I'm Convinced....

....that it is only in my willingness to go to Hell for other people that Heaven is really opened to me...

I'm Not a Believer

I should really say, I'm not JUST a believer.

To be honest, I'm tired of apologetics...tired of all the talk about what we believe. I sheepishly confess...I DO have a "Believers" file and a "Non-believers" file on my computer. If I know your name, you're in one of them (read sarcasm).

My brothers and I open the gym up every Thursday night for basketball. Many of the guys come from Meadville, but we get a sprinkling of players from all over the area, really. Those guys have deepened my Faith in amazing ways with their brash questions and our intense discussions about religion....just had another long discussion tonight. As I was praying afterwords a few thoughts came to me.

From the many convoluted discussions that I've had with these guys over the years, I have found defending religion to be VERY unhelpful and VERY frustrating. The answers to life are not found in being more religious...they are found in the LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST! Proving that the Mormons are going to hell is not meeting the needs!(Making my face red, popping veins, and speaking in a loud voice without breathing hasn't helped many of these guys)

And now I'm going to tell you what I've really come to abhor. One day I asked myself, "Why cant I prove once and for all the way of Jesus?" Then the convicting question, "Why do I ALWAYS direct the discussion toward what I believe?" In our discussions 90% of my sentences began with, "Well...what I BELIEVE...."

Hang what I believe...what these guys really need is to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. We need to quite talking so much about what "I BELIEVE" and start talking more about what "I LOVE." If all I can ever talk about is "what I believe," I'm really telling you that I love myself...that's not the gospel folks, and its certainly not "Good News!"

Now, "what I believe" matters...believing in God is part of loving Him. The Embarrassing part is that we have set up camp there in a very permanent way. We've been there for a blame long time, and there are very few signs that we would ever consider moving deeper into the forest. We really don't seem to care about maturing and growing deeper in Christ.

To be honest, I'm not much interested in marrying a young lady that firmly "believes" that I exist. If my married friends incessantly talked (with red faces) about the fact that they believe their wives are real people and can make shoe fly pie in 2 minutes rather than 2 days....I would be REALLY alarmed. When I see how much they love their wives....and listen to them talk about how much they love their wives, then I'm pretty much also convinced their wive exist and are beautiful people. After a while I might even want to meet these incredible people that they love so much....

I want to be very clear.

I have no energy to once and for all, prove my beliefs....I DO want you to know that I LOVE JESUS!

Maybe we should spend more time helping our children to love the right things. One of the most unfortunate things in our world is the fact that there are a lot of people that believe in God, yet love ungodly things. Remember, even Satan believes in God....

A Whale of a Season!

Its that time of year when the white whale will make another appearance rousing the peg legged captain in each of us. The gorgeous sight of the white whale is not enough...no, each sighting seems to lure Ahab farther and farther from home, wife, and son...filling his heart with an insatiable thirst to see more of his own harpoons sticking out of the white whales back....binding him ever tighter to the whale itself, till one day he too will plunge to the sea floor along with the white whale, hopelessly tangled in the mess of his own ropes.

Yes, the snowy, white "whale of a season," known in some parts of the world as Thanksgiving and Christmas really SHOULD cause us to turn to the Father's Son and inspire us to be more like Him, but I challenge you to go to your local ER and ask them how many choking throats they unplugged last Thanksgiving....their answer will give you a beautiful picture of the Father's Son gagging on a drumstick. You may also want to spend a day observing Wal-mart the week before Christmas. I really shouldn't mention it...but the white bearded character of the Christmas season looks like he may have been one of those people that needed his throat unplugged at Thanksgiving himself.

Please understand, I'm all in favor of entering the jolly and charitable spirit of the season, but why do we need to violate and rape the moment? Why do we always feel the need to lower the boats and sink harpoons into the whale's back. What's the rush? Why does the whale have to be MINE? A character analysis of Captain Ahab would probably help us understand ourselves better.

Why couldn't we just sit together by the big window for hours and watch it snow? Why couldn't we just lay in the autumn leaves and have a cup of coffee together. Why couldn't we just get out great grandmother's dominoes and play "chicken foot." Why couldn't we just lean on the fence and talk to the neighbor? Why can't we enjoy the moment? Why can't less be more?

Common...its a "whale of a season!" Drop your harpoons me lads, throw the blasted Ahab and his agenda overboard, drink to the "Maker of the Sea", and a toast to Moby Dick! Sheesh....its not every day that you get to feast your eyes on a white whale.....

Let Those Deer Walk

It has been great living near the woods again. Five years have gone by since I've done this much archery hunting. I've read that every good spiritual man needs to revolve around a divine center. This divine center is characterized well, I believe, by an archery centered lifestyle.

On a more serious note, there is a lot of peace and stability that accompanies time spent alone in the woods, allowing ones mind to calmly contemplate the difficult issues of life....

