Friends, Football, and Global Warming Bonfires

A response to a conversation started on Facebook after I commented to support Minnesota Vikings fans after a tough loss. Follow that here.

Okay, here’s some perspective from a non-NFC north fan.

I’ve lived in five NFL markets: Pittsburgh, Miami, DC, Detroit, and now the TC. Again, I’m a Miami fan.

The Pittsburgh fan base is one of the most loyal, faithful, authentic groups in the league and in my opinion one of the top 5 in the league. I have every reason to hate them and they Miami. The Stellars (w. pa. accent) essentially ended the Miami dynasty in the 70’s and the two cities are complete existential opposites. Yet never once was I drilled by a Pittsburgh fan for my Miami aqua #13.

Miami fans are among the most definitively fair weather in the league. Most of the true Phins fans moved away in the 80’s when the racial issues killed the city’s authentically blue collar population. Its not that the remaining don’t care but why would you spend time on a mediocre team when you can enjoy one of the largest party towns in the US where you can party way better on South Beach among far more visually pleasing scenery and cheaper with less emotional cost. Plus you’re only 90 minutes from Margaritaville. Nothing better illustrates the Miami situation than the fact that every home game this year has been a ticket sales sellout including next week’s pre-playoff, playofff vs the Stellars; but none has been an actual gameday attendance sellout.

As for the Skins, I think for the most part you can apply the statements about the Stellars to them as well. Miami ended their perfect 72 season with a SB W vs the Skins and about a decade later they pummeled a David Woodley led Phins team in the SB. The Skins are old school, the DC community is as unique an existence as there is in the NFL, and they love their team regardless.

No team better represents the state of their city/state better than the boys in Honolulu Blue. The fans are there in Motown, but they’ve been punished like very naughty children since anyone still alive can remember. Why would anyone still go to a Detroit game? I mean 10+ years with #20 only got them one NFC title game. What makes anyone with any common sense believe anyone on the current roster is going to lead them out of NFL purgatory? Yet, like robots they tune their DTV Sunday Tix package (games are blacked out like the sun rises) to the Lions and are safely asleep by halftime. Ford Field is gorgeous but in the end if the girls in the shoulder pads aren’t attractive why is anyone gonna care. That said, the minute the Lion-Cubs grow into men for a decade or so, watch out, the fan base will rise from their slumber and be one of the most rowdy in the league. They’re so bad they don’t even have the energy to notice I’m even wearing my Danny Marino threads.

That takes me to the TC where the first time I suited up in my Dolphins stocking cap and #13 and headed to class at NCU I was promptly informed by a well educated person wearing purple that “Miami sucks!”. And the echo resonates nearly half a dozen times a season since I came in the fall of 1999. While I’m not so much arguing that in fact “Miami doesn’t suck,” I am oft left wondering why anyone in the TC would even care if that statement is true. I say that to illustrate a point about Vikes fans, of which I can honestly say there are the faithful. But most of the vocal “fans”, for what ever reasons there might be good or bad, are so bitter about history in general that they are not able to rationally deal with losing a game even in the midst of a decent season. They have a great tradition and are very rarely truly awful but if you lived in a vacuum and landed on earth in December of any of the last 10 years except 1998 and spoke with the average Vikes fan, you would feel like they were supporting a team suffering through a Detroit Lions-like slump. Whether that frustration is a sign of passion or being sore losers (I don’t care how long its been since Tark played at the Met or if the Vikes ever won a “big game”) its a tired act the MN fans put on every year. I can fully see how Vikes can be annoyed by the Cheese or Halas Hall each year. But so many of the loudest Vikes fans couldn’t tell you who won the SB in 1977. That was the last time the Vikes played on Super Sunday, albeit, a loss to the Fighting Jon Maddens. The bottom line in my experience is they don’t even really know why they’re so bitter, its just an inherited sin of their fathers. Are the fans good? Maybe. Are they loyal? Sure. Are they tolerable. Just barely. Again not all are this way but every real fan is bitter when their club loses so, as hard as it is to believe, EVERYONE hurts when their team disappoints.

