the reformation [III]

I'm about halfway through my second twelve-week circuit of a revamped 'Reformation' wherein I put focus on gaining strength and caring not too much about what my weight looks like (within reason). I'm doing a 'clean bulk,' pushing the weights hard 3-4 times a week and consuming on average about 250 calories over my TDEE. On my first 12-week circuit I ate right around Maintenance at 2000 average calories a day; for the past five weeks I've been consuming around 2250 a day. On the first circuit I went from 159.5 to 160.5#; right now, five weeks in to the clean bulk, I have gone from 160.5# to 163.5#, for a total of three pounds gained; in a clean bulk you want to gain anywhere between .5-1 pound a week, so I'm right in the sweet spot, gaining around .75 pounds each week.

In my last Reformation post, the plan laid out was to continue eating around Maintenance and continue slowly gaining muscle without putting on any fat. After much consideration, I decided to scrap that and do a clean bulk. One of my concerns was putting on more fat around my waistline; I've always had a belly thanks to bullheaded Prussian genetics, and I was afraid about that getting more severe. Eventually I came to the conclusion that abs are for high school boys, and the wife likes my belly, so what's the big deal? I'll continue the clean bulk for a while, with the aim of not going over 175#. Once I hit 175# (at this rate that would be another 13 weeks, around the end of February and beginning of March), I'll engage a slow cutting phase at 1750-1850 calories a day leading into the summer. 

The Boniface Option: Potent Quotables

'[The] homosexual is both the apex consumer and the easiest personality to manipulate and lord over. Therefore the gayness of Trashworld is our rulers’ social engineering of the population to create the exact same ethos of the homosexual in everyone, regardless of their sexual tastes. They want you to be spiritually homosexual whether or not they can make you actually homosexual. They want everyone uprooted and alone. They want you to be only concerned with satisfying your immediate desires. They do not want you to care about the future. They do not want you to have children. They want your entire purpose in life to be “Consume today, for tomorrow we die.”' (10)

'If the Christian has a passionate love for the truth of God’s Word, the goodness of God’s justice, and the beauty of holiness, he will necessarily have an intense hatred of the lies, injustice, and sin.' (20)

'They want children stripped away from loyalty to their parents as much as possible, which they accomplish through public education. Loyalty to parents is severed, and loyalty to (usually) popular culture is mediated through peers or, in the worst cases, the ideology of the regime mediated through teachers is established. From there, most go to college to be physically separated from their parents totally, in addition to being spiritually and emotionally severed. There they are presented with a Pleasure Island where hedonism and sexual exploration are the carrot to the stick of ideological cajoling by leftist, anti-Christian faculty. The individual, who was once part of an organic whole, part of a family, a people, and a place, is now separated and stripped bare of all other loyalties and loves and made a tabula rasa, a willing vessel for the religion and culture of the globohomo world order.' (21)

'From before he could speak until he became an adult, he has watched tens of thousands of sermons shaping and forming his heart to love Trashworld. We don’t recognize them as sermons because we think they are religiously neutral TV shows and movies, but they are fundamentally not mere entertainment, but religious training. Here you are trained to believe that all of those that came before you were stupid, close-minded, bigoted, barbaric, and superstitious. All of Chesterton’s fences are torn down; every tradition that formed you both as an individual and member of a people or nation is either removed or looked upon with deep suspicion. You are trained to believe you are a total blank slate. All your beliefs, everything your heart holds to be true, good, and beautiful, you believe you have formed as a totally independent, free-thinker (when, in reality, they have been carefully crafted by insidious social engineers to make you the apex consumer).' (23)

'The globohomo cinematic universe that the modern bugman lives in must be chopped down. All of it is a seamless garment. Trannies, open borders, acceptance and promotion of sodomy and other sexual perversion, feminism, abortion and antinatalism, anti-white race hate (so-called Critical Race Theory), pornography, and the entire consumerist lifestyle are a single Donar’s Oak that must be sent through a woodchipper.' (24)

'The need of the hour is to teach especially Christians to hate the fake and gay globohomo cinematic universe. You must despise it. You must learn to reject it for the fakery that it is. It is a world that is not real. It is a world designed to make you reject the faith of your fathers. It is a world designed to make you an Esau, selling your birthright for a mess of pottage.' (25)

'Every sociological statistic signaling cultural destruction has risen exponentially in this period. Divorce, out-of-wedlock birth, decline in marriage rates, decline in birthrates, single-parent homes, etc. have all skyrocketed as the traditional household was broken up.' (30)

'[The] lifestyle that is idealized and glamorized and highly sought after by all—the cosmopolitan, independent, urbane, hip, affluent young person free from all responsibility—is one you must learn to hate. That is the end to which the murder of children, the abandonment of all sexual mores, and the destruction of the household is dedicated: so that you can live on Pleasure Island without ever turning into a donkey. That is what the pro-life movement consistently fails to recognize, the end to which the murder of babies is sought. People murder their offspring because they want to enjoy this fake and gay world, but in order for Christendom to return, it is a world that you must learn to hate. The “nice things” we are desperate to enjoy are the chains that keep us trapped in this world, and you must learn to associate them with everything you are fighting against.' (34)

'We are totally awash in despair. There has never been more depression, anxiety, mind-altering SSRI use, illegal drug use, drug overdoses, and suicide than there is today. Think about the comparison to our current standard of living to the past. Think of all the times when suffering and death were an ever-present specter haunting every moment of each man’s existence—the innumerable periods of war, famine, and disease, such as when the Black Death was killing one third of the population of Europe in the thirteenth century. Are we any happier today than these men? If anything, despite living in widespread material conditions as close to a utopian state as any time in human history, we are the most depressed, anxious, and tormented people who have ever lived. We have been all but liberated from material constraints yet have never been more miserable.' (40)

