Ride On

I took the Team out for a ride near Waco, where the Colonel has a squadron of Arabians. They were a little tricky to catch at first but came around soon enough to the lure of feed in a bucket.

It was good to be back in the saddle again and the kids had a fine time galloping about. I took the youngest on a short trail ride through some woods on the acreage, where we saw a snake eat a mouse.

In the meanwhile, the eldest charged about and managed to jump over a pile of brush. Stay on the horse, I thought, and sure enough he did.

After a couple of hours we took the horses back to the barn and hosed them down. They liked that, and no wonder, it was pushing 109 degrees. 

Great fun and big thanks to Mr. and Mrs. E. I've resolved to ride more often, good for mind, body and spirit.

Your Beacon of Tolerance,

LSP

Get in the Saddle

"For a so-called horseman you sure don't seem to do much riding, LSP," I hear you say, pointedly. Well not so fast. Monday being as good a day as any, I pulled on my Ariats, loaded a Circle Y in the truck and headed off to ride.

Keena

Which is what I did, on Keena, an old Polish Arabian mare who used to race and still has plenty of go. But I didn't push it, just walk, trot and a few short canters around Mesquites.

Front Office

Great to be back in the saddle again and next time I'll open things up a bit for a gallop. Good for mind, soul and body, provided you don't come off and break, obviously.

Ride on,

LSP

Alright There

So what's been going on in LSPland? Lent, obviously. Also some shooting and some not very successful small game hunting, but hey, it's good to get out in the field.

And some riding. About time too! 

I've been offered a Foundation Quarterhorse gelding and have a good mind to take it on, but first things first, let's meet the creature.

Have a blessed Lent,

LSP

A Handful Of Tack

Picked up a handful of tack and headed off for an episode of ride and shoot, only to discover that JB has Pigeon Fever, which is a nasty disease resulting in an abscess. Curable, fortunately. I rode Bebop instead and we had a good old gallop along the edge of a couple of large fields.

I loved that; Bebop can fairly fly along and we had plenty of space for it. Picked up a dog too and that was fine until he decided it'd be a neat trick to bite the horse's back legs while we were running. Bebop wasn't too keen on that game and made several good efforts to kick the dog out of existence -- stay in the saddle LSP! -- but no one, horse, hound or rider came to harm. 

I like a gallop, clears the head.

In other news, Jefferts Schori, boy bishop leaderene of The Episcopal Church, has written a book. She thinks that Our Lord was like a Hell's Angel who took toys to poor people, when not "messing about in boats" or being a "party animal." Well, nothing like a bit of christology to get the mind working...

Stay in the saddle,

LSP

Saddle Horn

The MC (Master of Ceremonies) at one of the Missions is a former bronc star. He won the world championship back in the '80s as pictured above.

He thinks me an "unlikely rider" and is concerned for my safety. The conversation after yesterday's Mass went something like this:

LSP: Off for a ride.

MC: Well you be careful.

LSP: Not to worry, if the going gets brisk I'll just hold on to the pommel thingy.

MC: Saddle Horn.

LSP: Ah yes! "Saddle Horn."

With that in mind, I had the Sunday afternoon fun of riding a well trained Arabian out by Waco with a group of parishioners. Fairly flew along, fast and flat over the fields, Western style. Didn't need the curious horn thing.

I want this saddle...

I love riding.

Stay in the saddle and, if you must, hold onto it - far better than bouncing off the ground, I always think.

Cheers,

LSP

Have a Blessed Sunday

golden void

Tried to get as much riding in as possible before flying off to the hopefully far cooler North. This means getting up earl and, on Saturday, driving to Miltdown Arabians with the sun at my back. Beautiful, there was even some rain, which was a godsend. 

Had a right workout, 'round poles and barrels at a canter/hand gallop, Western style. Total enjoyment and a good change to put some different horses through their paces.

ridiculous

Apart from horses, there was an interesting Gospel text this morning, in the feeding of the 5000, which serves as a type of the Eucharist. But why 5 loaves and 2 fish? 5 signifies the Law (5 books of the Pentateuch), which is fulfilled and sanctified by the twofold nature of Christ who is "true God and true man". The spiritual sustenance of this renewed Law is Christ Himself, who states "I am the bread of life", and is the acrostic in Greek for fish (Jesus Christ Son of God Savior). 

