In honor of the Queen Elizabeth II...

Sixty years ago today, Queen Elizabeth II of England got word that her father had died and that she was the new queen. In honor of that event, I am posting part of a chapter from my book, The Reformation for Armchair Theologians (2005), dealing with the birth of the first Queen Elizabeth. (Given the popularity of TV's "The Tudors," I thought something on Henry VIII, Elizabeth's father, would also be worthwhile.) It's a fairly long post, but I think you'll enjoy it.

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Henry VIII’s Character

Henry was an interesting and complex character. He was a poet, musician, and patron of humanistic scholarship. He was very well educated himself—for example, he actually wrote a theological treatise refuting Luther, for which he was given the title, “Defender of the Faith,” by the Pope. (Some people think this piece was ghost written by Thomas More, Henry’s close friend at the time. There’s no real evidence that that’s the case, and Henry was certainly capable of writing it. Just because the current royal family couldn’t write a treatise on anything doesn’t mean Henry couldn’t.) But this was only one side of Henry’s personality. There’s a technical term for the other side: he was a macho dude. He was a big, burly man who liked to show off how strong he was. To impress visiting dignitaries, Henry used to have horses brought into the throne room, which he would then wrestle to the ground. And like all macho dudes, he wanted to have sons. Lots of sons. “Big, strapping boys! Like me!” as Gaston says in Beauty and the Beast. So when Catherine got pregnant, there was much rejoicing. She gave birth to a child, and they named it Mary. She did get pregnant a few more times, but the children never came to term. Henry was sure that God was punishing him for his sins, and specifically for marrying his brother’s widow, by not giving him sons.

Like other macho dudes, Henry also had a roving eye, and as king he felt free to indulge himself. He was having an affair with one of the daughters of the Boleyn family, when his eye fell on her younger sister Ann. He decided he wanted to have an affair with her, but she refused unless he married her. This, of course, was a problem, since he was already married to Catherine.

The King’s Great Matter

The combination of disappointment at not having a son and lust for Ann was too much for Henry, and it certainly in his mind outweighed the diplomatic reasons for the marriage. So he sent his chancellor, a cardinal in the Catholic Church named Wolsey, to go to the Pope to annul the marriage on grounds of consanguinity since she was his brother’s widow. (Of course, this argument conveniently ignored the fact that Henry had received a special papal dispensation to marry Catherine in the first place.) Normally, this would not have been much of a problem, except there was an additional complication at this point. The Pope had gotten into a war with the Holy Roman Emperor, with the net result that Imperial forces had captured Rome, making Pope Clement VII the “guest” of Charles V. Clement was thus in no position to allow Henry to annul Charles’s aunt, and so Wolsey was sent home empty handed, ending his career in disgrace.

At this point, with Henry desperate to get out of his marriage, a man by the name of Thomas Cromwell came onto the scene. Cromwell presented a historical argument that the Pope had no legitimate authority over the English church. He argued that after the Romans were driven out, Christianity had reentered Britain from Ireland, whose church was not under papal authority at the time. Only with they Synod of Whitby (664) did England abandon her allegiance to the Celtic church in favor of Rome. That was a mistake, Cromwell argued, and permitted Rome to usurp the legitimate authority of the English king over the English church. That argument was good enough for Henry: he declared himself the head of the Church of England, divorced Catherine, and secretly married Ann, making the marriage public some time later. Cromwell became Lord Chancellor.

Henry was at best a reluctant Protestant. He took advantage of the change to close the monasteries and confiscate their property in the kingdom, yet in general his preference was to stay Catholic in every way possible, except with himself as head of the church. He savagely prosecuted and executed for treason anyone who expressed any doubts about his divorce, but at the same time he also executed mainstream Protestants as heretics. When he was in a reforming mood, he tended toward Lutheranism as less extreme than Reformed Protestantism, but he would inevitably lurch toward Catholicism pretty quickly, turning his back on reforms he had only recently instituted. His heart just wasn’t in it. But it wasn’t his heart that was driving his religious policy. This resulted in a wave of Protestants, known as the Henrican exiles, leaving the kingdom, typically heading toward Reformed territories on the Continent.

