Hey everyone, I’m migrating my original Tertium Squid blog, which was designed in Drupal, to WordPress. I’ll be moving the old posts over as soon as I can. Until then, you can see the original site here.
Gordon
Today is the final day of lent for 2012 and my 46th straight day of posting here. It was an ambitious goal, but I’m glad I tried it.
Knowing I had this deadline each day caused me to shift gears and begin to think like a writer again. Because one secret to writing well is to avoid sitting in front of a blank piece of paper trying to think of something to write. That way is creative death. The move you make is to open your eyes and begin to look closely at the world around you. Every day you and I encounter enough subjects for 40 or 50 essays. If you want to write, begin by looking at the world around you and noticing things. Every time you see something interesting, write it down in the notebook that you CARRY WITH YOU ALL THE TIME. Writers, you do have a notebook, right? Continue reading
I was on my way back from the artist hermitages at Laity Lodge last weekend when I saw an ashtray near the outdoor fireplace. That kind of surprised me. Laity Lodge isn’t exactly the kind of place where people do a lot of smoking. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone smoking in the 20 years I’ve been going there.
That doesn’t mean people don’t smoke at Laity Lodge. But it doesn’t seem to be common. And generally you don’t see ashtrays except in places where people smoke a lot.
I say there are two likely explanations for the existence of this ashtray. Continue reading
My first ever Maundy Thursday service. I am fifty years old, but I am young at heart and ready to experience all things new.
Saint Luke’s, how your beauty has broken my heart. Your priests have proved to be gentle and kind. The two I have met know my name and greet me with great love. Tonight John Badders smiled to see me. Gillian met me in the parking lot with a gentle hug.
The service was beyond words in its beauty and meaning for me. Like a great work of art hanging in a sacred space. Metaphysical claims about truth and God and existence simply have no place before such beauty. Continue reading
Einstein, a biography by Walter Isaacson. I loved this book so much that I decided to read it again in a year. That will be sometime in 2012. There is much about Einstein’s life that is charming. He was apparently a delightful man in many ways. Not a good husband. A somewhat absent father. But for a man who had such a mind and who lived so committed to his work, he was apparently a person that you and I would have enjoyed knowing.
Late in life he was working at Princeton. He was very old and became forgetful about everyday things. His mind remained sharp, though most of his stunning and seemingly intuitive breakthroughs occured in his 20s. But he would forget little things. One day while walking home from Princeton he became lost. He knocked on a door and asked a woman to call his wife. She was shocked to find Einstein on her porch. He was a world famous figure by then. She went to the phone and came back to find him at her kitchen table helping her daughter with her math homework.
Kind of a cute story. Continue reading
For those who didn’t read my previous post, after almost a year of vigorous exercise and dieting, I was feeling pretty good about myself and eager to take my new body out for a spin. I played softball for the Saint Luke’s team and forgot to stretch my legs. I pulled my hamstring on the second ground ball hit to me at third base. Pulled it bad.
How bad? This is how bad. I had no idea you could pull a muscle and it would bruise.
This bad boy put me out of commission for a few days. But I’m back to full exercises now. It’s still a little sore but not slowing me down. I’ll be back at the softball diamond with the Episcopalians a week from Easter.
Maybe I’ll see if I can play in the outfield this time.
We’re moving toward the end of Lent. Today is my 42nd straight day of writing. It feels good to get back in the swing of this discipline. I feel that I’ve recaptured something within myself, something that feeds my creative impulse. Continue reading
There is a somewhat controversial program that many ambitious ministers try to implement in churches, mostly without success. I’m talking about the infamous “nametag” member identification strategy. The idea is that the members of the church wear nametags so that visitors and infrequent attenders can remember their names. Visitors are sometimes offered temporary nametags – the stick-on kind – if they wish to wear them. Most congregations hate the idea and respond with resistance. Many pastors have tried the nametag thing, only to be shot down by the will of the congregation.
I’m at Laity Lodge this weekend. I write for this retreat center in a secret way, which I greatly enjoy. I rode up with Paul Soupiset, who has become such a close friend over the last couple of years. Somewhere between Boerne and Kerville, a funny sound started coming from the right front wheel well of Paul’s car. We stopped so that Paul could take a look at it. While he was under the car doing manly repair stuff, I wandered over to the place where grass met pavement and became intrigued with a cute little scene I found there.
