Martial Arts

For over 30 years now I have been studying martial arts. I have acquired a 6th Dan (Black Belt/Master Instructor) in AiKiDo, a 5th Dan (Black Belt/Master Instructor) in Judo, a 3rd Dan (Black Belt/Instructor) in Kendo (the Art of the Sword), a 3rd Dan (Black Belt/Instructor) in Tang Soo Do, and a 3rd Dan (Black Belt/Instructor) in Hapkido. I have also studied with other Masters in other styles, belting in some (at various levels) or just learning new things.

During this time of studying martial arts, I was studying and learning about the body through becoming a Combat Medic, a Cardiovascular Technician, and a Physician’s Assistant in the Army, and a Paramedic in the Civilian world. I also studied Shiatsu (massage therapy and pressure points), becoming a Master Technician in the State of Texas.

About 12 or so years ago, I started teaching individuals a mix of what I had learned, keeping the techniques in tact, and the “requirements” for each styles “belting”, with one minor twist, I took some belts out, and required more in each belt before taking a “Belt Test”. (I’m WAY old school when it comes to testing… I think it SHOULD be White Belt, Brown Belt and Black Belt, that is it…)

My martial theory consist of this:

1. Learn the arts to learn more about yourself.
2. Gain confidence in yourself.
3. Try to talk your way out of a fight, offer to take them for a drink, or food, or …
4. If that doesn’t work, walk (run?) away.
5. If that doesn’t work, block the attack, always trying to go back to 3 and 4.
6. If that doesn’t work, hurt the attacker (via a solid punch (often stops the fight), kick, throw, etc.), always trying to go back to 3 and 4!
7. If that doesn’t work, break something of the attackers. (Hand, wrist, arm, leg, jaw, etc.), always trying to go back to 3 and 4!
8. If that doesn’t work, maim them, always trying to go back to 3 and 4!
9. And if that doesn’t work, as a final and LAST resort, you make it lethal. This is ALWAYS a LAST RESULT, and only if you can’t walk/run away, or take them out for a drink, and the other things in the middle don’t stop the fight.

ANY time you get in a fight, you are going to get hurt, even if it is only the hurting of your hand when you hit them, because if you hit them right, your hand (or foot) will hurt too! Hopefully not as much as they will hurt (if you study under me, I can show you how to hurt them more than they hurt you!). Any time I get in a fight, it hurts me emotionally as well, fighting is not something anyone should be doing if at all possible!

Now, some of you may ask, why is someone like me, a “religious” person, teaching or partaking in martial arts? Well, after MUCH talking with several Priest and one Bishop of the Catholic Church, as long as I’m not studying or teach with the intent to do harm, but rather to learn more about the body, people, and “self defense” there appear not to be an issue with it and the Church. (Remember in the “old days” when Priest use to have boxing schools for their young boys, and when Priest had boxing in Seminary?)

Martial arts, to me, is about learning about my body, the body in general, and about staying in shape, the later of which I really need to do! It is not about hurting people. or about getting in fights.

All this to lead to the comment that I am in the process of opening up my own dojo! (Training Hall/School). I am now forming my own style of the ” Way of Circular Wind Ryu“. I am going to be aggressively be putting together a school, and have already started putting the blocks together!

To learn about that, click on “Investment” above! I could use your help.

You can also see my initial web site at http://cwryu.tripod.com/index.html. This will soon(ish) have it’s own domain and a better built site, but is a good start, if I do say so myself. The content there will be update over the next two weeks.

My opening day should be on or before October 6th of this year! Wish me luck, and pray for me!

More upgrades/changes!

Well, this last few days have been busy for me and this blog.

I have added some, I hope, useful plug ins to the blog, such as the ability to email a post you find to be of value to someone so they can read it. This is done via a link at the end of each post. You can only get it from the “front page”, not from the comments page. (By that I don’t mean you can’t get it if you go to older messages, you just can’t send it on from the comments page.)

You can also see how many users are on line at the same time you are. Scroll down, and it’s on the right hand side.

Right above that, you will be able to see if I’m on line via Skype. (This still needs some tweaking, as it is not always showing if I’m on line correctly… Try sending me a message, and if you tell me you are coming from the blog, I will reply if I don’t know you!)

Or, better yet, click on the Chat page (little bar under the coffee cup) and you can go into a chat with me (and others if anyone else is on line) if I am around my computer.

I have also put a page up (Plugins) with a list of all of the plug ins I use here. This list may grow smaller as I find some that I actually don’t like, or they slow the system down, or ….

I have now split out the links on the right hand side into categories, so you can know a bit more as to why I have them there…

I may re-arrange the order of things on the right, but for now these should be the end of the additions and changes to the blog for a while, except for new post and the fixing of the Chat so it works the way *I* want it to!

Enjoy!

Catholic Statistics…

A Order Brother sent me an email with a bunch of statistics about the Catholic Church. It is attributed to a non-Catholic person that is actually Jewish. I was not able to verify that info, and somehow don’t think that is who originally authored it, but I did verify the statistics:

Proud of Being Catholic

Excerpts of an article written by Sam Miller,
prominent Cleveland Jewish businessman -( NOT CATHOLIC )
Submitted by Dee Lynd.
18 April 2008

Why would newspapers carry on a vendetta on one of the most important institutions that we have today in the United States, namely the Catholic Church?

Do you know – the Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students everyday at the cost to your Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. Your graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%, all at a cost to you. To the rest of the Americans it’s free.

The Church has 230 colleges and universities in the U.S. with an enrollment of 700,000 students. The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, which account for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people – not just Catholics – in the United States today.

