 2nd place, and quickly headed onto the trails where the passport said we would find 4 CP’s “somewhere on the two loops.” We found the 1st one within 100 yards of the start of the trail, which seemed too easy. We found this trail pretty hard to ride at night, without good lights. Brian’s good handle bar light was not working now, and the trail was fairly technical. We rode when we could, and pushed bikes the rest of the time. After a while we started thinking we must have gotten off a bike trail and on to a hiking tail, as it seemed unridable! Then we stumbled across another CP, so I guess it was a bike trail after all.

From here we made our 1st major mistake, which would come back to haunt us. We crossed a foot bridge to find the start of the other loop, and eventually did. It turns out if we had not crossed the bridge, the other loop actually was right there! Where we did start, we found the 3rd CP pretty quickly. But this trail seemed to go on and on, and there were a few double black diamonds and bypasses… At one point we made the decision to take a bypass to get out, but when we did reach the end — at the foot bridge — we had not found a control. We searched around for more trail, and never found the CP. Eventually we went back to the foot bridge, rode up the bypass, and walked our bikes through the double black diamond. Still not control. I searched up and down the few trails at this junction a couple times with no luck.

We eventually decided to bail we had spent way too much time here. I thought when we checked out of this section, we probably would have lost significant time and places. It turns out we did lose a lot of time to CP0 who had done this section in about 45 minutes while we had been out for over two hours, but we were still in 2nd place. Now, though, we had missed a control, and as this was a rogaine style race, points come before time. The person at the CP and set the control, and he showed us on the map where it was, and it was right there near the footbridge. Somehow we had missed it even though we checked a few times. 😦

We took the roads back to the Cape Fear River at highway 42, where arrived at 6:55 a.m. and received a couple more UTMs to plot. CP0 had arrived well at 5:09 so we had lost a lot of time, but we were still in 2nd time-wise.

Section 4: Paddle the Cape Fear River

This began as fairly easy paddling to the dam, about a 2 miles. We had to portage up and over the dam, which was quite steep on each side. From there it became a “hike a kayak/river walk” as the water was quite low and there were many rocks. In a kevlar boat that is not good!

After about 3 miles of this, we came to the “ropes section” which was a simple trylean traverse across a side-let of the river, maybe 20 yards…

As we were leaving the ropes, we saw a boat behind us for the 1st time (the 3rd place team, Eastern Mountain Sports). They had just missed the ropes and had to turn back, so we figured we were still up on them 15 minutes or so.

Then it was on to more hike a kayak until we reached a bit of rapids and the pull out for the orienteering section. The splits show we had made up about 20-30 minutes on CP0 as they had headed out on the O-course one hour and 20 minutes before us.

Section 5: Orienteering

Raven Rock is a great place for orienteering, and Brian again showed his excellent navigation skills. While we were just a little off on the 1st control, and felt the next two were slightly misplaced though we found them pretty quickly, we went through this section in what we thought was a good time, clearing the course in 3 hours and 50 minutes. Here it is hard to look at the time splits as many teams were starting to skip controls due to the time, but we can see we gained just under 30 minutes on CP0. However, EMS had made up 40 minutes on us!

We were still in 2nd place leaving this section (We had seen EMS a few minutes earlier, and they came up as we were getting ready to pull out, and we got on the water about the same time.

Section 6: Paddle

We had about an hour paddle to the last boat take out, still on the Cape Fear River. Along this section we nearly had a disaster… The boat hit a rock hard, with enough momentum to get the middle of the boat on the rock, with me in the front and Brian in the back putting a lot of stress on the kevlar. We heard what I thought was the boat cracking, but it turned out to be the sealant cracking, and the boat did not take on any water, so we were ok. We reached the pull-out at the same time as EMS.

Section 7: Bike

We biked up a long gravel road to some paved roads, and then on to the north side of Raven Rock State park. This took about 30 minutes. Splits show we got to the check in before the trek 10 minutes before EMS and 70 minutes after CP0.

Section 8: Trek

The trek section was along two horse trail loops, with just 4 controls to get. We got the 1st two easily, and then bushwhacked through the woods to pick up the other loop. This bushwhack saved a lot time vs. taking the trail all the way around to the other loop! But the 3rd control proved difficult. We went up and down the spur where it was supposed to be, much higher than it was marked, and couldn’t find it. Another team came and we felt certain we were in the right spot. Eventually Brian tried to call the RD, but we couldn’t get signal. We had decided to abandon this CP has time was starting to get short for getting to the finish before the cut-off at 7 p.m. and we still had one more CP to get.As we were going down the back side of the spur, we should have hit a trail, and we never did. So we were not where we thought we were! We headed back to the trail where we had come up the spur, and then started the trail again. We soon hit another spur, checked that out, but no CP. Back to the trail, and a few minutes later, another spur. And there the control was… We had been off — way off. We probably lost a good 20-30 minutes on this CP. Oh well, on to the next.

We had more trekking/running to small waterfall, where I spotted the CP across the stream. After going around to grab it, we headed back to the TA, and then got on the bikes.

Section 9: Bike to finish

The last section was about a 30 minute bike on a gravel road (with a decent climb!) and then on to the finish. We reached the finish at 6:24 p.m, or 23 hours and 24 minutes. I do note based on the splits we had the fastest time on this short section by 5 minutes. I think we were just ready to be done!

We had missed one control on the course, and we did not know if any other teams had cleared the course, though we assumed CP0 and EMS had. Turns out EMS had missed one 50 point control, while we had missed a 60 point control, so they did beat us (barley!)

