Thursday, January 5, 2017

Dave Pack: Christ personally picked the Wadsworth compound because of the trees



Oh Dave!  You are such a lumberjack!

“Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars” (Zech. 11:1). Trees are a wonderful thing or, they can be a terrible thing. Again, I’ve been mentioning this…Cutting a lot of trees…I’ll be back tomorrow. I have cut about 500 trees myself, personally, over the last three Sundays. Most of them are small…
I read an interesting article about trees, and it tells you something interesting about the Garden of Eden environment that God wants to bring to the whole world, and I think why the living Christ…Before we get into a story of “bad” trees, let’s talk about “good” trees for a moment, because the world will be filled with beautiful trees. I was just sitting the other day writing down the number of kinds of major trees on the campus…About four major indigenous oaks. There are a couple of kinds of ash; there are three kinds of maples; there is black locusts; black cherry, wild cherries; there are king nut hickories and shagbark hickories; a couple kinds of poplars, a tulip poplar and then standard American poplars, and American elms and so forth…and they all look different. I’ve gotten to where I can pretty much spot them in the winter. We’ve got some flowering trees and apple; hawthorn and dogwoods, and some ornamentals.
But trees are all unique and different and serve different purposes. Here is an article. I just wonder, as I think of this magnificent campus filled with thousands of trees…about this article title, “Being around trees makes you less stressed”…and Christ picked this property.
Has there ever been a man in human history who is as macho as superfantabulous Dave?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

With all these trees at the Wadsworth compound, maybe this is the "lost" garden of Eden. Somebody should let Pack know, it could be mentioned in his next message.

Anonymous said...

Dave is an Apostle of Trees-Us Christ. That's why he is so far out on the branches and away from the trunk of New Testament Christianity. Of interest too, his first wife's maiden name was Ochs,

Unknown said...

How many NUT TREES are there on the campus??

Anonymous said...

"How many NUT TREES are there on the campus??"

Fewer now, apparently.

It's a matter of supply and demand. There are too many nuts on the RCG campus already, so they had to cut down the trees to stop the expansion.

Retired Prof said...

Well, this is embarrassing.

I have a twinge of fellow feeling with Pack in his involvement with trees. It's tiny, but it's unmistakably there. I manage the timber on our place for commercial harvest, for firewood to heat our home, and for wildlife habitat. His motive seems to be different--landscaping instead of timber harvesting. But still, as I gaze at a freshly cleared path for my truck through the woods, my pride must be a lot like Pack's as he looks out over the imitation savannah he and his crew have created.

Also, at least Pack is willing to get in there and share a little grunt work with his employees, something that would have been unimaginable with HWA.

Please understand, none of this raises my estimation of anything else about Pack.

Anonymous said...

There is unrest in the Forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the Maples want more sunlight
And the Oaks ignore their pleas.

The trouble with the Maples
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the Oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the Oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made
And they wonder why the Maples
Can’t be happy in their shade?

There is trouble in the Forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the Maples scream ‘Oppression!’
And the Oaks, just shake their heads

So the Maples formed a Union
And demanded equal rights
‘The Oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light’
Now there’s no more Oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw…

DBP

Retired Prof said...

Pack says his property has "About four major indigenous oaks."

About four? If he's learned as much about trees as he claims, he should be able to tell us exactly how many kinds he has, and rattle off their names.

Considering the climate in northeastern Ohio, I bet one of them is the bur oak. If any of those are of suitable size, he should harvest a few and have the lumber kiln dried for making musical instruments.

What? You thought only maple, spruce, ebony, rosewood, walnut, and such were suitable for musical instruments? Not from what I hear. Radio announcers on our NPR music station often play recordings of bur oak instruments being used to play bur oak music.

(I decline to apologize for that. When the time comes for a bad joke, I don't settle for the hoary old chestnuts poplar with my elders, so retro they still pine for them. No sir. Rubs my fir the wrong way. No halfway measures for me. I go for bur oak.)

Retired Prof said...

Hmm. That routine could be funnier. Can anybody help me spruce it up?

Anonymous said...

I've been called a funny guy and I happened to have grown up in and have lived near an "oak savannah" almost my entire life. But it is hard for me to be funny about RUSH, the world's greatest philosophical rock band. Neil Ellwood Peart(the drummer) is one of rock'n'rolls greatest lyricists. His lyrics transform good riffs and such into something much more.

An example from above:
"And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw…"

We know what a saw is, but it can also be a verb. Now with the nominalization of the verb "saw", the question becomes "Who saw what?", when we chose to denominalize it. I like to interpret that lost performative as "The One" we all are trying to get a glimpse of.

Which just reminded me of another Rush song "Limelight".

Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage

Cast in this unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact

[Chorus:]
Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme

Living in a fish eye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can't pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend

All the world's indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience
Outside the gilded cage
"Limelight"

Here is some more of Neil's genius. I'm sure there are many acoustic, live and softer-edge tones for the sound of the main-stream hard rock sound they used on that album, but it is the lyrics that I am referring to. Test For Echo is a great example, that link has all the lyrics for all the songs. With the lyrics to Half the world, color of right, dog years, resist, and chip away the stone, he really wrote his heart out on that album.

DBP