But the press is vindictive and trying to totally denigrate in every way the Catholic Church in this country. They have blamed the disease of pedophilia on the Catholic Church, which is as irresponsible as blaming adultery on the institution of marriage.

Let me give you some figures that you as Catholics should know and remember. For example, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church, 41.8 % of clergy women reported unwanted sexual behavior; 17% of laywomen have been sexually harassed. Meanwhile, 1.7% of the Catholic clergy has been found guilty of pedophilia. 10% of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia. This is not a Catholic problem.

A study of American priests showed that most are happy in the priesthood and find it even better than they had expected, and that most, if given the choice, would choose to be priests again in face of all this obnoxious PR the church has been receiving.

The Catholic Church is bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. The agony that Catholics have felt and suffered is not necessarily the fault of the Church. You have been hurt by a small number of wayward priests that have probably been totally weeded out by now.

Walk with your shoulders high and you head higher. Be a proud member of the most important non-governmental agency in the United States. -Then remember what was written in Jeremiah:’Thus says the Lord: Stand by the earliest roads, ask the pathways of old. Which is the way to good, and walk it; thus you will find rest for your souls.’ (Jer 6:16 [show]Jeremiah 6:16 [16]Thus says the LORD: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'
).

Be Proud to speak up for your faith with pride and reverence and learn what your Church does for all other religions.
…… Be Proud That You’re A Catholic……

These are trueish numbers. The number of students may be up or down each year, but the rest of the numbers are pretty close to the “real” numbers.

Blog Update, etc…

Ok, Per the comments of Kim, and a few others, I have finished putting in tags for all of my post. Took three days (ok, a portion of each day for three days) to do so, but it’s done. The tag cloud on the right side, near the bottom, will allow you to find all messages with that tag. The bigger the word, the more messages are tagged with that word.

I have also added a new reply plug in that allows you to, for free, add your comments either by voice, or by voice and video. You need to have Flash installed on your computer and have a mike (for the audio) and a web cam (for the video). (I have one on this message, but no audio (other than the noisy background from the Library, because I AM in a library at the moment, so no talking by me!) so you can see what it would look like! Enjoy!

I use to have a plug in called Tavelog, which allowed me to put coordinates into a message which would provide the Reader with a link to see the area I was talking about via Google Earth. That plug in is broken in this release of WordPress (which I run this blog under), so it does not work. If anyone knows of a similar plug in, I would love to hear about it, please leave me a comment.

I touched EVERY single message, and was shocked at the typos and mis-spellings (Jodi, where were you? ), which I hope to have fixed if not all, most of! Please forgive the bad typing and spelling!

Enjoy!

Back up, early…

Hello,

As you may already know, I have been down for a few days as I upgrade the blog software to the most current, tweak it some, and do other things behind the scenes. I hope you like the new look and feel?

[memedex: pollid#487832]

One of the issues that came up with the upgrade is I lost all my tags… (Although the tag cloud now works correctly.) I have updated some of the newer post with tags, but that did a couple of things I didn’t like, but can live with. Should I update all of the tags?

[memedex: pollid#487831]

I hope to be posting more often in the future, and I hope the postings are on topics you enjoy!

Keep an eye on these pages!

The Brothers and Sisters of Reconcilidation and Me…

Things continue to advance with the Brothers and Sisters of Reconciliation. We need a major growth spurt, but things are moving on. I was able to put on my habit two weeks ago:

after completing a long Retreat on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the seamstress FINALLY finishing it.

Last weekend I went to another Retreat, this time a silent one! Was a good time of contemplation and prayer. You can see where I was by going here.

Next I will be finding a job, hopefully in the Church or at a Catholic school. It is looking like I will be going to Seminary late next year. This will be a six year program, after which I will have a Bachelors in Philosophy and a Masters in Theology. I need two years of Philosophy, and Sacred Heart in Wisconsin has a six year program that gets both covered, and gives you the two degrees in the process. Looking forward to it!

It boggles …

… my mind that people can not trim an email they are forwarding on, and that they don’t know how to BCC the email if they are sending it to MANY people. I receive many emails a day from friends (and in some cases from their friends/family) that has been forwarded to them. When they forward it on, they have a list for from 5 to 50 (ok, on average about 15) in the To: field that can take a bit of screen space up as you scroll down to get to the message. But when you go to get to the message, you have to scroll down through from one to fifteen headers of people forwarding it on until it finally reached the person that sent it to you. In many cases you get to see the message that they are forwarding two or more times embedded in the message, which takes up even more space on YOUR computer (be it your mail server, or if you are like me, you download all email to a client on your computer) especially if there are pictures involved.

How come people can’t BCC the To: field if there are more than a couple of people there? There is also a security reason to do so. I now have a, in many cases, LONG list of people that associate with you. I have their email address, and I can now sell their name to spammers, or even spam them myself… (Send it back to yourself, and BCC the rest of the people!)

Now that the To: field is has been moved to BCC field on these long To: messages, learn how to highlight the text from all the Forwarding, such as the “Headers” (That information that shows who sent the older messages and who they sent it to. I’ve seen some that I bothered to count all the To: addresses between all the forwarding. There were over 120 names in the body (and one sent to me) all added up. And in this case, one of the recipients received the email 9 times!!) and any dublicate message bodies that are embedded.

So, when I get it, I just see your name in the Header, my name, and ONE message, without a LOT of filler of who sent it to who before you got it and sent it to me. Doing this makes reading email all that easier in the end.

PLEASE?