Wading through life

Part of The Saint Crispen’s Day speech of William Shakespeare’s Henry V:

What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.

…

He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

If you want some context, head to the Wikipedia article.

I’m currently reading Journey of Desire by John Eldredge. Desire is a major theme of the season I’m in—thus, last post’s reference to John Piper’s wellspring of resources related to Desiring God.

On page 64 of Eldredge’s work, he highlights an interesting slant on 1 Peter 3:15, which reads, in part:

…always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you…

He then goes off. And, oh, how it rings true:

Now, what’s strange about that passage is this: no one ever asks. When was the last time someone stopped you to inquire about the reason for the hope that lies within you? …

Yet God tells us to be ready, so what’s wrong? To be blunt, nothing about our lives is worth asking about. There’s nothing intriguing about our hopes, nothing to make anyone curious. Not that we don’t have hopes; we do. We hope we’ll have enough after taxes this year to take a summer vacation. We hope our kids don’t wreck the car. We hope our favorite team goes to the World Series. We hope our health doesn’t give out, and so on. Nothing wrong with any of those hopes; nothing unusual, either. Everyone has hopes like that, so why bother asking us? It’s life as usual.

And now for the payoff:

Sanctified resignation has become the new abiding place of contemporary Christians…

Are you resigning to “life as usual”?

Knock a typical American down and what happens?

1. Feels self pity and whines.
2. Says “Where was God?”
3. Sues somebody.

– John Piper, in How to Kill Sin on Desiring God Radio

You can check Internet Explorer CSS bugs #57-206 off the list.

The joy of overcoming software glitches. It’s fun and terrible at the same time.

Au Sable #113

Spent the weekend at the snow-ridden Au Sable Institute, which is near Mancelona, Michigan, but not near Au Sable, Michigan… in case you were wondering. I went up there with a dozen or two young adults from my church. It was a great weekend full of conversation, games, food, and firsts in snow shoeing and broom ball for me.

Not much went on photography-wise until my snow shoe adventure Sunday morning. The Lord dumped a couple inches of fresh power on the land over night and broke the clouds up enough to give me some good picture opportunities.

20 minutes in, I almost turned around and headed back to warm my frigid hands before taking any decent pictures. I was tiring of taking my gloves off to manipulate camera controls and swap lenses. But, I decided to push on and kept a bit more active to keep the blood flowing. When I passed through the wooded area onto the frozen lake, I actually got quite warm. The sun’s rays were bouncing all over because of the reflective white blanket of snow and absent shade.

So, this is my favorite of the bunch. It was one I had to wait a cold-while to get. When the wind would gust, it would knock snow from the branches and fill the air with a brilliant dusty glow—the sun’s back-lighting making it all possible. Back-lighting always makes for interesting exposure situations, as does a high-contrast frame.

This one also marks the importance of not just looking forward and sideways, but also backward, when hiking around for pictures. Turning around in snow shoes isn’t the easiest thing to do, requiring high, wide, awkward, precarious steps. But I had to utilize several 180s and some slowly-but-surely backward-stepping to line myself up for the proper frame.

See a few others in my Flickr gallery of the Au Sable trip.