I know what its like to watch a team in your division rise from ashes to dominate the NFL. Remember I grew up with Indy in the AFC east. To know that the Pats and the IndyPonys have risen from classic NFL mediocrity to be two of the 3-4 premiere franchises just makes me ill. Plus our franchise’s greatest player was denied SB glory by the NFL’s most pure chokers, the Jills, through out the early 90’s. Top that off with an owner who threw $$$ at the Marlins to earn WS rings with money he made selling stadium naming rights to our building that only made profits during FB not Hardball games. And how Marc Anthony? That’s another blog. But never once have you heard me present scenarios for me to disown my team or create my own personal global warming bonfire with all the Dolphins gear I’ve collected over 28 years. Yet both have been bullet point items in many dissertation speeches presented to me by Vikes fans.

Nothing against Vikes fans or any other team’s supporters but this is just one guy’s experiences.

Trey’s TCM VLog #2

Here’s VLog #2 for those who are bored with their summer.

Trey’s TCM VLOG Part 1

Here is the first in what I plan to be a series of VLOGs on my training for the 2009 Twin Cities Marathon. Sorry its so blah, but oh well. I’ll learn and I’m too lazy to do another one. Plus isn’t doing things in the moment what VLOGing is all about?

The People’s Munchin (AKA, the People’s Dictator)

Here is a link to the blog of our friend and Comrade Tim Austin where you will find pictures of the lil’est comrade.

ENJOY!

CLICK HERE

Jesus as an Airbag

When considering the wide range of experience that a human being goes through during his or her existence, the truth of their personal theology is revealed. When existence that is usually internal synapse and sinew is exposed for all to evaluate, you often find out more than merely what one is made of. Laid open in life’s aftermath is something profoundly different than mere theory or science. Self evaluation in these moments is often far more devastating than the events pursuant to a cause initiating such searching. People of professed faith often state creeds or verses of sacred text that might favor a mantra more than a true statement of belief. During these moments of bare nakedness I find myself less resembling the Jesus of Gethsemane and more like the questioning, doubting father in Mark 9. Instead of selfless surrender to the one Hope I profess to have, I find more often a selfish, self-supporting, wandering, doubter calling out in disparate late moment need.

“It is nearly killing me! Help me. . . if you can.”

Painful divorce. Senseless death. Mind-numbing loss. 1-2-3! Deploy airbag! Jesus be near, NOW!

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying and bear with me as I progress through my own internal logic diagram towards a coherent statement. I think it quite obvious that Christ and his Holy Spirit are those on whom we are supposed to call in time of disturbance or unrest. This, I think, even my most diametrically opposed comrades would agree on. None the less, it is foundation which must be poured so that no one can confuse what is being stated as something other than what it is. That being a person who values a side of cognitive coherence with his meal of spiritual submission while working out his salvation with a very localized sense of fear and trembling.

It is within this context of working out my end of this salvation process that I find myself challenged and sadly lacking. Please again, do not purpose to me various flaws in my soteriology. Simply stated there are things we’re responsible for in the process of becoming more like Christ and those are the stairs of which I am stumbling up and down in this post. In Christ in his place of prayer in a garden historical moments before his salvation act was put into play, I see the model of a human life so otherworldly from the one I am able to approach. Because He was and is God he was fully aware, not merely of his pending physical torture, but also of coming face to face with being made sin for an entire history of people living and yet to come. From this he was not able to escape his human emotion as exhibited by his prayer for God to potentially intervene. But in the next, in my imagining, excruciating, exhaled, exhausted statement he offers the submission that I find so lacking in my own life.

“Father, not mine, but your will be done.”

And from there all of history is different, regardless of your understanding of the historical value of the synoptic gospels. At some point Jesus, fully God, gave himself to his Lord and Father. Willfully, though not without a recognizable humanity that questions even the most loving father. At various times in my life, profession of faith and creed have been self serving and passionately fear based responses to distasteful circumstance. But a question arises in my soul in these moments. Where does my human hard work and desire to get the job done while relying on no human assistance infiltrate my spiritual humility to acknowledge basic existence, Christian existence, is only but a gift hinging on the next God given breath? No intent is here being offered to spiritualize the basic things like getting out of bed and taking a shower or shifting in a seat while watching the 6 pm news. Interestingly though, when those precious human faculties are take from us by disease, accident, or age we suddenly crawl humbly to a merciful God begging his hand to make sacred those abilities that were wholly our own but a few days, weeks, or months ago. In a humorous and not intentionally offensive mental metaphor, I picture myself driving in a car nearly externally wall papered with Christianese bumper stickers, maybe even a God is my co-pilot somewhere on the rear. Sticky note Bible verses are at every eye level on the interior and are completed with a ‘Smile! Jesus Loves You!” air freshener on the mirror. But never is Jesus consulted before or after every voyage in that car. I travel on and on in all directions. Is God in the seat next to me? And Jesus surely loves me, but what of me towards Him? Let me not pretend I feel for His nearness as I operate that vehicle and certainly not on a sunny day. But when the accident happens, without fail I call out, “Help me, if you can.” Hoping for the Jesus air bag deployment. Hoping.

