Why I Love the World Cup

Reason 1:

A tiny country with little recent reason for national pride has the chance (and takes it as often as not) to upset a perennial powerhouse (ex. Senegal vs. France; Ecuador vs. Poland; Trinidad and Tobago vs. Sweden) on the world stage. For a time, citizen's of said tiny country walk tall and proud because of what their team did on the pitch.

Reason 2:

Like the Greek Olympics of ancient times, the World Cup has the power to make peace between warring parties. In the Ivory Coast, a civil war which has raged up til this past weekend has been suspended for the duration of the tournament. Granted this peace is probably only temporary, but it sets the stage for a lasting peace.

I'd like to hear your reasons for liking / loving the World Cup tournament.

Saturday Morning Update

It is now day 2 of the 2006 World Cup and I have watched 3 games. Can life get any better? I submit that it cannot.

6-9-06
I watched legendary Germany defeat a very competitive Costa Rican team 4-2. Prediction Wanchope (Costa Rican forward) becomes a household name the world over by the time his team is out of the tournament.
I watched an out of shape Poland squad get RUN OVER by an energetic Ecuador. It looked like 1939 all over again for the Poles.

6-10-06
This morning England defeated Paraguay 1-0 in a game marked by bad calls and bad football by both squads. Here's hoping the Soca Warriors of Trinidad and Tobago give the Viking Swedes a run for their money today at noon.

That's it from the World Cup so far. 3 more games to watch today. Woo Hoo

Home of the Brave?

Engraved on a bronze plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty is the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. It reads:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Perhaps that door that was once open allowing my ancestors entrance to the land of opportunity is now shut. Perhaps it is only open to those who are white, or have some talent which grants them entrance. If that is the case, then perhaps we should close ol' Lady Liberty down. Either we are what she says we are, or we are not.

In the Army Now?

Tomorrow, at a little after 9pm, I will be talking with a recruiter from the Texas Army National Guard about becoming a chaplain in the Guard.

It is FINISHED!

"And the Lord look at all that he had made and behold it was very good."

The semester (aside from two pending assignments) is completed. More importantly the 125 or so young men, who up until today I had been responsible for, are GONE. I am now going to bed.

Good night all.

Who Am I?

You Are Kermit

Hi, ho! Lovable and friendly, you get along well with everyone you know. You're a big thinker, and sometimes you over think life's problems. Don't worry - everyone know's it's not easy being green. Just remember, time's fun when you're having flies!

The Muppet Personality Test

Almost there

As of the writing of this post there are now 22 hours til I have to turn in my written briefs (papers not underwear) for my comprehensive exams. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and though it's most likely the train coming the other way I don't care at this point. I just want to finish.

Thank you to all of you faithful friends who have been praying for me and supporting me to reach this point. I promise I will not let you down.

~ Harry

Why we create . . .

In a recent discussion with Marcella Walker, I came to a tentative conclusion that art - in its various forms - is the response of the created order to the fall. In short, we are artists because we suffer the pangs of separation. We know that the world is not as it should, and so we respond with art. (We also respond with humor, but that is a different post.) Our music, poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, cinema, et cetera is at is most foundational level our attempt to deal with the brokenness of the world around us, and reclaim, however tenuously, a connection with what the world could be.

I would like to hear the thoughts of you, my loyal visitors and readers.

~Harry

Lunchmeat (2005-2006)

Last night, Thursday March 9, Lunchmeat the cat, formerly of Smith Adams Residence Hall was struck and killed by a passing motorist while crossing EN 10th Street. The motorist remains unidentified and is assumed to be unharmed by the colision.

From the day he first appeared at Smith Adams, he was a friendly and affectionate cat. He was content to spend long hours sitting in laps and relaxing with the residents of the hall.

In short, Lunchmeat was a loving and loved member of our community here. We miss him.

The Broadway Version of My Life

Today while I was walking home from the library and seriously rocking out on my iPod (think the commercials) I thought what a cool thing it would be to make a musical of my life out of the songs on my computer. The list is incomplete (acts 1 and 5 are kinda hard to set to music.) But here is my life as a musical

Act 1
Superman by Five for Fighting
Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Act 2
Rave On by Buddy Holly
Come Fly With Me by Frank Sinatra
Kiss the Girl from Disney's Little Mermaid
I'm a Believer by The Monkees
Love Me Tender by Elvis Presley

Act 3
Charade by Bobby Darin
Your Mistake by Sister Hazel
She Hates Me by Puddle of Mud
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry by Johnny Cash
Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own by U2

Act 4
Somebody to Love by Queen
The Date Song by Jamie Hooten and David Graves
Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon and Garfunkel and Johnny Cash (I can't decide which version)

Act 5
O'Sullivan's March by the Chieftans
Into the West from The Return of the King (performed by Annie Lennox)

Let me know who you think should play me in both the stage and movie versions.

PS Thank you for indulging this little bit of narcisim on my part ;-)

Austin City Limited

This past weekend I had the great fortune to travel to Austin, the capital of Texas, to visit my good friends Nathan and Melissa Jerkins. While there I took a much needed break from school life and became, for 2 days, just another 20-something. We ate gigantic chicken fried steaks and fish tacos. We played washers and enjoyed one another's company.