'[The] strong bonds of friendship among men, that very thing that both builds cities and also conquers them, has been made lurid and an object of derision. Close male friendships with intense expressions of love, like Frodo and Sam, David and Jonathan, Alexander and Hephaestion, or Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed, are assumed by the porn-addled brains of bugmen to of course be homosexual. It is not just because the bugman is hypersexualized and cannot fathom any kind of love but the erotic; it is also because they have never experienced anything like love from another man. They are like men who only drink from a fetid swamp encountering fresh, spring water. This is why they attack it.' (41)

'We live in an anti-polis, something that increasingly looks like a collection of millions of random and anonymous individuals, not one single individual with a relationship with others beyond what is necessary for bare economic utility. Would not a place like this be awash with anguish, depression, anxiety, mental illness, drug use, suicide, and other deaths of despair?' (42)

'But as much as modern man deludes himself into believing he has killed God and set himself upon His throne, he has hilariously fallen short. Shaving down the cartilage in a man’s Adam’s apple, giving him silicone breast implants and female hormones, and removing his genitals and replacing them with a rotting, putrefied, permanently open wound—which is only possible with antibiotics that already have rapidly diminishing returns—does not transform a man into a woman. It only creates a horribly disfigured man. It is putting a man in a dress and makeup, and stuffing a brassiere with tissues, but with several extra and irreversible steps.' (56)

'Any and all boundaries that God has made immutable are the object of the idolator’s fury.' (58)

'The idolatries of the ancient world and modern age are the same in that they both seek to invoke the power of their demon gods to transgress the immutable boundaries God has set. Compare a pagan to the denizen of Trashworld. Imagine a Germanic woman offering her firstborn to Odin for a good harvest and houseful of children. Compare this to a twenty-first century American woman offering her firstborn to Mammon so she can keep sending emails all day between Bumble dates and margaritas. The only difference between the two is that the latter gives up her soul for far less in return. They will do heinous, unspeakable things because they cannot bear the fact that God has made the world the way that He has made it; He has set us within impassable mountains and the deceitful gods promise a way over them.' (58)

'As the late thinker Roger Scruton said, “In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions. These answers are tacit, shared, embodied in social practices and inarticulate expectations.”' (77)

'You have to understand that this battle is not a materialistic one. In fighting the idols of this age, you are not fighting against flesh and blood, you are fighting against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this age, against the dark hosts in the heavenly places. You don’t fight such a war at the ballot box or even with rifles and tanks. You fight it by drawing near to the presence of God on the Lord’s Day offering yourself as a living sacrifice cut up by the priestly two-edged sword of His Word and burned up by the fire of His Spirit. You are doing battle against the demons that animate this hideous dystopia you live in. That is how you have to understand worship. You are drawing near to the Triune God this Trashworld is at war with. He is feeding you from His Word and at His Table, and God and His people are dropping fifty-megaton bombs on the gates of Hades. You are chopping down the shrines of demons and building Christendom out of the lumber.' (79)

'A household is a micro-nation. A household, like individual men and individual women, has a distinct telos. It exists for a purpose, to pursue a particular goal. Unlike the nuclear-family arrangement of the postwar era, it does not exist merely to perpetuate existence. Producing and raising up future generations is one function of the household, but it is not the only function of it. Our first parents were told to fill the earth and subdue it. The household is the basic unit of conquest.' (82)

'The entire force of a multibillion-dollar media and entertainment propaganda regime has been employed for generations to psyops men and women into despising the things God has designed them to love. God designed men to love their wives and their children and to desire so intensely to have a wife and sons and daughters that he would kill and die for them. Generations of psychological and social conditioning has diverted the course of this great river of passion to flow instead to cheap consumer goods, vapid entertainment, and pornography. The deep passion has been turned inward to create innumerable legions of narcissists. A similar thing has happened to women, the fury of a mother whose child is threatened has also been turned inward and directed against the object she was designed to protect—her child—if that child threatens access to brunch. The womb, the very place of comfort, protection, and safety, has been turned into a slaughterhouse. The thing God has created us to love and protect has been turned into an object of hatred, because powerful forces have manipulated the lusts of the masses.' (84)

'The boomer might well be right that the millennial and zoomer just doesn’t have the work ethic his generation has, but he does not consider how much greater that work ethic was rewarded in his day (and how disincentivized it is today). Things are quite a bit harder than they were in 1975. This did not happen by accident. The people who rule our society have chosen to create these conditions.' (86)

'You must give up pretensions that you will have a life as comfortable as the boomers enjoyed, but a good life where you can support your wife and your children is attainable if you carefully plan for it.' (86)

'Industrialization of our food supply is a blessing to the extent that it efficiently delivers calories to an ever-increasing population, but these processes that produce food at such a massive scale have introduced kinds of foods and changes to nutrition that have never been seen before in human history. Whether good or bad, we have only seen food production like this for only one or two full generations, and it is no coincidence that we have had an exponential rise in obesity.' (105)

'Could replacing animal fat in our diet with a thing that a hundred years ago was only fit to be used as paint thinner—seed oils—be a significant cause of what is making us both flabby and ill, sapping us of all masculine energy? What if our entire food supply is designed not to provide the necessary nutrition to sustain life, but primarily to increase the consumption of food and thereby increase profits?' (106)

