Exercise - Ugh!

At the age of 30, I was proud to boldly state my lack of interest in exercise if it didn't involve chasing a ball. In other words, I abhorred exercise for the sake of exercise, but I was always interested in a good game of hoops, golf, touch football, and many other ball-games. Fast forward to today, and my former office and music studio has been transformed into a 10x11 room with four carefully arranged exercise machines and a television with VHS and DVD player mounted on the wall. To what do I owe this change of priorities? The combination of knee surgery a few years ago, a history of finger injuries, the sudden onset of hypertension, and the cumulative effects of aging. The injuries discourage me from playing my favorite game, and the latter two items are often best battled by regular exercise. I know firsthand why professional athletes retire in their mid-30s.

I still do not enjoy the daily routine of exercise, but I recognize it is a part of my responsibility to be a good steward of all of my God-given resources, including my weakening and decaying body. So, I guess I should get to bed since I need to rise at 6 A.M. in order to squeeze a workout into my morning schedule!

Hickman One

This week, I read B. F. Skinner's Walden Two, his fictional description of a utopian community based on the power and principles of experimental behavioral psychology. The author clearly holds in high esteem the power of the scientific method as applied to the study of human behavior. He sees humans as purely physical beings, complex machines that can be controlled to generate the desired behavior given the proper stimuli. His hypothesis is that a community based on these principles would lead to an overall higher overall sense of happiness and security among the total population. One example of the practical implications of his idea is the method of child-rearing that he advocates. Children would be raised by specialized community workers in age-segregated nurseries or living areas, with only occasional contact with their biological parents.

Admittedly, we have been engaged in our own little social experiment based on very different assumptions. Our presupposition has been that our family environment based on Christian principles is the best place for rearing our children, to the point that we abandoned the government school system in favor of directly providing our children's academic education at home, in addition to spiritual, physical, and social training. Skinner had his Walden Two; we have our Hickman One. The difference is that he apparently never had the opportunity to test his presuppositions fully, either because he wasn't really serious or because he didn't have a thousand friends willing to join his multi-generation experiment, although others apparently have tried. In our case, the experiment is being conducted even as I write. We're well into the second half of our experiment. While our sample size is too small to generalize for the entire population, we certainly have no major regrets and would advocate that others conduct the same experiment based on the same presuppositions and guiding principles.

Seasons

Today marks the end of the Hickman family summer break. The term "break" is a bit of a misnomer, especially for this coach of a first-time triathlete. (If I thought I had much to do with it, I might brag about my successful stint as a first-time triathlon coach and training partner.) Seasons are an interesting idea. They provide life with regular, somewhat predictable change. I agree with C.S. Lewis that we were created with a need for a break from monotony yet a need for regularity and predictability [Screwtape Letters]:

"He [God] has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme."

Tomorrow, the coming academic season starts at the Hickman household. This will be our eleventh season for the Hickman Institute. This will also be the last for our eldest child. That means that one aspect of regularity and predictability will never again be like the coming year. Change is a-comin'! This will be the last year I am frantically reading and listening to keep up with Luke's studies in humanities, history, economics, and literature. Looking ahead, here's my required reading list:

• Darwin on Trial
• The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict
• The Old Man and the Sea
• The Plague
• Walden Two
• That Hideous Strength
• Pollution and the Death of Man
• The Second American Revolution
• Sophie's World
• The New Tolerance
• True Spirituality
• Of Pandas and People
• Economics in One Lesson
  

If I can keep up, this list should provide good material for this weekly forum for sharing my thoughts.

A Calamitous Communion

Communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Lord's Supper: all of these are names for one of the two holy sacraments in the reformed church. This practice, modeled by Jesus at the Last Supper and described by the Apostle Paul in his epistles, is a solemn occasion where Christians remember Christ's death on the cross. Christ, the God-man, willingly suffered cruel and unjust torment to atone for the sins of all who repent and believe. This action on the part of our Savior is the core event of history. God's chosen people before Christ looked forward to the Messiah's deliverance, and God's chosen people after Christ look back to his work on the cross. Thus, observing the sacrament that some call communion is a serious endeavor worthy of an attitude of reverence and humility.

Switching gears to my morning at church, we celebrated communion during the morning worship service today. To minimize the time and effort in distributing the elements (juice and wafer, in our case), our local church recently switched to a prepackaged combination of juice and wafer. The juice is in a plastic cup, sealed by a layer of plastic across the top. Above that layer of plastic is a thin wafer, above which lies another layer of practice. After removing and eating the wafer this morning, I encountered a challenge I had not previously encountered with these conveniently packaged elements: I was unable to remove the layer of plastic that sealed the juice! Suddenly, my solemn, reflective experience morphed into a battle with out-of-spec adhesive. Eventually, I separated the plastic into two layers, with the lower thin layer still sealing the grape juice in the container. Unfortunately, I was not aware that I had failed to break the seal. To make a long story short, as I squeezed the plastic cup with expectations of transferring every last drop into my mouth, I instead produced a high pressure stream of the juice focused directly on my lovely wife's favorite white and pink polka dot sweater.

