What’s the “weekly mettle maker?”
The weekly mettle maker is a weekly blog post that contains training ideas, information, and fun facts related to Heritage Arts’ programs — Heritage Self-Defense, Heritage Wildwood nature appreciation and survival training, Heritage Fitness, and Heritage Spirit (YouTube church). It’s been around for over 5 years — although we didn’t start numbering them until May of 2018!
Mettle Maker #318
Self-defense: Every martial art, ancient and modern, has certain movements that it seeks to habituate by means of repetition and memorization. Some of the terms for these movements are forms, patterns, kata, tul, pumsae, hyung, drills, flow drills, and sinawali. I’m sure there are plenty more terms in various martial arts and languages. As I was just typing that last sentence, I recalled reading a martial arts book in which the author called his techniques tricks.. For the rest of this article I’ll just use the term forms. Here’s my problem with forms how they are (mostly) taught and performed nowadays: they are sanitized, polite, tame, lukewarm, and profoundly safe. That’s a problem. The purposes of forms, as they were originally intended, was to get human beings ready for battle — correcting outlook and mindset, toughening the spirit, practicing warrior demeanor, cultivating a terrifying aspect so as to intimidate our adversary, and so forth. Practicing a form shouldn’t be merely physical. It should be a mental and spiritual exercise as well. When you practice your forms, be sure to practice your mindset and to also your threatening, aggressive aspect. This is why, at Heritage Self-Defense, we refer to our forms as “mettlecraft drills.” Want more training tips? Come out the club here in Richmond VA or sign up for our free distance learning program here.
Click here to sign up for DAILY MOTIVATIONAL text messages!
...
Click here to sign up for DAILY MOTIVATIONAL text messages! ...
Fitness: Sick of the person you see in the mirror? Would you like a coach — somebody to help you design a fitness program and to help keep you motivated and on track? Sign up for our free distance learning program.
Wildwood. Have you ever spent a night alone in the woods? The first time you do this, you will quite probably experience a certain amount of fear, perhaps even terror. But terror is the sister of awe, and you may find that former gives way to the latter as the night progresses. How do you feel as the light gradually fades? What happens to your sensibilities as the day gives way to dusk, and the dusk to night? Are your ears more sensitive, your nerves more jumpy, your mood altered? Sense how much life is around you -- insects, plants, creatures of all kinds -- and really get in touch with it. Breathe it in, tasting the wind like a snake and feeling the pulse of the Earth under your feet. Do you feel insignificant and small, or do you feel larger than life, brave and capable? How do you feel when the moon rises and turns your nighttime world into day? How about when the sun rises in the morning? What to learn more? Read Chapter 30 from the Wildwood Workbook, or sign up for our free Wildwood distance learning program.
Homily for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sept. 4th, 2022
Readings: Wis 9:13-18b, Ps 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17, Phmn 9-10, 12-17, Lk 14:25-33
Luke 14:25-33 World English Bible Catholic Edition
25 Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard† his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple. 27 Whoever doesn’t bear his own cross and come after me, can’t be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? 29 Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation and isn’t able to finish, everyone who sees begins to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy and asks for conditions of peace. 33 So therefore, whoever of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has, he can’t be my disciple.
† or, hate
Sometimes, when Jesus sets the bar as high as he does in today’s gospel reading, we tend to prevaricate and think ourselves around into a kind of relaxed complacence. You know what I mean. We say to ourselves, “Well, this is all metaphorical. Jesus doesn’t want to destroy civilization by turning everyone into penniless, family-hating homeless people. Somebody’s gotta have a job or there won’t be any food, goods, art, music, or medicine.” And so we politely put these hard – one might even say terrifying – words of Jesus into a pretty little box and file them away where they can’t scare us anymore.
But listen everybody, that is wrong, wrong, wrong. We cannot do that. Jesus is very clear on this point. He wants us to do the math. He wants us to add up the costs associated with turning away from his instructions. As we are constructing ourselves and building out our lives, Jesus wants us to make the same sorts of calculations that a builder makes when calculating the costs of building a structure. As we are trying to figure what we are going to fight for, protect and defend, he wants us to make the same evaluations a king, president, or prime minister makes when considering war. Jesus wants us to take this very seriously indeed.
How seriously? So seriously that he says we should despise even our own lives, pick up our own crosses, and follow him, or else we can’t be his disciples.
Pick up our own cross?
Pick up our own cross.
Weigh that in your mind. Do the math. Fortunately, our government doesn’t publicly execute criminals in the most humiliating and painful manner ever conceived. Fortunately we no longer make criminals carry the instrument of their own execution to the killing ground, then nail them up so that passersby can jeer at them and watch them slowly die. Fortunately we’ve never seen such a thing. But when Jesus was speaking the words in today’s reading, everyone in earshot had witnessed the horrors of crucifixion. They knew exactly what he was asking. And so should we.
See here. There are so many demands on our time. Family members demand their share of our time and attention. Our bosses make additional demands on our time and are always rearranging our priorities. Plus we face financial demands – paying bills, taxes, loans, and all of that. Sometimes we can’t even make ends meet. Our bodies make demands — for sleep, food, intimacy, entertainment, recreation, and all of that. And we face moral demands. Our political parties want us to toe the party line even when we disagree with elements of the platform. Our governments sometimes ask us to choose one of two reprehensible candidates. In the face of all these demands and compromises, day in and day out, we wonder:
Who am I? What am I doing? What’s the point of all this?
Jesus has the answer and is the answer. When we value him most highly – mind, body, and soul; when we make him the landmark toward which we relentlessly march – as unwaveringly as possible – we have a mission, a direction, a role model, a king, and a purpose. Everything falls in line behind and beneath Jesus.
Can turning away from a domineering, demanding, needy family member feel like “hate?” Sure it can. Can the stresses, setbacks, and sufferings of life can seem like dying a slow death? Of course. Can giving up the rat race, no longer trying to “keep up with the Jones’” and shrugging off the tyranny of material possessions feel like living the life of a wandering disciple? You bet. But do it we must.
If we do not, we will be as incomplete as the unfinished tower and we will lose the war against the wickedness and snares of the devil.