'The fact remains that we live in an age of universal deceit. They have told you that the foods that made your ancestors healthy and strong—eggs, red meat, butter—are all killing you. These are lies. They want you to live in a gnostic fantasy world where your sustenance is totally divorced from the created order: you will eat industrial sludge derived from soybeans and insects and you will love it—or else. They do not want you to consume foods that have come from the animals God gave us to both rule over and to thankfully feast on.' (106)

'By ripping the deep-seated, natural, creational desire to marry and have children from women, by leveling all distinctions between man and woman, and by reducing women to mere human beings, do the masters of this decrepit age make normal, peaceful, well-ordered human life impossible. If you destroy the femininity of woman, if you mangle what it means to be a wife, if you contort and disfigure motherhood, you have transformed the womb and the household into a factory for the production of bugmen.' (111)

'In order to conform such passages to Trashworld, the bugman has to say Paul was just wrong, or he must assert that any moral instruction in the Bible is dependent upon cultural context and therefore we can pick and choose what is valid or he must contort and manipulate it so badly through super-academic, crafty exegesis that only the most respectable scholars can even begin to sift through, showing that Paul is not really giving any instruction at all that anyone without decades of training in the minutiae of Greek grammar can ever hope to discern. But the plain teaching of the Bible is very clear: widowed young women should marry, have children, manage a household, and live a godly, Christian life. And if that is his instruction to young widows, how easy it to apply to young women in general! It was simply assumed by the apostle that this is what young women ordinarily did; they got married, had children, and managed households.' (113)

'That is the point that must be brought home in the clearest terms possible: our daughters are given the option of being wives and mothers and builders of households that will bring forth a glorious heritage for generations to come or being receptacles for the seed of a hundred different men. What were they created to be? Which option gives them dignity, purpose, and fulfillment? To birth, feed, nurture, and raise up new people and bring greater and greater glory to her household or to be a meat-puppet sex toy for countless random men who will give her rapidly diminishing attention after her twenty-eighth birthday? This is what must be presented to our young women and our daughters: that the options before you are either household or harlotry.' (115)

'To teach your daughters to hate those enticements, you must make your own household a place of deep joy. It must be a refuge from the disgusting world of filth. A place your daughters would give their lives to replicate. If your household is a place of strife, a place they cannot wait to flee from, no matter how much time, effort, and wealth you expend to raise your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, you are doing the job of Trashworld and you may as well sign your daughter up for OnlyFans yourself. Every single thing you do in raising your daughters, whether you do it well or poorly, is a tiny step closer to her answering the ultimate question of what she will do with her life: household or harlotry? You must be present and give her the attention you don’t even realize she craves. Every second you devote your focus to your daughter is an investment that will bear a ten-thousandfold return. Even when your daughter is in diapers, every moment you consciously devote to her is more money in the bank directing her toward a life that is in conformity with the order of the world that God created, and away from the promiscuous, degenerate anti-life of Trashworld.' (117)

'God has called you to spend the one life that He has given you to work to rebuild Christian civilization within your sphere of influence; to build strong brotherhoods with other men committed to doing the same; to shape your body, mind, and soul into being the kind of men capable of overthrowing empires; and to set your spirit on fire with the very same flame that once engulfed most of the planet in the glories of Christendom.' (127)

'Aaron Renn has offered a threefold schema that he calls Positive World, Neutral World, and Negative World. 1 In short, Positive World is where the Christian religion is viewed as a social positive, i.e., if you are publicly known as a Christian, this will be beneficial to your social status and career. Whereas in Neutral World, your public faith is neither beneficial nor detrimental, and in Negative World it is entirely detrimental to your social status and economic prospects.' (128)

'The single greatest problem with The Benedict Option, is that there is nowhere left to run. Globohomo is totalizing. Globohomo seeks to dominate every square inch of the planet. The answer is not to run and hide and await martyrdom. The answer is a Christianity that is equally aggressive and expansionary. Jesus Christ commanded His church to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them all that He has commanded to do (Matt. 28: 18–20). Trashworld is a bizzaro version of the Great Commission, one that seeks to repudiate the Christian discipleship of the nations, to cast off their baptism, and to subvert all that Christ has commanded. This is not something you can run and hide from.' (130)

'We are discipled in a passive-aggressive, emasculated, individualistic, consumeristic, therapeutic Christianity that abhors confrontation of any kind. It should come as no surprise that “Why don’t we just fight back?” is a thought that has not even remotely crossed the mind of our most important social critics. We are taught to believe that the bearing of Jesus Christ, and the bearing that we therefore as Christians must adopt, is that of Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The Christian man must always be calm, friendly, and, above all else, nonconfrontational. That is what it means to be Christlike, according to contemporary evangelicalism. But this of course runs contrary to the actual Jesus Christ as He is presented in the Gospels. Yes, Jesus was the very model of patience and kindness to those who were in desperate need of grace and mercy, but nearly everywhere He went He also faced incredibly hostile opposition that He manfully and assertively confronted. Contemporary American Christianity loves the sweetness and gentleness of Jesus, but has rejected His fierceness and ferocity, almost redacting it from the Bible.' (130)

the reformation [II]

12 Week Recap. I've completed my first 12-week circuit of weight-lifting and dialed-in nutrition, and I'm pleased with the results. I have set multiple personal records and am already looking 'buffer' (as my wife says). I haven't taken actual before-and-after measurements (beyond what shows up in the mirror and on the scale), but as I've only gained one pound, it's safe to say that I've increased muscle mass while losing fat. I've been meticulous in cutting my alcohol consumption, watching my macros (I averaged around 130-160 grams of protein a day), and have kept records of my caloric intake. This has enabled me to establish baselines for the next twelve weeks. Below are some dietary records (left here for posterity's sake, as I wish I had recorded them earlier for ease-of-access):

