Balancing Pose

Clues to God's Character

Numbers 32-Deuteronomy 7 (Day 13)

It starts toward the end of Numbers and continues through Deuteronomy: Moses prepares the people for the transition from wilderness wandering, to battle, to settling in the promised land. Moses will not enter the land. If my count is right, Moses himself mentions this three times in the first six chapters of Deuteronomy. He got irritated with the people of Israel. That irritation spilled over into disobedience to God, and so Moses joins the rest of the first generation of those freed from Egypt yet destined to die outside the boundaries of the promised land. 

Boundary Speech: From Remembrance to Trust

Moses’ farewell speech takes place at the edges. The wilderness itself is one giant boundary between slavery and inheritance. Moses himself is near the boundary between life and death.

In this place and time “between,” the speech of Moses itself pivots between remembering and anticipating. He commands the Israelites to remember what God has done for them, to teach it all to their children, and to recognize the ways that God’s actions in their history have shown them God’s loyal character. The memory of God’s faithfulness will (or at least it should) help them trust God when they are in the midst of uncertainties that lie in the future for them. These early chapters of Deuteronomy make the point that God will hold up God’s end of the bargain. God has freed them; God will give them the land.

The pivot from remembering to trusting should work better than it does for most of us. Given what they know of God’s faithfulness, why do the Israelites so quickly and so often fail to trust God in the chapters and books of Scripture yet to come? One might also ask, why do we? 

"Not as the World Gives...."

One of my favorite quotes is a line from Annie Dillard, possibly from Holy the Firm. “Ask. Seek. Knock.” she writes, alluding to Matthew 7:7, “But you have to read the fine print: ‘Not as the world gives do I give to you.’” Maybe trust is so difficult for us because we just forget. We forget about God’s deliverance. We need someone to remind us of God’s past faithful and generous actions, especially when the present and future are frightening. But maybe there is something more than poor memory at play here, too. I wonder if something in us doesn’t know that, even though faithfulness and generosity are elements of God’s character, one may also say of God what Jesus said of himself: “Not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:27, RSV). That not-as-the-world giving is not always what we are sure we need. The temptation, then, is to think we might be better off taking matters into our own hands. 

In the readings to come, I’ll be looking for how God’s faithfulness and generosity surprise the Israelites not only because (a) they forgot that God is faithful and generous, but also because (b) they defined faithfulness and generosity rather differently from the way God did.

Why I Hate (Parts of) the Old Testament

Numbers 21-32, especially Numbers 31

There are several reasons I do not like many part of the Old Testament. Numbers 31 represents one of them: so-called holy war. The chapter is one of those “God said to lay waste” chapters. Words like “avenge” and “vengeance” figure prominently. Moses is furious when he finds out that the soldiers who killed all the Midianite men let the women live. He orders the death of any women who have “seduced the People of Israel away from God in that mess at Peor” (31:17, The Message), and so on. 

One of my pastoral colleagues says that he believes this sort of thing in Scripture is a “period piece,” by which he means that Israel saved in its canon the record of how it used to think about God in order to show how its thinking evolved. Ancient Israelites understood God to be commanding them into war and genocide. Later generations would not be so quick to assume that the impulse to war and genocide came from God. In this view, the scripture as a whole is not a moral guide as much as it is a record of the good, the bad, and the ugly as Israel struggled through their history to hear and heed God. Just because something is in the Bible, and just because something is said to bear God’s stamp of approval, that doesn’t mean it went down as God would have wanted. 

This helps a little, but mostly I am still appalled by holy war texts. To get through readings like this, I have to rely on what I know from the New Testament: Jesus never, ever took up arms against his enemies. Yes, he worshiped the God of Israel; yes, he was a Jew. It is also true that he never took up arms. The closest he came was that whip of cords with which he cleared the temple, which was a far cry from the summary execution of “seductresses” in Numbers 31. In Christ, God does not “get a bigger hammer” to solve the problem of human sinfulness. Instead, God absorbs the blows and neutralizes the power of violence by not returning evil for evil. The only way I can read texts like this Midianite massacre is to say that whatever God was thinking and doing then, God was acting in an equally earth-shattering, yet decidely non-violent way, in Jesus of Nazaeth.

Looking Back vs. Living Forward

Numbers 8-21

Over and over again in this section, the Israelites complain about their circumstances in the wilderness, and each time, they bring up Egypt. The wilderness wandering is interminable. How is this better than a life of slavery, punctuated by a decent meal now and then?

