as personable as mold in an expired container of cottage cheese

Welcome everyone to Cooks Forest State Park! I am currently nestled into bed in the heart of Western PA “roughing it” with my family for the week. Now when I say “roughing it,” images of lean-to’s and cooking eggs on rocks come to my mind; but to the Constable family, “roughing it” is far from archetypal. For example, we are in a pop-up camper, complete with three beds, running water, electricity, and a refrigerator. There is a bathhouse roughly 50 yards away from our location and the nearest child molester is quite possibly merely a stone’s throw away. As part of this journey (and further subtracting from our “roughing it” score), I have brought my computer to catalogue the action daily to give my take on the trip, and quite possibly larger issues upon which I will have much time to ponder.

As you can tell, the Constable Family Vacation 2006 is not a glamorous cruise or a jaunt along a shoreline before sunset or even a thrilling mechanical ride that flings our bodies at mind-numbing speeds. We are in Cooks Forest State Park, home of trees, squirrels, rivers, sunshine and tornadoes. My mom says we’re “pathetic” for coming here. My sister is horrified to spend more than fourteen hours without seeing her beloved boyfriend. My dad is really just looking for some time off work. And I’m mixed in my motives for coming. Practically, I’m here to rest, read some books, and write. Beneath the surface, I’m hoping I’ll find tons of time to spend with God and loving family. This is as much a spiritual retreat as a physical getaway. So frankly, Cooks Forest State Park, offers very few distractions from my intended goals.

Today wasn’t too eventful. We packed up and were able to leave by 1pm and took the relatively short two-hour drive to the campground. After settling in and eating a generous portion of my mom’s famous sloppy joes, we had some family come up and visit. I was most thrilled by the little Frisbee I was able to play with my seventh-grade cousin. One of the things I miss about GCC is the ability to find someone to throw a Frisbee with you anytime and anywhere. That alone is worth the tuition. After they left, my family played some cards. My dad won, and once I started on the sorry trail towards defeat, I started to become a little sour. My competitive streak gets the best of me sometimes. It never really comes out in friendly games at school, but when I’m home, I guess I feel like I deserve to beat everyone. Unfortunately that everyone included my family today, and though it was annoying, we were able to laugh it off later.

Perhaps the best moment today was when a man in a golf cart approached our campsite with a question. Now previous to all of this, we discovered that our electricity was out. My mom brought a TV so she could watch Big Brother (admittedly, a great show, but I could live without it for a week), and she became upset during the process of locating the channel with the antenna when the TV’s power cut out. Minutes later, we discovered the problem was not our camper, but the campground. Back to the moment, we were all playing cards outside when the man in the cart asked, “Do you folks have power?” Not even waiting for the nice plump gentleman to complete his quaint sentence, everyone but myself shouted back, “NO!” in a somewhat bitter tone. The man took the hint and scootered off into the sunset while my parents shouted an apology for their obvious unintentional rudeness.

Tonight’s entry will end here since it is 1 am and my eyes are getting a bit droopy. I can’t believe I’m following a sweet essay on war with a nonsense summary of my family’s vacation. But I guess that’s the beauty of a blog: Anyone can publish anything – there doesn’t have to be a theme. So for those of you eagerly awaiting some startling new philosophy on life, look to the Bible, not me. That’s where you will find wisdom, precious precious wisdom, more valuable than the riches of the world…

Hugs and handpounds

~Break~

Vacations never last as long as expected. Five days off of work and time to spend reading the Word and spending time with family and resting seems like a really long time, especially since a single day off work in itself is incredibly relaxing. But this vacation, though half complete now, seems like it’s almost over. Well, enough trying to attract pity, on with the show.

Day two started like every other vacation day in Constable history: late. I am merely guessing, but I assume that most families on vacation are out and about by 10 am. Psht, if you came to our camper at 10 am with all the intentions off immediately rushing off into town we would wearily ask you who in our family has been rushed to the hospital or if the campground has suddenly has caught fire. We greet the morning sun at 10:30 am and are usually not ready to do anything of real structure until noon. A despicable time, I realize, but a reality.