Here are the final standings:

We finished first place in our open division and third place overall. I am quite happy with how I raced since it was my 1st long race in over 5 years. We were right there with two very good teams for most of the race. Brian’s navigation and me drafting behind him on the road bike allowed me to hang with him without slowing him too much. (Other than the night single track, where I was terrible! We probably lost 30 minutes or more on those 2 sections!)

I loaded up all my gear, ate a little at the post race cook out, but did not stick around for the awards. I just wanted to go home, get a shower, and get some sleep!

I had terrible chaffing and a rash from being in the same wet bike shorts for nearly 24 hours. And the next day I was tired and sore, but that is expected. I had pushed pretty hard to keep up with Brian’s pace, but overall I am recovering nicely and look forward to my next adventure! 🙂

Here is a link to the final results.

(I’ll update this with more pictures if/when the volunteers upload them!)

Here is what my leg looked like after the race. This is due to way too much bushwhacking! 🙂

Born to Run. Christopher McDougall.

Posted on September 25, 2009 by seanb724

I’d love to write more about this book, but I am about to head out on my 1st 24 hour adventure race in several years. I am glad I finished it before race! There are many things I could write about, but not right now. Instead I will say that if you are an endurance athlete of any kind, love the great outdoors, then read this book. McDougall did an excellent job in telling this story.

And I’ll leave you with my notes from the book, mostly just a bunch of quotes:

“Tarahumara virtues: strength, patience, cooperation, dedication, persistence”
on a 95 year old Raramuri hiking 25 miles over a mountain: “Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn’t. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home.”
“you are tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.”
on women ultra runners: “how come nearly all the woman finish Leadville and fewer than half the men do.”
“No wonder so many people hated running; if you thought it was only a means to an end — an investment in becoming faster, skinnier, richer — then why stick with it if you weren’t getting enough quo for your quid?
on Leaville: “pacing is so grueling and thankless, usually only family, fools, and damn good friends let themselves get talked into it.”
- ( Hi Ben and Shane! 🙂 )
“Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.” — Mark Twain
“I always start these events with very lofty goals, like I’m going to do something special. And after a point of body deterioration, the goals get evaluated down to basically where I am now — where the best I can hope for is to avoid throwing up on my shoes.”
“You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.”
- (The Beast is the “monster” that attacks every endurance athlete when they hit their lowest, and think they can’t go on. It tries to convince them to stop. I’ve been there, and I have survived. 🙂 )
On feet: “They’re self correcting devices. Covering your feet with cushioned shoes is like turning off your smoke alarms.”
- Why I love my VFF’s!
“Your body needs to be shocked to become resilient..”
- Why something like adding plyometrics to your work out is so good.
“You don’t stop running because you get old. You get old because you stop running.”
“The reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other, but to be with each other.”
When Jenn Shelton fell and at first thought blood was pouring from her hand, and then realized it was chocolate goo, made me laugh out loud. I was racing in FL with Ben once, and crashed over a gate that I had not seen in the dark. When I got up I thought I had severed an artery in my leg, there was so much “blood” coming down. Took me a minute (while trying to figure out why I didn’t feel excruciating pain) to realized the goo I had in my shorts and exploded down my leg. Shew, I wasn’t going to die out there in the wilderness!

There are two goddesses in your heart… The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Riches. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You give your heart to the Goddess of Wisom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous and follow you.” (Ask for nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.”

The oath:
- “If I get hurt, lost or die, it’s my own damn fault!”

Books to read:

Dharma Bums — Kerouac

Music Monday: Needtobreathe

Posted on September 14, 2009 by seanb724

I am really digging the new album by Needtobreathe, “The Outsiders.” I had never heard of them until I happened to see a tweet mention that they were really good. So I poked around all the normal places I go to listen to new music (spotify, lala, myspace) and I knew I would like this album. I’ve listened to it a ton the past week, and it is still growing on me.

Check out this video of the title track:

The Prodigal God. Tim Keller.

Posted on August 30, 2009 by seanb724

A friend of mine gave this to me to borrow at small group a few nights ago, and it was a quick read. The book is about the parable of the Prodigal Son, which I’ll include in its entirety at the bottom of this post:

Who would think that you could get an entire book out of that? In fact, Keller himself writes:

On the surface of it, the narrative is not all that gripping. I believe, however, that if the teaching of Jesus is likened to a lake, this famous Parable of the Prodigal Son would be one of the clearest spots where we can see all the way to the bottom.

Well, you can get an entire book out of it, and a very good book at that. Most of the book focuses on the older brother rather than the younger brother, which is not quite the norm when I’ve heard this parable preached. The older brother is full of self righteousness and this parable was directed at Pharisees…

A definition of “prodigal” would be good:

prodigal: recklessly spendthrift (not just wayward)

recklessly extravagant
having spend everything

Just a few quick thoughts:

Is God’s saving grace “prodigal” ??? (not in terms of spending, but in terms of saving with no reason)
Why people like Jesus but not the Church: “Elder Brothers” (self righteousness) (pharisees)
One of the reasons the younger brother left in the first place (i.e. one of the reasons people leave the church) is because of older brothers

The Parable of the Lost Son

¹¹Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

¹³“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. ¹⁴After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

¹⁷“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ ²⁰So he got up and went to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

²¹“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.^[b]‘

²²“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

²⁵“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

²⁸“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

³¹” ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ “