New York City in 2008

We decided to make another trip to one of our favorite cities: New York City. Our hotel room is within this view of the Empire State Building.


Before dinner, we stopped by the Sports Mecca eatery and game center in Times Square: ESPN Zone.

Ryan is hanging out at one of his favorite places: Times Square!


Brenda and Ashley on a visit to Tiffany's on Wall Street:

Movies On Freedom and Control

From the Inside and Outside

Freedom to choose is a limited ability. There are several serious reasons for the limits, the first being the lack of ability to truly choose, but there are also other limitations. But having the lack of ability to choose, does not mean that we do not sense something else is there for us. That sense of yearning which goes undefined. Two movies have approached this critical human dilemma and done so with insightful and cinematic presentation. Both were written by Andrew Niccol.

In 1997, "Gattaca" was released. This movie portrayed the options available to a man who has the right DNA to be successful. It is a movie which explores the question of freedom for work, love, and destiny from a perspective of having the right genetic material. The eugenic Darwinian and scientific state controls who can do what.

The following year, "The Truman Show" debuted to critical and commercial success. Jim Carrey portrays Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of the most popular reality TV show which chronicles every minute of his life. The creator of the show is none other than "Christof", who resides in the sky above the perfect world, "Seahaven". The play on names is obvious between Christ and Heaven with a True Man battling his ambition to explore the world and find his true love. Christof is a more benign controller than the state in Gattaca but in the end, both lead characters are not as free as they wish. They eventually discover there is another world than the one they see.

Have you explored your ambitions and wondered where they came from? Have you ever wondered what's happening to you and your desire to do something else? Have you ever met a frustrating combination of obstacles to what you believed was a path open to you? These are a dangerous set of questions - almost too scary to bring to the front of your thinking - but they are the background noise of life. Rather than explore them, we get busy with the routines of life and miss the greater opportunities for living a bold and rich life.

These movies will challenge you to explore the inside and outside controls in your life. As long as you accept the world presented to you, you will never know about the greater world which exists beyond the painted sky. I invite you to reach out and touch the sky.

Both movies are listed in the Amazon carousel at the bottom of this web page.

Movies of Grace and Love

The Color and Shape of Grace and Love

"Moulin Rouge" has been on DVD since 2002. It is a movie people either loved or hated. Set at the end of the 19th century Paris, it included modern songs sung by an apparently rambling band of Bohemians pursuing life's meaning. Some of my closest friends worried about me when I said I loved this movie!

"Moulin Rouge" tells a story about a man named "Christian" (Ewan McGregor), who leaves his sensible, but disappointed London father who warned him of the waste Paris would be. Christian lands in the most fleshly portion of Paris, the famed "red-light district", Moulin Rouge and falls hastily in lust with the sparkling diamond, Satine, played by Nicole Kidman. Or is it "love"?

In this movie of fleshly desires, power trips, selling one's soul for fame, pursuing a meaningful writing career, etc. there are two primary colors which, when observed, tell a different story. If you've seen the movie, it's worth another viewing to see the story from the colors blue and red. As the story unfolds the lead character moves from red to blue.

Watching the entire movie from those two vantage points, a deeper story is being told between the principle characters. If you haven't seen it and want to hear the desires of the heart, take a chance on discovering more than meets the ear.

If "Moulin Rouge" makes use of two colors to tell a story of Grace, then "Stranger Than Fiction" (2007) uses two geometrical shapes to convey a story of Love. Cast in a most unexpected role, Will Ferrell does with the character Harold Crick what Jim Carrey did for Truman Burbank in "The Truman Show".

Drawing from the geometrically structured world of an IRS tax auditor, "square" and logical Harold meets the chaotic and rebellious Anna Pascal, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is portrayed in a conflicting geometrical shape. As the story of these two people is being played out, we learn that a narrator is either creating the story or simply describing it. As Harold discovers his place in the story he is moving from one perspective on life to another and meets with the highest purpose in life.

These are two movies which use dynamic relationships between a man and a woman to open us up to the most important questions we face about Grace and Love. In both stories, those principles exist beyond them and are the points to which they aspire.

Both movies are PG-13 with minimal material which makes you uncomfortable watching in mixed company. You can order both from the Amazon carousel at the bottom of the page or join Netflix, which is free for the first month.

