Handgun people debate caliber, grip, aim, ammunition costs. But they all agree that the best gun is the one you will take with you.

(more…)

Then the voice spoke from the high mountain, commanding, “Build!”

And so they built. (more…)

We are excited to watch Poppy Hill when it gets here. John Mansfield got me with this:

This involvement connects to her relationship with her departed father, and the climax of the story takes the girl and a boy to the bridge of a ship in Yokohama harbor where its captain delays departure fifteen minutes to tell them of his admiration for their fathers, his friends that he remembers every day.

And so I have been thinking about the memories we leave behind us. I want my children to think of their time at home as the happy, golden years. That doesn’t come through indulgence. It comes through structure and discipline and light and love and water fights on the front grass.

Which brings me to eternity. (more…)

An old man had spent his life building his acres into a beautiful home. He had fruit trees, a house, some pasture, and everything cunningly laid out to be more productive and more beautiful. He had done it all himself. He had raised his children there.

One day in the warmth of the sun he was walking in his orchard and started to weep. His wife found him there. “What’s wrong,” she said.

“I was thinking about how our sons have left and don’t want to come back,” he said. “They’ll sale this place. Strangers will take it when I am gone.”

She loved him and wanted to cheer him up. “Well,” she said, “maybe they’ll love this place as much as you do.”

But he was not comforted.

Just as he prefers a carefully regulated diet and a low-risk career, so also he prefers the perceived safety of trusting what Studies Have Shown over taking a leap of faith. Just as he is content with a humdrum life, so is he content with a humdrum view of life. It has never occurred to him to aspire to be a god, and so the idea of God has little appeal.

-thus Wm. Jas.

On the 29th of June
a foreman of my own people,
men at work of my own people,
and the great machines we built,
knocked down the pines

not for timbers
not for hearths
but for being in the way

They pushed the soil tumbling
down the slope,
leveling,
the pale dirt and stones
from far underneath
not meant to be seen
now spilling broken out and pushed
then compacted

Coming Soon! Your Dollar Store!
For consumption was
the consumption wrought

Is there no end to debt
and spending and
obesity?

Heaven, raise the mountains up
and make the valleys low
again

He said the Amish stop schooling at age 14 and start working full time to accumulate funds to buy their own place. Which he said they do early to mid 20s. They live at home so all their money goes to savings. That is an incredible model. Grubstake of $150k by the time you are ready to get married makes one heckuva difference.

-from here

It’s time to be serious. Education has its place. Though with way more caveats than the mainstream will know. Don’t drop out of school and work full-time (probably). You won’t accumulate $150k. But the Amish have the right idea.

Grubstake mindset. Parents should have the goal that kids contribute. We pay our kids no allowance and they have to work to earn the money for any extracurriculars they want to be in. Parents should be working with the child to accumulate a grubstake. Not to accumulate a college fund. Not going into debt in college is a huge goal, but paying tens or even hundreds of thousands is almost pure loss unless you have a very specific professional plan in mind. The grubstake is to get started in family, house, and career.

Imagine your daughter being debt free in college and having $20,000 to get married on. Once married, having the experience of looking for side projects to earn money, so she can make income in a way that fits into family life.

Imagine your son having the work experience and mindset to start businesses.

Your children should still be involved in home production. We pay our kids for the eggs from their poultry.

This is not to say that you as a parent should not offer any financial support at all. You absolutely should. Making them earn their own money is a tactic, not a principle. If you want your children to succeed, if you want grandchildren, you mustn’t be like the parents of the world and throw them out to the wolves of the world without real guidance and support. (Except, perversely, if they want to find themselves with a year in Europe or with a decade of playing video games in the basement.)

You should absolutely be willing to let your children’s young families live with you while they accumulate the funds to buy a home, start a business, finish up a valuable professional education. You should absolutely plan on paying for maternities and other expenses that will help your kids start a family right away.

We were comfortable and were feeling like we could rest on our laurels financially–until we started calculating how much we would need to really help our kids when they were having their first few children. Our budget got tight again. We are back to scrambling again.

Being great isn’t just about the quantity of work, he asserts, but also about the workers themselves. In reviewing different studies about the role of practice in music, games, sports, education, and professional success, Hambrick found that rehearsal time accounted for only about one-quarter of any disparity in skill level. Other factors—like age, intelligence, and natural gifts—all played big roles in setting apart the better from the best.

–here

It’s about that ‘10,000 hours practice’ thing, which everyone knew was hokum from the get-go. (more…)

My life began with childlike faith. After then going through the dark forests of positivistic science, to which I gladly gave myself for so many years, I was finally able, through contemplation of the whole, to emerge into the light of day with a view of things that is both visionary and empirical.

