A New Cycling Season

I wish I had grabbed a picture of one of my bike trips from earlier this year, when the ground was still covered in snow and it was dipping into the single digits… But this is a good second: the first rail trail ride of 2011.  I rode from my house in Big Rapids to Reed City on the White Pine rail trail (about 13 miles each way).

In related news, I have heard that the bulk of the remaining unpaved White Pine trail between Reed City and Cadillac is slated to be paved this summer!  In other news, I may be working with the Evart Local Development Finance Authority to help extend the paved portion of the Pere Marquette rail trail from Clare to Evart, where it currently goes at least to Reed City (not sure how far after that is paved, but at least a little bit).

So lots of cool cycling stuff is happening this year.

Anyway, the ride today was my longest yet this year (26 miles), and the trail was fairly good, though there were spots with either lots of debris (rocks, sand, etc) or snow patches.  However, the latter managed to melt pretty well during the couple hours I spent relaxing in Reed City, making the return trip much easier.  My advice: enjoy this improving weather with whatever outdoor sport you like best–just get up and do something!

View from White Pine rail trail; just North of Paris; camera phone panoramic

My next big ride: to Mecosta and back: 34 miles round-trip. Need to visit the Russell Kirk Center and train on some good hills!

A People without Understanding

Today I started reading Hosea and I noticed something there that I’ve noticed before, but am still interested by. The verses are interesting to me because of an attitude we have today about intelligence. We seem to say of many people, “He (or she) was brilliant, but they were a bad person.” My Poli Sci professor warns us: Richard Nixon was perhaps our smartest president, but intelligence is dangerous (i.e. he used it poorly or was poor of character). Actually I just had a conversation tonight and he brought it up again. Or consider Hitler; he was a great leader, he just used it to rally a horrendous force.

While I agree in many ways with this manner of thinking, I believe we don’t realize enough that it’s merely a cultural understanding. In Hebrew culture (especially in the Proverbs, but also elsewhere, as we find here in Hosea), intelligence is irrevocably linked to morality, character, and a fear of God. This leads to some misunderstandings by modern readers of the Proverbs or Psalms when they encounter the term “fool,” as they assume it refers merely to intelligence. It really means much more. (Check Psalm 14: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'”)

From Hosea chapter four:

6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge;
because you have rejected knowledge,
I reject you from being a priest to me.
And since you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children.

…

14 I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,
nor your brides when they commit adultery;
for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes
and sacrifice with cult prostitutes,
and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.

In verse six, we see that there are two reasons for God’s rejecting/forgetting Israel: a lack of knowledge and a forgetting of the law. Verse fourteen, if the last line is taken by itself, would seem to be good advice for any modern government, and indeed I think any libertarian Wikileaks proponent condoning an informed populace would quickly agree. But once you look at the verse as a whole, you see that only one line seemingly refers to intelligence as we think of it, while the other four are concerned with moral uprightness. In other words, four-fifths of the exhortation in this verse condemns immoral sexuality, while only one speaks of “understanding,” suggesting a link between the two.

I’m not entirely sure what this means yet, or what application it holds, but maybe we need to keep this in mind more often. Maybe the level of intelligence and persuasion a person holds is not as important as, and perhaps is inextricably linked to, his/her character. Maybe this is related to the idea of integrity as oneness: not isolated intelligence but understanding linked with character. Maybe this would have huge implications to our government if we held our politicians’ and administrators’ moral competence to the same rigorous expectations as we do their technical. Although, maybe we don’t even measure the latter competence as stringently as we should…

Fulani Creation Story

I originally found this story in a book of poetry at my parents’ house as a kid.  Years later, I found it again and looked into it a bit more and found that it is actually a story handed down generation by generation among the Fulani people.  Very cool.

 

“At the beginning there was a huge drop of milk.
Then Doondari came and he created the stone.

Then the stone created iron;
And iron created fire;
And fire created water;
And water created air.

Then Doondari descended the second time,
And he took the five elements
And he shaped them into man.

But Man was proud.

Then Doondari created Blindness, and blindness defeated Man.
But when blindness became too proud,
Doondari created Sleep, and sleep defeated Blindness;
But when sleep became too proud,
Doondari created Worry, and worry defeated Sleep;
But when worry became too proud,
Doondari created Death, and death defeated Worry.

But when Death became too proud,
Doondari descended for the third time,
And he came as Gueno, the Eternal One,
and Gueno defeated Death.”

FULANI (MALI) AFRICA

Self-Destruction

“I know you’re furious with me because I won’t talk to you about holy things. But I have no wish to be holy. What will they do, in the next world, to someone who has committed the greatest sin? I’m sure you know exactly what the penalty is.”

“God will punish you,” Alyosha said, watching her closely.

“And that’s just what I want: I’d like to get there and be punished. I’d just laugh in their faces! I terribly want to set the house on fire, this house, our house … Don’t you believe me?”

Handiwork.

I recently discovered that I am a lot happier and way more productive when I’m not just busy with school work but also have a building project to occupy my time. I don’t know if it’s taking out my aggression, working different parts of my brain, or just being manly that does this, but it works. Seriously. And so I thought I’d post with a few of the things that have been keeping me busy lately (in warmer months it’s more likely to be my bike keeping me busy, but I guess I can post about that some other time…)

This is the original Ashley and I found at BigLots, when I decided it was my Everest…

The other was really flimsy; this is the (much) stronger version I made.

Closeup.

The whole thing in action.

The beginning of a small (2’x3′) table for my hallway

Girlfriend.

Two of these are finished now; I’ll have to update again with the finished product

Small bookshelf for use in my study; I used a simple design that only required a single board, and then stained (for my first time, I think it turned out ok).

The bookshelf in its natural environment.