First 12 Weeks: 159.5# to 160.5# [1 pound weight gain]

Average daily caloric intake ~2000

Week 1 2050 calories per day   159.5 pounds

Week 2 1875                             158.5

Week 3 2115                             159.9

Week 4 2300                             161.6

Week 5 2000                             160.7

Week 6 1750                             159.7

Week 7 1875                             159.5

Week 8 2200                             161

Week 9 1950                             160.4

Week 10 1975                           159.8

Week 11 2125                           161.5

Week 12 1850                           160.5

Based on these measurements, I'm able to make the following deductions:

1850 or below results in WEIGHT LOSS

2000 results in MAINTENANCE

2100 or more results in WEIGHT GAIN

The Next 12 Weeks. Thus ends my first 12 week circuit. Next week is a deload week - reduced intensity and volume to give my body some much-needed recovery time before my next 12 week gauntlet - and then I'll begin afresh. While I've debated with increasing my caloric intake a smidgeon and going balls-to-the-wall with muscle growth, I'm leaning towards maintaining my 1800-2000 daily caloric range to slowly put on muscle while cutting down fat. I'm content with gaining some weight, but I hope to keep at or under 165# by the turn of the New Year. 

As far as an exercise regimen, I am going to continue alternating between heavy days and lighter eccentric days, while also incorporating more handle-band routines. I'm building chin-ups and pull-ups into my regular routines and am going to give more focus to isolation exercises for my chest and shoulders. The last 12 weeks were predominantly barbell-oriented with chest and shoulders, and I want to change that up; at the same time, I want to incorporate barbells more frequently into my arm workouts. I need to be more consistent with my chest and calves, and I'm going to be troubleshooting my upper leg workouts - due to bad knee joints, it's been difficult to find something that doesn't result in me waking up gasping in pain in the middle of the night, which invariably scares the little ones who end up in bed with us. 

an exorcism

Early last summer I moved my family into a new home closer to our church so we could better engage in the community. Within the first week moving in, things started feeling weird. There was a sense of dread, depression, and anxiety that infused the atmosphere of the place. Everyone felt it and was on edge. 

After a few discoveries while doing deep cleaning, and an informative 1AM visit by the police, we learned that the house had been a renowned heroin den. It was a hub for dealers from two states looking to sell their wares in bulk. A young woman died of an overdose in one of the bedrooms just months before we moved in. Further research via the rabbit hole of Facebook revealed that one of the tenants had been a practicing witch. 

Now a few weeks into our move, our oldest daughter - who always stays up late during the summer as teenagers tend to do - started reporting seeing and hearing odd things. Footsteps in the hall in the middle of the night when she was the only one upstairs; feelings of being watched or with another presence; and occasionally glimpses of what she described as a tall, dark figure with long arms and long fingers that would stand in thresholds and step into other rooms when she jerked her head around. I attributed it to her imagination and detecting patterns in normal house settling sounds (though our middle daughter also heard the footsteps), but I became skeptical of a 'rational' interpretation when I started having experiences of my own. I get up around 4-5A most mornings for coffee, scripture reading, and Zen time - we have little kids, so it's difficult to get this time when they are awake, and by the end of the day I'm beat - and after getting my coffee and retreating to the living room, I would return to the kitchen to find all the cupboards inexplicably opened. This happened a few times, and it started getting under my skin.

My wife - who has always mocked the idea of haunted houses and the like - started getting her own creepy feelings and hearing odd things in the middle of the night, usually around 3AM, for what it's worth. I decided to reach out tot the elders of our church and request a house blessing. Most of our elders came and blessed the home; we prayed, read Psalm 91 (what has been termed an 'exorcism psalm'), and they blessed the house. When we stepped back into the home, the atmosphere was different; everyone in my family reported that it felt more peaceful, like something that was previously there was now gone. My middle daughter, who had been refusing to sleep in her new room and was camping out on the sofa next to our bedroom, told us that night she was ready for her own room. There have been no more footsteps, opened cupboards, or phantasms in the middle of the night. 

I'm not well schooled in exorcisms, or demonology, or spirits, but I am confident that there was a tenant in this home who had not moved out.

the reformation (round 2)

Between 2019 and now, I made major changes to my lifestyle and dropped from 210 to 150 pounds. My goal was to slim down; now my goal is to build strength and muscle, which requires a caloric increase. Once I hit 150 pounds, had I gone any lower, I would've started looking like a boy, even despite my beard (which I keep mainly to make it clear that I am not fifteen years old). My current goal is to stay between 160-165# while focusing on building muscle and strength. At this point my 'battle plan' is as follows:

Caloric intake: 1600-2000 calories a day

Protein intake: between 120-160 grams a day

Workouts: strength training 4-5 times a week

Most people, when bulking, take in around 2500 to 3000 calories a day. Mine is lower because I'm smaller, and thus burn less energy than someone six inches taller than me, and because I don't want to put on twenty pounds only to have to cut in six months. Studies have shown that the net muscle growth between yoyo bulking/cutting and steady-state recomposition (in which you build muscle slower but don't put on weight as fast) is about equal, and I like food too much to be a great cutter. Thus recomposition is more my style.

