My sister Shauna and I ran a 12k this morning to kick off Thanksgiving in style. Nothing like a morning 12k to make for a guilt-free Thanksgiving.

My dad and sister’s friend ran the 2-miler and my mom and Sarah walked the 2-miler. I sense a new tradition in the offing…

Here’s the route (in beautiful Lubbock, TX):

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

- Satch

“But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

- GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Emphasis mine)

This is not just beautiful prose. Today it gives me pause, and encourages me to analyze my own rebellion.

I do consider myself more than a bit of a rebel within the circles I run².

But I’m also more mystic³ than skeptic, which means my insurgency must have a cause, lest it become insurgency for its own sake.

So I protest war because I believe in the value of all human life, including those who want nothing more than to end mine.

I protect the environment around me because I do not believe that subduing the earth is the same as rendering it uninhabitable.

And I fight poverty, not to justify my undeserved wealth, but because dignity is a birthright of all human beings.

I am not, as Chesterton describes, a rebel in search of any cause. Rather, I rebel because of what I uphold to be true.

1. or, in this case, on a digital screen fashioned to look as much like paper as possible without actually being paper.
2. of course, perhaps I’m being melodramatic
3. as some would define it, this means that my faith is wholly knowable, but that I can not know it within myself completely. Or more simply put, God has all the answers, while I do not.