So yesterday we woke up at our usual late time, had our usual breakfast, and decided to go for a nice scenic horseback ride through the forest. Alright, easy enough. Well what we projected to be a one-and-a-half-hour jaunt turned into an outrageous three-hour adventure. Most of our extended family lives in the region we are staying in this week, so we thought it hospitable to invite my grandfather out to spend a day with us. Unfortunately, we had not made plans as to when he would visit us and told him that we would call him with the arrangements. Cooks Forest State Park is a cellular black hole. We tried as hard as we could to get a signal as we drove down the road towards the horse stable to call my grandfather, but not one of our four cell phones picked up enough signal to dial. What was most frustrating was my mom giving us an update every time the amount of bars she possessed changed. Here I transcribe a snippet of conversation during this too real car ride:

Dad: Alright, anyone have anything yet?
Breanna: Nope, no service.
Mom: I got one bar!
Tyler: Nah, I keep going in and out of serv…
Mom: Oh, no service…wait, two bars!
Dad: Should we stop?
Mom: Wait, no service again…
Tyler: Maybe we should just wait until we get to Brookville to call (it’s only eight miles away)
Breanna: How come we don’t turn around where we had two bars?
Tyler: It doesn’t work like that around here. Signal changes like the wind.
Mom: Yeah, one bar.
Dad: There’s the horse place there
Breanna: Why didn’t we stop?!
Mom: We have to call grandpa!
Dad: Brookville is right next to I-80, we’ll have signal there...
Mom: Ooo! Three bars!
Dad: You want to…
Mom: Oh wait, no service
Breanna: Go back to the place we had signal!
Tyler: Mom, why don’t you call as soon as you see you have signal?
Dad: We’ll be in Brookeville soon…
Breanna: Just go back! It’ll rain before we get to ride horses!
Tyler: Why don’t you…
Dad: I’M NOT TURNING BACK!
Tyler: I’m not talking to you! MOM, call when you get any signal!
Breanna: Why don’t we turn back!
Dad: Here…we’re in Brookville
(Everyone exits and makes phone calls, then gets back into car)
Dad: Who’s up for ice cream?
Tyler and Breanna: ME!

The horseback ride itself was interesting. The man running the stable made about nine too many sexually-charged statements and seemed to have a hobby in collecting jokes directed against women. For example, what’s the difference between a woman and a Pit-bull? A Pit-bull doesn’t wear lipstick. Yeah. So anyway, our guide was about as personable as mold in an expired container of cottage cheese, which made the trip slightly less exciting. My horse’s saddle had the name Onyx upon it (coincidentally the 66-point Scrabble word that clinched my victory over Erica last week), but was later told that his name was Junkyard, and I couldn’t have had a better horse. My thesis on horses is as follows: They are tremendously majestic creatures that are incredibly beautiful and strong (and probably trustworthy); however, they remain animals, and by that I mean that they are not humans and not as predictable. I realize that a well-trained horse will act however the trainer wants it to 99.9% of the time, but every time I mount one of these amazing animals, I can’t help but notice how inferior physically I am to it. That man has been able to subdue the horse is enough of a miracle in my book. In short, I mean to say that I find horses terrifying because of their brute strength, but so amazingly crafted by God that I cannot help but be attracted to them. Anyone who makes a living off caring for these magnificent beasts has my utmost respect. The trip in itself was pretty cool. My horse kept running into the horse in front of me (probably my fault, but can’t they see!?). It was also the only horse not to shamelessly relieve itself or attempt to snatch a snack off the nearest tree. When I nudged him right, he went right, and when I pulled back, he stopped. Junkyard was a gem, and I thanked him kindly afterwards for the scenic adventure (and for not pulverizing me).

Day Three was slightly more and slightly less eventful. First the slightly more… We planned on taking a canoe trip down the Clarion River on Tuesday. I use the word “planned” loosely, for we merely penciled it into our schedule of things to do that day. Planning would have meant research. But we did things our way, and that meant waking up at our usual time and eating our usual breakfast and meandering about getting ready to depart before eventually making it The Pale Whale Canoe Fleet at 1 pm. My dad exited the car to get some preliminary details and returned quite enraged. The only trips offered after noon were four miles long, only a 90 minute journey. Needless to say, our plan for the entire day was destroyed. We were pretty disappointed (some of us more than others), but immediately tried to do something else on what turned out to be the most pleasant day of the week (in regards to the weather). So instead of asking our grandfather to come out Wednesday as “planned,” we called him to request that he come out that evening. He couldn’t, so we spent the day lounging around camp relaxing. I didn’t complain; in fact, going into the vacation, I figured that we would have free time most of the time, so I was able do some reading. We went out to eat that night, and I got sick from the meal, and I won the nightly card game (Texas Hold’em), and all in all, it was a great day.