Of course as the vehicle spins slowly in freeze frame I do not expect that God desires us to offer the blood tinged sweat of Jesus as we cry out “not mine, but your will be done!” But I do think that He might like more than the occasional deductible payment in acknowledgement of the debt we owe. Instead He gets the auto pay, direct deposit version from us for weeks and months and years between incidents with maybe a few verse-a-day recitations and Passion Live album sing alongs while commuting so we do not have to change our life to model His. A life that, when made flesh and lived among us, was not a marketable “counter culture” figure head nor a slogan engineering entity, but instead was the One and Only full of unfailing love and faithfulness which led Him to bare the scorn of our sin and close the divide between us and our heavenly Father. And all to often I realize how separate I allow myself to get from that Love and Faithfulness which shines in the darkness that masquerades itself as light when life is going by so smoothly.

Obviously these thoughts are tied to the first chapter of the Gospel of John. In that text there is a statement about darkness that I miss often when I breeze through that early text before the testimony of the Baptist in regard to our Savior. The later portion of verse five says, “..and the darkness can never extinguish it.” But my NASB has a footnote that reads, “and the darkness has not understood it.” That sounds more familiar to my experience. Because my life exists in a darkened world its all too easy to misunderstand the Light, misunderstand my Savior, my salvation. Salvation is always salvation. Not just on days where the water is deep and the wind is strong. Not just on days when ease of life is mistook for self sufficient light.

Reading through an old book that I was to have consumed as a freshman in college ten years ago this fall, I found John Fischer and his writing in Fearless Faith. His question resonates within this internal conversation.

How much does my faith in Christ have to do with what I actually put my faith in? How connected to the things of this world do I remain place of willful and prayerful reliance on Christ and Him crucified, dead three days, and risen again? How much of my existence is based on my grasp of who I am in this world verses who I am in the eyes of my Savior? I am in deed far short of the model set by our Lord and no one I have ever met who has truly set out on that goal has ever felt differently. To pursue Him is only to find out daily more and more how Great he is and how small I am. None the less there is more than the way I have known the true Light that is the Life for man.

Being deeply wounded or afflicted in our day to day existence is authentically painful. But often my fear is certainly greater than my faith and that is the greater pain now realized. I cannot really have immobilized faith. More truthfully that would be doubt realized. Jesus response to our recognizable friend in Mark 9 reveals the offense I feel guilty of when he tells the man, “What do you mean, if I can? Anything is possible if a man believes!”.

There is no certain answer that I can know about the journalism questions of life. The five W’s and an occasional H of our human challenges and struggles will crush and rebuild us over and over again and in that I have no doubt. Who, what, when, where, why and how are never so easily deciphered as the issues they cause. Inside of these questions however is the life we are living. No one completely ever knows except God himself. Questions like the ones connected to an old man’s suicide or a young girls sudden unexplained death will most likely go by our sphere of understanding no matter the examination process we put them through. People who operate much like myself will certainly lose sleep at various times in those foggy paths.

My roommate and HQBR comrade Sports Dave and I have often stated that theology is not so much written as much as it is lived. Everyone is living an orthodoxy regardless of their awareness to that. As I experience more of the devastating quandaries this human life creates, it has become more and more of my desire to live a theology of belief. That is so simple and really silly and my seminary friends will all quickly lunge forward with their far more polished or at least examined views. There are choices we all make and within my life there is a thirst to be something closer to consistent. Something closer to not just a lonely everyday sameness, but a regular functioning believer despite circumstance. Choosing to believe will create a new frame to my everyday life because I will always be living what I believe whether I acknowledge that or not. Pairing down those beliefs is a never ending task that is a part of that working out my salvation that I spoke of earlier. Trembling and fear need not be regarding my situation, but instead in awareness of a great and mighty God who did for me what I profess to believe he did. Forward progress is difficult to discern in something as challenging this, but it is my hope that the orthodoxy I live is not made up of trite scripture quotation but the feel of my Savior speaking his words to me through the truth that was hidden in my heart as I grew in Him through out my life. It is with an intellectual understanding being connected to my spiritual need that I pray the words of the father in Mark 9.