He will be the nourishment of the faithful whose number is 5000; as we are reminded in Acts, "The number of those who believed were 5000." These are the multitude of the new Law and constitute a new Israel, signified by the 12 baskets of food left over - fed by none other than Our Lord.

When I was a child, Rev. Ronnie Loyd, a Welshman, taught us that the real miracle and the spiritual meaning of the text, was that Jesus persuaded the 5000 to share their lunches, making it the "miracle of the bag lunches". 

hippys

Not dissimilar, I suppose, to a hippy "be-in" but without the thieving and general knavishness. I mentioned this interpretation to the congregation and denounced it trenchantly as, "Rubbish!"

God bless you all, not least in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Canada tomorrow.

LSP

Good Arabs

I know it's odd, but both LSP missions are heavily populated by shooters and riders, which means I get to combine pastoral visits with guns and horses and, lately, drive off to Waco where a member of the congregation has a stable of Arabians.

Arabs

They're fine, well trained, intelligent animals and a real pleasure to ride; I took off on Saheem the other day - walk, trot, canter, gallop, run! We sped along, fast and flat. Exhilarating. 


Then it was off to Lake Waco at a more relaxed pace, interspersed with the odd theology conversation.


Rider 1: "So, LSP, are you a Plato/Augustine man, or an Aristotle/Thomist?"
LSP: "Aristotle/Thomist, old chap."
Rider 1: "Thought so."
LSP: "But both are good. Unlike Hauerwas."
Rider 2: "He's bad. Got it all from Yoder."
Rider 1: "Yoder? They worship him at Duke."
LSP: "Useless. Saheem - canter!"

Saheem

And so on. Got into an informal race on the way back, chasing after my Platonist friend, "Rider 1". He has a book out on Just War Theory - sure to be a hit in LSPland.


A big vote of thanks to Miltown Arabians for the pleasure of a great ride - hopefully the first of many.


Stay on the horse,


LSP

Coyote, Hawk, Horse Gun

powerful LSP medicine

You'll have to forgive the lack of posts but things have been busy with the first two weeks of Lent and the attempt to get some penitential perspective on the business at hand.

camo jacket, now I'm invisible

Still, managed to have a go at the coyotes. Interesting result; got up early to make my stand at first light. Set up, hunkered down and called away (electronically), in a crosswind, upwind of a creek the dogs are running through. Did they come in?

JB and Bebop ready to go

No. Set off a few 'howls' and got a response - uphill and about a 1/4 of a mile away - along with lots of bellows from a herd of cows. The dogs had run uphill towards the bovines before I was in position, they weren't leaving those pastures for my "distressed rabbit", and who can blame them?

bad gelding

But the birds were listening, namely three hawks and a crow that answered the call and circled lazily overhead, looking for the hypothetical wounded bunny. They were neat to watch and it was good to see my call produced results, just not the ones I'd had in mind. So I went to another stand and called again, but then it was too late. No dogs...

But plenty of horses, which I rode. Excellent result.

Moral of the story? Get a better setup and try, try again - perseverance, you see.

God bless.

LSP

Happy Independence Day!

It's been an unusually hectic couple of weeks, what with worship,

teaching the faithful,

shooting,

training the horse (huge thanks to VS for training me...), working to some kind of deadline for the religious press, and reading Owen Chadwick's outstanding book, 'Spirit of the Oxford Movement.' Here's an excerpt, on Keble, who famously stated:

'If the Church of England were to fail, it should be found in my parish.'

And Chadwick's commentary:

'The stance is so squared and so real that it takes a moment to see how cloud-capped are the towers he defended.'

I fear LSPland isn't so very far from the same battlements; with that in mind, have a blessed Independence Day and stand vigilant for freedom.

Off to clean guns now.

Cheers,

LSP

Spurious Slice of Country Life

Managed to persuade one of the sisters to get on a horse. She had a good time.

