Tony Dungy did things “The Lords Way”

I have always been impressed with Tony Dungy, not only as a World Champion Super Bowl coach, but as a person of deep Christian faith.  He has always been humble, even keeled, and able to apply his personal values to everything he did.  He wore his faith on his sleave.  This makes some people a little nervous I think, well I post some thoughts in a vlog which you can find here:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXndp47Tjlc&feature=channel_page

Legends and Myths

Throughout our planet we have a wealth of legend and myth. Stories so unbelievable, of a time so foreign from our current understanding, that no one would give them serious benefit of the doubt today. Giants, Dragons, and Sorcerers contending with champions and maidens enrich our imagination but slide away from our histories, finding their way into dusty tomes and left unread. The they reappear, now instead of as story from which we can learn but now as a drama to titillate and overwhelm us, now the style of the time has re-painted them and given them some noble purpose. Whether it be in the ancient religions of times past or in the comic book superheroes of the modern day. We are bombarded with ideas of superhuman greatness from Thor to Spiderman. The explanations of the phenomenon are lost on man’s senses. I will bring up another example, stories of millennia past from the Bible talk of a civilization now destroyed by catastrophe, with nothing remaining to be recognized today. Men who lived to be nearly one thousand years old and of individuals so pure that even God would desire their companionship. Some of these legends live into today, the pyramids say that some of the arts of this deep past yet remained for others to remember. But even these arts and the willpower to carry them out are lost on the technology softened humans of today. Maybe we should put and end to our pride in technology and begin to re-open those books unread. Maybe there is more truth to Thor, Odin, the Nephelim and Atlantis then our modern comforts would suggest. Maybe we should come to realize that despite our advances and our haughty belief that civilization of today has never been eclipsed are empty and that we are but shadows of those who walked before us and but the coolness after a storm gone past. If catastrophe can wipe all of what existed in the past to nothing more than legends no one dare admit believing then what can the hand that unleashed that judgment thousands of years ago do to us weak and lesser humans of today?

Hungry?

“The laborer’s appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.” Hebrew Proverb

More than once I have woken up, lived through a day and late at night gone back to sleep. All good except for one thing, I did not get anywhere. Who says that linear progress is something worthwhile anyway? Tell that to Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, George Washington, or anyone who has done anything important or beneficial and they might have given a look that say, “What idiot says that.” My point being that, though wondering what the meaning of life is might work in a philosophy class it has no practical application in real life because we have been endowed with a sense of hunger. First, we hunger for food. As most of my readers are American, we probably deal with the issue of having too much food not too little, so the proverb at the top of the post will likely not be fully understood by anyone. So what else is there to drive us? Could it be that we have no biological need to get any farther in life than to feed ourselves? Judging from human progress, I would say no. However, I think we must manufacture hungers. Another way to say this is SET PROGRESSIVE GOALS.

If one has never traveled to a third world country one will see the ultimate affect of regressive thinking. One missionary described it this way and I paraphrase, while in America we keep up with the Joneses, in Africa the Joneses get torn down to everyone else’s level. If a tree is planted that no one else has what happens? Neighbors do not plant a tree to keep up but instead cut the neighbors tree down. This inherent cultural suspicion of progress has a massive affect on a person’s life. If anyone wants to see why in fact seeking linear progress is better than denying its necessity need only look at a country blighted with socialism or voodoo.

So now I will make this personal, how are you motivated to bring your life farther along from point A to B? What is you hunger if it is not for food? To create hunger one needs to recognize that creating solid goals of progress and working hard towards them is what is needed as opposed to greed. Greedy people are not for progress, they are for overwhelming their senses without being productive. So set goals and realize the sweat required of you, and it always helps if those goals are to satisfy the needs of others rather than just yourself, because ten you create an echo chamber that transends greed and selfishness. I do not know what more I could ask for this Christmas season!

Feelings and Choices

People struggle for identity, and they struggle to justify what they desire. Self esteem and rationalization of behavior has become entangled in our post modern world and determines much in our moral worldview. The question let to us is, is this how tings should be? The cult of self is the #1 religion in the United States of America and the oil and incense used are feelings and individuality.

I am a sexual human being; most people have sexuality play a very large role in defining their life and shaping their behavior. Because individualism is so big in America, sexuality which is almost inseparable from the person has become a tattoo which we loudly let scream, “This is me, pay attention and serve!” Simply having feeling that are sincere and strong do not make those feelings valid, right, or worth the respect of others. It is my experience with others and myself that usually the desires of our heart are little more than disguised weapons to pierce someone else or our self. Human being are selfish and mean, it is not too great a stretch to recognize that their desires, sexual or otherwise, are more harmful than not. This is certainly a very sad state of affairs, but one must see that most of humanities legacy is negative.

If we engaged in sexual activity or acted on desires in nothing but a selfless manner which places others first and ourselves last, we would be greatly limited in what we could do. My question to all of you is, is that necessarily a bad thing?

Everyone, and I mean everyone, will have to put some portion of their desire, and what they want away forever. This is because if we got everything we wanted, we would hate much of what we received, and others adversely affected by our actions would like it even less.

How the Movie Crumbles

Is anyone with me in thinking that movies say a lot more than we give them credit for?  Movies say a lot of things, they make assumptions that are often passed on to us, and they have codes of conduct that influence us.  Humans need rules, if none are provided we make them up as we go, if they are not present or there is confusion about what the rules should be we become very angry.

Just as we do not like being in situations of ambiguous criteria for acceptable behavior we do not like movies that are jumbled.  Two movies got a hard time for this, the latest was Pirates of the Caribbean: World’s End and the earlier one from a couple years back was The Matrix Revolution.  They could not establish understadable coherence and it made many of us want to throw our popcorn at the screen instead of munching it down.  The complaint was complexity of plot for both, I would disagree, the storylines were simple the meanings behind the events and character interactions throughout that story were jumbled at best however.  When I watched PoC 3 I could not really lay a finger on who side everyone was on and I did not even know who to invest my energy and interest in, I could not even associate any character with positive feelings.  A story is supposed to create a hero or anti hero, and this movie created neither; with that the story tension dissipated and was ineffective.  The characters collapsed on themselves and were all uninspiring dispute the great special effects, awesome scenery, and witty one liners.

While the problem with PoC 3 was in its characters, Matrix Revolutions had great characters but a story line that was incoherent with a solid moral purpose.  Pirates had a story with a clear destination but lacked the characters to drive it.  MR had characters whose relationships were concise and being able to root for the good guys was easy as it was very apparent who you were supposed to root for.   However, the story itself was derailed.

To succeed a movie must set down standards of plot behavior and character interaction as soon as possible and stick with it consistently and push the envelope of these rules to spice the title up.  A perfect example of this is the movie Rear Window, Directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock.  The movie instantly set certain boundaries and rules that characters had to stay in, but Hitchcock did what only he could, he had the character specifically break the rules or at least push them to the point of breaking which created an undeniable tension.  Though this movie would not be called frightening in today’s world of Saw and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the manipulation of rules and guidelines created an excitement that culminated in an ending that was somewhat predictable yet altogether fulfilling.

I demand you watch it, you may not be able to handle the drivel that comes out of Hollywood after you have but that is a good thing in my book.

Merry Christmas!

I look forward to adding to this site regularly.  Come back soon!