“Lord, I believe, forgive my unbelief.” For with that unbelief lessened, it might be that my Lord is more of a savior and less of personal flotation device.

A New Era for HQBR

Hello friends and followers of HQBR. Recently your comrades at HQ have moved across the Twin Cities Metro area to lovely Robbinsdale. After two years at our home in Minneapolis the collective feeling was that we needed to move on to something different. It was apparent we needed a change of pace and a new place to call home. After much searching we came across a lovely place to call home. Following several weeks of deliberation we also decided upon a new name for our home.

With some input and feedback from friends across all boundaries of our lives, we decided to go with the suggestion of our dear friend/comrade John Davenport. Thus, the residence we now occupy will be referred to as “The People’s Co-Opperative” or “The Co-Op” for short.  We have not aligned ourselves with any one political group.  It is merely something that serves to satisfy our collective sense of humor. Please fear not for your dear Co-op brethren and the People’s Munchkin! It does however christen an new era in our lives where we would infact like our house to be your house. If you live in the TC Community we would love to have you over. The new era in our lives was opened with a barbeque last Saturday which marked out the plan of our co-operative housing alignment to be a meeting place for our fellow comrades.

No changes will take place regarding the name or web address of our blog so please continue to contribute to our collective media production here at HQBR. We look forward to your participation in future meetings at the “People’s Co-Operative”.

Thankful For the Truth

As a sports fan you know its coming. The day when your favorite jersey wearing heroes will unlace the footwear for the final time and walk down the stadium tunnel and out into the parking lot of the rest of their lives. Some will sit behind a desk and explain the details of a box and one defense or the intricacies of a triangle offense to a couple million viewers before the prime time broadcasts of the game they played for over twenty years. Others will only be seen at celebrity golf events. But more often than not, most will simply fade from public eye and be briefly remembered during video montages cued up by TV producers for filler during playoff halftime shows.

Some of these legends get their last moment of some thing special before they saddle up for the sun set ride like John Elway was able to enjoy. Others like my favorite gun slinger, Dan Marino, go out in an agonizing super nova of pain which included 6 pics and the most lop-sided playoff loss in franchise history. Elway solidified his legend. Marino only served to encourage the naysayers  who say a title is  everything. And who can really disagree? What do we think of Patrick Ewing? What about Hakeem Olajuwon? The difference? Stats? TV time? Legendary series? Try this: The Dream= 2 worlds championships, Knee Pad Pat= Zilch.

Here’s another: Clyde Glide vs. Scottie Pippen? Both on the 50 greatest list. Clyde went for 20.4 ppg, 5.6 apg, and 6.1 rpg. Scottie: 16.1, 5.2, and 6.4.  But all we remember is Scottie and MJ taking down Clyde and his Rose City Rippers in their classic finals matchup. But thats fair enough. History is ALWAYS written by the victors.

As I sat in front of the TV last night and watched game five of my beloved Celtics and the astoundingly athletic Chicago Bulls, something struck me as I watched the minutes tick down to around 360 seconds left. The C’s were down 11. They looked absolutely dead on their feet. Slow on defense. Lazy on offense. No legs in their jumpers. Arms no longer stretched out to clog up the lanes. This was the end of a short lived season of glory. Old man teams don’t come back from 3-1. Thanks for the moment last season KG, Ray, and Paul. At least we kept ahead of the Lakers for a few more years. Oh me of little faith.