My questions: Why did God mandate this distraction? Why did He choose to direct that stream at her sweater rather than my clothes? Was this God's sense of humor or a test for us?

Our Family Trip to Colorado (Part 2)

We returned from Colorado last Monday, but the daily demands of life after a 12-day vacation prevented me from giving an update regarding our trip until now. On Wednesday (July 28), we left Estes Park and drove to Cripple Creek, which is now primarily a gambling town. I was personally pleased to see at least one or two casinos out of business. We had planned two activities for that afternoon and evening in Cripple Creek. First, we toured the Mollie Kathleen gold mine; at least the chemical engineer found that interesting. Then, after dinner in the car (prepared by Sarah), we went to the Butte Theater for a production of Gunslinger: The Legend of Billy the Kid. This was a small theater, with about 50 in the audience. The musical was written in the early 1900s. The cast did a good job, and we enjoyed the experience of an Old West melodrama. The show was followed by a "summer olio," which was hilarious, the highlight of the day. We would definitely recommend seeing this show.

On Thursday, we drove to the top of Pike's Peak. We encountered sleet (3 mm white balls of ice) just short of the peak, which resulted in an hour delay when they temporarily closed the road. That afternoon, we intended to visit the Garden of the Gods, but rain resulted in the postponement of that outing.

On Friday, we visited Focus on the Family's soda shoppe and bookstore. (Unfortunately, KYDS Radio was closed.) We then tried again to visit Garden of the Gods, with partial success. A torrential downpour terminated that visit prematurely. In the evening, we enjoyed a Chuckwagon Dinner at the Flying W Ranch.

Our last day before heading home was Saturday. We visited the Olympic Training Center, taking a brief but interesting tour and visiting the gift shop. We also visited the "living history" site at Rock Ledge Ranch.

On Sunday, we visited a good friend in Louisville, dropped off a distance runner at CSU in Fort Collins for the Jim Ryun Running Camp, and headed east.

Our Family Trip to Colorado (Part 1)

Yesterday marked the midpoint of our family trip to the Rockies in Colorado. We were in Estes Park for 5 nights. Thus far, this trip has been a wonderful opportunity to experience different topography than we Michiganders typically enjoy. We arrived Friday night, picking up Luke from this week at a Freedom Academy I, sponsored by the Foundation Economic Education. Saturday through Monday, we spent our sightseeing hours in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Before lunch on Saturday, we enjoyed a pleasant walk around Sprague Lake.

After lunch, we drove through the park on Trail Ridge Road, learning about the three different ecosystems in the park: montane, subalpine, and alpine tundra. Entering from near Estes Park, we turned around after reaching the Alpine Visitor Center.

On Sunday, we hiked to Emerald Lake via Dream Lake and Nymph Lake. What a beautiful hike!

On Monday, we drove to a different park entrance and hiked from the Wild Basin Trailhead to Ouzel Falls. At the Ouzel Falls, the kids and I extended the hike by climbing to the top of the falls. We would highly recommend each of these outings for others. The drive and the two hikes were each a 4-hour outing, including lots of stops for snacks, drinks, and photographs.

On Tuesday, we went on a whitewater rafting trip. The bus ride was long, about 80 minutes each way, but the rafting was fun. Luke came the closest to flying out of the boat, but the other three family members immediately grabbed him when he was first launched outward from his position on the front right of the raft. Leah was sore on Wednesday morning; she paddled hard.

Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

Encouraged by my son to start a blog while he does the same, I decided to take his challenge. In his 17 years and his sister's 15 years of boot camp at the Hickman Institute (that's the serious name for our home), we (that's my wife and I) have challenged them to pay attention to four different aspects of their personal growth: spiritual, physical, social, and intellectual. This pattern was first suggested to me explicitly by my college Fraternity. While not a perfect parallel, these four areas are quite similar to those suggested twenty centuries earlier by the greatest teacher who ever lived. When asked to identify the most important commandment, he replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:29b-30) The heart (καρδία) can be translated as the "inner self," which sounds like one's spiritual being. The soul (ψυχή) refers to that "breath of life" within humans and animals that sets them apart from the rest of creation. While not a direct reference to the social nature of our being, I find that connection useful. The mind (διάνοια) refers to our way of thinking, our faculty of understanding, which is clearly aligned with intellectual pursuits. Finally, the word strength (ἰσχύς) means power and might, implying a physical force.

As we have raised our kids (or, better, discipled our kids), we have used these four categories to strive for balance and completeness in their personal development. As I record my thoughts in this forum in the future, I will likewise strive to address aspects of life in these four categories.