THE SCENE: Crisp, cool, clear and crunchy. Mid twenties freezing the last week of rain. Satellites orbit overhead.
F3 WELCOME & DISCLAIMER
WARM-O-RAMA:
- Side Straddle Hops (concentration to 25!)
- LBACs (Out and Above)
- Pretzels
- Tempo Squats (get deep)
- Fence Steppers OYO
- Tempo Merkins (10)
- Newton’s Cradle
- 10 second plank
THA-THANG:
- Mosey to the Bell
- 3 sets of 20 dips and 20 big boys
- Mosey to parallel bars
- 3 sets of 20 Inverse Rows and 20 flutter kicks
- Mosey to pool wall
- 3 sets of 5 wall ups and 5 pull ups
- Mosey to behind the amphitheater for Mucho Mucho!
- 20 squats, 20 merkins
- 20 wide squats, 20 wide merkins
- 20 bobby hurleys, 20 diamond merkins
- 20 split squats, 20 stagger squats (both sides)
- Short form Tree biscuit
- Run to a tree, do a burpee. See how many we can get in the remaining time.
MARY:
Dealer’s choice, got a full circuit. LBCs, Heels to Heaven, Side crunches both sides, flutter kicks, American Hammers, and Hello Dollys.
COUNT-OFF & NAME-O-RAMA
CIRCLE OF TRUST/BOM:
Sitting in church on Sunday, my eldest daughter gets up and goes to the bathroom. On the way back, she passes a basket in the narthex that has peppermints and takes one. When she gets back to her seat and sits beside me, this is all good. I see no problem with picking up a peppermint on the way back. Until, that is, she decides that the next thing to do is to draw her older brother’s attention to it. To flaunt her prize. This results in a prompt confiscation.
It is right for good action to carry a reward. In this case, getting up to using the bathroom in an appropriate time brings with it an opportunity for a piece of candy. This isn’t so different from the way our own bodies are arranged. Eating is necessary, and so carries with it pleasure. The same is true of sleep. Sex functions similarly in a marriage. These rewards, when maintained in their proper position and alignment with their associated good, are also good. They were, in fact, purposed as a good.
In taking from the tree, Adam and Eve first participated in a troubling alternative to this purposed good. When we see the possibility that we can game the system, that the reward is available for the taking, when the reward becomes the purpose, good fragments. Obviously, my daughter’s physical need to go to the bathroom is more limited than her potential to obtain reward. This can express as deception, only to go get a candy and return without any actual visit to the bathroom. My son, with a newfound desire for candy, might decide that he needs to go to the bathroom even though he doesn’t, only to obtain a reward. Certainly, the risk is that both of my children become fixated on the candy, and thus ignore the reason we are even there at all, to worship the Creator God who brought forth into this world both the candy and our capability to enjoy it. To me, this serves as a microcosm example of my own struggles with physical desire.
I eat beyond physical need, now enduring physical consequences while slowly deadening my own enjoyment. So I seek to fragment the system, using deceptive chemicals to experience the pleasure (I’m looking at you Coke Zero) while avoiding the consequences, or at least the consequences I am paying attention to. This is a positive feedback loop, with my desire ever growing, demanding greater and greater sacrifices to sate my appetite. Soon, the only purpose of eating is pleasure. The real good, my physical nourishment, isn’t even playing second fiddle.
As we leave behind us a time of feasting and turn back to the routines that define us, I think it merits our attention to look at the places where we are gaming the system for pleasure. How do we return to balance? How do we restore an appetite to its proper position and alignment? It often includes dealing with some consequences we have been storing up. But that blister can be drained and healed. It doesn’t last forever.
MOLESKIN:
Great to be back at The Project! Pretzels were courtesy of Wilderness Road in Kingsport. Snaggletooth got distracted thinking about consequences when he should have been concentrating on counting, but then there weren’t any…
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
We gotta pick a date for our next family Q.
