Arch Logic

This morning I faced a decision. Do I run or chill? It was overcast, looking like it could rain. I was down in the Metro Philly area staying over at my brother's place, not too far from Valley Forge Park. The run around the Park is a pretty hard five miles. I haven't been running as much since buying the FitDesk. But, I try to run once a week. My watch needs to be recharged by motion.

It is Memorial Day Weekend and I do like to pay homage to the Fallen and running through the history down in the Park always inspires. The Arch in Valley Forge symbolizes our country's founding for me.

I figured the more I thought about it, the less likely I would do the run. So, I laced up the Nikes and headed down to the Park. I dig the essentiality of running. If one has a pair of shoes, one can run.  No expensive equipment, gym membership, and personal trainer. So, run I did. I had some regrets along the way. I was sweating profusely.  I imagined toxins being leeched out of my system. Once I finished, I was exhilarated and exhausted. A really odd sensation. So glad to have done it, so glad it was over. I needed to run to even out the account of excess and exercise.

Saturday, after planting my herbs, hops, and vegetables in three separate garden spaces, count 'em...3, I was drinking a beer and smoking a cigar out back on the porch and heard some back and forth conversation of my neighbor and her boyfriend. I wasn't being nosey. Our decks are practically conjoined like Siamese Twins, only separated by some wood fencing.

She is having some issue with her outside electrical outlet not working and she and her boyfriend were not on track with their diagnosis of the problem. Since I went through the exact same problem last summer,, I knew what the problem was so I decided to speak up. It has to do with the GFI up in the bathroom.

While I was chatting over the back fence dispensing my thin knowledge of electrical systems, I was in-progress with the previously mentioned drinking a beer and smoking a cigar. She made a comment that for someone who is so exercise-centered as me, I did have some pretty unhealthy habits. Her boyfriend came to my defense as I would expect any man to do in a similar situation.

My argument in response was that is precisely the point. Since I eat pretty much what I want--with bacon and sausage being a staple in my diet--I consume a decent amount of my kale-based E-8. And, since I smoke an occasional cigar and routinely drink beer, I work out six days a week (although I did have to rest my ailing elbow this week and abstained from lifting). It is guys like me who should work out, not those male metrosexual tofu eaters who eschew tobacco and have a glass of white wine on the weekend.

I am no genius but like Jesus said, it is the sick who need a doctor, not the well. I am not sure how we miss such obviousness.  

It is almost people go to one side of the other...fitness freak eating only healthy or beer-guzzling, cigarette-smoking, potato chip-consuming cable watcher. The Arch is a good illustration of meeting in the middle. Let me expand the thought a bit wider.

As mentioned, it is Memorial Day Weekend, where our country honors those who died in battle. People tend to be either pro-military action or anti-military action. There is a middle ground. I think we should be less militaristic as a country. But, that hardly means that I believe that military action is fundamentally immoral. It can be if force is used to impose evil ends.

This does NOT make me one who believes in "redemptive violence." Such simplifications are too easy and stereotypical, a way to avoid dealing with complex issues. Both the Left and Right are guilty of this strategy of reducing the arguments of the other.  So, we have demagogues arising who promise to solve all of problems and such hubris is pretty frightening.

God's word is hardly as opaque morally as moderns like to imagine. What is confusing is the Providential Will of God where the moral order between action and outcome is hardly linear. The Fall has disrupted the cause and effect in this world to some degree. Not entirely, but innocents do suffer and the guilty go free. The short game seems out of sync and it is. Eternity is a long long time to resolve those ripples in time, no matter how big they appear to be on this side of the wave.