This year I carried my pocket camara with me on many of my hunts. I usually forgot it was there and pulled it out only in moments of boredom. After a very mediocre season of seeing very few real shooters, I finally shot a deer yesterday. It ended up being a real dose of humility. I looked up to see a very nice shooter walking into a clump of pine trees. According to my minds eye I would affirm the deer was about 18 inches wide and quite tall. I pulled my bow back....a deer stepped out of the other side of the pines and I shot it without looking at its rack. Confident that I had shot a nice buck I went and got my brothers to help recover the deer.

To my incredible dissapointment we trailed the deer a mere 50-60 yds and found a very average 8 pt. I wouldn't believe it was the deer I shot, but its hard to argue with my arrow sticking right through its body. Either I stupidly shot a different deer when it came out the other side of the pines, or it is the biggest case of "ground shrink" that I've ever experienced.

The humility is good for me....its just hard to grow trophy bucks when we're shooting these 2 year old bucks. Pennsylvania hunters....we need to let these deer walk.


Ryan and I put in several food plots.

Early season...no deer....bored.

The instrument of death.....

I go WAY up in the trees....often see turkey buzzards circling below me.

Needs one more year to be a shooter....

Punching My Chest and Confessing Cynicism

ANOTHER dictator is dead....Harold Camping was wrong AGAIN....and intellectualizing the Anabaptist way hasn't helped us like we thought it would.

Aye...if Gaddafi would just have known what I know about "Truth" or what is really "Real"...if he would just be as smart as I...if he would have had a well thought out "Anabaptist perspective" on leadership...Oh, if he would just know what I know about "community"...he clearly didn't understand "relationships"....if he could have attended that seminar on "The Kingdom"...how God, HOW did he not get a copy of "Mere Christianity?"

....and at this point in the story Jesus leans over and interrupts my prayer, "sshhh....(Me: Wait I didn't even get to Harold Camping yet!) sshh...check out that man over there punching himself in the chest....I'm telling you Kyle, He's getting really close to My Kingdom.

Be Careful HOW You Remember!

Memory is less a neutral accident of the mind than a conscious work of interpretation, marked as much by deletion as by selection. How a community remembers its past is the single most important element in determining its future. - from my current reading ("Constantine's Sword")

Think Holocaust...think Industrial Revolution...think energy crisis...think national debt...think about how your parents treated you as a child........be careful HOW you remember!

Ponce Deleon's Fountain of Youth

I find myself these days, clinging to that category called youth...scratching and clawing...sinking my fingernails into the rock...stubbornly laying claim to a portion of my youth group...calling them my own.

They are so good for me! This past weekend they reminded me...even inspired me...to drink deeply of that fountain of youth that Ponce De Leon never found. Unfortunately he was searching in Florida when he should have bee searching the headwaters of the great Kinzua Reservoir...where the wind blows cold, rivers are pregnant, hot drinks boil over the fire, and enough rain falls daily to take anyone back to their days of youthful tenacity!


















Aye...we spent the weekend camping in this business. The weather was cold, but we warmed ourselves with hot drinks, blazing fires, and amazing fellowship. "Sticks and stones can break our bones, but rain can't keep us from loving each other, making memories, and having a GREAT weekend!"






































The most popular spot on the campground after early morning sleeping bag extraction was certainly the hand dryer...there is nothing so devastating as entering the bathroom only to find some other "bean head" has already claimed the coveted residence.

Lord have mercy, get the sheriff on the phone!

This is a unique presentation of many of the things I've wondered about for quite some time...we don't have the freedom or luxury to over-react because there ARE young peoples lives at "steak" here.

Its good to simply hit the pause button sometimes and evaluate what we REALLY are doing as educators, and people that sacrifice our lives for such a polarizing institution. If I'm going to cut my heart out and try to make it to the bottom of the proverbial ziggurat, I want to know what I'm accomplishing and why I'm doing it.

It really would be too bad to successfully make the bottom of the ziggurat only to find that the gods of the Aztecs weren't interested in pulsating hearts(or shrink wrapped and vacuum packaged students) after all...

Teacher Chitter....

We might not be "Rolling Stones" here at FBCS, but we're definitely rolling something. The school year is now underway and those involved are slowly beginning to breath in a more rhythmic pattern.

A lot of apprenticing gets done in the first three weeks of school. Many of my classes are being taught by student teachers right now. I spend much of my time looking over their lesson plans and watching them teach. The question is...who really is the apprentice? Much of the time I feel like I'm learning as much or more than the student teachers simply by watching THEM teach!

We spend a lot of time talking about lesson plans, and I spend a portion of each day looking over the student's lesson plans for the following day. This has got me thinking about my own lesson planning.

Being one who is willing to try most anything (even utterly stupid things), last year I began experimenting with something that I've never heard of before (The fact that I've never heard of it before DOES NOT connotate that it isn't out there somewhere...it simply means that I never heard of it).