A Christian Soldier in the Land of Abraham

In Honor of Pete Burks

Creation: The Garden of Eden and The Nobility of Man
The Fall: From the Garden to the Desert
Promise: The Desert Home of Abraham and The Quest for Heaven
Fighting to Save your comrade in a war you didn't like

Cinematic Music

Jesus, Judas, and a U2 Song
"Until the End of the World"

(To watch the video, click here for a full-scale viewer or on the first one to the right)

Sometimes it takes me awhile to figure things out. The words to U2's song, "Until the End of the World" had been bugging me for some time. I just wasn't sure what Bono was referring to, until during one listening, I heard, "In the garden...". Then I realized it was referring to the Garden of Gethsemane and the betrayal of Jesus. Only Bono was singing from Judas's perspective.

I wanted to capture this song's point of view and show it to a group of students in a chapel, so I took highlights from the movie "Jesus" and created a rough music video. The quality was bad from the VHS so I only showed it once. Then Mel Gibson created "The Passion" and I had some dramatic footage to recreate the visuals for the song.

In the spring of 2006, a book was released which attempted to portray Judas in a sympathetic light; a light which is not reflected in the Gospels. So, to offer a countering position - again, in an educational setting - I built the video around the song and sought to create the images of extreme conflict between Judas' decision and Jesus' purposes.

Taking the musical elements of The Edge's guitar, I cut the scenes to provide cinematic soundscapes - a soaring guitar riff was used at the point of a sweeping camera angle, or in the climatic scene, with the serpent crawling toward Jesus.

In addition, I choose cuts to show the contrastive nature of Judas', "waves of regret" and Jesus', "waves of joy", and the responsive crying out of Jesus "Love, love, love" from the Cross scenes.

From the opening scene of Jesus teaching on loving one another and the sun rising and Judas fleeing the tormenting children to the last scene of Jesus' triumph, this music video is intended to demonstrate the biblical story as portrayed by the Gospels that Judas was not a character to be admired.

Football is A Collision Sport!

Wide Receivers Can Block Too!

Trinity Christian's 1997 football team had a group of receivers who were the fiercest blocking unit I've ever coached. Their catching ability was just as strong, earning their team an appearance in the state championship game.

In the first video clip in the top right, there are five receivers who loved to block. You might have to watch the video a few times to catch every block. You'll pick up the pattern if you watch which way the ball is going. You will see what the linebackers didn't see coming!

They are Brian (45), Blake (18), Jonathan (21), Matt (49), and Pete (81), who gave his life serving his country in Iraq in 2007. They were a great group to coach, but better men to know.

Music is by blues legend; the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughn. This is his live version of "Goin' Down".

Galileo, Sunspots, and Worshiping God

Splotches on a Cloth

"Gliding all around us, sitting in the West,

As it was in the beginning, so it shall be with the rest.

Laid on sure foundation, perfect order is our lot."

It was his kindred faith, with a differing thought:

Laws in the Book of Nature; discovering how the heavens go,

Expanding through a tool, discomforting their world view.

Oh! We around its center, giving Truth His due.

In 1993, I found this image from an online display of the Vatican Library. I was studying weather patterns and the impact of sunspots when I came across the work of Galileo and was amazed at his observations on sunspots. This sketch was made by his students on May 3, 1612. The discussion about it would appear in letters to his friend Mark Welser and eventually be used against him when he wrote the following year, "Observation on Sunspots", which advanced the prohibited Copernican cosmology.

This picture stands at a pivot in history between the historical approach to seeing the natural world as the handiwork of God and drawing scientific observations with no regard for God. Working from his observations, Galileo believed the earth was moving and the sun was fixed, which opposed the Roman Catholic Church's position. Galileo could make his observations, but he could not interpret the Bible. A century after Martin Luther had challenged the church in theology, Galileo was challenging the church with his observations and famously offered that his "observations should not be held subject to questionable interpretations." As Luther was the flash point for the beginning of the Reformation, so Galileo became the flash point for the beginning of science seen in opposition to the church.

In an attempt to pay tribute to Galileo's work and to remind me that Christians should be free in attempting to understand God's world without bias or threat of judgment, I wrote a poem which draws up the conflict in worldviews - the old and the new. The poem makes the assertion that a Christian man, through his deepest desires to study Nature, has the opportunity to see the Glory of God in immeasurable ways. By the use of scientific inquiry, God does not disappear from the world, but rather He is seen to be all the more glorious (Psalm 8 and 19 and Romans 1).

The first three lines were the worldview of the Church before Galileo. There are references to the creation of the heavens and the earth from Genesis 1; to the Psalm 104:5, which describes the immovable foundations of the earth; and the underpinning Aristotelian philosophy that everything in the world had perfect order.