Day Four started out much differently. We were determined not to sleep away our final opportunity to go on a decently-sized canoe trip, so we woke up at the unheard of time of 7:30 am and ate a quick breakfast. We were at the Pale Whale by 8:45; it opened at 9:00. After some awkward small-talk with an unfortunate nearby staffer, we gathered our rented paddles and PFDs and piled into the van and trucked up the river. Our driver tried his best to chat with us, but eventually we ran out of questions to ask complete strangers that you have no intention of seeing again. I do, however, remember that he attends PSU-Behrend, a member of the PAC, Grove City’s athletic conference. Why Behrend does not call itself PSU-Erie is beyond me. Before the name change, Erie was probably the best branch campus option; after the change, I’d have to lean towards Altoona or DuBois, just because they’re fun to say.
Anyway, the canoe trip was great. My mom and I manned the first canoe while my dad, lovingly nicknamed the Pale Whale due to his choice to be shirtless and shamelessly pale, and my sister paddled along in the other canoe. The Clarion River has an average depth of three feet, which is actually the deepest it has been in a while. If there were a canoe trip designed for people afraid of water, this was it because one could see the bottom of the river wherever one traveled. Things were frustrating at the start since few of us ever had paddling experience (especially with my canoe since my mom and I seemed to always be undoing what the other would do), but once we got a few miles in the trip, we were able to relax more and take in the scenery. We finished the trip faster than the average time, which surprised us, and left the Pale Whale (the canoe fleet, that is) feeling much better than we had Tuesday.

My grandfather came up that night, which was good. We spent the last part of the night relaxing and reminiscing before we had a huge chicken fajita feast that night. I forgot to mention before that we had brought along a TV. My relationship with the television has deteriorated since going to college. I have done some reading, and some thinking, and some more reading, and while I do not feel like outlining an entire position against the overindulgence in TV, I mean to say that TV is definitely something I can live without. My mom, on the other hand, loves the TV. I can’t blame her, nor do I judge her, for I, too, waste my time on various other things. So we brought the TV with the slim hope that we could pick up the signal to watch our favorite primetime shows. It just so happens that our campsite had full cable hookup capabilities! While I may have went a little overboard with my comments on how watching TV wasn’t really camping, I eventually gave in and watched Big Brother (such a good (yet trashy) show). That night, we also played 500 Rummy. I’ve played a few games of Rummy in my day, but this was not only the greatest game I’ve ever played, but quite possibly the greatest game in the history of the game. Every player led at one point and everyone had had their highs and lows (except me. I was slow and steady picking up about 50 points a hand and being the one who goes out before everyone else). Nevertheless, we came to the final hand with everyone within striking distance of the necessary 500 point goal. In the final hand, every single card, every single one of the possible 500 points, was played. The result was that every player scored over 500 points, my sister hitting 500 exactly, and my dad scoring 545 points. It was amazing. I’m sure you’re sharing in the excitement.

As I write, I am home participating in a free online poker tournament. There were 16500 entrants and I am now one of 9035 remaining in the tournament. That may explain why my style has been shoddy throughout the latter part of this entry. I hope to write a wittier, lengthier entry soon. I pray that you all are making the most of every day. We ought to be using every precious God-given breath for His glory.

On Christians and Atheists: Part I

Hello all! I hope your day is coming along just splendidly. I am in-between a double-shifted workday today and have decided to use my three hours of downtime to transcribe and post a few of the essays I have written recently. They are slightly more polished than the previous ones, but are still definitely in rough draft mode (especially if I were to turn them in as Edwards papers). Nevertheless, these first three essays are more on the atheist side of the coin, with the first and third parts having a more apologetic approach, and the second piece with a more critiquing angle. I hope they give you something to think about. I must admit that I am most proud of the third piece, for I have never thought about the origin and progression of language before until I wrote this essay, so all the glory goes to God for such profound thoughts (at least, they were profound at the time for me). Here we go...

On Christians and Atheists

Part One

I. God Made Nature Beautiful

How can God not exist? How can one not admit that, as seen in nature, there is a power greater than he? When a man gazes upon a pristine sunrise over a ocean, an image more majestic than any masterpiece, does he not feel an Artist at work? When he looks upon rolling mountains packed with trees of a billion shades of green against the sunlit sky, does he not appreciate the vastness and beauty of this unadulterated land? When clouds break up the sun’s omnipotent light into a thousand beams, scattering them onto the hills, houses, and people below, does one not ponder that another being is trying to touch us?

