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What’s the weekly mettle maker?
Training tips and educational info in support of our free programs, that’s what! What’s mettle? Mettle is, “The ability to meet a challenge or persevere under demanding circumstances; determination or resolve.” Want to cultivate your rough ‘n’ tumble mettle? Complete one of our 100 Feats!
Mettle maker #473: PASSION AND HUMILITY
Last week I listed all nine of the takedowns and throws in the Heritage Rough ‘n’ Tumble curriculum. We’re going to be making videos on the ones we haven’t already. This week we added Drop Shoulder Throw and Scarf Hold Takedown. See video above right.
Before you can practice throws with your friends you need to get good at your shoulder rolls, back falls, and side deadfalls. Humble yourself. Practice them often. If you don’t have a partner to train with, and you need to train solo, make or buy a grappling dummy and throw that instead.
It’s not complicated. Add at least these two takedowns to your toolbox — preferably all nine — but at least these two.
Moving on.
It has been way too long since we posted some outdoor skills material.
What in tarnation do outdoor skills have to do with martial arts?
This is Rough ‘n’ Tumble. If we’re going to fight like the old-timers we need to, as much as we can from a practical standpoint, think and live like the old-timers did.
Many of the greatest old-time fighters credited their life skills and day jobs for their winning ways. Jack Dempsey was a coal miner. James Braddock was a stevedore. Rocky Marciano worked as a ditch digger and railroad layer.
So many of the our wrestling greats have been farm boys that it might be easier to list the ones who weren’t. For those who can’t name any, try Rulon Gardner and Matt Hughes and (gulp) Frank Gotch.
Karl Gotch was a blacksmith.
How you live is how you fight. How good is your top saddle and your wrestling ride if you spend half your life in the saddle?
How much manual labor, and how any outdoor skills did Daniel Boone and David Crockett possess? Would you like to go back in time and fight either one of them?
Outdoor skills are survival skills, and survival skills are self-defense skills.
How about learning a new plant, why don’t we?
The plant on the left is a Maypop, Passiflora incarnata, a.k.a. purple passionflower or wild apricot. It’s a true passionflower, a very hardy, perennial vine, great for your yard or garden. Egg sized fruit appear from August to October in the American South (in other words, now). The blooms are lovely and fruit is yummy. By the way, it’s called a Maypop because of the popping sound it makes if stomped on!
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Holy Eucharist is LIVE on YouTube every Sunday at 10 am EASTERn. Click HERE to watch live. To view and print a copy of the program for holy Eucharist, CLICK HERE.
Homily for the Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time 8/31/25 – Father Mitch
Readings: Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29, Psalm 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11, Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a, Luke 14:1, 7-14
Luke 13:22-30 World English Bible
1 When he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching Jesus carefully. 7 He spoke a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the best seats, and said to them, 8 “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, don’t sit in the best seat, since perhaps someone more honorable than you might be invited by him, 9 and he who invited both of you would come and tell you, ‘Make room for this person.’ Then you would begin, with shame, to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes, he may tell you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
When I was a young we listened to music performed by real musicians on real instruments, recorded on vinyl records, and played on stereos that were powered by tubes. There were no solid state stereos with silicon chips inside them. There were no electronic music files. Most everyone today takes the tone of modern sound files for granted. But when CDs and solid state stereos came out, plenty of folks didn’t like it. We thought it was cold, flat, and thin. The only reason the new technology took over is because it is cheaper, more portable, and more durable. The sound quality isn’t in the same ballpark. I guarantee that the depth and richness of something like the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys, or anything by Frank Sinatra played on a vintage, top-of-the line, tube-powered stereo system would truly shock the ears of a person who’s never heard anything that deep and rich.
This is happening in all aspects of our culture, not just in music. Slowly and by degrees a kind of shallowness has taken over our movies, our books, our news, everything. The words that we speak, hear, and read lack subtlety and depth. We have passed through the Modern Age and entered into the Shallow Age.
Let’s listen to the rich recordings in today’s Bible readings with ancient ears! When we hear from Sirach that we should conduct our affairs with humility that we will be loved more than a giver of gifts, we should hear a deeper ring of truth. Material gifts are not what people in need want most. What they want are caring friends who don’t act superior or look down on them. When we are suffering, we want neighbors who’ll listen to us, care about us, and sympathize with us.
When we sing today’s psalm, “God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor” we hear the richness of this prayer. The poor are those in need – not just in need of money, but in need of love, guidance, and healing. Poverty is almost always the outward sign of a deeper privation – a lack of mental or physical health, a deep personal wound, a festering resentment or a flaw in character that needs to be mended. When the psalmist sings, “God gives a home to the forsaken; he leads forth prisoners to prosperity” he sings of the way in which God heals, mends, and fills up the poor in spirit.
When Jesus advises the Pharisees to humble themselves and take the least exalted seats, of course he’s using the host’s invitation of the humble person to sit at a higher place as a metaphor for God’s invitation of the humble into the afterlife. When he suggests that we sit at the end of the table where the least exalted sit, he’s advising us to sit down with people who are poor – not just poor in money! – but with people who are poor in spirit, in every manner of moral, spiritual, and physical privation.
As we read in Hebrews, there was a time when God had Moses stand at the foot of Mount Zion and prevent the people from ascending to be with him. But now we have a new covenant in Christ, who has descended from heaven to sit with us at the unexalted end of the table. Not only does he dine with us – he gives us his body and blood as true food and true drink that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.
Let us in turn dine with those who are in moral, spiritual, and physical poverty, and feed them both with alms and with the spiritual food of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
