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 #358
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: If called upon to do so, can you silently avoid or ambush a nefarious malefactor? Don’t assume you could move quietly if you needed to. Practice regularly. See the video on the left for inspiration (and proper foot position). Need Rough ‘n’ Tumble coach so you can learn more practical self-defensey sort of stuff? Join the Heritage Self-Defense club in Richmond, VA. Or, if distance learning is your thing, click here to enroll in the Heritage Self-Defense distance learning program!
Fitness: How do you deal with injuries, lack of success, age, and other set-backs? Life isn't about what you can do -- it's about what you can do. Thinking about what used to be isn’t helpful. "Mr. Used-to" is dead and gone. After my heart attack, I had to adjust everything. Age never stops taking its toll. But I was patient. I started training old-school, using the philosophy espoused by Mark Hatmaker, Dan John, Farmer Burns, and so on, and I’ve never felt more more alive.
T'suh!!!! (That’s a Comanche expression — click the link for the background)
Need help designing a training program that works for you? Need more specific advice that directly relates to your personal set-backs? Click here to sign up for our free distance learning program.
Wildwood outdoor skills: Plant edibility testing. If you are in a survival situation and desperate for food, do you know how to test the edibility of an unknown plant? Here is the edbility test devised by the U.S. military. The document in which it is found, Survival — Army Techniques Publication
No. 3-50.21, is an excellent resource and is recommended reading for all sturdents in the Heritage Wildwood program.
U.S. MILITARY PLANT EDIBILITY TESTING
4-57. Select plants that grow in sufficient quantity within the local area to justify the edibility test and provide a lasting source of food if the plant proves edible. Plants growing in water or moist soil are often the most palatable. Plants growing in shaded areas are less bitter. There are exceptions to every rule, but isolated persons should only select unknown plants as a last resort.
4-58. When selecting unknown plants for possible consumption, remember the poisonous characteristics to avoid. Apply the edibility test to only one plant at a time so if some abnormality does occur, it will be obvious which plant caused the problem. Once a plant has been selected to be tested, proceed as follows:
Step 1. If there are any unpleasant odors such as a moldy or musty smell coming from the plant, stop testing and disregard as a possible edible plant option. Also, if the plant gives off an “almond” scent, disregard it as a possible edible plant option.
Step 2. Crush or break part of the plant to determine the color of its sap. If the sap is clear, proceed to the next step.
Step 3. Touch the plant's sap or juice to the inner forearm. If there are no ill effects, such as a rash or burning sensation to the skin, then proceed with the rest of the steps.
Step 4. If a there was not an ill reaction when touching the inner forearm, place some of the plant juice on the outer lip for eight minutes. If a reaction occurs, stop the test.
Step 5. If still no reaction, taste a small pinch of the plant and leave it in the mouth for eight minutes. If there is an unpleasant taste, such as bitterness or a numbing sensation of the tongue or lips, stop the test. If a reaction does not occur, swallow the pinch of plant.
Step 6. After swallowing, wait eight hours. If there is no reaction after eight hours, chew a handful of the plant, swallow, and wait an additional eight hours. If no reaction occurs after eight hours, consider the tested plant part edible.
Step 7. Eat any new or strange food with restraint until the body has become accustomed to it. The plant may be slightly toxic and harmful when eaten in large quantities.
Want more inspiration, and education, regarding 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 EASTERn. Click HERE to watch live and, to view and print a copy of the program for holy communion, CLICK HERE.
Homily for Trinity Sunday 6/4/23 – Archdeacon Mitch
Readings: Ex 34:4b-6, 8-9, Dn 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 2 Cor 13:11-13, Jn 3:16-18
John 3:16-18 World English Bible Catholic Edition
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only born§ Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only born Son of God.
All sin, as St. Augustine said, is “incurvatus in se” – to be curved inward on oneself. Not expanding outward to fulfill one’s proper role in the family, the community, the nation, and the world, but collapsed inwardly. The seven deadly sins manifest this truth. Pride is the mirror that says we are the loveliest of all, and envy is the one that says we are not, but we should be. Greed and lust are obsessions with obtaining our desires. Wrath is about exerting our will, and sloth is disregard for our duties to others.
The opposite of curving inward is to give of oneself, which God embodies in his trinitarian structure. In his role as the source and establisher of creation, God is the sheer act of being itself. God could have remained inward, a single point, complete in himself. But in his goodness, for our benefit, he looked out upon the void, imagined reality itself, and spoke it into being.
And then we, humanity, curved inward on ourselves. The church fathers agree that the apple would have been ours eventually, when we were ready. But we were concerned, not with God’s plan or the fate of our descendants, but rather with our immediate wants and desires. We could have expanded outside ourselves to fill up our role in his creation. But instead, concerned with our will, we grasped rather than waiting to be offered, and collapsed inwardly into sin.
Yet God, ever-loving, ever-forgiving, ever-expansive, sent his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, down into our sin to pull us out. Again, God could’ve remained a single, fixed point, being complete as he truly is, in and of himself. But no -- he deigned to grant us a second point of contact. He came down and offered himself up in total sacrifice to show us the way out of the inward-curving, downward spiral we created.
This act of complete sacrifice and love we repaid by killing him on a cross. Did God withdraw? Did he become angry, and disdain his creation? No. He went further still. Our ever-forgiving, ever-loving God gave even more. He gifted us a third point of connection, the Holy Ghost, to be with us always and show us the way.
Today, brothers and sisters, let us with one voice celebrate and praise the Holy Trinity. Let us embrace him as our Holy Father, who rightly and sweetly ordered all things, who gave us rules and structure, laws of physics, morality, and ethics. Let us accept his son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, the Logos, whose loving hands created meaning itself and reached down into our sin to drag us upward into eternal life. Let us burn with the fire of God’s Holy Ghost and embody his goodness and truth.
Let us not grasp, hold, and curve inwardly, but live by God’s example and forgive, freely give, and empty ourselves out into the world.