You say, It is all science. You say, the sunrise over the ocean is merely the refraction of light, and if we really wanted to, we could use our hi-tech computers to predict what the sunrise will look like tomorrow (as if the flight of seagull or the foam of a wave were predictable and able to be represented perfectly on a screen!)

Or you say, It is of necessity that nature exists, because without it, man could not survive. You claim that because humans live, it is necessary for nature to be the way it is, because if nature were different, we wouldn’t be the same creature. Therefore, the sun must rise and trees must be green and clouds must even sometimes scatter light. You may be right in those cases, but it does not capture the essence of the argument. It may be necessary for the sun to rise, but the sun must not rise beautifully. That a sun must rise to sustain life is irrefutable. But that a sun must shine light against an early morning sky and bounce light off at various angles and multitudes to the eyes of an onlooker is not necessary, but it is beautiful.

Whether we accept it or not, the issue returns to man and his construction. It is necessary for man to live under the sun, and one could argue that it is necessary for man to have the ability to see, but what, dear reader, makes man see beautifully? Why does man stand as the lone appreciator of nature? Why can man, along all the beasts, see the sunrise over the ocean as beautiful?

It is not of necessity that man sees beautifully, for man depends not on beauty to survive and sustain. Man was made to see beautifully because the Maker made a creation worth appreciating as beautiful. God made Creation not only to be useful, but to be beautiful. It is God’s way of saying, “I am pleased with what I have made; appreciate it with me!” That we see the sunrise, the tree-clad mountains, the sun-scattered landscape, the clear night sky and the eagle’s majestic flight as beautiful is not necessary, but a gift. It is the gift of communion with the unseen Creator, God.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” ~Psalm 19:1

II. A Battle for Nothing

If it is true, as atheists believe, that there is no God (or as agnostics believe, that it is impossible for man to know God), then why do they spend so much time and effort arguing against something that does not exist? Because there is nothing there in their eyes, they cannot be said to be fighting for anything.

It is as if they are telling a young boy that Santa Claus does not exist and then becoming offended when the young boy tells him that there is. And they do not get angry in the way one gets angry as if he is the only sane man on earth; they get angry in the way one gets angry as if what he is up against will annihilate his way of life if it is not destroyed. It is the killing of Santa Claus for fear that if enough people actually believe in him, the world will start wearing red velvet suits and pointed shoes with bells on the toes to work and expect everyone else to do so. He is fighting against what is to him, a fairy tale.

If the atheist or agnostic cannot be fighting for anything and against a mere fairy tale, what is the purpose of fighting at all? If God is merely a fairy tale created my man, what’s the harm in letting Christians believe in him; after all, eventually every kid “comes to his senses” and stops believing in Santa Claus, why not God?

The opposite side is this: Christians have something worthy for which to fight. For if they are correct about the existence and reality of God (and they are), there is a burden placed upon them. They have the truth; they realize that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one enters God’s promised Kingdom of Heaven except through belief in his death for man’s sins and resurrection to authenticate his claims. They know and posses what many men strive to obtain their entire lives but fall painfully short: the Truth. If Christians are correct, how ultimately important it is for Christians to talk to the atheist or agnostic (in love, of course, since that is something Christians have, or ought to have, given that “God is love.”) in the saving of their soul. Christ came “to seek and to save what was lost,” and every Christian has that same call to spread the Message of eternal life in Heaven with the world.

In summation, the Christian has everything to fight for; the atheist has nothing but the satisfaction of being right (that is, until he dies).

III. The Phenomenon of Language

How does the atheist explain the phenomenon of language? This question, perhaps above all, stumps me. How is it that man has developed such a vast array of languages if it were not at Babel as described in the Scriptures?

The first conjecture one would make is that language is a product of a region or civilization. While it is true that languages are spoken in regions, it does not make languages products of those regions. Sure, the Eskimos have thirty names for snow, but it is not the snow itself that makes the Eskimos have so many names for it. People living in Japan are likely to speak Japanese, but the oddly-shaped island never made them do it. The idea that geography dictates language is silly. I may depend on an apple to live, but the apple never introduced itself to me.

Thus, the second conjecture: language is simply a product of evolution. On the surface, this seems reasonable. Man needed the ability to communicate more information to describe its surrounding and other life-essential things and thus created a series of sounds to symbolize these things. But what, dear reader, makes the sound systems, these languages, so different? If we are all human, as I can assume we are, then are we not all built the same? All healthy, breathing people have the ability to speak. If we were all crafted in the same image (and for Christians, that image is God), then we ought to have evolved the same; that is, if language is a product of evolution, we ought to have developed the same language. Our minds and bodies are the same, so our instinct (if it can be called that) to speak would be the same, and the language we create should also be the same according to this theory.