I galloped about on Be-Bop,

and had a shoot.

Total enjoyment! At Camp Crucis now, teaching the St. Michael's Conference along with Apostolicity and Texanglican. Good result.

God bless,

LSP

Ride & Shoot

Downtown Brandon

I've made a new resolution to ride and shoot more, which means going out on Tuesday morning, through the bustling little town that probably never was Brandon, and saddling up at a farm just outside it - less fancy than the last place, but a lot more room to ride.

A place to ride

And to shoot, so I unleashed the AR on some targets from around 50 yards and successfully killed a tuna can and some of its Arizona Ice Tea brethren. The latter give a satisfying explosion when full...

Arab

There's plenty of room to hunt too, but I've yet to scout it out. All in good time.

Two flyers, two on

Now back in the day I would've scoffed at the AR, because of plastic components and the 5.56 of the thing. For me it had to be solid wood and steel or it wasn't real. That changed with the L1A1 and I'm perfectly happy blasting away with the carbine - still, when budget permits I think 7.62 in the same platform would make sense, you know, because of all the walls you have to shoot through...

Cheers,

LSP

Roving About

A gun, one of Tom's

The last few weeks have been busy, taken up with guns - I need more of them, but who doesn't -

Church,

Bishop Iker, Good Man

horses,

dogs,

Cats on the porch - they're not allowed inside,

and plinking.

Horses have moved to new pastures, where there's far more space and plenty of opportunity for going fast, which I like. Opportunity for coyote hunting too - not to be wasted. More anon.

God bless,

LSP

Eschaton

Along with the ride and shoot imperative goes a bit of reflection on the Revelation to St. John the Divine. Why? Because apocalypse seemed suitably Lenten and I foolishly told one of the Missions that I'd teach a course on it - something I've never done before. Farrer gives a powerful account; here's an excerpt, on bestial numerics:

"The number of the Beast reveals him as both the instrument of judgement on the wicked and the object of judgement himself. But that is not all. St. John takes up two mathematical properties of the 666. First, 666 is what we should call the recurrent decimal for 2/3. St. John's age did not talk about recurrent decimals, but of course St. John could recognize 666 as two-thirds of that standard quantity, the thousand. Why is Antichrist two-thirds? because the angels of the trumpets (showing the enthronement of pagan power) have destroyed one-third of everything before he begins to reign, and the angels of the vials return with total destruction as he comes to his end. In the interval he reigns over a kingdom of two-thirds."

Farrer goes on to describe 666 as the triangulation of 6 x 6:

"666, therefore, is a 12 fold triangle with a periphery of 30 x 3 1/2. St. John's calculation of the period of the Beast's reign, in days, is 12 (months) x 30 (days) x 3 1/2 (years). The coincidence between this reckoning and the factors of the 666 triangle is no mere accident... the purpose of the artificial reckoning is to exhibit the Beast's fatally limited reign as a function of his number."

There's a lot of mathematics in the Revelation, unfortunately for me, but whoever said life would be easy?

Speaking of maths, my Revelation class added up the number of horses that were collectively owned by the people in the room and came up with 21 beasts. A decent little force multiplier if things get all eschaton and we have to leave the Union of the False Prophet.

God bless Texas.

LSP

Horsing Around

Rural Texas was the way England used to be before Carbon turned the erstwhile land of hope and glory into some kind of Kurt Vonnegut Ice 9 disaster. In other words, it was misty and wet with the light drizzle of rain that I always used to associate with the onset of spring, or summer for that matter. But nostalgia aside, it was good to get out to the stables and ride about, except for one thing.

As soon as I began to get into the stride of a canter, the horse would pull a quick head duck, half halt, sneeze, then proceed as if nothing much had happened. But it had, the rider had nearly gone over the handlebars; not dissimilar, I suppose, to being on a motorcycle when the brakes go on unannounced - scary. Didn't come off, fortunately.

Still, sneezing aside, it was great to get back in the saddle for an hour or so. Curious creatures, horses - they do me the world of good.

Get to sight in new M4gery tomorrow, excited about that.

Stay on the horse,

LSP