The weekend was more than simply good food and games, however. The weekend was an eye opening experience. I have spent the better part of the past decade living in the theorhetical world of the university. Virtue is a topic of conversation, tolerance a matter of course in a world where everyone operates with similar agenda's toward similar ends. The weekend in Austin opened my eyes to the world outside the academy. In this world, virtue is a lifestyle that must be practiced faithfully if one is be virtuous. In this world, tolerance must be embraced as each new person is encountered. Here, in the real world, the theoretical world of the academy must actually be put into practice. Honestly, it was unsettling. This is not a safe world, and the consequences for our actions are real, the stakes much higher.

God help me as I prepare to enter the real world.

A For Real Update

I have just finished reading the book Farnham's Freehold by Robert Heinlein. It is a science fiction novel which describes a family catapulted 2,000 years into the future by nuclear war. There they discover that the cultural roles have reversed. "Whites" have, by their own self-immolation, become the subservient culture to the dominant "Black" culture. I will not give away any more details because it is a good story which you should probably read.

When it was published in 1964 it was, to be sure, a controversial book. It seems to me to be controversial for both sides of the racial divide. White people would be offended by its portrayal of white people as the property of others, while Black people would possibly be offended by the assertion that, given power, they will be no more humane than white people were.

The question of power is central to the understanding of the author's point. It is not about race, it is about power. Power is the dividing factor in human relationships. It is the thing which makes its posessors strive for more, and those who lack it to fight for it. Once again, it is not about race, but about the attitudes of power. Power corrupts those who posess it as surely as people die and governments levy taxes.

Jesus Christ laid aside his power and priviledge and became the lowest of humanity. He laid aside his divinity to become a slave, and he calls us who claim to follow him to do the same.

An Update

This update is for you Jamie Hooten.

I will be going to Austin to visit Nathan and Melissa Jerkins this weekend.
Comps are still beating me about the head and shoulders.
Changing door locks is a fun diversion from schoolwork.

The Life of the Minister

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." 1 Corinthians 8:1b-3

Perhaps those of us who are called to ministry would be well served, and would well serve God's church if we take these words to heart and enact them in our lives.

Survival of the Fittest??

We now live in the twilight of the human race. Human beings (homo sapiens) have peaked as a species and are now on the way out. Soon we will be joining the dinosaurs in the pre-historic section of the museum.

We get into machines and routinely race around at 3 to 5 times the speed our bodies were designed for. We get into other machines and fly, a feat for which we are not physically equipped. This high level of technology should carry with it a large body count as the poorly equipped and the unadaptable are weeded out of the collective gene-pool, thus making the remaining whole better equipped to deal with the world we have created. Is this the case? No, it is not. We have used our high level of technology to create not only faster modes of transportation and the like, but also safer ones. Now, the unfit are allowed to persist and even procreate through the proliferation of helmet laws and seat-belt legislation thus muddying the gene-pool. I submit that humanity has thus ceased growing and has begun to revert to previous lower levels of intelligence.

It will not be long before the curtain closes on the human act and we go to intermission. Current expenditures of resources and the increasing pollution levels will soon leave us with a world no longer capable of sustaining human life. A fact somehow missed by the law making bodies of the United States especially. The Dinosaurs had a run lasting millions of years, we've been going for several thousand. A meteor ushered their demise, we are bringing about our own.

You Can Never Go Home Again

This post is on location at my parent's house in Grand Prairie, Texas.

This afternoon I drove "home." I say "home" because Home is Abilene, Texas where I have spent the majority of the past decade and "home" is Grand Prairie, Texas where i spent the majority of the previous two decades and where my parents still live.

Everytime I come to visit, something has changed. Except to me, one who visits so infrequently, it seems as though a lot of things have changed. Because this is the place where I grew up though, it seems more than a bunch of new buildings. It appears as though the fundamental nature of the universe has been altered. This town is the place of my memory, and now that memory is disconnected from reality.

I love holidays, and I love spending time with my family at holidays, but I do not enjoy going "home." It reminds me that even the most fundamental things in the universe are changeable and not always for the better.

Supernatural

This one goes out to all those hard science people out there:

I am a historically, literarily, theologically bent fellow. As such I have very little problem accepting/assiging mystery to the world around me. I have been wondering, however, how do my friends in the sciences deal with the supernatural? The aim of the sciences is to measure, categorize, and define the world and thus (it appears to me) erase mystery.

Discuss . . .

And the Winner Is . . .

The winner for my [renamed] Winter Reading Project is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Melissa Jerkins who recommended it has history on her side as she and her husband Nathan are the ones responsible (and probably culpable) for recommending such classics as Steven King's The Gunslinger; Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny; and they are singularly responsible for my acting career.

Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions which I will also attempt to read as well.

Holy Crap, How many of these Things are There?

Numenorean


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, now I know. Don't we all feel better now?

My December Reading Project

To all my diehard fans out there who have been pestering me to post some more of my profound thoughts, I turn the tables. Here is your chance to be profound on MY blog. I'm going to let you my loyal friends and enemies pick out the books (2) which I will read during the December holidays. ACU was so kind to us this year and has given us 5 weeks instead of the usual 4 so I wish to read something good.

Here are the ground rules:

1) The book MUST tell a story (Fiction or Non-Fiction). I am not looking for a philosophical/ethical/theological treatise no matter how profound.

2) You MUST present coherent arguments for me to read it.

I will pick the winner (probably 3) and post their persuasive arguments on the front page of my blog for all to read. Seriously, you can't buy this kind of publicity. But you're welcome to make an offer.

So, Tell me what I should read and why.