The problem is this: there are too many and too different languages in the world today. If you’re still on the evolution bandwagon, let me offer you a situation. If man started in Mesopotamia (for example), then man’s first language was universal. As the land became more populated, people spread and encountered new things and these new things needed new words. So man created them. As time went on, man created more words for more things, but by now, there need be no further explanation for I can make my point here and now. Man started with a universal language; and as time expired, he took the freedom of creating new words. Cultures and peoples used these words, but they merely adapted their previous language base in doing so. In other words, if man started with a universal language base, there ought to be some evidence of it. But there is not. Linguists can prove that some languages are “related” to others, but they have not discovered an Alpha-language.

And they will not. Evolution cannot and will never explain why languages are so diverse. No matter how long something is drawn out over a seemingly infinite period of time, it does not make a thing any less miraculous; nor does it provide an explanation for the facts. A fact is that German, Japanese, Afrikaan, and English are incalculably diverse. No span of time can explain the changes in words, sounds, and sentence structure exhibited by these languages. No linguist can trace these languages to the Alpha-language. It seems as if only a super-human force could have caused such a multitude of languages.

There is a much better answer to our predicament. The third and final conjecture can be the only true one. It states that man did once possess one universal language and a common speech; and then encountered one jealous super-human force that changed the course of speech forever. The story is that of Babel as explained in Genesis 11. Man had one language; but then sought to become like God and reach heaven. Their vision was to build a tower larger than that the world has ever seen, but their motive was prouder. They sought equality with God. They desired the ability to boast that they could do all things without God. After all, it is the oldest sin in the book, dating back to Adam and Eve, and their craving for the knowledge of God. God knew that the people’s universal language was what was uniting them to this cause – so he “confuse[d] their language so they [could] not understand each other” (Gen. 11:7).

Babel fulfills both of our logical requirements: first, that man had developed a universal language; and second, that something greater than man had to have made such a vast assortment of languages with seemingly no relation to each other. The one-then-many through evolution hypothesis fails the second requirement, for mere geography or time could not have made language so diverse. Only God could have created such a queer mix of symbolic sounds for such a queer creature, and I can but smile knowing God put our mouths into such a curious mess.

~end part one~

On The Marriage Protection Amendment

A few weeks ago, my first couple weeks back from school, I had heard all of this glorious dialogue about a Marriage Protection Amendment. I am not even sure of my opinion, and I will give the following arguments for my indecision.

First, I believe that same-sex marriage is an obvious assault on the institution of marriage. Biblically speaking, marriage is between a man and a woman. Additionally, homosexuality is a sin (Rom. 1:26-27). That’s further from the point. The family is the basic foundation of any society. A basic family is a mother, father, and their children. If it can be broken down further, it may be said that sex (respectably used), is the foundation of family, for families could not exist without sex. The qualification of that statement deserves an essay itself, but that will wait for another time. Families have been damaged by the improper and disrespectful abuse of sex. To “fix” the problem (that is defining the problem as that of families and not of the abuse of sex), society has attempted to redefine the family, or at least what is left of it. It should go without saying that families today are in the worst shape they have ever been. Divorce and single-parenthood (including absentee parenthood) are at an all-time high and a traditional family is not too traditional anymore. Our perversion has led to an increased interest in same-sex relationships based on a confused view of sex. Instead of checking our definition of sex, we have attempted to redefine family, and thus the attack on marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman; don’t shape the definition of family around your wicked desires.

Second, I am quite sure that governments should not be the ones attempting to redefine marriage. While the definition sounds like the Christian (and correct) definition, I firmly believe that government should not see themselves as able to protect marriage, for doing so would mean the government has the authority over marriage, which it does not. The only solutions are local solutions. No problem will ever be fixed completely by government legislation, it takes the actions of individuals, families, and communities for any real progress to be made. Marriage, no matter how much legislation protects it, will never be safe as long as sex remains to be practiced outside of it. Is this saying that marriage will never be safe? On this earth, probably. But individuals and families can influence communities to practice love inside the institution created by love.

On another note, I often wonder why atheists or agnostics marry. If they don’t believe in God, who created marriage, then why would they indulge in joining into them? It must be purely for economic or social status reasons, but that is pure cowardice.

Okay, I’m done. It was fun. Hope to hear what you think!

Later Days!!