I like to toy around with different weight lifting routines, and because of bad joints - early onset arthritis is a bastard - I need to be extremely careful with how I lift and what exercises I do. At the moment I'm hitting each muscle group twice a week, with the first workout focused on heavier lifting and the second with lighter eccentric lifting. For each muscle group I do 16 minimum sets a week, and each muscle group for each workout gets a minimum of six sets. My main area of focus at the moment is shoulders and arms (my chest is quite fine), and I'm working on getting my legs where I want them to be: I have chronic chicken legs, and it doesn't help that my knee joints are bad and a single leg press exercise has me hobbling for three weeks. I'm the quintessential 'Hey bro, what about leg day?' culprit - but I have a medical excuse, so I have no guilt.

of sunrises, sunsets, and storms

Our neck of the woods lies in a 'weather pocket' in which pop-up thunderstorms are a regular occurrence. The result is often beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Here are a few snapshots I've taken while cruising the roads:

AI is crazy

I threw some profile pics into an AI Generator, and it spit out several.

Here's a sampling, chosen because they make look like a badass.

the Barnhart Reunion (snapshots)

 

the summer of grilling

When we first moved into our new home, the only appliance it had was a refrigerator. Absent a stove, we turned to the trusty Blackstone grill. The thing about Blackstones is you can cook just about anything on them. You’re not limited to meat, planked salmon, and kabobs; Ashley loves making eggs and pancakes on it, for instance. For two weeks we cooked on nothing but the grill, and when we got a new stove – an air fryer stove, like the wife has always wanted – we decided to continue making most of our meals on the grill. Amish chicken, chicken thighs, pork chops and pork loins, ribeyes and top sirloins, shaved beef and beef medallions, salmon and tilapia – the Blackstone covers it all. On a whim I decided to chop up some cabbage and potatoes and throw them in a tin-foil pan and cook them on the grill, and it turned out so good that it’s become our standard for cooking vegetables. Perhaps the best part about working the grill is that I don’t do it alone; I always have company. Without fail Moose shows up from the woods and hovers around for choice morsels – I tend to throw him some meat most days – and Zoey and Naomi like to assist me with the cooking. At the end of a long day, there’s nothing quite as soothing as hanging out with my girls, smoking a nice cigar from House of Cigar, sipping on bourbon, and working the grill. I’ll miss these summer days, though I’m looking forward to our crop of winter meals: roasts and soups and stews and pies. 

Zoey, Naomi, and Maggie keeping me company while I grill. They're sitting on a brick
pizza oven that needs to be thoroughly cleaned before use; it's one of my late summer goals.

Moose enjoying some grilled shrimp. I am a generous master.

a new blog (transplant)

Greetings if you have come across this blog by way of the old one! One of the privileges of getting older is looking back on the days of your youth and seeing how cringe you really were, and that cringe was put on full display for anyone willing to take the time to comb through old blog posts. I won't link to the old blog here, for it is best Dead and Buried (though I'm keeping it alive for nostalgic purposes).

I figured now is as good a time as any to shift to a new blog. We've undergone lots of changes in the past six months, and in a lot of ways we are reshaping how we do life. Late last month we sold our first home on Woody Hollow Drive to move into a fixer-upper in the rolling wooded hills of Batavia, Ohio. 

our last family photo from Woody Hollow!

Our reasons for moving were several, but at the top of the list (1) we wanted to be closer to our church and church community, (2) we wanted more opportunities to live the homestead/hobby farm life, and (3) we wanted to get out of the Glitz and Glamour of uppity West Chester. While my drive to the office has doubled, I'm thankful that I get to do a lot of my job from home. We're looking forward to life outside suburbia, and it's been a bit of a culture shock, especially for the wife. According to the federal government, Clermont County is the westernmost Ohio county considered part of Appalachia, and that Appalachian culture is on full display. I'm quite fine with it; in a sense, these are my people. 

home sweet home

The home we purchased is surrounded by woods and filled with all sorts of wildlife: giant beetles, snakes, a koi pond with fish and flowered lily-pads and dragonflies and frogs, foxes and raccoons and opossums, and a menagerie of odd-looking bugs and woodland critters. Just yesterday Zoey found the bones of a deer on our property, and one of our goals is to bleach the bones and reassemble as much of the skeleton as we can ('Consider it part of next year's homeschool curriculum,' I told the wife). Our two mature cats, Moose and Elouise, love the property, and we got two new kittens, named OJ Pickles and Bear, who will be joining them outdoors. We have enough property to hopefully begin raising meat rabbits and chickens next year or the year after, and I'm looking forward to getting our garden going next spring (this year I contented myself with just a few plants in pots, and of course jalapenos were one of them). There's a lot of work to be done on the yard - the previous owners let it go the way of the birds - but we've found some hidden gems: yucca plants, which I love and whose buds are edible; bamboo along the fence-line, which can be used to make fishing poles and cat toys and all sorts of things; Chinese Rose of Sharon, which are midsummer bloomers; and Japanese maples, which are expensive. At some point an owner must've had been an aficionado of all things Asian. 

There's a lot of work to be done on the home itself; that's the nature of a fixer-upper. Our home warranty goes into effect the end of this month, and we have a laundry list of service calls to make. We've tackled a few things (electrical issues, some plumbing stuff, and odds-and-ends), and we're in the process of patching drywall, painting the interior top-to-bottom, and we're about halfway done tearing out the disgusting upstairs carpet and sealing the sturdy subfloor with Kilz and painting it with deck paint (a temporary solution until we put flooring in). Despite all the work that needs to be done, we're happy with the home: it's almost twice the size of Woody Hollow Drive, four bedrooms and three full baths, with a basement that, once waterproofed, can be finished. We have a five-year plan to bring it up to speed, and in the meantime the girls love it. 'This home is perfect for me,' Naomi mused. 