Second Verse, ... a Little Bit Worse
Ann got pregnant, and there was much rejoicing. She had a baby, and they named it Elizabeth. At that point, barring another pregnancy, Ann’s days were numbered. She did get pregnant, but failed to carry the child to term. So Cromwell stepped in once more. He arrested a few people, one of them a young lutenist, and tortured them into admitting to having an affair with Ann. She denied it, but her fate was pretty much sealed. Apparently, Henry offered to let her live if she agreed to an annulment; she refused, because that would have made Elizabeth illegitimate and thus ineligible for the throne. So she was condemned to be executed. Ann requested that a French headsman do the job. There were two reasons for this. First, English headsmen were not professionals—one was the town butcher, for example—and they had a very bad track record in terms of accuracy. What you don’t want to happen when you’re being beheaded is for the headsman to miss. Second, the French used swords rather than axes. This meant that you knelt with your head high, and the swordsman took your head off with a single horizontal swipe. With an axe, you put your head down on a chopping block. Ann wasn’t about to bow her head to anyone, so she decided to go with the sword instead. 

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If you want the rest of the story, you'll need to get the book. To quote  Eric Metaxas at the National Prayer Breakfast, no pressure.

For the book: http://www.amazon.com/Reformation-Armchair-Theologians-Glenn-Sunshine/dp/0664228151/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328539232&sr=8-1
For the audio book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Reformation-for-Armchair-Theologians/dp/B002V0FH5K/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328539232&sr=8-2

Today Matters

“The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.”

This statement sums up John C. Maxwell’s book, Today Matters: 12 Practices to Guarantee Tomorrow’s Success. Maxwell argues that success is built on making good decisions and then following through on those decisions daily with disciplined action. It's not an event, it's a process.

The book is organized around 12 areas where we need to make good decisions and follow through on them:

1. Today’s ATTITUDE gives me possibilities.
2. Today’s PRIORITIES give me focus.
3. Today’s HEALTH gives me strength.
4. Today’s FAMILY gives me stability.
5. Today’s THINKING gives me an advantage.
6. Today’s COMMITMENT gives me tenacity.
7. Today’s FINANCES give me options.
8. Today’s FAITH gives me peace.
9. Today’s RELATIONSHIPS give me fulfillment.
10. Today’s GENEROSITY gives me significance.
11. Today’s VALUES give me direction.
12. Today’s GROWTH gives me potential.

It is worth noting that there are a number of interesting connections between these 12 areas and the 24 character traits identified in positive psychology.

The book includes exercises to help you make decisions and manage them in each of these areas. A month spent on each (remember—it takes 21 days to establish a habit, and I think it’s a good idea to give it a bit more) will pay off tremendously in the long run. Even a week on each would be a good thing, though that might lead to trying to change too many things at once, which is a recipe for failure.

Today Matters is another way of highlighting the principles outlined in The Slight Edge and applying them systematically in a wider range of areas. I highly recommend both books.

Article on Hugh of St. Victor and medieval technology

This is the next article in the series, "Christians who Changed their World."

http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/indepth/17398-hugh-of-st-victor-1096-1141

First Month Checkup

We’re coming to an end of the first month of 2012. For those of you who set goals for the New Year, how are you doing? It’s time for your first month’s checkup.

• Did you write down your goals and review them daily (ideally rewriting them)? If so, have you discovered anything new about them? Did you modify them in any way, or are you happy with them the way they were? If they need refinement, no would be a good time to think through how you should adjust them.
• Did you put in place a new habit for each of your goals? If so, is the habit well established by now? If not, keep at it for another month. If so, is the habit helping you make reasonable progress toward your goal? Do you want to stick with that habit or add something else to it this month?
• Did you enlist others to help you be accountable for your goals and habits?

 Remember, if nothing changes, nothing changes. If you want this year to be better than the last, you need to get on it now, doing the small things that compound to make big changes over time. If you haven’t read Olson’s The Slight Edge, you really should. And remember the quote from Aristotle: “We are what we do habitually. Excellence, then, is a habit.” Let’s strive for excellence in all areas of our lives.

