Parable of the Russian Olive Tree

Don't laugh at me. This is serious.

I was chopping down the trees in my back yard today. The first one I chopped out last week was rotted out in the center of the tree, all the limbs were the same way and I was able to push it over without much effort after chopping a little more than half way through it. Today I started tearing the limbs off the tree I was working on, same story, the limbs were rotted out in the center. So I assumed that the trees were just a weak wood as they are still growing, they aren't dead trees.

A little back story here, my grandparents came up to visit some time last month or the month before and my grandfather identified the trees as Russian Olive Trees. He said that they are related to the olive trees in Israel, but that they don't produce fruit. End of back story.

So I begin chopping through the tree, and I hardly put a dent in the trunk after the first five minutes of chopping. I was like.. what the heck, maybe I just have a dull ax (which it is dull, but that wasn't the problem) I get half way through the tree (which took me about an hour and this isn't a very thick tree) and I hit the center and so I decide to try pushing it over. Yeah. It didn't budge. And I thought of that movie of which I couldn't think of the title where the guy says "strong like bull". And I'm thinking... man, if this tree was a bull, I would have had it on the ground bleeding out like 300 swings ago. Heck.. I would have "felled" said bull on the first swing, straight for the jugular. No playing around with that one. Even if I missed the jugular, it would be what? one or two swings more and strong bull would be out for the count. No. The phase should now be, "Strong like Russian Olive Tree".

And I started thinking about religious principles, and I know that eventually I will fall this tree and it will succumb to me, but that we should structure our lives and build ourselves up spiritually to be like this olive tree so that when the storms of Satan come we can withstand his ax till his arms weaken and his strength fails him. And unlike this olive tree, we can seek refuge and recover from the blows he delivers to us in our lives.

The other thought that I had as I was chopping, Just outside the center of the tree at the base was a knot in the wood. Knots form where branches are meant to grow in. This knot formed in near the center of the tree which is where every change in us starts. We cannot change ourselves from the outside in, but we must change ourselves from the inside out. If this limb had started to grow near the outside of the tree, it would not be nearly as strong as it would be as it would have been in the center of the tree. On the outside, it would have fallen to the storms nature brings as we would fall to the storms of Satan. And thus our repentance should be, a formation from the center, from the foundations of our souls that brings about a desire for change and that is strengthened as it grows through time.

And may we all be "Strong like Russian Olive Tree".

Slacker

I'm a slacker. I haven't posted in who knows how long and I apologize for that, I've been a bit busy. I have the pictures of the yard up on a computer and I'll have them up here in a little bit. We also adopted a new little one. Since Chrissy has decreed she cannot be a princess, our new little one is Duchess Aurora. She's a gray Tabby cat, and she's only about nine weeks old. Probably a bit closer to ten now though.

So my post for the moment...

For those of you who saw on facebook, I did indeed try to make it into Flag PD. And yes, I failed. I wasn't told the test was timed, so I went in having done 50 sit-ups without breaking a sweat the night before, and thirty seconds before the test starts, the officer conducting the test looks at some one from human resources and asks, they only have a minute, right? And the person from human resources says, I think so... and they go back and forth and they settle on that we only have a minute to do our thirty-five sit-ups. That would have been really nice to know, I only missed by two, but I still missed and therefore I failed. I'm now training to test with sheriff's office, which is basically the same job local police have but it's a little more work and quite a bit less pay. I will be privileged with not only the responsibilities of a patrolman, but I'll also get to do interrogations and crime scene investigations (a little more in depth than a cop, but not quite to the same level as a detective).

Unfortunately though, the minimum requirements for SO is a little bit tougher than the PD's. I have to make 38 sit-ups in a minute rather than 35 (not that much tougher), 21 push-ups in a minute instead of 26 (ok.. I confess.. that's a bit easier) and a mile and a half in 12:41 instead of 13:46. As of today I've surpassed the push-up and sit-up requirements but I still have 1 minute and 41 seconds to shave off to make that time. I can do it!

Yard work

I always used to think while growing up that yard work was stupid. Or rather, huge yard projects that drastically alter the yard for to appease the creative tastes of the home owner. Or in this case my parents (whom I love dearly) putting in a walk way in the Dover house. Or wanting to clean up the patch of trees in the front yard in the Farmington house. You know, things like that. That is until I entered into the general realm of home owning.

While I do not own the house I'm currently living in, I have more freedoms to clean up and do as I wish than renters do. For example, I had the ability to pull all the trees out of the side yard, which I spent last? week doing. Might have been the week before, I don't remember.

Upon the realization that I would be starting my blog today, I took pictures of my next big project. It's a rather intensive one that will probably take a few years, but that's ok, I'm planning on living here that long. I suppose I'll need to put up the pictures to better explain what I'm going to do, but those will come in the next few posts.

I'm going to be taking all the large trees out of the back yard and put in a fence, so that I may let the dogs into the back yard without worrying about them running away. But this is a much larger project than it sounds to be. Details to follow.

For those of you who don't know, my two dogs are Max and Kovu (pictures to follow as well). Max is a three-year-old 80-90 pound Anatolian Shepherd, Great Pyrenees mix. He's a beautiful white dog that is more like a bear rug than anything else around the house. Kovu is the typical third generation mutt. He's about 40 pounds, has the brick brown color. He's still a puppy (about 8 months old now), so he's quite the little ball of energy. They've identified Akita as the dominant breed in him. But German Shepherd, Pitt, and Pyrenees have also been identified as well. When I adopted him they said he had a bit of lab in him too. I don't see that so much though. But I'm no dog expert.

I also have two cats, Kiara and Carmel (pictures to follow [and for those who've put Kovu and Kiara together.. yeah, we're Disney fanatics]). Kiara is a pretty princess. She spend her day sleeping or cleaning herself with occasional intermittent sunbathing. She spends more time cleaning herself than anything else though. While she and I used to play around, if a hair fell out of place, she could feel it, and she would stop wrestling with me to fix it. She also seems to think her pretty white paws are always dirty too. Which I'm not entirely sure how that works considering the amount of time she spends cleaning them and how much she detests dirt. Carmel is more dog than cat. He enjoys being roughed up like dogs do, bathes, being picked up, being held, being brushed. He lays on his back and holds his paws like a dog so we'll scratch his tummy. You'd swear he was raised by dogs, he wasn't though, he was found at about 5-6 weeks old when he fell out of the high school ceiling last spring. I heard a statistic though that orange cats behave most like dogs even if they've never had exposure to dogs before. I'm not entirely sure I believe that though as I haven't seen the research, but after seeing him I'm inclined to toss the idea around a bit.

My list of things to do today isn't getting any shorter, so I'm off for a bit.