Another big change in the midst of all this is another promotion at work: come September I will be officially instated as the 'Assistant Director' at Walk of Joy. In this position I'll oversee all the departments within our company: our Residential department, our Employment department, and our two day programs. The plan is for a further promotion in September 2024 to 'Executive Director,' in which I begin taking over a lot of the responsibilities currently handled by our CEO. I thank the Lord for the favor He has shown me: over the past six years, I have gone from being a simple direct care service provider working shifts in the field to a Site Lead, to an Employment Specialist, to a Site Coordinator, to Assistant Residential Director, and I have two promotions on the horizon. Each new position has come with a significant pay raise, and each has come with less hours away from home. I'm reminded of one of my favorite passages from the psalms:

O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup;

   You maintain my lot.

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;

   Yes, I have a good inheritance.  [Psalm 16.5-6] 

 

the year in books [V]

This month I finished several batches in my 2023 Reading Queue: a quartet of westerns, some historical fiction ranging from the biblical period to the Korean War, and several religious works. Of the westerns my favorite book was Loren D. Estleman's The Book of Murdock; of the historical fiction, my favorite is a three-way tie between Cain at Gettysburg (set during the American Civil War, obviously), The Iceman (set during World War Two), and Fields of Fire (set during the Vietnam War). Of the religious works, my favorite was John Frame's Salvation Belongs to the Lord; it was such a great, easy-to-understand, and succinct approach to Reformed theology that I may very well make it part of Chloe's curriculum next year. 

the year in books [IV]

The next batch of books this year is a slew of fiction: Stephen King's Salem's Lot, which was more a 'town mystery' than a vampire nove; Loren D. Estleman's The Book of Murdock, in which Page Murdock impersonates a priest to capture rustlers; P.T. Deutermann's submarine yarn, The Iceman, taking place under the waters of Guadalcanal; James Webb's Vietnam novel Fields of Fire; King's more recent The Outsider; and Larry McMurtry's Horsemen Pass By. Not a bad collection: two Stephen King, two historical fictions, and two westerns! My favorite of this back is a three-way tie between The Outsider, The Iceman, and Fields of Fire (all were great); my least favorite was McMurtry's Horsemen Pass By (I prefer westerns set in the 1800s). 

Calvin on Galatians

~  Potent Quotables from John Calvin's Commentary  ~

GALATIANS 2

Election Unto the Purposes of God. 'God had, no doubt, decreed, before the foundation of the world, what he would do with regard to every one of us, and had assigned to every one, by his secret counsel, his respective place. But the sacred writers frequently introduce those three steps: the eternal predestination of God, the destination from the womb, and the calling, which is the effect and accomplishment of both... [God] is said to separate us from the womb, because the design of our being sent into the world is, that he may accomplish, in us, what he has decreed. The calling is delayed till its proper time, when God has prepared us for the office which he commands us to undertake.' [from Galatians 2]

On Vocation. '[We] owe it to the goodness of God, not only that we have been elected and adopted to everlasting life, but that he deigns to make use of our services, who would otherwise have been altogether useless, and that he assigns to us a lawful calling, in which we may be employed.' [from Galatians 2]

Reliance on Works Nullifies the Work of Christ. 'If the death of Christ be our redemption, then we were captives; if it be satisfaction, we were debtors; if it be atonement, we were guilty; if it be cleansing, we were unclean. On the contrary, he who ascribes to works his sanctification, pardon, atonement, righteousness, or deliverance, makes void the death of Christ.' [from Galatians 2]

GALATIANS 3

Justification by Law or Faith? 'The law holds all living men under its curse; and from the law, therefore, it is in vain to expect a blessing... The blessing which it offers to us is excluded by our depravity, so that the curse alone remains... The law justifies him who fulfils all its precepts, while faith justifies those who are destitute of the merit of works, and who rely on Christ alone. To be justified by our own merit, and to be justified by the grace of another, are two schemes which cannot be reconciled: one of them must be overturned by the other... You will more easily unite fire and water, than reconcile these two statements, that men are justified by faith, and that they are justified by the law.' [from Galatians 3]

Faith Is Never Alone. 'It is not our doctrine that the faith which justifies is alone; we maintain that it is invariably accompanied by good works; only we contend that faith alone is sufficient for justification... We, again, refuse to admit that, in any case, faith can be separated from the Spirit of regeneration; but when the question comes to be in what manner we are justified, we then set aside all works.' [from Galatians 5]

GALATIANS 4

Christ Under the Law. 'Christ the Son of God, who might have claimed to be exempt from every kind of subjection, became subject to the law. Why? He did so in our room, that he might obtain freedom for us. A man who was free, by constituting himself a surety, redeems a slave: by putting on himself the chains, he takes them off from the other. So Christ chose to become liable to keep the law, that exemption from it might be obtained for us.' [from Galatians 4]

On Spiritual Illumination. 'Paul reminds the Galatians whence they had derived the knowledge of God. He affirms that they did not obtain it by their own exertions, by the acuteness or industry of their own minds, but because, when they were at the farthest possible remove from thinking of him, God visited them in his mercy. What is said of the Galatians may be extended to all; for in all are fulfilled the words of Isaiah, “I am sought by them that asked not for me: I am found by them that sought me not.” (Isaiah 65:1.) The origin of our calling is the free election of God, which predestinates us to life before we are born. On this depends our calling, our faith, our whole salvation.' [from Galatians 4]

On the Observance of Holy Days. 'When certain days are represented as holy in themselves, when one day is distinguished from another on religious grounds, when holy days are reckoned a part of divine worship, then days are improperly observed. The Jewish Sabbath, new moons, and other festivals, were earnestly pressed by the false apostles, because they had been appointed by the law. When we, in the present age, intake a distinction of days, we do not represent them as necessary, and thus lay a snare for the conscience; we do not reckon one day to be more holy than another; we do not make days to be the same thing with religion and the worship of God; but merely attend to the preservation of order and harmony. The observance of days among us is a free service, and void of all superstition.' [from Galatians 4]