“We ate fish in Egypt—and got it free!—to say nothing of the cucumbers and melons, the leeks and onions and garlic” (Num 11:5).

“Why didn’t we die in Egypt? Or in this wilderness? Why has God brought us to this country to kill us? Our wives and children are about to become plunder. Why don’t we just head back to Egypt? And right now!” (Num 14:2-3).

“And why did you take us out of Egypt in the first place, dragging us into this miserable country? No grain, no figs, no grapevines, no pomegranates—and now not even any water!” (Num 20:5, all texts are from The Message).

Going back, rather than forward, often looks like a good strategy. That is never more true than when selective memory has helped you filter out the bad times and romanticize the good. Those of us reading these chapters after having read Exodus know that what the Israelites remember about Egypt is not all there is to the story. These people had been slaves in Egypt. When Moses went to them with news that God had heard their cries and would rescue them, they were too worn down even to hope for an end to their trouble. When Moses asked the Pharaoh to give God’s people time off to worship God in the wilderness, he concluded they had too much free time and simply increased their workload. Now the people of Israel have forgotten all that. When something hard is happening in the wilderness, their first thought is, “If only we were back in Egypt.” 

When we are tempted to look for ways to “go back” to the good old days, it may help to remember a few things the Israelites are having trouble calling to mind here:

1. Life doesn’t run backward. We live our lives in one direction. Remembering is not a bad thing, but recreating or re-living the past is not possible and trying to do it puts us at risk of missing what new things God is doing in our present and future. 
2. The longing to go back is often based in a lie. Were things really the way we remember them? How many lashings did an Israelite slave endure before they went home to a few slices of fresh cucumber? 
3. God is trustworthy, especially when things are hard. We do not need to look back with longing. We will find God not just in the past but also ahead of us, in the future we cannot see yet. 

Timothy Dudley-Smith has written a hymn text, “O Christ the Same,” that puts our lives in the context of the news that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) and gives us words to offer thanks, not just for the past and present, but also for the future even before it happens. In the last line, we sing, “O Christ the same, beyond our brief tomorrows, we bring you thanks for all that is to be” (text © 1984 Hope Publishing Company).

Happiness and Habit

One of my mom's favorite observations what that "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." (Forget for a minute that it's not clear why you would want to catch flies.) Several influences have converged lately to push me toward a more sweetly regimented life.

Getting Outside

Finally, after the longest winter in years, and a wet, cold spring, it's started to be nice enough to spend time outside. Kaylee and I do a lot of walking year 'round, but it has started to be fun again. Most of the time our route takes us down to the Mississippi, across it, and back on a different bridge. Everyone in the house is happier on days when we take this walk. Kaylee gets enough exercise that she leaves me alone to write for longer hours and Hank doesn't feel like he is competing with the dog for attention in the evening. I do not feel chained to a computer screen where the magic of insightful writing is maddenly refusing to appear at regular intervals. 

Cleaning the House

I miscalculated last month and ended up hosting two events when my house and dinner were, let's just say, out of sync with when the guests were arriving. Read: things were a mess and diners were fainting from low blood sugar. These miscalculations—and spring—inspired me to get a little more proactive on the housecleaning front. I've had help from the iPhone app called Home Routines. It gives you editable lists of things to do, and gold stars when you accomplish each task. There are lists of morning and evening tasks, weekly tasks, and "zones" that you work in a little at a time so that you more deeply clean your whole house over the course of a month without turning into that person whom housemates and small animals fear. 

Reading Devotionally

This commitment to read the Bible in 90 days means that I'm regularly reading the Bible for 20-30 minutes a day. The habit is admittedly less than a week old, and I hesitate to claim too much too soon here. All I will say so far is that it seems easier than I thought it would be. This is another place where I'm getting some help from my friends. Twitter peeps @nathanhoff and @chrisenstad keep posting on their reading, and their commentary encourages me to think of this project as a conversation rather than a chore.

*   *   *

It occurs to me that all of these developed and developing habits have in common some outside influence that makes me smile. The dog practically wags right out of her skin when she sees me lace up my walking shoes. The iPhone app breaks unpleasant work into small tasks and rewards me with pixels of gold when I accomplish something. Colleagues on Twitter keep a conversation going that is interesting enough that I want to keep up with it, and with them. I'll never accomplish great things by force of will, but that's ok. Like the flies, I do better with honey.

In What Kind of Lives Does God Work?