Normally we write up lesson plans for one class period. For example: I write a History lesson plan for Monday....another one for Tuesday...another for Wednesday...etc. Each lesson plan basically includes an Introduction(hook), body of content, and closure. We rightly call these "Daily Lesson Plans" because that's exactly what they are. I have been experimenting with something slightly different, and I think I might like it better. The jury is still out, and I'll have a stronger opinion by the end of the year hopefully.

I have been trying "Thematic Lesson Plans" rather than "Daily Lesson Plans." Do not get "Thematic Lesson Plans" confused with scoping out the year. When I say "Thematic Lesson Plan" I am actually speaking of the detailed lesson plan that you will teach from each day. One "TLP" will be bigger and may cover three or even four class periods though.

Maybe I would like to talk about the earth's crust over the next three days. Rather than write up three separate lesson plans about the earth's crust, I write one larger three day lesson plan ("TLP) that will cover the earth's crust. Five strenths of the "TLP" that I've found are:

1. You will find your text books are more adaptable to the "TLP." Have you seen any text books that are arranged into 180 neat little packets of equal day size pieces?

2. Students/people learn best when information is presented to them thematically(this is why we arrange books this way). Teachers are often caught red handed, thinking of themselves more than their students. A daily lesson plan feels better/comfy/safer to me as a teacher, but I found that my student seem to learn more if I put good work into a thematic approach.

3. The "TLP" has more elasticity. If you get a little behind on you lesson plan the first day, you can plan to pick up the pace just a bit over the next two days and easily get back on schedule. If you get behind on a "DLP"..."thats all she wrote"..."its over"..."she's dead!" If the quiz at the beginnin of class had a hiccup, you can't recover with the "DLP." With the "TLP" you also have the freedom to willfully slow down for a little if students have good questions. The "TLP" simply gives the teacher some healthy elasticity.

4. It is unnatural and inappropriate to have a jazzed up introduction to each class period anyway. A good juicy introduction to a new theme is great. Once you've introduced the theme really well...simply pick up tomorrow where you left off today. This will connect the information and the theme better in the minds of the students. Jazzy introductions in the middle of a theme only breaks up the theme and works against the way people learn best.

5. It is subconcioiusly frustrating for a teacher to share information that is divorced from its surroundings. When the information simply becomes free floating bubbles in the wind, I subconciously get tired of seeing them pop. I also begin to question why I teach, and if I really have anything that is worth sharing with the students. When I see themes emerge, I get excited, and enjoy what I do.

Keep in mind that this IS simply "Teacher Chitter." I am only experimenting, and I know for a fact that there ARE weakness to the "TLP" as well. I simply thougth I would chitter away, and share my experiment with you. Go chitter with your students...and your chitter better be full of LOVE!

Wilderness Survival

When I was young(which is always a safe thing to say) I was really into wilderness survival. I would soak pine needles in boiling water...gently sip the residue and claim, to the astonishment of my brothers, that it was the best tea I had ever tasted. The "normal Joe" would break out in the shingles and lose all his hair if he ate or drank any of these concoctions. (This is how I know that all the modern day depictions of mountain men are most assuredly false. They are always pictured as having shocks of hair and full beards, when in reality they had probably lost all their hair by the time they were even old enough push out any facial fuzz.)

The wilderness has changed a bit for me over the years, but its call on me has not dwindled. To this day I still have my hair since I often tote my own hot drinks into the wilderness and on occasion even Wal-mart pastries will get "SENT" along. Recently I found myself on three separate camping trips in a matter of two weeks. The wilderness just might be pushing its luck!

Your looking at a boatload of work for the common "camperdad" right here:)

OK...Andrew wins the water displacement competition....(Some rock ledges provided some significant height for this particular depth charge)


Erikson kick starts some night fishing with a 25" Flooreye.

Seriously...you can't beat cards in a stream...especially when its 90 degrees. (With your mental health in mind, the knucklepucks that participated in this folly have been taken off the picture...they were involved in wilderness survival at a young age and have no hair.)

Macarther Returns: More Island Hopping to Come

When I left the land of the "Burg" at the end of last school year, I bade my fair friends farewell and wished soft rains would fall on their fields(I think they would be satisfied with HARD rains at this point). I also promised that I would re-open my blog so that I can safely and blissfully think they want to follow my life...and the cool part is that I never have to know if this is actually true.

I see that it has been over a year since I did any serious blogging....probably lost all my readers, but hey, tis always cool to follow your OWN blog anyway...

"hmmmm, I wonder if my blog looks any cooler than it did yesterday...lets see, maybe I posted":)

Shoot....its probably the same reason people look at themselves in the mirror.

I basically did carpentry work and toured with a choir this summer. I don't feel like blogging about either of them. You can check out the choir tour here. If you want to check out carpentry there are books in the library...it would be most authentic to let the sun really beat down on you as you read the book....