Ministers: The Tools of God's Providence. 'True, we are “born of God,” (1 John 3:9;) but, because he employs a minister and preaching as his instruments for that purpose, he is pleased to ascribe to them that work which Himself performs, through the power of his Spirit, in co-operation with the labors of man. Let us always attend to this distinction, that, when a minister is contrasted with God, he is nothing, and can do nothing, and is utterly useless; but, because the Holy Spirit works efficaciously by means of him, he comes to be regarded and praised as an agent. Still, it is not what he can do in himself, or apart from God, but what God does by him, that is there described. If ministers wish to do anything, let them labor to form Christ, not to form themselves, in their hearers. The writer is now so oppressed with grief, that he almost faints from exhaustion without completing his sentence.' [from Galatians 4]

GALATIANS 5

On Circumcision. 'But what is the meaning of this, that Christ will profit nothing to all who are circumcised? Did Christ profit nothing to Abraham? Nay, it was in order that Christ might profit him that he received circumcision. If we say that it was in force till the coming of Christ, what reply shall we make to the case of Timothy? We must observe, that Paul’s reasoning is directed not so properly against the outward rite or ceremony, as against the wicked doctrine of the false apostles, who pretended that it was a necessary part of the worship of God, and at the same time made it a ground of confidence as a meritorious work. These diabolical contrivances made Christ to profit nothing; not that the false apostles denied Christ, or wished him to be entirely set aside, but that they made such a division between his grace and the works of the law as to leave not more than the half of salvation due to Christ.' [from Galatians 5]

Defending Circumcision and Attacking its Abuse. 'When he views circumcision in its own nature, he properly makes it to be a symbol of grace, because such was the appointment of God. But when he is dealing with the false apostles, who abused circumcision by making it an instrument for destroying the Gospel, he does not there consider the purpose for which it was appointed by the Lord, but attacks the corruption which has proceeded from men.' [from Galatians 5]

The Sacrament of Circumcision. 'When Abraham had received a promise concerning Christ, and justification by free grace, and eternal salvation, circumcision was added, in order to confirm the promise; and thus it became, by the appointment of God, a sacrament, which was subservient to faith... the Divine appointment of circumcision was only for a time. After the coming of Christ, it ceased to be a Divine institution, because baptism had suceeded in its room.' [from Galatians 5]

The Practice of the Sacraments. '[The] sacraments, when we partake of them in a sincere manner, are not the works of men, but of God. In baptism or the Lord’s supper, we do nothing but present ourselves to God, in order to receive his grace. Baptism, viewed in regard to us, is a passive work: we bring nothing to it but faith; and all that belongs to it is laid up in Christ.' [from Galatians 5]

False Doctrine a Leaven that Spreads through the Whole Dow. 'Satan’s stratagem is, that he does not attempt an avowed destruction of the whole gospel, but he taints its purity by introducing false and corrupt opinions. Many persons are thus led to overlook the seriousness of the injury done, and therefore make a less determined resistance.' [from Galatians 5]

The Two Tables of the Law. 'The law consists of two tables, the first of which instructs us concerning the worship of God and the duties of piety, and the second instructs us concerning the love of our neighbor; for it is ridiculous to make a part the same with the whole.' [from Galatians 5]

Love Fulfills the Law. 'God therefore chooses to make trial of our love to himself by that love of our brother, which he enjoins us to cultivate. This is the reason why, not here only, but in the Epistle to the Romans, (Romans 8:8, 13:10,) love is called “the fulfilling of the law;” not that it excels, but that it proves the worship of God to be real.' [from Galatians 5]

What does it mean to love thy neighbor? 'He who loves will render to every man his right, will do injury or harm to no man, will do good, as far as lies in his power, to all; for what else is included in the whole of the second table? This, too, is the argument employed by Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (Romans 13:10.) The word, neighbor, includes all men living; for we are linked together by a common nature.' [from Galatians 5]

Self-Denial: The Beginning of Obedience. 'The Spirit denotes the renewed nature, or the grace of regeneration; and what else does the flesh mean, but “the old man?” (Romans 6:6 Ephesians 4:22 Colossians 3:9.) Disobedience and rebellion against the Spirit of God pervade the whole nature of man. If we would obey the Spirit, we must labor, and fight, and apply our utmost energy; and we must begin with self-denial.' [from Galatians 5]

A Reality Check. 'What can be conceived more dreadful than that men should walk after the flesh, and shut themselves out from the kingdom of God? Who will dare to treat lightly the “abominable things which God hates?” (Jeremiah 44:4.)' [from Galatians 5]

A Warning Against Obstinancy. 'Paul does not threaten that all who have sinned, but that all who remain impenitent, shall be excluded from the kingdom of God. The saints themselves often fall into grievous sins, but they return to the path of righteousness, “that which they do they allow not,” (Romans 7:15,) and therefore they are not included in this catalogue. All threatenings of the judgments of God call us to repentance. They are accompanied by a promise that those who repent will obtain forgiveness; but if we continue obstinate, they remain as a testimony from heaven against us.' [from Galatians 5]

Virtues as the Kindness of God. 'all virtues, all proper and well regulated affections, proceed from the Spirit, that is, from the grace of God, and the renewed nature which we derive from Christ. As if he had said, “Nothing but what is evil comes from man; nothing good comes but from the Holy Spirit.”' [from Galatians 5]