At my feet was a tiny rock, embedded in some soil that settled into a small clearing at the last rainfall. Miniscule weeds looked like bushes to me. And the only sign of human existence in the tableau was a bit of shiny metal, perhaps a link from a small chain, discarded by someone and looking as mysterious and out of place as the Monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. Continue reading
In the early days of blogging, back before there were more blogs than people, the comments were much more interesting. It was kind of a novel thing to leave a comment. Early comment systems didn’t have spam filters or other controls. On my first blog, you couldn’t edit or delete comments. And initially, there weren’t many Christians reading my first blog. So a lot of the comments were from people who were not part of the American Church culture.
I was a little sad when Christians found Real Live Preacher. Things changed after that. Continue reading
I’m correct in thinking that everyone who does one of these “write every day in Lent” things is allowed at least one completely sucky entry, right?
I hope so.
Cause I’ve been on the computer all day writing articles for my clients AND meeting with a client trying to get her website finalized. And all I can think about is my hamstring.
Believe it or not, Sunday was the first time I’ve ever really pulled a muscle. In all the years that I was an athlete, I never did. I had some injuries but not the classic “pull up short and grab the back of your leg” muscle pull. And of course the 30 years I spent watching TV, writing, working on the computer, or reading never lead to any physical injuries. Continue reading
Okay, technically it wasn’t Welfare, but it was government assistance so let’s not split hairs.
In November of 2007 Jeanene quit her job because Shelby was in a crisis and we needed an adult at home. Like many Americans we had health insurance through her job, but we thought we’d just call up some insurance company and get different insurance. I was working three jobs at the time to make the money we needed. Pastor, writer for the High Calling, and I was working for the Christian Century setting up their blog network. I’m not counting Real Live Preacher as a job, but I was doing that too.
So I don’t want to hear anyone say that this stuff only happens to lazy people. I’m a hard working guy. Always have been.
But then a series of bad things happened. Continue reading
I was pretty excited about the softball game on Sunday with the Episcopalians. It’s just a recreational league. No practicing or anything. Whoever shows up can play. I put on my extraverted personality and took the initiative to meet people. After all, I was the new guy trying to fit in. The guy in charge asked if I would play third base. Sure, no problem.
As the game began I realized this was the first time I had participated in any kind of competitive team sport in many years. This used to be such a big part of my life. I’ve been working out hard for about a year now with P90X, so I felt well prepared to step back into team sports.
Sadly, things did not go well. Continue reading
I think I’ll wrap up the Back to the Body series tonight. I’ve learned a few lessons over the last 10 months. Here they are. At the end I’ll offer some practical suggestions to anyone who is thinking about starting P90X.
It’s interesting to me that my spiritual journey has come to involve a more contemplative, exercise-oriented practice as opposed to a more cerebral, theological approach. And now I’ve also begun to pay attention to my body in other ways. Maybe it’s something that happens when you turn 50.
If you are unhappy with your physical condition, the way you are eating and living right now is what got you to this place. If you go back to your old ways after a 3 month fitness program, you’ll lose all you gained in the same amount of time, if not sooner. An intense exercise program like P90X is only valuable if you see it as a jump-start to a new way of living. Continue reading
I apologize for the length of this. But I started this thing, so I guess I’ll try and finish it.
It took me four months to get through P90X the first time. It’s supposed to be 3 months but I had a number of nagging injuries and a couple of weeks when I was out of town. A warning for people over 40: this is an intense program, so Tony Horton isn’t kidding when he says to be careful. My tendency was to push hard and just deal with the injuries. I didn’t want any excuse to slack off because I would have. Look, you’re going to be sore every day during this program. I just ignored most of the small pains. But if I pulled a muscle or tweaked a joint and felt I needed rest, I would stay on the diet, take a few days off to recover, and then pick up where I left off as soon as I could.
I have photos but showing them would be creepy. So let me give you some before and after numbers. Look, this is going to sound a bit braggadocious, but I’m offering this as encourgement to anyone who is wondering what can be done in 3 or 4 months. When I was wondering whether or not to try P90X, this is exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to know from someone I trusted. Does it work? Continue reading
You know Plyometrics is going to be bad before you even get started. During the warmup, Tony says they tried to hire some “hotshots” for this video, but they couldn’t handle it. So the people working out with him are from the first P90X class. You probably won’t notice until Tony points it out, but one of the guys has a prosthetic leg. Tony mocks you with this. “Eric is performing today on one leg. So I don’t wanna hear no excuses from any of you!”