Genesis 28-50

The second half of Genesis reads a bit like a script from Dallas or one of those other "big, rich, morally bankrupt family" shows from the 1970s. There are patriarchs, wives, affairs, corrupt business dealings, and underhanded schemes at every turn. Laban would probably win the prize for the most double-crossing of all the double-crossing family members here, but I don't know: Jacob seems to give as good as he gets. Joseph's brothers are in the running too, not only lying to their father about Joseph's death for years, but also selling him into slavery in the first place. And then there's Joseph himself, with his deceptions and set-ups after he recognizes his brothers and before they know they are dealing with him.

The striking thing about these chapters from a theological perspective is that God is at work in the midst of all this violent, creepy, and (we must say) fairly "normal" family life. Tamar plays a prostitute in order to trick the patriarch, Judah, into providing her an heir (cf. Gen. 38). From that heir, the Messiah is a descendent (cf. Matthew 1). Joseph's brothers nearly kill him, then decide to sell him into slavery not out of mercy but merely for more personal gain, and though Joseph's own fortunes are up and down for years, in the end many people are saved from famine because he was eventually in the right place (prison) at the right time (after Pharoah had dreams no one else could interpret).

To the question, "Through what kinds of people does God work for good?" the answer is, "People like you." Your life, with its twists and wrong turns, with its lucky breaks and unlucky mistakes, with its displays of generosity and displays of sin: your life is exactly the kind of life God works in to redeem what has been lost, or stolen, or sold away, and to bless all the nations of the earth.

The Bible in 90 Days

Download Schedule (.pdf) for reading the Bible in 90 days.

When I heard that my colleagues, Pastors Chris Enstad and Clint Schnekloth were starting on June 1 to read through the Bible in 90 days, I decided to make another attempt. I’ve never managed to read straight through the Bible. In fact, my attempts have led me to wonder where the idea is even all that useful a way to access Scripture. I love intensive reading of Scripture, focusing on a few sentences or paragraphs and relating those to the book they are in. Extensive reading is another matter: I feel simultaneously rushed and bored trying to gobble down big chunks of text each day. 

However, I really like Chris and Clint, and I respect their instincts for ministry and for living the Christian faith. “If they’re doing this,” I said to myself, “It must be worth doing.” So I’m trying again. Doubts about the project’s merit for me notwithstanding, I’ve just finished the reading for Day Two.

The Message?

I’ve chosen The Message as my version, mostly because when I have tried to read a real Bible translation, I get stuck in books like Leviticus or Numbers. I’m hoping the conversational style and popular vocabulary of Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase will help me make it all the way through the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments.

Today's Highlights

Genesis 1: "Lights! Camera! Action!"

The first chapter of Genesis is fun to read in The Message. God sounds like a play director, shouting direction to actors, stage manager, lighting guys. There are one-word sentences with exclamation points (e.g. “Light!”) and a count of the days whose form actually mirrors the Hebrew (e.g. “Day Four.”)

Genesis 18: Entertaining Angels Unawares

I have always loved the story in Genesis 18 about the three men coming to visit Abraham. These are the guys who elicit laughter from an eavesdropping Sarah when they tell Abraham that they will return “this time next year,” and Sarah will have borne a son.

The news of Isaac’s birth is both funny and joyful, but the part of the story I like best is the first part, when Abraham sees the strangers from a distance and runs out in the heat of the day to greet them. Won’t they stop for a while, he asks, just to rest in the shade perhaps? The strangers agree and (presumably) rest; meanwhile Abraham and Sarah shift into high gear, slaughtering and roasting a calf (how long must that have taken?), baking bread, getting milk, and otherwise working to put "a morsel" (18:5, KJV) before the travelers. This story is for everyone who ever over-prepared for a special meal; more profoundly, perhaps, it reminds an audience thousands of years removed from Abraham that by showing hospitality to strangers, we may, like him, “entertain angels unawares” (cf. Hebrews 13:2, KJV).

Accordance Users' Conference

I spent a couple of days last week with a few dozen avid Accordance Bible Software users and members of the team from Oak Tree Software. David Lang's last "top 10" reason to attend the conference ("Become a power user of Accordance 9") was the encouragement I needed, together with an astonishingly cheap flight/hotel deal from Orbitz. Off to Dallas I went.

Prof. Rick Mansfield has written a great review of the conference as a whole. I concur with everything there, except I'm a good bit less interested in mobile computing than he is (otherwise I'm completely normal). Since I attended a couple of the sessions that he did not mention, I thought I would report on those here and then offer some thoughts for next year.