Universal Virtues

People today frequently argue that ethics, morality, and ideas of virtue and character are entirely determined by culture, that they have no objective reality. There is increasing evidence, however, that at least some ideas about character are hardwired into us. One of the more interesting studies comes from a group of psychologists who examined cultures from more than 30 countries and all the major world religions. They found 24 character traits that have been universally recognized as virtues by moral philosophers and religious leaders throughout history. After compiling the list, they examined isolated tribes including the Masai in African and the Inuit in Greenland and found the same ideas. The list includes:

• Creativity
• Curiosity
• Open-mindedness
• Love of learning
• Perspective
• Bravery
• Persistence
• Integrity
• Vitality
• Love
• Kindness
• Social intelligence
• Citizenship
• Fairness
• Leadership
• Forgiveness and mercy
• Humility/modesty
• Prudence
• Self-regulation
• Appreciation of beauty and excellence
• Gratitude
• Hope
• Humor
• Spirituality

 This study led to a movement called “positive psychology” that believes that practicing these traits will improve psychological and even physical health. The movement’s handbook is Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (American Psychological Association, 2004).

As part of your program of personal growth, why not look over this list and rate yourself on each of the character traits. Which are your greatest strengths? Which are greatest weaknesses? Find someone who knows you well and ask her or him to rate you too, encouraging them to be brutally honest. Looking over the answers from both lists, how do they compare? What can you do to build on your strengths and shore up your weaknesses? Consider putting the answers on the list of goals that you are working on this year.

(Thanks to Michael Lee Stallard, Fired Up or Burned Out, from which I learned about positive psychology.)

Review of Jeff Martone's Kettlebell Rx

Continuing on the theme of loving God with our strength:

I have long been a fan of kettlebells. I bought my first shortly after Pavel Tsatsouline reintroduced them to the US and have since expanded my collection. Along with martial arts, they have been my preferred form of exercise ever since. They’ve gone from being a pretty hardcore training tool to the mainstream market—they’re even sold in Dick’s Sporting Goods and Ocean State Job Lot.

Although kettlebells are more forgiving in some ways than heavy barbells, it is still easy to hurt yourself if your form is bad, and frankly, a frightening number of “instructional” videos out there right now are almost recipes for injury. The best way to prevent this is to get good coaching. If coaching isn’t available, the next best thing is Jeff Martone’s excellent book, Kettlebell Prescription (Kettlebell Rx).

Martone has a very impressive resume in fitness, combatives, and kettlebells. He is a Kettlebell Sport Lifting Coach for both the American Kettlebell club and IKSFA in St. Petersburg Russia, and was one of the first senior Russian Kettlebell Challenge (RKC) certified instructors. He is also a CrossFit Level II certified instructor and does a lot of CrossFit’s Kettlebell training. Along with that, he’s a Controlled Fatigue Training Level II certified instructor, a Warrior Diet Nutrition certified instructor, and a Physical Fitness Specialist certified instructor with the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research.

In other words, he knows what he’s talking about.

A lot of Martone’s work these days involves teaching kettlebells for Crossfit gyms, and this book was written with that audience in mind. Even with that focus, Kettlebell Rx includes so much good information that anyone interested in fitness, particularly those who use kettlebells or who simply want to try them out, would benefit tremendously from reading and studying it.

Kettlebell Rx is remarkably comprehensive. The first chapter includes a thorough basic joint mobility section, which if you read this post you know is an important though neglected form of exercise. It also includes post workout stretches. The book then provides step by step progressive instructions for four major classifications of kettlebell exercises: swings, Turkish getups, cleans, and overhead pressing exercises.

The Turkish getup is worth an additional comment. Jeff had severely injured his shoulders—multiple surgeries, dislocations, etc. His shoulder would sometimes go out of joint even while in bed. He ultimately managed to rehab it using the Turkish getup and says that if he had known about it earlier, he believes it would have prevented some of those surgeries. Rather than trying to explain it, I’ll just refer you to these videos of Jeff teaching the exercise. In the last one, Jeff does the get-up using his wife rather than a kettlebell.

The chapters on these exercises have a number of unique features. Martone shows a step-by-step process for learning the exercise, including preparatory movements to help perform the exercise correctly and safely. He also shows the most common mistakes and explains how to diagnose and correct them. This is the most important part of the book, since it lets athletes, coaches, or even just workout partners without much experience with kettlebells learn the exercises properly and fix mistakes in form. Martone then gives a “prescription” for an exercise protocol with each exercise.

The next section of the book deals with programming, including advice for different populations, a simple but effective strength program, conditioning, and various circuits using kettlebells.

The next section deals with rotational strength, developed through “H2H” kettlebell drills, a.k.a. kettlebell juggling. Jeff has DVDs devoted specifically to this subject and was the first person to emphasize this aspect of kettlebells in the US. I personally find this fun, and it has done more to improve my hand-eye coordination and hand speed than anything else I’ve done. Martone also includes programming for this kind of exercise and sample circuits. If you are going to try these drills, do them outside on a soft surface, because sooner or later (probably sooner), you will drop the kettlebell.