Then the Truth made himself known. Paul was absolutely invisible for three quarters. He was a dead man on defense after chasing a long list of young legs around the New Garden with the old parquet for what was already most of five games before game five was at the half. But lest we forget, it was not KG or Ray or Kobe or Gasol who was the MVP in the first finals played in the New Gaaaaden. #34 wrote himself a new page in C’s lore that may not be his alone but history will certainly remember he was the biggest player on that stage. But the collective fan memory is a short sighted vision. Now Paul is old and struggling (sad a guy going for well over 23 a night in five playoff games is “struggling”). His legs have simply played too many games in 18 months (thanks TNT announcing team for that bulletin board post). The John Salmons and Derrick Roses and Ty Thomas’s of the world are simply too much for him to guard and then still perform the classic Pierce finishes that leave Celt’s fans grinning and opponents saying that was the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen! But the truth is, Pierce is still (and you can write this down) “the mo f-ing truth!’. (thanks Shaq Daddy for that immortal quote). With time running out on his season Pierce awoke to find the stroke. That nasty nearly impossible step back, drive way basketball garbage shot that he got to fall three times. Three times with everyone on both benches knowing he was going to win or lose the game himself. Three times with KG and his huge bottom lip and Brad Miller and his now crooked tooth watching. Three times with young studs Ben Gordon, Rajon Rondo, and Rose all looking on as Pierce performed doctorate level work in NBA legend building. You see its not always if you’re the high scorer as Gordon learned in game three. Its certainly not how many points you score in the first quarter. But when the game is on the line and everyone in every time zone on the planet knows you’re getting the rock, and everyone in the galaxy knows exactly where you’re going to be when you shoot it and exactly how its going to look when you do? And then you do it three times? That is why every kid in every barn yard, back alley, or driveway the world over shoots every twilight shot they can from their money spot until its too dark to see the rim.

Chicago is a great team and against almost anyone else playing right now, I would be on their side. Gordon is an assasin. With a few more takes into the NBA playoff lane Rose will learn how to be the unstoppable finisher that the entire league will love and fear for the next decade. The mere sight of Joakim Noah makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth, but he is the type energy/heart  guy EVERY elite Association team needs to win a championship. Miller and Hinrich are talented all around players with a touch and an ‘tude that makes thump your chest proudly. Sure the Rondo/Miller foul will live in infamy and would most certainly have provided a second overtime encore had a flagrant been whistled, as it should have been. But lets not forget the lid was on the coffin with just under nine to go in regulation. Noah had just uglied a bad carrom in to the hoop for a 10 point Chi-town lead and Boston had to call a 20 second TO with about 7:40 to go. With Gordon heating up and things getting uncomfortable for the hometown team, Ray fouled out with three minutes left on foul that seemed awful soft for the playoffs, ironically a double call on Miller as well. Pierce was still MIA. Then with everything building to a fiery conclusion Paul gave us all a world class dose of foreshadowing with 10 ticks left to tie the game. His 16 foot stepback was nuthin’ but twine and KG’s lower lip was as swollen as ever. Finally, lets not for get that Mr. Gordon had a clear and solid look at a shot with time expiring that didn’t fall. Everything Chicago needed to go right happened on Tuesday night. The Bulls might have got hosed but they have no one to blame but themselves and a large spoonful of bad playoff medicine.

Boston is mostly likely going to come up short in their title defense this year. Should they get past Chi-town sans KG and Leon Powe, the awaiting  Superman, Bron-Bron, and Kobe all figure to be too much for a repeat of their 2008 magic. But for three glorious possessions as time dwindled down in overtime Paul Pierce showed that this is still his team. This is still his building. Gordon and Rose will have their day, maybe even in this series. But Tuesday night Paul summoned up the courage to shoulder “legendary” like so many before him did, for maybe the most legendary of all non-Yankee franchises in pro sports. I will not revert to any more henious puns about his nickname in relation to his performance, but for all guys my age who only saw the 80’s big three when they were arthritic and past prime, Paul is our guy. We knew all along he just needed some support and he would show the entire world what he could do. Even if it was the last time we get to see that nasty beast of a fade away rain down like drops of gold into our playoff memories, we’ll always have that performance. Pierce is not that old but teams like the Bulls and guys like Dwight and Lebron are just too good to keep away for much more than a few years. After Tuesday I can be proud of #34. In a few years when that number goes to the rafters next to 33, one down from 32, and kitty cornered from my personal favorite, 00, no one will doubt that is where it belongs.

Thanks Paul, I am very thankful to have seen the Truth these last few years. I am a believer once again.

Let’s get 18! GO C’S!!!