Workspaces

Dr. Tim Jenny (a.k.a. "Dr. J.") did a session on Building Custom Workspaces. If you missed it, you can catch his podcast on the topic and/or download his notes from this Accordance forum (maybe, at last check they weren't there yet). The best part of this for me was his quick differentiation of these elements of a workspace: zones, windows, panes, tabs. Each of these elements behaves a bit differently from the others. You can combine them in ways that make sense for whatever project you're working on and then save different workspace configurations for different projects.

The addition of zones in Accordance 9 makes the Accordance workspace amazingly flexible without being so busy you get lost in your own resources. I love the ability to have a lexicon and analysis details open alongside my texts. I have also discovered that the maps open now by default in a separate zone. No more clicking tabs back and forth to see these resources while reading Scripture.

Presentations & Accordance

Rev. Tom Childers did a session on working with Accordance as a Presentation Tool. Rev. Childers mentioned "Slide Show" mode (available in the Window menu), but he spent most of the session demonstrating how one could work with a dual display to have notes and a "busier" Accordance workspace on a computer while a cleaner text-only window could be displayed on a projector. There were lots of general tips on presentation style too ("Have a backup plan." "Know your equipment.")

The session offered a great example of the way many of us use Accordance alongside a number of other tools. It doesn't make sense to try to turn Accordance into Keynote or PowerPoint. If you need a static map in a presentation, it makes sense to export an image into a presentation that you build in one of those programs. On the other hand, if you want to scroll through a Scripture reading for people, especially with parallel texts, or you need the flexibility of showing texts or places on a map "on the fly" with an audience, Accordance can be running on your computer and simultaneously looking good on a projector.

The Construct Window

If they had not been offered at the same time, I would have attended both the Graphical Resources workshop and the Construct Window workshop. Alas, until the Accordance software team turns its attention to time travel, choices like this will need to be made. I went to David Lang's Construct Window workshop. Great pedagogy here! David started by showing us a search performed with the search entry box, then showed us how to do the same search in the construct window, then how to add new elements to refine results of that search again within the construct window.

After the session, I'm not as scared of the construct window as I was before it. I still routinely get error messages when I try to use it, but I've found (wait for it...) it helps to read the error messages instead of just clicking them away. They really are error-specific and they often help me understand what I've done wrong. Reading through the hits also helps clarify what I need to do either to limit a search further or to back off certain limits in order to see what I'm looking for. Looking down the list of hits, I quickly see what Accordance thought I wanted (that is, what I actually asked for), and I can see how it is like or not like what I am actually after.

Ideas for Next Year

Keep Multiple Formats

This year's conference featured plenary sessions, "light" and "heavy" tracks of how-to sessions, and panel discussions. The variety, in my view, was just right. I'd love to see similar variety in future conferences. The evening session on a related topic but not on Accordance per se also worked very well.

'More is More' in terms of Presenter Preparation

The sessions worked best when presenters had examples "up their sleeve" as it were, and not so well when they depended on examples from the audience. Maybe we audience members were unprepared. Maybe we did not want to monopolize a session with what might be either too simple or too arcane a request. For whatever reason, more than once the energy went out of a session—at least for a moment—when the presenter said, "What about you? What would you like to see?" I know presenters were trying to involve us, but something about it seemed to make everyone quiet. From Rick's assessment of the last session (which I had to miss in order to catch a flight), it sounds like that session, too, was a good idea that got a little derailed by a similar dynamic.

Handouts

I'm not sure if a decision was made, conference-wide, not to have handouts, but if so, I'd urge presenters to reconsider this for two reasons.

1. If you have to produce a handout for your session, you as the presenter have to get clearer on what you are trying to accomplish. You cannot as easily give in to the temptation to punt (or so I'm told).
2. A few screenshots or tips on a one-page handout can help session participants take notes and help them recall the session highlights much later. Without such a handout, much more is likely to be quickly forgotten.

I'm not asking for a photocopy of every presenter's slides or a dozen screen shots. In fact, that would be less helpful than what I want, which is just what will fit on one page per session. These could then be posted to the forums for users who couldn't make it to the conference.

Progress on Learning Goals & More

I wanted two things from the conference.

1. I wanted to come home with an enhanced capacity for doing my own scholarly work in Accordance, especially given the updates of Accordance in version 9.
2. I wanted to learn the program well enough to teach my Luther Seminary students how to use it in Greek and exegesis classes.

I made progress on both of these goals. And while it wasn't part of a learning goal, exactly, it was a great pleasure to make the acquaintance of the real people/rock stars behind the software and the support provided for it. Thanks to all of those who put this event together.

