reign over me

Brooke and I had a date on Monday and we decided to go see the movie Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. Brooke thought the story was good but didn't really enjoy the film. I loved it. In all fairness to Brooke's opinion it's not a great film. There are several scenes which are too long or uneccesary for plot development, a few of the scenarios just aren't believable (two in particular made me made groan inwardly because of how cliché they were), and I'm under the distinct impression that the quality of a film decreases with each line of dialogue that Liv Tyler has. However, while it was not a great film it was a good one and it touched me more deeply than I expected it would. Instead of giving you a drawn out review of the film I'll just list some of the reasons I appreciated it.

Here they are in no particular order:
1. Marriage and fidelity are held up as good things deserving of commitment and preservation. This was accomplished without being smarmy or moralistic.
2. The film portrayed a healthy friendship between two adult males. Due to the plot of the film the friendship was obviously not a normal one but in my opinion it's still one of the best depictions of male friendship I've ever seen in film.
3. 9/11 and the personal loss experienced by thousands of people that day was handled tastefully. You actually only hear the expression "9/11" one time in the entire film which was refreshing. The way this subject was dealt with made also me realize that I still have some unresolved emotions concerning the events of that day.
4. I actually appreciated how slow the film was. The film lingers and repeats scenes. This is an intentional feature that reinforces the idea that emotional healing takes time.
5. Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler deliver fantastic performances.
6. The film clearly demonstrates that "normal" people who seem to have everything together need help as well as the "weird" folks.
7. I really appreciate that a talented black actor was given a role that was truly human and not a stereotypical "black" role. Cheadle's character is well developed and worthy of his amazing acting skills. Cheadle's role is technically as the supporting actor but he definitely comes off as the lead.
8. I don't want to ruin anything but let's just say that the title of the film is very intentional and in my opinion is more true than was even intended by the film makers.
9. There are other things I could write but the last one I'll mention is that I think the character of Alex Johnson is a good picture of what I want to be as a pastor. While imperfect and flawed in his own ways he approaches other broken people with respect and kindness. He admits his mistakes and apologizes when he screws up. He enters into Charlie's world and lives life with him. He isn't condescending and he takes a genuine interest Charlie. These are things I would like people to say about me and I think they are things that should characterize those who are in pastoral ministry, unfortunately this often isn't the case.

So there you have it. Some of my thoughts on why Reign Over Me is worth your money.

31

So thitry-one years ago today I was, ya know, born and stuff. It's amazing to me how perspective on age shifts with time. When I was eighteen I thought of thirty-one as old, now... not so much. It also seems to me that the distance between the age you are and the age you consider to be old gets bigger with time as well. While at eighteen I thought thirty-one was old (a thirteen year gap between current age and old age), at thirty-one I now think your old when you're like sixty-five (a thirty-four year gap between current age and old age). At any rate this birthday kind of feels like a nothing birthday. Thirty was a big one but thirty-one really holds nothing exciting for me. On top of that, while I don't think of myself as "old" I can definitely tell I'm not in my early twenties anymore. My expanding belly gives me some indication of this as well. Oh joy. Happy gettin-older-day to me.

linkage & misc.

It came to my attention little while back that a bunch of my links were messed up. I've finally gone through and fixed them all so everything should be in order. If you have any problems with any of the links on this page please let me know and I will make the necessary corrections. Also, under the NZ links I've added one to a great NZ commercial that will surely be a classic. It goes pretty fast so you may need to watch it twice to catch everything. The cool thing is that we've seen many of the locations shown in the commercial.

Other than fixing messed up links the last week has been spent getting caught up on my "To Do" list. The problem with such a list is that the rate at which I add stuff to it usually faster than the rate at which I check stuff off. I also started a part-time job at the seminary this week but I don't really have a simple, clear-cut job description so I'm not sure how to explain what I'm doing in a concise way. The only other thing to report is that it's been warm here. Like, "I think I'm gonna wear shorts today" type of warm. It's supposed to drop back into he 50's again tomorrow though which sounds good to me. I'm not ready for heat.

some major catching up

Okay, so there has been quite a bit that has transpired since the last time I posted. Instead of having this turn into a huge-long post I think I'll just summarize what's been happening and then put up some pictures. First, after the L'Abri conference I spent an extra week in Minnesota with our friends Denis and Margie. Good times were had and Margie and I were able to prepare for our talk on tattooing. While I was there they got somewhere around 14'' of snow. I actually like snow though so I enjoyed going out shoveling and snow blowing. We ended up heading back to St. Louis a day early to avoid another blizzard that was coming through. After we left, Rochester was hit with another 10'' of the white stuff. Last Friday Margie and I gave a talk entitled, "Art for Living, or Living Art? Tattoos and Tattooing in a Post-Everything World." This talk was a part of the Friday Nights at the Institute put on by the Francis Schaeffer Institute. The talk went okay. Margie was great but I didn't feel like I came with my "A" game if you know what I mean. I also wasn't thrilled with the venue. It was a really cool place and would be an awesome place to sit and have a beer while watching a small concert, but for a talk I think it turned out to be much less than ideal. Anyway, as soon as the talk was finished I hopped in a rental car and drove to Huntsville, AL. I encountered several crazys on the road, nearly died in a head-on collision once, and finally arrived at our friend's Eric and Susan's place around 4:30 in the morning. The weekend was spent experiencing my first missions conference as an actual missionary. Overall it was a good weekend. On Monday I drove down to Birmingham to have lunch with the Missions Pastor of a church there that might support us in New Zealand. Then I hopped in the car and drove back to St. Louis and arrived just before midnight.

So now I'm back, recovering from travels, and enjoying seeing my beautiful wife again.