What’s the weekly mettle maker? Training tips and educational information in support of our free programs, that’s what! What’s mettle? According the American Heritage Dictionary, mettle is, “The ability to meet a challenge or persevere under demanding circumstances; determination or resolve.”
Mettle Maker #337
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Fitness and Self-Defense: Navigating your way toward your fitness goals. The other day I decided to do some Thrusters. I hadn’t done them since August, and I wanted just to check-in and see how much I had or hadn’t lost. Turns out I had lost lots. I had to step down about 25%. But I didn’t care that much because, as it happens, Thrusters aren’t really indicative of pure strength. Some exercises just need to be performed with a high degree of regularity in order to stay proficient. Like Thrusters, that can be owing to skill perishability or flexibility requirements rather than pure strength. I know this because my Military Press and Squat are relatively unchanged.
The problem with hyperfocus on the same exercises is that it makes us prone to repetitive use injuries, tendonitis, and increased cortisol production (especially if we go too hard, rely on PEDs, don’t take adequate time off, and so forth) all of which are bad. What we have to do is find the right balance. between regularity and variation. The keys to this, as we see them in the Heritage Arts family, are MBF© (“Martial Base Fitness”), twice weekly Constitutionals, and old school training modalities (increased frequency, reduced impact, and solidified gains). This is they way everyone trained before drugs and surgery became SOP.
Want help designing a sensible and healthy training program to suit your specific goals? Click here to sign up for the 100% free Heritage Fitness Distance Learning Program.
Outdoor skills: Finding direction at night. Obviously you could learn to tell directions by stars or by constellations like Orion. But what if, depending on the weather or where you are, light pollution or clouds makes the stars hard to see? Use the moon instead. The full moon always rises very near sunset, and it rises about a hour later each day until, at the new moon, it rises at sunrise (which means you can’t see it). The moon rises in the east just like the sun. Watch it come up and find east. Or, if you get lost at night and you didn’t see it rise. have a seat and mark the moon against a prominent tree or landmark. Wait an hour and check it again. Connect the dots and find east. See the photos below for three methods of finding direction at night. Interested in a free outdoor skills distance learning program? Check out our free programs here.
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Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord, 1/8/23 – Archdeacon Mitch
Readings: Is 60:1-6, Ps 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13., Eph 3:2-3a, 5-6, Mt 2:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12 World English Bible
1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, behold, wise men* from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, 2 “Where is he who is born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east, and have come to worship him.” 3 When King Herod heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he asked them where the Christ would be born. 5 They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is written through the prophet,
6 ‘You Bethlehem, land of Judah,
are in no way least among the princes of Judah;
for out of you shall come a governor
who shall shepherd my people, Israel.’ ”✡
7 Then Herod secretly called the wise men, and learned from them exactly what time the star appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem, and said, “Go and search diligently for the young child. When you have found him, bring me word, so that I also may come and worship him.”
9 They, having heard the king, went their way; and behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them until it came and stood over where the young child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.
11 They came into the house and saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Opening their treasures, they offered to him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 Being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country another way.
In the ancient world, there was no grand plan. For the Greeks, the Romans, the shamans of Asia, the Slavic pagans, the druids, the Celts and the Vikings – all of the world’s ancient cultures – there was no time as we know it today. They looked up into the heavens, and they saw repeating patterns of stars. They saw recurring seasons. Every year was just like the last. They assumed that every year in the past had been like the present one, and every year in the future would be the same.
Each individual historian kept time independently. This one marked the time since the reign of a certain monarch, another by the number of seasons since this or that war, or the number of years since the foundation of a given empire. It wasn’t until Christianity burst onto the scene this all changed. The years began to be marked as before Christ or after Christ – BC and AD.
But even after Judeo-Christian culture began to mark universal time, scientists – and this is not a coincidence! – scientists picked up the pagan banner of steady-state time. Scientists and pagan unbelievers were united in their disbelief. Cosmologists – these are the astronomers who study the origin of the universe and the formation of its galaxies, solar systems, suns, planets, and moons – were just like the pagans of the ancient world. They thought that the universe had always been, and it would always be, the same. That is, until a physicist and cosmologist by the name of Fr. Georges Lemaître – a Roman Catholic priest – rocked the scientific establishment. Lemaître’s “Big Bang Theory” is now taught in every school in the world. The universe came to be at a particular point in time. And at a particular point in time, it will cease to be.
Judeo-Christians knew this all along of course. We know that God is the source and establisher of creation. We read in Gen 1:14, Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and they shall serve as signs and for seasons, and for days and years.”
We know that God created the universe and put into place the stars and planets and established the very laws of physics that scientists use to prove and disprove their theories.
We know that the greatest scientists and astronomers of Jesus’ day – pagans from Babylon known as the magi – used their scientific methods to determine that something incredible had happened: the King of the Jews and the Savior of the world had been born.
We knew then, and we know now, what everyone in the world must surely know just by looking at the date: that time begins and ends with God, and human time is measured by the birth of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray, brothers and sisters, that the world’s pagans, skeptics, and idolators of materialism, come to embrace the greater truth of Christ embedded in the science which they hold true. Let us pray they each have their individual epiphanies: that they journey westward bearing their gifts, and kneel before the King of the Universe who is Christ the Lord.
* 2:1 The word for “wise men” (magoi) can also mean teachers, scientists, physicians, astrologers, seers, interpreters of dreams, or sorcerers.
✡ 2:6 Micah 5:2