Sabbatical, Day One: Triage-Free Laundry

I woke up early this morning, 4:40 a.m. to be exact. The jitters made it feel like the first day of school or something. July 1 begins a 12-month sabbatical from teaching and on-campus responsibilities at Luther Seminary. I'm actually still working on tying up loose ends in a project I've titled, "Preparing for Sabbatical," so today's work was not dramatically different from yesterday's. The day did hold one moment, however, that reminded me of the difference between sabbatical and "real life."

I started the day by putting a load of clothes in the dryer and taking a walk with the dog. When we got back, the clothes were dry. As I opened the dryer, I thought, "I could just fold these and put them away right now." And then I did that.

I didn't throw them back into the basket, sorting out only what had to be hung immediately to avoid ironing later. I didn't toss them all on the futon or the bed for folding later—"when there's time." I just finished the laundry task. The whole thing took maybe 6 or 7 minutes.

Now I've probably had that kind of time to fold laundry on other mornings before work, but I never think I have any time—for anything. How much of our days do we spend like triage nurses deciding between urgent tasks that require attention? Laundry is less important than sleep, which is less important than making breakfast, which is less important than meeting prep, which is less important than getting to class, and on and on. It was wonderful to fold handkerchiefs, bath towels, socks without having first navigated a maze of decisions about the relative urgency of the task.

One of the goals for this sabbatical is to figure out how to live a more sabbath-oriented life after it. What rhythms of work and rest might the year reveal to me that are sustainable even when meetings, students, classes, church presentations, and all the rest crowd back in? Future posts will take up the question of how busy I need to be, and why. For now, it is enough that I got my laundry folded and still had time for some other work that benefits more than just myself and my closest neighbor. It was a good start to sabbatical.

sabbatical

Retooling Greek for Parish Ministry

I'm teaching a Kairos continuing education class at Luther Seminary this month on how to get your Greek serviceable again if it's been a while since you worked with it. Here's the schedule, pending approval from the Kairos office. You can register here.

Retooling Greek for Parish Ministry

June 21-25, 2010

Luther Seminary - Stub Hall Lounge

Mary Hinkle Shore, professor of New Testament

________________________________________________________________________

Monday

                                                      1-2:30 p.m.     Welcome, Introductions, Shape of the Week; Vocabulary

                                                      2:30-2:45 p.m.      Break

                                                2:45-3:40 p.m.            The Article

                                                      3:40-3:50 p.m.      Break

                                                      3:50-4:40 p.m.      Verbs

                                                      4:40 p.m.     Class ends

________________________________________________________________________

Tuesday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Participles

                                                      10 a.m.    Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.    Little Words: Prepositions, Conjunctions, & Particles

                                                      12:15 p.m.    Class ends

   1:30-3:00 p.m.     Optional afternoon session on BibleWorks software

________________________________________________________________________

Wednesday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Infinitives, Nouns & Adjectives, Pronouns

                                                      10 a.m.   Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.     Studying Words: Using Concordance Tools & Lexicons

                                                      12:30 p.m.     Class ends

   1:30-3:00 p.m.      Optional afternoon session on Accordance Bible software

            ________________________________________________________________________

Thursday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Process for Greek in Sermon Preparation (using texts for Fifth Sunday after Pentecost).

                                                      10 a.m.     Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.   Process for Greek in Sermon Preparation, part two.

                                                      12:15 p.m.    Class ends

   1:30-3:00 p.m.       Optional afternoon session on web tools for Greek study

                                                      ________________________________________________________________________

Friday

                                                      8:30-9:45 a.m.      Process for Using Greek in Bible Study Preparation

                                                      10 a.m.     Chapel and Break

                                                      10:45 a.m.    Resource Fair & Further Study Options

                                                      12:30 p.m.    Class ends

Required Reading

Webb, Joseph M. and Robert Kysar, Greek for Preachers. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2002.

Shore, Mary Hinkle. “How Do I Keep My Greek (or Get It Back)?” Working Preacher, posted 11/16/09. URL http://www.workingpreacher.org/texts.aspx?article_id=278, accessed May 31, 2010.

Other Resources

The bookstore will have two laminated Greek study guides on hand from Zondervan, an introductory one by William Mounce and an intermediate one by Daniel Wallace.

Results of the GO! Challenge

Members of the ELCA pension and benefits program have a wellness benefit. We earn up to $450 off of our deductible for participating in various activities aimed at identifying and addressing our individual health risks. Taking a health assessment results is worth 150 points ($150). After that, enrolling in various online programs to encourage stress reduction, weight loss, increased fitness activity and the like add points to your account, up to a total of 450 in a year.

