First Annual Heritage Arts Campout!
Click the pic to get your ticks!
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 #346
DID YOU KNOW…? That you you can get a daily motivational text message from Heritage Arts? Click the awesome (and perhaps a bit cheesy?) scrolling link below to sign up!
Click here to sign up for DAILY MOTIVATIONAL text messages!
...
Click here to sign up for DAILY MOTIVATIONAL text messages! ...
Self-Defense: Make a paper grocery list. Why? Because if you make a list on your cell phone, every time you check it you’re going to see an alert, notification, email, text message, or whatever. And that means that you’ll end up being glued to the phone for the entire trip instead of paying attention to your environment and actually shopping. You’ll get done faster, enjoy the trip more, be more aware of threats, and perhaps even have some enriching interactions with actual people. If your nose is in your phone, you might not spot your co-worker or neighbor on the product aisle, or spot Jennifer, your favorite cashier, or Michael, the college-bound produce guy. Pay for groceries and get something to eat. Pay attention and get safety, engagement, and enrichment of experience. Get there. Interested a martial arts distance learning program that’s 100% free? Click here to join the Heritage Arts Self-Defense program!
Fitness: Try out some old-school calisthenics. See the video on the right? Here are three old-school calisthenics being done the old-school way, which means they are done:
At a very slow pace
With total control throughout the movement
With full range of motion
Without bouncing or ballistics
With a deep breath on every rep
Try out the three calisthenics in the video — Pliets, Push-ups, and Bicycles (note that the old-schoolers didn’t crunch on those Bicycles!). Make sure you observe the 5 rules. Do 3 sets of 8 reps or so and let me know what you think in the comments. Want more old-school fitness material? Click here to sign up for our 100% free program!
Wildwood: “Learning outdoor skills is a total waste of time.” Hogwash. I’ve got 15 reasons why it isn’t. Being outside reduces stress, cortisol levels, muscle tension and heart rates – all of which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease – and increases focus and attention (Avitt 2021). That’s 5. Participants in one study reported a 64% increase in life satisfaction after spending just 20 minutes in a natural setting. No wonder -- spending time outside boosts Vitamin D levels, lowers blood pressure, improves sleep, relieves pain, and boosts immunity. Now we’re at 11 reasons for learning outdoor skills. It also reduces inflammation (which has been linked to numerous health problems, including cancer, autoimmune disorders) and rates of depression (Singh 2019). That’s 13.
And the benefits aren’t just available to individuals. Cleaning up abandoned lots to plant trees and gardens, and introducing parks to high crime areas, improves relationships between neighbors, which results in reduced crime and depression rates (Avitt 2021). Just make sure you leave your cell phone in your pocket, and don’t wear earbuds. Unplugging from technology, especially social media, and giving your mind a much-needed break, gets your juices flowing. Really engaging with nature, paying full attention to the environment, recharges your batteries of attention, leading to increased creativity (Main 2012). There you go — 15 reasons why learning outdoor skills might save your life and rescue your community from depression and crime! Interested in learning outdoor skills? Click here and sign up for the 100% free Heritage Wildwood distance learning program!
Holy Communion is now LIVE on YouTube every Sunday at 9AM. Due to YouTube LIVE processing times, the weekly Holy Communion video is often partial until late afternoon or evening. If you attempt to view the video, and running time is less than 40 to 45 minutes, please check back later.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW AND PRINT THE HOLY COMMUNION PROGRAM
Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, Sunday 3/12/23 – Archdeacon Mitch
Readings: Ex 17:3-7, Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9, Rom 5:1-2, 5-8, Jn 4:5-42
John 4:5-42 World English Bible Catholic Edition
So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.*
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9 The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17 The woman answered, “I have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.† When he has come, he will declare to us all things.”
26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.”
27 Just then, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you looking for?” or, “Why do you speak with her?” 28 So the woman left her water pot, went away into the city, and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything that I have done. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the city, and were coming to him.
31 In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
33 The disciples therefore said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Don’t you say, ‘There are yet four months until the harvest?’ Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already. 36 He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit to eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this the saying is true, ‘One sows, and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you haven’t labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, “He told me everything that I have done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
Brothers and sisters, last week I spoke about how Peter was overwhelmed by seeing Jesus transfigured and flanked by Moses and Elijah. Peter lost his logical and philosophical grasp on the nature of Jesus and the prophets. The great apostle offered to pitch tents for all three of them, even though Moses and Elijah, having passed on many years before, clearly had no need for tents!
This week we read the story of the Samaritan woman who, like Peter, gets confused about the nature of God and Jesus. To get down the source of her confusion, we should consider that pagan gods were tied to specific places and peoples. In those days, religion, location, and culture -- food, climate, government, all of it – could not be disentangled. Caesar was a Roman god and ruler of the Roman people and the Roman empire. Egyptian pharaohs were gods, and the entire point of Egyptian religion was to maintain maat, the universal order that guaranteed the yearly floods which brought fertility to the Nile Delta and the Egyptian empire. Even the Jews believed that Jerusalem was the center of worship for Yahweh. Just as modern Muslims pray toward Mecca, Jews in Jesus’ day prayed toward Jerusalem.
So it’s not surprising that the Samaritan woman would say, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” What’s remarkable is that Jesus would reply her that that there is no single geographic place where Yahweh should be worshipped. Jesus says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
What is remarkable about the God of the Jews is that he is not limited by space or connected to one nation or culture like the Roman or Egyptian gods. He is the God of all who loves all.
What is remarkable is that God is not a god of nature, associated with some natural phenomena like lightning, depicted with an animal head, or associated with a planet. He is the God who created nature, animals, and planets.
What’s remarkable is that when Moses asks for his name (Ex 3:14), God’s answer isn’t even a noun – it’s a verb, and it’s a riddle. It’s usually translated as “I am who I am” but even scholars can’t agree if that’s correct. It has been rendered as “I am and I will be”, "I am that I am", "I am what I am", "I will be what I will be", and even as "I will become what I will become.”
How astonishing and remarkable that is!
People in the world today continue to struggle with the same questions and problems they struggled with in Jesus’ day, although many do not know it. Consciously or unconsciously, many worship the gods of place -- flags, political people, parties, and pundits -- the gods of nature -- environmentalism, sex, food, magic crystals -- and the planetary gods of astrology and divination. And, just as the people in the biblical stories struggled, we in the church also struggle to understand, and put into practice, the meaning and implications of God and his word.
Following in the footsteps of the woman at the well, let us have the desire embrace the message of Jesus and the implications of this unique God and Savior, and carry that message back to those in need of answers to life’s most difficult questions.