It is a view that has roots in faith, and from it builds bridges of scientific coherence towards a new kind of visionary faith rooted in scientific understanding. This new kind of faith and understanding is based on a new form of observation. It depends for its success on our belief (as human beings) that our feelings are legitimate. Indeed, my experiments have shown that in the form I have cast them, feelings are more legitimate and reliable, perhaps, than many kinds of experimental procedure.

It is in this way that I was led from architecture to the intellectual knowledge of God. It was my love of architecture and building from which I slowly formed an edifice of thought that shows us the existence of God as a necessary, real phenomenon as surely as we have previously known the world as made of space and matter.

-thus Chris Alexander, Making the Garden

Our feelings are legitimate.

I’m not always sure why you guys read this blog or what you find of value in it.  I don’t ask, because I don’t cater.  Folks sometimes volunteer that they like the little parables.

Me, I’m proud of my discovery of what glory is; of virtue charts; of the parable of the nest of thorns; of the world’s worst pun; of my Christmas posting; of the insight into how time and eternity are integrated; and a few others.  It feels good to reflect on that.

But it may be the most important insight I ever had is one I don’t take much pride in.  It’s too obvious.  Too many people already know it.  It’s the argument from meaning. (more…)

The buffalo calf told his cow, “Mother, isn’t it kind of those wolves to always go with the herd, protecting us from our enemies?”  The buffalo cow upbraided him, “Son, they are looking for the old and the sick to kill and eat.  They are not protecting us.”  “Then they are the enemies,” he said and straightaway charged out to trample them, whereon he was slaughtered and devoured.

Moral: Know your enemies.

Old friend, old friend.

We knew each other best

when we first knew each other at all.

(more…)

Being content is a gospel virtue.  In its superpowered form, contentment is gratitude.

Growth is also a gospel virtue.  Not just moderate, quiet growth.  It too must be superpowered.  Immoderate growth.  Progressing beyond all reason.  Insatiable ambition.

The man of God must have both. (more…)

The great secret is to relish greatly and yearn greatly.

Buddhists at least in the western Yoda-style version say you should try to get rid of your yearning because it causes you dissatisfaction with your current lot. Even in our own tradition dragons are miserable evil creatures because they always want to hoard more gold and/or fear losing what they already have.  So much so that they don’t enjoy the gold they lie on. It is the absence that drives them, not the possession.

Common sense tells us that its basic human character to feel dissatisfaction with what you currently have if you are desiring more than what you currently have. Ambition and contentment don’t play nice together.

But common sense lies.  It is possible. Everyone loves babies while still working to have them grow up. That’s ambition and contentment at the same time.  Part of the fun now is the potential they will grow into then.

The master man is the one who loves his little house and his little family, his small yard and his climbing rose . . . and who loves them like a Jove!

While in his mind’s eyes still seeing so vividly he can taste it, and working like a madman to achieve it, the great house on the hill with broad tree-dotted acres of lawn rolling down to the sea, where several generations of superb, aristocratic descendants come and go.  That vision is part of why he loves what he has now so madly.

Every man a holy pirate king! Gleefully running your gold through your hands, eyes glittering at the uncharted seas that still lie unplundered before you.

“Be still and know that I am God” while also daring all.

15 years ago my little daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on the birthday she never quite made it to that year, with slight updates since.

Today would be Betsey’s 19th birthday. Instead she is always not-quite 4.

Happy Birthday, Betsey Pearl.

We miss you. We hope you are happy where you have gone.

The greatest festival of the kingdom is the releasing of the waters of growth from their reservoir in the mountains every spring.  Each family has their own little gate and their own channels that run to their land and on this special occasion, they release them all together.

The occasion is special for many reasons.  Tradition, the holiday sense of fun and excitement, the feasts, the games.  But most of all, it is the waters themselves.

These waters have strength and power beyond ordinary waters.  They are literally magical.   They carry a fresh scent with them, wiping out the must of winter.  Everywhere they go, the land brightens, the green of the plants deepen, and nature grows.  To drink from these waters is to be renewed.

The time of the waters is a time of joy, of renewal, of happiness, of spiritual peace.

The second greatest festival of the kingdom is releasing the waters at midsummer, when they bring furthered growth, coolness, and happiness and joy.

The third greatest festival of the kingdom is the final release at the end of the summer, when they soften the land, ripen the harvest, and gladden all hearts.

Well, not all hearts. (more…)