As you read the poem, note the 1st personal pronouns in the first and last lines: "us" moves from the center in the first line, representing the geocentric worldview, to the outside of the line in the last one "we", representing a heliocentric worldview. The fourth line, which also contains an indefinite 3rd person masculine pronoun, is the pivot of the poem. I have inverted the pronominal positions in lines 1 and 7 around the one in four.

The last three lines of the poem describe Galileo's approach to seeing nature. He believed that Nature was God's first book of revelation. This first book could been seen for how the heavens go, but not teach someone how to go to heaven, which was what the Scriptures teach. I also included his use of technology: the telescope. The use of present tense, hanging participles is intended to show the rough process that is involved (English teachers are always wanting to fix the grammar!). Finally, the "Oh!" that "aha" moment comes and the observer learns. When a Christian goes through this process, and realizes the way things really are, he or she gives "Truth, His due" or better yet, worships God!

Interpreting the world we see is a tough business and everything hangs on seeing it properly. It is the conflict between the value of truth and the supposed equal value of opinion. It raises some important questions: "Is there truth?"; "Whose truth?"; "Does truth change?"; "If truth changes, then there are no eternal truths." "Are there objective truths?"

It asks another important question: Do we have the humility to learn from the data or do we use the data to teach our bias? That is not just a question for the Church - the Bible's value is determined by this issue: if it agrees or disagrees with someone's position it is a matter of interpretation - but is also for the modern scientific world: Science can be just as dogmatically wrong as the Church has been.

You might notice that Galileo is never referred to in the poem. Or is he?

The New Canaan Society

New Canaan, Connecticut is the home of Jim Lane, the founder of The New Canaan Society. Meeting with a small group of Christian businessmen in New York City, Jim had a desire to live an authentic Christian life. From that meeting, thousands of men, also seeking authentic and meaningful Christian fellowship, have been meeting throughout the country. If you want to find a place to share your life, be inspired by the testimony of others and worship the Lord Jesus, find a New Canaan Society meeting near you. You will be blessed.

Click here to visit The New Canaan Society website

On Football

Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi:

The Lasting Impact of a Loving Relationship

Coach Tom Landry had just finished addressing our high school football team in a pre-game devotional. Trinity Christian Academy is a Christian school located in a Dallas suburb which always had a time before a game to talk about Jesus Christ. It was a time to remind these young men about the most important things in life. In a most unusual event, the 1998 game was delayed because the visiting team was lost in the Dallas traffic in the post-Thanksgiving Saturday.

Coach Landry had a long-term relationship with Trinity Christian. He served on the Board of the school in its early days. His youngest daughter, Lisa, graduated from there, and the football stadium is named for him. Coach also had a grandson playing in the game. As it turned out, that pre-game talk by Coach Landry would be one of, if not, the last he would ever give. Coach Landry (he will always be “Coach Landry”) would be diagnosed with leukemia four months later and succumb the following February, 2000.

Caught between the pre-game team devotion during which Coach Landry shared his Christian testimony to a room full of nervous high school football players and a delayed kickoff, our coaching staff had the unusual opportunity to visit with one of the greatest football coaches in history. I had brought my camera with the hope of capturing each coach with Coach Landry. One of the trainers took a group picture of us. As it turned out, it would be the last time I coached the offense at Trinity Christian. We lost the game with Coach Landry sitting in the stands watching his grandson play his last high school game.

During our time of nervous and excited chatter about the Dallas Cowboys and what he was doing in the 10 years since he had coached his last season, we explored some of the observations Coach could offer us. I asked about the biggest changes he had seen in the NFL. In addition to feeling sorry for the then current head coach of the Dallas Cowboys (Chan Gailey), he pointed to how the relationship between coaches over the years had changed.

In the current NFL, the competition and the money have created coaches who are independent business men with agents and multi-million dollar contracts, endorsement deals, and corporate handlers. The assistant coaches are in a world away from job or financial security. In the middle management world of those assistant coaches, far removed from cozying up to billionaire owners the way head coaches do, men are working to keep a job or to position themselves for the next step up the coaching career ladder. Making friends in this business might get you a job or even, if things sour, cost you a job. So, coaches are slow, if not downright hesitant to get close to anyone. It hasn’t always been that way.

Coach Landry took us back to his days in New York when he coached for the football Giants. The stories are well-known to the old timers and younger fans who love the history of the game. Coach was the defensive coordinator for the Giants and was credited with shutting down and even shutting out the famous offense of Paul Brown, the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. He told us how, after a season when the Giants defense did not give up a single point to the Browns, there was a league meeting in New York City. At one point during the day of the meeting, Coach Landry was walking the sidewalks of New York when he noticed walking toward him on the same sidewalk was Paul Brown. Paul also saw Coach headed his direction. Rather than have to pass each other on the sidewalk and exchange pleasantries, Paul immediately found a hole in the traffic and crossed to the other side of the street. Coach Landry chuckled as he told us that story. He went on to tell us that he and Paul Brown had a very good relationship but the pain of losing and the classic grudge-holding of Paul Brown was but an example of the enjoyable personalities of the earlier days.