Winter Solstice and Running Beautiful

Defending something you love is never hard though it can certainly be difficult. People and nations have warred for hundreds of thousands of years without any doubt as to its right. Soldiers and their families will certainly confirm that the battle is not possibly summed up by the narrow meanings of the adjective ‘difficult’. Of course few of the things in my life that I’ve actually sought to defend have as many impossibly difficult ramifications as those of war. My life is often made more self important than reality allows as I make so many excuses and defenses of the truly trivial trimmings of my existence. Knowing that is something quite unnerving. Considering the corresponding ramifications of that reality is an entirely different conundrum. Maybe my theological and philosophical counterparts here at HQBR would insert their common response to that being the typical “existential crisis” that we discover all to often in our lives as housemates, friends, and young men desiring something more than just sleeping, consuming/burning calories, and reading lots of books to improve our understanding of the faith we tritely say we hope to affirm.

This isn’t a blog about those things in typical dry rot, arm chair theologian, amateur philosopher style that you  could probably find here most times. Instead its something more on the trivial non-essential meeting up with the necessary essential. Please bear with me as expound on my thoughts because something of this is, I think, substantive for all of my friends that follow us here at HQBR and thus would probably be our family or friends. When you come upon, whether through stumbling knee skinning experience or existential examination, something which affects and effects your approach to the next days of your life its often true that it will reach out to someone that resides outside your own internal zip code.

Long winters in Minnesota are a battle of endless attrition with the elements. The options are stay inside as much as possible while resorting to intake of caffinated beverages, large quantity of electronic entertainment, and the old paper back friends in our personal libraries OR find some way to participate in the “fun” of winter through skis, skates, vulcanized rubber discs, or mechanized chariots. This winter solstice has brought me to a new sort of understanding of myself that is both scary and empowering. On several fronts the events of life teach but were only made valuable through the extra time found  indoors under artificial house arrest. First I need relationships on a better level than what I had during the 365 days of 2008. Second those relationships are in fact directly proportional, not merely to my happiness, but to the more emotionally fulfilling experience of joy. Third, not running is not acceptable even during the winter. That was the extent of development regarding my self-understanding through last week.

Then the sun broke anew through a long and arduous winter curtain. Dave and I decided to head out for a run to soak in the ridiculously awesome feeling of 60 and sunny that is left behind in Minnesota  by the revolution of the Earth on its axis as it hurls itself around the sun (please no commentary on creationism here.). As a running coach I was pointing out a few things for Dave as we warmed up our winterized appendages in the parking lot of a neighborhood park. It came to me how much I love to teach about what I love. Likewise it became apparent how much I value Dave and his running “story”. A few moments later as we pounded out the workout we had prescribed, it also became apparent that running two or three times a week during the winter was well worth it. Huh, interesting. Two things I love intersecting. Who knew. Relationships and running are meant for one another? How could this be?

Its always been a struggle for me to feel like what I do with my time was something worthy of the calling I feel like I’ve been consecrated to through the pursuit of my faith. Maybe its because I’ve never considered what I do beautiful. Maybe because I don’t feel beautiful. All sarcasm regarding dudes and the word beautiful aside, its true that a self portrait of myself would best be described as homely, gangly, and generally unaesthetic. Though I always have been somewhat okay with that situation, its made what I do feel less than valuable to the greater population and sadly to a large extent, God. How hopelessly selfish. Sad self pity in the way of people and relationship being lived with and being lived out. What greater beauty is found than that of  our macaroni creations or finger paint smudges offered to a Father who simply wants our undivided attention? What is a symphony or a cancer cure to a God who is the source of such things. Sure, millions will be astounded through the vibrations of the cello as they tickle the inner ear. In deed, prayerfully one day a cancer cure will provide a second life to thousands if not millions of souls. But to what end? So the hearer can salute the cellist? So the healed can walk away to live a life, blessed and full of good, but without a relationship to the Healer? As the cellist moves the bow or the researcher spins the cylinder they become more confident that God is not necessary. Somehow I feel God weeps at that thought, but maybe that’s just an emotion that will fade away. None the less, I cannot escape the feeling that external beauty is for us so we can be moved. But relationship is more than feel good or warm and fuzzy. If my macaroni and glue stick is what  I have to give but I keep it in the box and in the drawer, it seems to me no different than the unplayed symphony.