What about virtuous unbelievers? 'There have often appeared in unrenewed men remarkable instances of gentleness, integrity, temperance, and generosity; but it is certain that all were but specious disguises. Curius and Fabrieius were distinguished for courage, Cato for temperance, Scipio for kindness and generosity, Fabius for patience; but it was only in the sight of men, and as members of civil society, that they were so distinguished. In the sight of God nothing is pure but what proceeds from the fountain of all purity.' [from Galatians 5]

A Few Comments on the Fruit of the Spirit. 'Joy does not here, I think, denote that “joy in the Holy Ghost” (Romans 14:17,) of which he speaks elsewhere, but that cheerful behavior towards our fellow-men which is the opposite of moroseness. Faith means truth, and is contrasted with cunning, deceit, and falsehood, as peace is with quarrels and contentions. Long-suffering is gentleness of mind, which disposes us to take everything in good part, and not to be easily offended.' [from Galatians 5]

What role does the Law play in sanctification? '[Where] the Spirit reigns, the law has no longer any dominion. By moulding our hearts to his own righteousness, the Lord delivers us from the severity of the law, so that our intercourse with himself is not regulated by its covenant, nor our consciences bound by its sentence of condemnation. Yet the law continues to teach and exhort, and thus performs its own office; but our subjection to it is withdrawn by the Spirit of adoption.'  [from Galatians 5]

The Spirit WILL change us. 'If the Spirit of God lives in us, let him govern our actions. There will always be many persons daring enough to make a false boast of living in the Spirit, but the apostle challenges them to a proof of the fact. As the soul does not remain idle in the body, but gives motion and rigour to every member and part, so the Spirit of God cannot dwell in us without manifesting himself by the outward effects.' [from Galatians 5]

GALATIANS 6

A warning against eager chastisement of a brother. '[No] man is prepared for chastising a brother till he has succeeded in acquiring a gentle spirit.' [from Galatians 6]

A rule to observe when chastising a brother. 'Whenever we have occasion to pronounce censure, let us begin with ourselves, and, remembering our own weakness, let us be indulgent to others.' [from Galatians 6]

On bearing one another's burdens. 'The weaknesses or sins, under which we groan, are called burdens. This phrase is singularly appropriate in an exhortation to kind behavior, for nature dictates to us that those who bend under a burden ought to be relieved. He enjoins us to bear the burdens. We must not indulge or overlook the sins by which our brethren are pressed down, but relieve them, — which can only be done by mild and friendly correction.' [from Galatians 6]

A warning of impending judgment. 'To destroy sloth and pride, he brings before us the judgment of God, in which every individual for himself, and without a comparison with others, will give an account of his life. It is thus that we are deceived; for, if a man who has but one eye is placed among the blind, he considers his vision to be perfect; and a tawny person among negroes thinks himself white. The apostle affirms that the false conclusions to which we are thus conducted will find no place in the judgment of God; because there every one will bear his own burden, and none will stand acquitted by others from their own sins.' [from Galatians 6]

A few parting shots on Good Works:

1. We have no good works which God rewards but those which we derive from his grace. 

2. The good works which we perform by the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit, are the fruits of that adoption which is an act of free grace. 

3. They are not only unworthy of the smallest and most inconsiderable reward, but deserve to be wholly condemned, because they are always stained by many blemishes; and what have pollutions to do with the presence of God? [from Galatians 6]

the month in snapshots

raccoon friend tried to steal Moose's winter home

Ainsley was fascinated with our cornish hens

Ainsley mowing down on some pumpkin oatmeal

Naomi thought Maggie's face made a good canvas

at least this time they painted on paper...

Zoey's sticker shop! 1 cent per sticker. 

the year in books [III]

The latest installment in 2023's Reading Gauntlet includes three histories, one book on geological evidences for Noah's Flood 4400 years ago, and two pieces of fiction. Of the three histories, my favorite was Needham's 2000 Years of Christ's Power: The Middle Ages. Bauer's history of the medieval world was a close runner-up, and though Justinian's Flea was good, it was poorly marketed (most of the book was about the reign of Justinian the Great rather than on the bubonic plague that rattled the Byzantine Empire during his reign). Of the two pieces of fiction, my favorite (no surprise) was Stephen King's Later. I'm always reminded how much I enjoy reading King, and I've added some more of his books to my reading challenge for the year.

the month in snapshots

three little ones napping side-by-side

Maggie sporting her first bloody nose

exploring the woodland fort with Pepaw 

Naomi's fourth birthday!

snow day fun! 

the year in books [II]

The next installment of 2023's Reading Queue is a mixture of fiction and nonfiction. On the fiction side we have Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger, William Johnstone's To the River's End, Simon Scarrow's Centurion, and Brian Godawa's Noah Primeval. My favorite of these was Godawa's Noah Primeval, which is surprising, because I expected that laurel to be won by McCarthy's 2022 publication. Alas, while The Passenger has gotten generally rave reviews, even die-hard McCarthy fans have been disappointed. It has a different 'feel' than a lot of his earlier works. 

In the nonfiction camp we have two excellent books: Michael Oard's Biblical Geology 101, an introduction to creationist interpretations of geology, and Steve Weidenkopf's The Glory of the Crusades. Oard's book encapsulates a lot of the most recent argumentation for a young earth whose features speak of a global flood some 4400 years ago; The Glory of the Crusades was a retelling of the medieval Crusades in light of recent scholarship that sought to destroy the common perception of the Crusades as being wars of conversion and conquest. The ultimate motivator behind the Crusades was the recapturing of territory lost to foreign armies (who happened to be Muslim), and while religious motivations were certainly present in the rank-and-file warriors, they weren't fighting to convert or massacre Muslims. The only downside to the Crusades book is that the author's Catholicism overshadows everything (though his jabs at Protestantism were fun to read).