To further illustrate how the relationship among coaches had changed, Coach Landry told us of his relationship with another coach on the Giants’ staff, Vince Lombardi. Coach Landry was responsible for the defense and Lombardi was responsible for the offense. For five years (1954-1958) these two brilliant coaches would practice against each other. Each week, they carried the personal responsibility for the success or the failure of their individual units. These were two men who would ride in a cab together each day to work, sometimes even joined by a young sports reporter, Howard Cosell. Their wives knew, understood, and loved each other. It was a shared life. But their competitive juices fully flowed each day and they didn’t take losing very well.

Coach Landry told us about the time when the Giants offense had not played well but the defense did producing a win for the Giants. The New York writers were critical of the offense and praised the defense. Lombardi didn’t talk to Landry the entire next week. Coach Landry gently chuckled again when he told that story.

We had been laughing at these two stories enjoying Coach opening up to a group of admirers. He paused and for a minute or so, no one said a word. We all stopped talking. Then Coach continued with a story no one had ever heard.

Coach Landry still wanted to talk about relationships among the coaches and what they meant to him. One relationship he continued to talk about was the one he had with Vince Lombardi. It was clear that Coach Landry loved Vince Lombardi and that love was mutual. (I had an interest in this relationship because no men had more contrastive personalities than these two and I was actually attempting to write a case study of them. My research was eventually funneled to a real writer, Donald Phillips, who was would release his own book on Lombardi’s leadership abilities; Run To Win: Lombardi On Leadership in 2001. It was released at the start of the 2001 football season, the same week of 9/11/01).

Coach Landry took us back to December 30, 1967. It was the day before the famed Ice Bowl Game in Green Bay. It would be a miserably cold game, played down to the wire and won by the Green Bay Packers for their record third consecutive world championship. The Packers would earn their second trip to the new NFL-AFL championship game, the newly named “Super Bowl”, and defeat the Oakland Raiders. That game would be the last game Lombardi coached for the Packers. Following that season, he retired to become the Packers’ general manager for a year before moving to Washington D. C. to become the head coach of Washington Redskins. He would only coach one season. He died the following September of cancer at 57.

But on the night before that historic Ice Bowl game, two couples were sitting together over dinner at the Oneida Country Club in Green Bay, Wisconsin. These couples had known each other for nearly two decades. They shared their earlier years as coaches together and they shared their families. On this night, they were sharing their lives again. Alicia Landry, Coach’s wife, always traveled with the team to away games. As she would later tell me when I asked her about this incredible story, she always sat in the front of the team plane with “my Tommy”. She was the team mom. She remembered the trip and spending time with Vince and his wife, Marie. The four of them, Vince and Marie Lombardi and Tom and Alicia Landry, sat alone, but for the few respectful patrons who didn’t bother them, enjoying a casual dinner out.

While Coach Landry was telling us that story, we stood in complete silence. We knew we were hearing the untold story of that great game and those two great men and their lives together. Somehow, we had believed the imagery of these two teams which had battled through the 60’s for NFL dominance and imagined that their leaders must hate each other. As a Cowboy fan growing up, I ALWAYS hated the teams who beat my ‘Boys. Anyone having anything to do with a team I hated, I also hated. Players, coaches, and fans were all the same to me: Evil! However, listening to Coach Landry that day gave me a new perspective on the game and those who coach it: The relationships you have are the things that matter when the game is over. It was 31 years after that dinner in Green Bay when he told us that story. Vince and Marie Lombardi had been dead for 28 and 16 years respectively, but to Coach Landry, his love for them remained.

In a little over a year, Coach Landry would also die. But before he left this world and his quiet and gentle voice was muted, he left a hand full of high school coaches remembering that it is the relationships we shared that matter the most.

In 2003, ESPN was planning a movie about the Ice Bowl game, the focus of which was on the relationship between these two great men. Included in the script, but never confirmed as an actual event, was a dinner between the Landry’s and Lombardi’s. Vince and Marie’s family usually joined them on dinners the night before home games, but on that night, one of the grand children was sick and they couldn’t go. Vince’s son wasn’t sure where they went that night. Eventually, ESPN dropped the plans for the movie. Now the story about that dinner and the relationship between these men is known.