HIS Karate-Do

Well, we (Trish, Lynne and I) just got back from an enjoyable 5 days in….Vegas. My old Sensei, better known today by his students world-wide, as Shihan Funakoshi, was hosting his eighth world karate tournament in the city. This was to be his last tournament there, possibly the last one in the US . Next year, it’ll be held in England , and since his dojos are primarily located in Europe , likely to be on that continent from this time onward. Hence, it was probably our best and last chance to attend, not so much for the tournament, but to have the opportunity to train with Shihan. Of course, throughout the seventies and eighties, I had been able to train with Shihan many hundreds of times, but Trisha could only vaguely remember being his little white/blue belt student when she was six years old. So this was going to be a possibly last time for me to train with my old sensei and a first time for Trish to train in his advanced class as a black belt. It was a lot of fun, and I realized two things: 1) That much of what I share with our brown/black [...]

When I was still working in the IT industry, we would have a new slogan or motto every year. I remember one year, in the 1980’s, the motto was: “Partners In Change”. It was pretty appropriate, since we were busy reorganizing almost constantly, trying to remain the strong, dominant player we had been for the previous three decades. Of course, as regular employees, we felt ourselves to be mere peons within the huge, 500,000-employee, worldwide corporation. My own version of that year’s motto was: “Partners In Change…Small Change.” (Small change, get it?…like working for nickels and dimes) It used to get an appropriately small chuckle from my co-workers. Fast forward twenty years, and I was working for the US Army, as an employee in the Transformation Office, one of the highest priority initiatives and leading edge unit in the modern Army. Its meaning is far more than a motto, it represents a massive, Army-wide effort to address the complex, dangerous situations occurring today in global warfare. I firmly believe that the best things in life are truly transformational… a deep kind of change that gradually (sometimes suddenly) brings one to another level or direction. Two very common examples are: marriage [...]

Before every training session of the karate-do ministry, as with other ministries, we begin with prayer in fellowship. Though each prayer is unique, most contain an invitation to the Lord’s presence, a thankfulness for the health and time, and place to train, asking for protection over the fellowship, as well as a blessing over those members who can’t share that day’s session. I have realized over time, that no matter who leads the particular prayer, before we line up, before that first “Shomen Ni Rei!”, a simple request is heard again and again…that we might learn the unique lessons that He has in store for each of us during that training session. The Do and the ministry are so much more than just conditioning, stretching, movement, self-defense, or cultural history. As a Christian, if you are Saved…why wouldn’t the Lord take you from your temporal existence immediately? No one can answer for the Lord, but it’s generally thought that the reason each of us continues our mortal existence is because we have more to do and more to learn, here on earth, before we are called forward in His time. I know I’ve mentioned before, that prior to starting in [...]