“Yeah, well I was thinking of turning off the video, Tony, but I guess if ERIC is doing it with one leg…”
But the real frightening part is when the warmup is pushing you hard. One part of the warmup is 90 seconds of lunges. You know what a lunge is? Take a step forward, only put your foot about twice as far forward as you normally would. Then sink down until your knee is bent at a 90 degree angle. Then stand up and repeat with the other leg. Do this over and over for 90 seconds. The first day my thighs were BURNING. Then Tony said, “Now this is just the warmup. If you’re having trouble with the lunge sequence, this might be too much for you.”
Let me break the suspense. Plyometrics IS going to be too much for you the first time. And the second time. And the third time. It’s actually going to be too much for you for a long, long time. Just get used to that. Continue reading
In May of 2010 I began to exercise and eat in a more healthy way. After 5 months, I started to write about my journey in a series I called “Back to the Body.” I wrote part one in September and didn’t write part two until 6 weeks had passed. And then I lost all interest in writing about this. Not because I stopped exercising, but because I couldn’t spare the writing time. All my writing was going into more serious matters, essays and my regular Pilgrim Post for Laity Lodge.
But now I am ready to continue the story…
P90X began for me on the first Monday morning of May, 2011. I had my equipment, my DVD workouts, and my diet planned. Jeanene was going to be beginning the P90X Lean program at the same time, which differs somewhat from the P90X Classic.
The first workout is called “Chest and Back.”
I knew it was going to be awful. I didn’t think it was going to be ridiculous. The first excercise was pushups. How many? Until you can’t do any more. Having done pushups a few days earlier in the “qualification trial,” I could only do 6. I followed this with 6 on my knees. Next was pull-ups. How many? As many as you can. I couldn’t do even one pull-up at the time. I was 5’8″ and weighed almost 200 pounds. There would be no real pull-ups for many months. I got a chair and used one leg to help me. I did 10. Continue reading
In some ways, my journey back to the body began in my early 40s, when doctrinal Christianity started to lose its meaning for me. There’s only so much energy you can put into polishing your theology. While other people still seemed interested in arguing over the finer points of doctrine, I got bored with that. With that boredom came the realization that my Christianity was mostly a cerebral thing. Desperate to find meaning in the faith that had been so important to me, I turned to more monastic practices of ritual prayer, silence, and meditation. I started making rosaries and chanting. I started sitting in the woods behind our church and listening. Anything I could do to get my body involved in the practice of my faith. I found that cerebral faith exercises, like obsessive theology polishing, tend to lead me toward doubt and despair. But body practices tend to calm me down and bring me joy.
Then I met an episcopal priest who used to play college baseball. I had the crazy idea that we should get together and play catch once a week while talking about the lectionary texts for the upcoming Sunday. I loved it. Unfortunately he moved away and I never found a suitable replacement. I was desperate enough that I bought a box of baseballs and went to the middle school diamond where I threw them from second base into the backstop behind home plate. Then I’d run around the bases and do it all over again. Continue reading
Not many people know this about me, but when I was young I was very athletic and active. I was a hyperactive boy; I ran more than I walked, fidgeted more than I sat still, and talked pretty much non-stop. If I had grown up in this generation I probably would have been heavily medicated. Instead I played sports. A LOT of sports. I began playing Little League baseball and Pee Wee football in second grade and continued both with great passion until I graduated from high school. My senior year I was the varsity quarterback and played shortstop and right field for the baseball team. I ran the 400 and 800 meters on the track squad just for fun.
I was a jock. That’s what we were called. I made good grades. School wasn’t hard for me, but I didn’t care about anything intellectual. I kept my grades up because it made my parents happy and let me be eligible for football and baseball. I didn’t learn much in high school because I didn’t care about ideas or truth. I had a girlfriend and I had sports. Nothing else mattered that much to me. I read voraciously but innocently. I read because I thought books were more fun than movies. I didn’t know that reading could lead to intellectual discoveries, and I wouldn’t have cared if I had known. At eighteen I was a springy, energetic, happy-go-lucky ball of energy. Continue reading
