The Rusted Musket

The thing with zeal, which is another way to say passion, which is another way to say zeal, is that it usually only make sense to the person who has it.

I felt very privileged the other day to sit down with an old acquaintance, he’s cool and zealous, a total stud. He’s been doing mission work in some part of Romania for the last 14 months. Those of us in the missions business (I speak as if I am) refer to 14 month mission assignments as “long term” missions, opposed to “short term” missions, which usually last about two weeks. I truly respect walking around another culture long enough to actually need to do laundry; I think it’s very sincere.

My friend was very passionate about what was going on in Romania, his life. He told me how he guest spoke at his old youth group last week and how he went all “Pauline Spirit Hammer” on them. In the re-telling of this particular story his zeal meter rose along with his volume. Before I knew it zeal and volume were landing all over me, and the coffee (which tasted better afterwords), and the neighbors; man, his hand was even shaking!

Then I shushed him.

Yes I did. He was getting to loud and passionate for my comfort.

He said he was sorry.

I tried to appear as if I wasn’t dry bones, telling him never to be sorry about passion.

Questions I’ve been pondering since: A) As a believer, when was the last time you hung out with someone who was so passionate about Jesus they made you squeamish? B) When do you suppose was the last time you were passionate enough about the concerns of Christ to such a degree that it flavored someone else’s coffee beans?

Image Credit: UI Creation

The Highlander was full, completely fat with gear, man children, and accoutrement. We actually covered the last thirty miles with our weekend food stuffed under our boots and piled on our laps. The journey had been long but not arduous, time flies when good men ride shotgun.

Base Camp Wilson has this magical introduction, charming to the Nth degree, like my wife wearing nice things just for the heck of it. The final three hundred yards are flanked with mature trees going up a lung busting hill that pauses to applaud the lake giving gaze below. You descend, it’s almost reckless, then suddenly, after a hard left, something magnificent peels into view.

We’re going to be here for the next couple days, basically doing the kinds of things boys love doing, like exercising 2nd Amendment rights, lighting fires, fishing, going over zombie apocalypse scenarios, and throwing tactical tomahawks. (We even have an ultra secret codename for the weekend!)

There’s something about the northern woods that produces epic shots and colorful memories, such as the Holiday Lodge and the Red Squirrel, or the Christian Band and Avenge Me. Yes, the long weekend is replete with bulls-eyed bottle caps, burnt checks, and Saturday night Cleanathons.

A  toast then to this years great adventure, to those in attendance, and those in spirit, and to all travels in-between now and next time…

Image Credit: Josh Wilson

- The Summer Class – (though I’ve pictured a school in the spring)

Here we have an opportunity (I don’t even know if it’s fair to call it a class) to slam you through a semesters worth of learning in 4 weeks. It’s an educational blitz so fast you hardly need a change of clothes. And the final? The penultimate of short term memory regurgitation.

Let us stop and think for a second.

If you’re regurgitating and forgetting as soon as you’ve passed a test, what the heck was the purpose of taking the test or the class in the first place? Credits you say. No, try again. Cash you say. Why yes, yes, you got it! The university also trots around this thing called credit requirements, which is their way of politely saying Cash.

Tell me true, is this appropriate regurgitation or inappropriate cash grabbing? I suppose you could say all of college, all of life, is regurgitation in one form or another, but the summer class seems to me like the most blatant unadulterated pinnacle of cash grabbed regurgitated learning.

There’s something so brutal about the recent Mexican bus massacres and the pits filled with bodies (72 at last count), that my mind recoils at the horror, and yes, the terror of it all. It’s the Gestapo like drug gangs halting and “tapping” folks into fodder categories, it’s the fact that it happens BETWEEN government installations specifically set up to safeguard traveling along the coastal highway, it’s me imagining my brother and I traveling with our wives on those very same buses and having our lives, everything we were, or to be, grouped into chattel, shot in the face, and dumped into pits.

I’m having a hard time even finding a suitable thumbnail for this post, the photo’s are so graphically violent I can’t in good conscience use them.

The barbarity that Los Zetas unleashes on Mexico’s innocents is terrorism; I mean, If I was Mexican and using my real name for this entry I could very well end up DEAD. That is terrorism, killing for an ideal, the ideal of intimidation and dominance…

Image Credit: ckp

A lot of people conceal carry (CCW) in the USA, and I think that in some areas the general public is okay with that, but many times people ask if the CCW should carry their gun loaded. Please read the following post and watch the accompanying video.

Why you carry a loaded gun

If you notice in the video the man tried to rack the slide on his gun at least 3 times. That took enough time to get shot. It is a very tragic video as I believe the man died and most likely would still be alive had he carried a loaded gun. When you are in a flight or fight situation you are as good as your worst day at the range, so you can’t afford to screw up, meaning that it needs to be as simple as possible.