Running will never make sense to so many people. How it can be spiritual is certainly debatable. Even though I told Dave, the seminarian, that running is MY seminary, I know it cannot truly be defended as a worthy expenditure of my time when I discuss it with a non-runner. Seen through the lens of what has been given to me, I will however defend my passion for what it is intended to be in my life. It is my connection to 25+ athletes and over 50 former teammates and friends who share my affinity for that sport. Through that I have relationship. In those relationships I have been challenged, stirred, revived, encouraged, and supported. I’ve stood in wedding parties and delivery rooms. I’ve cried and prayed and sung and laughed. Through my sport I have fulfillment of vocation and a sense of direction. I have impact beyond my neighborhood or city. Truly I have something more than pitted out old tee shirts or marathon metals on my wall. More than national championship banners in an old musty gym. More than chenille letters tucked away in a keepsake box.

I have a picture in my office which shows six young college cross country runners covered head to toe in mud and sweat. Some shoeless, all still in skimpy runners uniform. A cloudy overcast sky that had just dumped slush on them for the last three hours looms over head. They stand arm in arm, in a mud patch. You can almost see them shiver in the still photo. Their race is done. The job is complete. When you touch the picture you can virtually feel the satisfaction they felt on that day. Because I will never play a symphony nor make a miraculous medical discovery my opinion might be less valued than that of others. But one day if you visit my office and hold that picture in your hands, I can promise there is no more beautiful sight in all of God’s creation.

Savior, be glorified. I am about to go for a run.

HQBR Movie Review: Gran Torino

This week two thirds of the HQBR headed out to the movies to take on Clint Eastwood’s newest film Gran Torino. This story was said to be inspired by life in a St. Paul neighborhood and features a teenage actor from just down the road from HQ in Robbinsdale. With Eastwood’s flair for the dramatically violent and a story about gangs affecting a neighborhood that was once a solid place to live, we were excited to see this film heading into our Thursday dude night.

The screen play of a script written by a native Minnesotan has Eastwood playing Walt Kowalski, a retired Korean war veteran with more than a huge portion of racist tendencies and pent up emotions regarding his actions during the war. Right away you are exposed to the hard nosed Kowalski wreaking havoc as he stalks around the dinner after his wife’s funeral. The main point of that selection of scenes being that he does not get along with his aloof sons or their families.

Enter the Hmong family next door. Kowalski unwittingly saves his young neighbour Thao from being violently initiated into a gang by his older thug cousin when the gang attempts to take Thao from his own front yard. Through his actions Walt is viewed as a hero to the Hmong neighborhood which he strongly resists. When Kowalski witnesses some African-American guys trying to rough up Thao’s older sister Sue, he once again steps in. This time he is slightly won over by Sue and the plot finally turns from focusing on his resistance to embrace his neighbors to Kowalski starting to become involved in helping to teach Thao what it means to be a man.

Though Eastwood often goes outrageously overboard with his obscenity laden, racial slur filled language the movie is successful in getting you to like Walt. You learn a lot about why he is the way he is and also a lot about why the Hmong characters are in the situation they are. The relationships that are built become enjoyable if not believable for the viewer. The three main characters are pretty developed by the movie’s end and you find yourself really connecting with the main conflicts of the plot. When everthing is combined with Eastwood’s Dirty Harry-esque quips and growls as he carries out the role of Walt Kowalski, you get what the movie is advertised to be. Which in my opinion is a story worth telling and a movie worth seeing. You might not make it through the film if gratuitous swearing or violent scenes disturb you, but if you can chalk those up to the characters involved, you might just get to the end of a pretty good movie. As for the name, all I’ll say is the title comes from the make of a car that plays a big role during the film.

This film is definetly not for everyone but if you’re up for the usual Eastwood style, this satisfies his legacy. I happen to enjoy it so despite less than super acting by all parties I give it 3 stars.

A Trip I Took

The following is a short photo essay based on photos I took while driving home from Michigan on December 28. There are 44 photos used in this essay selected from over 200 pictures taken. Because I was driving I was obviously unable to focus or change settings. I occasionally was able to adjust the f-stop and shutter speed when I was not sliding all or the highway on ice, slush, or snow. I never focused the camera using my sight and snapped anywhere from 3-7 pictures each time letting the camera catch what it saw.  The results are some cool pics and a dangerous and arduous drive home made far more enjoyable. It was interesting to note what the camera was able to catch and compare that with all the small details you note while driving for hours on end. It was also able to catch some other dirt, dust, and smears that give the pics an interesting perspective. Let me know what you think. Music is from Sufjan Stevens and his Seven Swans Album, the track is “Alone with you”.

A Lonely Ride Home from Trey Meadows on Vimeo.