Bagger Vance Wisdom

"Junah had finally stopped thinking and playing golf."

You know you got a good movie when each time you watch it--you enjoy it more than the last time, you catch some new insight, and it sticks with you.  You gotta good movie in The Legend of Bagger Vance.  So what was the turning point in the movie for Junah aka Matt Damon?  The narrator, the grown up Harley the caddy is Jack Lemon, and he says--"Junah had finally stopped thinking and playing golf."  The turning point?  To be at one with the game...to be the game, stand inside it.  Once you start thinking about it, you step out of and reflect on it.  

Talk to those people who have attained greatness in any field.  You will hear the same thing.  They stop thinking and become one with whatever they are doing.  They become an extension of it.  

What about us?  The only way that happens is if we practice...whatever we are about--how do we enter it through our values, how does it ignite our passions--like the sail on a boat, how do we offer ourselves and allow the wind to blow where it will?  Yesterday's post offered a powerful poem by Antonio Machado.  The heart has not gone to sleep, the poet writes, but it is "listening/on the rim of vast silence."    That's when we stop analyzing life and living it--"listening on the rim of vast silence."

 No, my heart is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
Not asleep, not dreaming—
its eyes are opened wide
watching distant signals, listening
on the rim of vast silence.

Back in Business!

The blog is back in business after the internet has been shut down for me!  Thanks for checking back to see what's going on.  So I have a special's special for the post.  It's one my favorites.  I can actually feel the words in this poem.

Has My Heart Gone To Sleep?

Has my heart gone to sleep?
Have the beehives of my dreams
stopped working, the waterwheel
of the mind run dry,
scoops turning empty,
only shadow inside?

No, my heart is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
Not asleep, not dreaming—
its eyes are opened wide
watching distant signals, listening
on the rim of vast silence.

Antonio Machado

What about the Red Line?

Please cut me a break with this post.  I am running the risk of politicizing what I intend to be the world from the religious perspective—and the hints of God in the world.  Needless to say, everything keeps coming back to that red line of Pres. Obama in Syria and that crossing it with chemical weapons would be a “game changer.” 

Let’s work with that red line. As soon as it was drawn, it was like drawing the “line in the sand”—cross it, and we will respond militarily—so goes the threat.  That’s my very straightforward point.  Draw a line in the sand and threaten retaliation.  The line in the sand is the point where conflict begins. Simple enough, right? 

Go back to the desert. Look at the footsteps.  Instead of a line, what do you see?  There’s a pathway there, a line of footprints to follow—the journey beyond yourself.  The Jesus I find in Scripture left footprints for people to follow—not lines to cross into conflict.  He was always leaving footprints to entice people to get up and get going with the their lives.  It was not enough to feed the hungry, heal the sick, raise the dead, open the eyes of the blind—no! it was what people did with their lives and the freedom to follow his footsteps. 

Boy's Dream Comes True

Colton Lambert lands MD State record bass

A boy's dream came true when this 12 yr old fisherman landed a state record bass, 11lbs 6oz--some 4oz more the previous 30 year old record.  He had his father by his side to help him land the lunker, thought at first to be a snap before it bolted tearing off yards of line.  No fish story--he really caught it--but a fish story for sure as a memory maker for his life.

Our lives are made of stories, and many of them I am afraid that we try to throw back or just don't know what to do with them.  I was a high school soph in northern NJ and landed a 2.5 lb bass--a monster for me!  I still see the swirls under the tree limb, the perfect cast, and feel the fight.  Too bad I was not wise enough back then to let the fish go...as I was many more years later when I had this experience and penned these lines in Memphis:

Lunker Luck?

Was it just one of those gifts of the gods,

When every cast landed a lunker bass,

Bigger than anything I have ever caught

for forty years? Or nothing but dumb luck,

of the right place at the right time?  Maybe

it only matters that I threw them back,

knowing never to claim for my own,

what could only be the gift of a lifetime.

Swimmer Nyad completes 35 year swim from Cuba in Key West!

Diana Nyad completes 110 endurance swim from Cuba to Key West

“I have three messages. 

One is we should never, ever give up. 

Two is you never are too old to chase your dreams. 

Three is it looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team.” 

Diana Nyad

Endurance Swimmer from Cuba to Key West, FLA  

Kyakers escort Nyad's swim   

This was Nyad's 5th and finally successful swim in a 35 year chase for the record to do the swim without a shark cage.  Who possibly knows what drives people toward what records--certainly more than to be in the Guiness Book!  Life stretches out before us, and we have the choice what the race shall be and why we choose to do it in the first place.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded 

by such a great cloud of witnesses, 

let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin 

that so easily entangles. 

And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

Hebrews 12:2

Labor on this Question Today

          Get off the metro and find the path of life....

“Are we making a living, 

or…

   Learning how to live?” 

 Get off that metro for just one day and ask yourself the question  that matters all of your days--are you learning how to live, to craft a life?  Or is this just a day to kick back, rest, and then start it all over again?  Of course we have to make a living to live.  The point, however, is how we stop in the middle of it to learn how to live—to grow into a life.

Paul was after that message in his letter to the Ephesians.  To be a Christian is to grow up into Christ, what he called the full stature and maturity of Christ—a life that is a labor of love.  (see Ephesians 4)  Now that is a far cry from taking a day off for Labor Day—just to stop the conveyer belt and go back and do it all over again. 

Who Speaks for the Children?

So the primary question is really no longer, what do we know. The question is what are we -- we collectively -- what are we in the world going to do about it.

 And then in the same speech, Secretary John Kerry answered the question by saying: 

And that is at the core of the decisions that must now be made for the security of our country and for the promise of a planet where the world's most heinous weapons must never again be used against the world's most vulnerable people.

 

 Just my opinion.....,

Kerry asked the question, made the case and then President Obama gave his own answer. Condemnation of what he will not confront militarily by the black hole of Congressional debate...in what the President says may be a month.   Does anyone really think that lacking congressional authorization that he would act?  Painfully ironic for a President who has found ways to get around congressional process and approval in any number of cases

So the children of Syria will go to bed tonight more vulnerable than many others with the threat of chemical weapons out there. Is the question one of how to punish Assad and his henchman?  Or is it how we remember the eternal worth of each child so that as Sec. Kerry said--such heinous weapons will never be used on any of the children of the world.  The pathos of preventing that threat is only offset by the loving God who went to the Cross to lead us to the Garden -- that we should never forget, must always seek as the true vision of the world.