I chose to earn 300 points with the GO! Challenge, a four-week program that seems to be intended for groups to do together. It works as an individual project too. There are tracking sheets and stars for various activities. I didn't keep track of stars. Instead, I looked down this list, and chose something new every week to focus on.

• Healthy breakfast
• Fruits & veggies
• Water
• Quiet
• Aerobic exercise
• Core/strength training
• Flexibility/balance
• People
• Learn
• Sleep

I found the GO! Challenge helpful in encouraging me toward some habits I want to keep. Here's what happened.

Week One: Breakfast, Water & Sleep

Farewell to frosted mini-wheats & constant coffee. Hello to 9:30 p.m. alarm.

I always eat breakfast, so that seemed like an easy place to start the challenge. I decided cold cereal (ok, not just cold cereal: frosted mini-wheats) did not exactly count as a healthy breakfast. I lost the mini-wheats habit in favor of oatmeal or my homemade granola, yogurt and fruit.

During week one, I also started to drink 8 glasses of water a day. It was harder than I thought. I had to cut back on coffee and tea to get in all that water! Four weeks out from the start of the challenge, the water habit is growing on me. I still have to think about it, but I'm getting it done.

I love sleep so that seemed easy too: at least 7 hours. The trick I had to learn here was to set an alarm for myself at 9:30 p.m. every night. Ideally, I hear the alarm and wrap up what I'm doing so I can be in bed by 10:00 p.m. I love mornings, and if I go to bed at 10:00, I can actually wake up in time to enjoy the morning.

Week Two: Fruits & Veggies, Aerobic Exercise, Quiet

Dinner on a schedule, walking the dog, and going to chapel.

In Week Two, I started trying to track whether I had eaten at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. I figured out that I did a better job if I had a plan for snacks during the day and veggies on hand to cook for supper. Hank and I have also started trying to eat at the same time every night. There is something about the structure that makes all of this veggie prep easier.

I love citing the results of the recent Great Britain study that people with dogs get significantly more exercise than people with gym memberships. Kaylee is my walking partner. If I walk with her for about 30 minutes in the morning, and then walk when I have opportunities during the day, I can routinely get in 10,000 steps a day

For "Quiet", the GO! Challenge people suggest prayer, meditation, doing a puzzle, and so on. While chapel at Luther Seminary does not usually feature all that much silence, I decided to count it in the quiet category. From Week 2 of the challenge on, I got more faithful about chapel attendance at school. The change also had the effect of helping me connect with people (another category on the challenge) since getting to chapel requires stepping outside my office, and because there is always some social time after chapel

Week Three: Flexibility/Balance

Yoga, and "enough already."

I like practicing yoga, but through the winter, my practice had become increasingly intermittent. With all the sleep I have been getting since Week One of the Challenge, I am now able to get up for 6:30 a.m. yoga classes a few days a week.

I also realized in Week Three that there is a limit to how many wellness activities one can add into one's life before feeling stressed by all the wellness activities. Less is more sometimes.

Week Four: Core/Strength Training

Yoga Sculpt

The yoga studio where I am a member has a class called, "Yoga Sculpt." It is basically yoga done with weights. Much of the class is aimed at strength training, but it also has components related to flexibility and cardio fitness. Last week, I tried the class for the first time. It's hard. At this point, strength training has been the only unappealing part of the GO! Challenge for me. On the other hand, muscle strength makes just about everything else about getting through the day easier. I'm going to keep at the Sculpt classes once or twice a week and see what happens.

Results of the Challenge

In a nutshell:

1. I got my wellness points for finishing the Challenge. $300. is real money.
2. Water, walking, and eating lots of fruits and vegetables are just part of daily life now.
3. I lost two pounds. I know this sounds like "nothing" over four weeks, but I only had about 10 pounds to lose to have a normal Body Mass Index, so 2 pounds is 20% of the way to my goal.

Overall, the challenge was easier to complete than I thought it would be. If I had it to do again, I would stick with the strategy of doing the easiest lifestyle changes first. The "early wins" kept me motivated.

I have this persistent fantasy that with about three days of healthy eating, I will lose ten pounds, or I'll magically fit into clothes that are a size smaller. The GO! Challenge confirmed how unrealistic that idea is, at least for me. Nothing dramatic happened to me. Nothing dramatic at all. I just feel better.