The last section deals with competitive kettlebell lifting. It’s really more of an introduction to the sport and is intended to alert people to its existence and to challenge people (particularly Crossfitters) to try it out.

Kettlebell Rx is easily the best book on kettlebells that I have seen, as well as a great source of information on most aspects of physical fitness. If you have any interest at all in kettlebells, this is the book to buy. You’ll be glad you did.

Kettlebell Prescription (Kettlebell Rx) is available through Amazon or directly from Jeff Martone. This is my affiliate link to his website.

And now for something completely different, a post on exercise

Learning to love God with all our strength involves taking care of and developing our body. Key elements of this include adequate rest, proper diet, and regular exercise. Chances are you already know a lot of what you are supposed to do, but the question is, do you do it?

Here, I want to focus a bit on exercise, and in particular, one form of exercise most people do not know about.

Probably the most common approach to exercise breaks it down into three basic types: cardio to strengthen your heart (e.g. jogging, biking, or swimming); resistance training for strength and to maintain muscle mass and bone density (e.g. “the bells”—barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, and clubbells—or bodyweight exercises such as pushups); and flexibility exercises (e.g. stretching or common approaches to yoga).

There’s a lot of information out there about these three kinds of exercise, some of it better than others. But there’s another class of exercises that is just as important that few people discuss: joint mobility training (JM).

JM systematically moves all of your joints through their full current range of motion (ROM) in every direction the joint is designed to move. A full routine includes the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, thoracic spine, lower back, hips, knees, ankles, and toes, working either from top to bottom or from the periphery to the core.

JM is different from flexibility training. To understand why, do the following:

1. Lie on your back.
2. Keep your left leg straight and on the ground, and bend your right leg at the knee.
3. Bring your right thigh toward your chest and notice how close you can get it.
4. Lower and straighten your right leg.
5. Keeping the right leg straight, bring it toward your chest again.

With your leg bent, you can move your leg far closer to your chest than you can with the leg straight. In a nutshell, that’s the difference between JM and ROM exercises and stretching: in stretching, the flexibility of the muscles is the limiting factor, while in properly designed JM routines, muscular flexibility is largely taken out of the equation.

Why is joint mobility important? In the former Soviet Union, scientists studying the human body determined that biological age was directly related to the condition of the connective tissue in the joints: the better the connective tissue, the more youthful the body. They also discovered that JM can improve the quality of the connective tissue and even repair some kinds of joint damage, and as a result it can act as an anti-aging program for your body.

Done consistently, JM can also improve ROM, eliminate early morning stiffness, and lead to better, more pain free movement. It is also very useful as a warm up for exercise, as a kind of “pre-hab” to prevent injuries, as well as for releasing residual tension from exercise in your cool down.

The best joint mobility programs that I have found come from one of two places. The first is China: tai chi and some qigong programs include very good JM work, which is why many Chinese tai chi masters move so well into their 80s and 90s.

The other source is Russia. Pavel Tsatsouline, the “evil Russian” who re-introduced kettlebell training to America, has a JM program called Superjoints. Superjoints includes several different routines, some of which combine JM work with conditioning. One of his instructors, Andrea Du Cane, also produced programs called The Ageless Body and Kettlebell Boomer that include both JM and kettlebell work. These have different levels graded to condition and ability. If you use kettlebells, these are excellent programs. All of these resources are available from Dragondoor’s website.

Scott Sonnon, who studied in Russia, has produced JM programs including Intuflow and Ageless Mobility. These are graded for different levels. Scott’s routines take less time than Pavel’s and advance by increasing movement sophistication rather than by increasing repetitions. On the other hand, the higher reps Pavel prescribes can be very helpful for repairing some kinds of joint damage. Scott’s programs are available from RMAX.

Steve Maxwell, one of Pavel’s former instructors, also has a series of JM routines for beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels that are instantly downloadable via the internet. These can be accessed through the link at the bottom of this page.

Two notes: first, all of these sites deal with high end strength training, fitness, and martial arts; don’t let that throw you—the JM programs are for anyone. Second, in the interests of full disclosure these are affiliate links, so if you order through them, I will receive a commission.

And the standard warning: do not start any exercise program without consulting your physician.