MediocreMan

He Is Risen! · 20 April 2019

Resurrection of Christ
by Noël Coypel
This work is in the public domain.

If you are of a mind to go to a Christian church on Easter Sunday, you will most likely hear the words, “He is risen!” to which you will probably respond, “He is risen, indeed!” And you will be right.

The older I get, the more I realize that my own faith is firmly rooted in fact. Sure, there are experiences and feelings that go along with a relationship with God, but those experiences and feelings mean very little without the facts that back up my faith. I would be wretched indeed if Jesus had not risen from the tomb. Or if He had just been a fanciful fictional character in an outdated fictional book.

H.G. Wells said, “I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.”

I wonder about this quote and thoughts from other non-believers who know about Jesus, but do not follow Him. I wonder how they reconcile the facts with their own decisions. After all, if this most dominating figure in history has captivated us for centuries, why do we not look closer at the facts? Why do we not dig deeper into this person who claimed to be God? Why do we just pass off the notion as ludicrous that Jesus was who He said He was, that He died and rose again, and that He wants us to follow Him?

I wonder about these questions and I realize the answer lies in a Fleetwood Mac song. God has said to us all that we can go our own way. And He said it to us from day one of human history. (Which is day six in Genesis.) So instead of looking at the facts and following where they lead, we choose to follow our own notions and go our own way. Every day.

The fact of the matter is that Jesus is risen indeed. This is not the most contested fact in history, it is the most attested fact in history. People have been trying and failing to prove it wrong for over two-thousand years. The Romans could have quashed the whole Christian movement once and for all by producing the dead body of Jesus. But they could not do it then and people cannot do it now. For Jesus is risen indeed. His body was only in the tomb a few days.

I know that people flounder in their faith. We have doubts. We wonder if the Bible is true. We wonder if Jesus is truly risen. And we are right to do so. We ought to flounder every once in a while. We ought to have doubts that God is there. Or at least we ought to question. Because as long as we truly seek the answers in those times of questioning, doubting, and floundering, we can find them. And we can know that the answers are rooted in fact. History proves again and again that the foundation of our faith is true. Just ask God to prove it. He will.

For you see, the most important words to know are just the beginning of our faith. Those words are written indelibly for all time and all people. And they are heard most loudly on Easter morning by Christians around the world.

“Jesus is risen!”
“Jesus is risen, indeed!”

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Spring Break · 13 April 2019

Spring break is a great time for those in education to relax, refresh, and recharge. Even if they still go to school every day.

Not everybody goes on fantastic vacations to sit on the beach and soak up the sun during spring break. There are certainly those who do, but there are also those of us who stick around. Certainly to relax and recharge, but also to keep up the skills and fitness of our athletes who are coming into midseason form. It is a fun time to work with those athletes who did not go on vacation and give them some needed one-on-one attention.

Do not get me wrong. I do not begrudge those who go on vacations to the beach or even those who do less exotic things like staycations, where they see the local sites. Nor am I complaining that I am not doing either of those things. After all, the rest of my family is working or at school. And truth be told, I like to work. Being with students and athletes is why I teach and coach. Yes, I enjoy the time I am away from them, but I like teaching and coaching high school kids. I am energized by their youth and enthusiasm.

Which brings me back to relaxing and recharging.

Even though I am off to work every day during spring break, the days are not as long. So I do get a chance to relax and recharge. I get to do projects at home, I get to sleep in a little longer, and I get to do a little more writing. Fun, fun, and more fun. At least for me. I like to stay busy. Being busy is relaxing, refreshing, and recharging. Having fun gives me energy. I am not the Energizer Bunny, but I do like to go, go, go. Partly because that helps me to sleep, sleep, sleep. So I can go, go, go again the next day.

I am all for vacations and staycations and just having fun. I am also for working and playing hard. After all, those are the things that help me sleep well at night. And after a few days of sleeping in a little bit, I am refreshed and recharged. I am ready to go once again. And that is what spring break is all about. It is a time to relax, refresh, and recharge. Whether I am at school each day or not.

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Wogglewonkle · 6 April 2019

If you are ever stuck for a word to use, especially if something is messed up, try wogglewonkle.

One of our staff members (who shall remain nameless) was commenting that the tables in our staff room were wogglewonkle. The wheels on the tables were not locked so they were cadywompus (which is of course, a real word, or close). They were out of kilter. At any rate, the tables were not aligned like they were supposed to be. Since we also have chairs with wheels, when somebody moved a bit, the tables and chairs and everything got all messed up. And according to the aforementioned unnamed staff member, those tables were wogglewonkle.

Well, I replied that I had heard of cadywompus (my dad used the word often), but I had never heard the word wogglewonkle until that day. Again, unnamed staff member said, “Yea, you know. Wogglewonkle.” Which of course, I had already said, I had never heard before. But we all laughed anyway because regardless of what the word was, we knew what she meant. The tables were not quite the way they should have been. They were wogglewonkle.

I would not try to dispute the legitimacy of such a great word, but I certainly could have. In the old days, I would just grab a dictionary, and point to the location where the word should be to prove that it is not a word. Today, the way you know that a word is not a real word is when you try to put it into a note or text on your phone, said phone (assuming it is somewhat smart) will try to put in a word or words that are not even close to the made up word you are trying to put in. So when I tried to put wogglewonkle into my phone so I could write about it later, the phone tried to put in “woggle winkle,” two completely different made up words.

(Okay. For those of you who are saying that I am full of hot air, I must apologize. I just looked up woggle and winkle. It turns out that they are real or close to real words.. Woggle is apparently a device that scouts use to tie their kerchiefs about their necks. Winkles are apparently spiral shelled mollusks. Who knew? Yes, I know. Somebody knew.)

(By the way, when it comes right down to it, all words are made up. They just might not make it into the lexicon of the English language. At least not right away. Words can audition for years to get into dictionaries, but many never make it. Or they languish in the lesser known dictionaries. It is surely word purgatory to be relegated to something other than a real dictionary. But that is another story.)

(Oh. One last parenthetical remark. Did you know that smart phones are really not that smart? I think about that all the time. Okay. Not really. In fact, I seldom think about it except in the beginning of the school year. That is when I tell my students that computers are dumb. After all, they do everything you tell them to do. And only what you tell them to do. That is not very smart, if you ask me. Yes, the people who program those phones are very smart, but the phones themselves are not. Again, quite another story.)

Well, that is about it for wogglewonkle. In fact, with all the parenthetical statements and even paragraphs, I am sure this blog post is wogglewonkle. Or cadywompus. Some people might even say that I am a bit off kilter. But that is okay. I just let them know that I am always a bit wogglewonkle. And when they wonder about it, I will just let them know it is my new catchall word. Wogglewonkle.

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