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Two special events this fall!
Get your tickets now for the 1st Annual Heritage Arts Campout. Event starts at 4 PM on Friday 10/13/23 and runs through noon on Sunday 10/15/23. Martial arts, fitness, outdoor skills, and spiritual development — for just $25/ticket. CLICK HERE for all the details or get TICKETS here. Or sign up to walk the Richmond Marathon with us on November 10th. SIGN UP here.
Mettle Maker #372
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.”
Fitness — How about a little change of perspective. Take a look at the first page of Issue No. 1, Volume XX (1908) of “Physical Culture,” the most popular health and fitness magazine of the old-school era, which ran continuously from 1899 to 1955 (left). How does this viewpoint (which has a lot in common with the Heritage Fitness way of thinking) differ from what you see online, on YouTube, Instagram, and social media? Yeah. Lots! Looking for a free fitness coach? We’re a 501c3 charity! Click here to sign up for our distance learning fitness program!
A shortcut to the cemetery.
Martial Arts - Plains knife is where it’s at. The first martial art I studied was Hwa Rang do by way of Michael D. Echanis’ book Knife Fighting, Knife Throwing for Combat. I bought the book in high school and worked through the mental and throwing exercises. The book is 2% mental drills, 10% solo throwing drills, and 88% one-step drills (one student plays the attacker by making a semi-sincere attack, and the other student executes a particular programmed response).
There are dozens of one-steps in this book that, by consistent practice and memorization, are supposed to be made habitual across time. Eventually I took up Taekwondo and forgot about the book until years later when I started training in knife stuff. I remembered the book fondly, probably because it had been my first real foray into the world of martial arts. So I bought The Complete Michael D. Echanis Collection: Special Tactics for Knife and Stick Combat , which includes the original book and two others, and a friend of mine and I began working through the drills.
Nothing in it worked against sincere attacks. And so much of it involves circuitous, labyrinthine responses to direct attacks, that it reads like a shortcut down Cemetery Road. Looking anew at the mental drills, I found them very dark, scary, and strange, and not in harmony with with the eight universal spiritual disciplines.
If you want to learn how to use a knife for self-defesnse in a practical, workmanlike manner — without idolizing the weapon! — you need to study Heritage Self-Defense, which incorporates Mark Hatmaker’s Plains Knife material. Join the club in Richmond, VA or click here to sign up for the Heritage self-defense distance learning program!
Here’s a way to spend more time outside — build yourself a log cabin like Fr. Mitch is doing in his back yard!
Wildwood Outdoor Skills — What’s the big deal about spending time outside? Being outside isn’t just relaxing. It reduces stress, cortisol levels, muscle tension and heart rates – all of which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease – and can increase focus and attention (Avitt 2021). 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. It also reduces inflammation, which has been linked to numerous health problems, including cancer, autoimmune disorders, and depression (Singh 2019).
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. 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).
For a comprehensive outdoor skills program, click here to sign up for the Heritage Wildwood distance learning program!
Holy Communion is LIVE on YouTube every Sunday at 9AM EASTERn. Click HERE to watch live. To view and print a copy of the program for holy communion, CLICK HERE.
Homily for the Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time, Sunday 9/10/23 – Father Mitch
Readings: Ez 33:7-9, Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9, Rom 13:8-10, Mt 18:15-20
Matthew 18:15-20 World English Bible Catholic Edition
Jesus said,
“If your brother sins against you, go, show him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained back your brother. 16 But if he doesn’t listen, take one or two more with you, that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.* 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the assembly. If he refuses to hear the assembly also, let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector. 18 Most certainly I tell you, whatever things you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever things you release on earth will have been released in heaven. 19 Again, assuredly I tell you, that if two of you will agree on earth concerning anything that they will ask, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the middle of them.”
The modern way of seeing is the materialist-rationalist view. Only those things which can be measured, quantified, and studied are real. All of modernity has been and continues to be a long, complex, and lurid celebration of the sin of idolatry. Material realities are elevated to highest standing, and the things that are sacred – God, love, beauty, truth, justice -- are deemed fluid, immaterial, unimportant, or dangerous. This is why, during the height of the COVID pandemic panic, science was worshipped as ultimate truth while our churches were deemed “non-essential services” and ordered closed, despite having been hospitals serving the physically, spiritually, and mentally ill.
The faulty and idolatrous modern way of seeing was perhaps first succinctly described by Plato in his allegory of the cave in the 4th century BC. Plato describes people who, for their entire lives, have been chained in a cave facing a wall. All they can see are the shadows that are cast against the wall as other individuals go about their daily activities. As far as the people chained in the cave are aware, the shadows are real. Not knowing any better, their “reality” is a world of shadow puppets. Only when they are unchained can they see the actual forms, the real truths that cast the shadows.
The early fathers of Christian church saw Plato’s cave as a wise pagan precursor to their view that ideas are more “real” than objects. Christians know, for example, that all kings and leaders are destined to imperfection because they are shadows of the Heavenly King. Saul, David, Solomon, and Pharoah are all different people, but they are all the same in the sense that they are pale shadows of our King in Heaven. Heaven contains the realm of ideas, and it casts long shadows into our daily lives.
To the ancient mind – and this is very, very hard for modern people to step into – physical examples are less real than the ideas they exemplify. We need to get into this mindset in order to fully understand today’s Gospel reading: the idea is more real than the material. This is because the material world itself is based on an idea – an idea in the mind of God! – which he spoke into existence.
The only true bridge between the realm of ideas – Heaven – and the realm of the material is Jesus Christ. He is the Word made Flesh – the ideal become real. He is the perfect King alive. And this is why, in today’s reading, Jesus says that they only way to properly adjudicate a dispute is to gather together in his name, which is to say, in a manner that places Jesus Christ in the center of our assembly. Only if we do that can we have any hope of permitting on earth what is permitted in heaven, and forbidding on earth what is forbidden in heaven.
Every conflict has its details and particularities. In a sense that they are all different. But it’s truer still to see, as the ancients did, that all disagreements are the same insofar as they cannot be properly solved unless we invite Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, to be our mediator.
*18:16 Deuteronomy 19:15