Abuse

As many of you know, I've been engrossed in a new project that is taking a great deal of my time, but one that is with God's blessing going to take our dojo to new and amazing heights.

While I've prepared several Blog posts in advance this recent edition of Church and Culture, by my Pastor James E White at Mecklenburg Commnity Church, spoke to me at a time when I had the message I wanted to share and I'm fortunate to have it come to me when I needed it. It's addresses an issue that is far to prevalent in our society day - Relational/Domestic Abuse. 

Church & Culture Blog | Church and Culture

Please feel free to leave comments on their page or ours.

If you or someone you know are being abused. The time to act is NOW. Don't wait for it to get better - Don't wait for it to get worse.  There are a number of services available to help women and their families out from under abusive relationships.

http://www.womenthrive.org/

http://www.safehorizon.org/ 800.621.HOPE (4673)

www.unitedfamilyservices.org/domesticviolenceservices.html

It's Always Too Soon to Quit

Once a simple mantra of my karate class with Grandmaster Castanza, it has slowly and inextricably become a part of my everyday life.  This however didn’t start in the dojo, it began as part of my upbringing.

 My Dad, having grown up during the great depression had learned, as so many people at that time had, that nothing should be taken for granted; Make everything you have count and make it last as long as you can. Never give up on something because it was too hard or might require too much work, you didn’t have that luxury.  



During the Great Depression of the 1930's Families were
were forced into lives of meager livings and were often
forced to be separated in order to find work.



 During the depression, the US was fully buried under its blanket of isolationism, which eventually got torn from our grasp as we were thrust into WW2 and along with that came rationing as our natural resources were collected by the government for the war effort. Our men and boys shipped overseas to either the European or Asian theater to fight an enemy as they fought off the cobwebs of the last 2 decades.  However, the servicemen at that time, knew that there was only one way to return – In victory. As the George Cohan song said, “…And we won't come back till it's over, over there”.  (Though this song was written for the previous generation fighting WW1) it still rang true for this generation of Americans, they had not yet truly known a time of peace, and everything that they had was through hard-work and fighting for it.

In one of the best known speeches Sir Winston Churchill left us with these immortal words, “We shall go on to the end … we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength …whatever the cost may be … we shall never surrender”

Forty years after the armistice in Europe and Japan, I walked into my first dojo and was once again introduced to this concept. However, this time it related to me and my personal goals, for one of the first times in my life I actually had goals, up until then it was just work.



Late Grandmaster Gary Castanza



This catch phrase of Grandmaster Castanza, initially rose from a comment he made during his very first and very public Rape Prevention and Self Defense classes. To bring a point to his comments regarding the need to fight back – not just resist – and to keep fighting back until the attack was completely eliminated, emphasizing that  when your life is on the line, “…its always too soon to quit..”  This quickly became adopted at one of the tenants of our dojo encompassing not only the need to fight back, but the necessity to keep training even when we no longer feel the motivation. To keep going for the sake of our goals even when they seem as far away today as they were yesterday.  Get up out of your seat, gi up and workout. When your body is ready to give in, push it just a little further remember that the difference between a brave man and a coward is that the brave man goes just one second longer… He (or she) sticks with it when others around them quit.



Thomas Edison inventor of the light bulb
and movie projector



A common story shared about perseverance is that of Thomas Edison, and it was said the he tried and failed with more than 10,000 variations of filaments before he perfected the right one for the first light bulb. Had he quit after his first hundred or even thousand failings we may still be lighting candles to bring light to the darkness, and all that following in the stream of technology that might have been delayed or never even explored without the aid of artificial incandescent light; such as the movie projector, and thus your favorite movies and a major part of American culture would have been lost.

When I first started training in the mid 80’s the statistics said only 1 in 4 new students will make it to yellow belt. Only 1 in 10 of them will last to Advanced (green or blue) and only one in 100 of them will make it to black belt.  If Statistics are accurate then or now and an average of 1,000,000 people start the martial arts for the first time each year only 250 will make it to black belt or 2.5 out of every 10,000. If you make it to black belt you’re 1 in 4000 that step out of their comfort zone to train and don’t quit before its “over, over there.”   

A poem hung in our dojo back in the day which now also hangs proudly in my dojo today often referred to as the "Don't Quit" poem, you may research the beadth of the poem on your own, but the final stanza drives home the message:

Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

- Author unknown

Keep this in mind before you give up on your dreams. Talk to a mentor – if you don’t have one, find one. They’re important people on our paths of life. It’s always too soon to quit.

Schrödinger’s Punch



Erwin Schrodinger



The acclaimed physicist Erwin Schrödinger put forth a theory in 1935 which has become commonly known as Schrödinger’s Cat, which describes the paradox of existence. How all things in the physical realm are able to exist in two states at once.  While the validity of this experiment and its resulting theory may have been the cause of much debate, its application is much more relevant in the world of martial arts.

When a punch leaves its position in the guard or from the hip, depending on your practices, it has both the elements of being a strike as well as a block (or deflection for those purists). It travels outward at our opponent and its existence or purpose is dependent on the intended and final target.

While this hypothesis, can be applied to any strike, I’ll simplify the concept by using chudan uke or a middle block and its interpretation of being either a defensive deflection against the opponent’s strike,  while at the same time it has the potential of being an uraken uchi or back fist to the opponent’s head, ribs, or even the arm itself; the latter being the epitome of this hypothesis, where the block is the strike. The contact point of the block is the same as the target point of the strike.

While an entire book could be written with these examples and variety of strikes from the upper body and lower body, that will be left for future development. Prayerfully, I get the chance to attack that project before a better person beats me to it.

So ultimately, by the law of validation by transference (OK, so its not a law– its been 20+ years since my last physics class, but a really good way of validating theory) By being able to apply the theory to a wide variety of models and circumstances, one moves incredibly close to proving theory. In this case we transfer the theory from the proven model of the strike/block to our existence as Martial Artists and Peaceful People. It is often a point of contention that the martial arts produce individuals who seek to inflict violence on others, while proclaiming that they are striving for peace. Certainly  there are individuals who corrupt the nature of the arts in this way by intentionally choosing to target other people, and actually picking fights or inviting attacks.  However, if a poll is conducted of experienced martial artists you will discover that the greater majority of martial artists have never needed to utilize their since beginning their training.

A punch isn’t by its nature a violent act, guns don’t kill people, my word processer doesn’t misspell words, and the martial arts don’t create violent people. It’s the free will of the individual to use their resources for good purposes or evil purposes, but not merely by chance or circumstance, but by the intent of their spirit and mind.  We are violent monks prepared to unleash the amazing power of destruction or compassion, based solely on our choices.