The Gospel According to Gran Torino

Walt is doomed.  When Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino opens, his character is recently widowed, bitter, foul-mouthed, violent, borderline alcoholic and very sick.  His kids don't really care about him and he thinks they are self-absorbed and ridiculous.  But, maybe the worst part of it is that he hates his neighbors.  Like Dirty Harry, Walt is isn't a "racist," he hates everybody, but as a Korean War vet, he especially hates southeast Asians who remind him of the things he did there.  He is destined to die, coughing up blood on the floor of his garage, feeling guilty and alone.  And no one will care.  Let me try to lay this out without giving too much away.

His fresh young priest tries to get him to come to confession, but Walt constantly and vehemently rejects him.  The priest character is great.  Initially, one is inclined to feel about him exactly as Walt does, but as the movie develops, we see that he is also 3 dimensional and has something to offer.

Walt's life begins to change when the son of his Hmong neighbors gets in gang trouble.  In a classic "Dirty Harry as Grumpy Old-Man" scene, Walt inadvertently saves this young man by wielding his M-1 and growling "Get off my lawn!"  The Hmong community responds by showering him with gifts.  Eventually, the older sister Su befriends Walt, seeing past his tough-guy bluster and sort of integrates this racial-slur-spewing crust of a person into her family.

The major text of the film becomes a commentary on manhood.  Walt ends up mentoring Tao, the teenage boy next door and trying to "man him up" in blue-collar Detroit "Greatest Generation" style.  Though his version of manhood is basically comic-relief at this point, Tao eventually does become more confident and assertive and Walt becomes more warm and human.  Still, he turns to violence to try to stop the gang-intimidation and learns a lesson he should have learned in Korea.  Violent begets violence.

Ultimately, Walt has to stop the cycle of violence and he lands on a creative solution.  He goes to confession to fulfill his wife's last wishes.  Then he confesses the things that have TRULY haunted him to Tao.

He drives over to the gang-house and calls them out.  They emerge, brandishing their pistols.

He talks tough for a minute or two until all the eyes of the neighborhood are on the scene.  They wait, and so do we, for Walt to rain down lead-vengeance on these neighborhood terrorists.  Through lips clenched on a cigarette, Walt snarls, "Got a light? (pause) I've got a light!" Then he enacts his plan.  

What does he do?  Oddly enough, Walt sort of pulls a WWJD.

Throughout this film, Walt is the hero saving the Hmong family, but at the end, it seems clear that they have saved him from dying alone, bitter, uncared-for and uncaring.  

Walt has changed, though his language still leaves a great deal to be desired.  

He loves his neighbors as himself.  He is honest about his pain.  He is reconciled.  

In the last moments of the film, he is literally an icon of Christ. 

He is very nearly a new creation.

How many of us can say the same?

In Ephesians 2-3, Paul says that the mystery of Christ is when Christ on the cross broke down the wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles and made them one.  It is a work of reconciliation.  

When someone goes from hating his neighbors, to loving them, God is at work.  It may not be the whole picture, but it is a picture of salvation and redemption.

Connecting to God - II

Another way of trying to connect to God is by trying to set the tone for the day with some sort of meditation or conscious commitment of one's day to God.


In college a friend of mine and I decided we would spend (I think it was 20 minutes) meditating each day. This posed 3 problems. First was finding a quiet place of solitude. My apartment was completely out of the question. The library was a pretty social place sometimes. BUT, in the basement of the college building next door there was a rarely used classroom and an almost never used restroom. I had my spots! This leads to the second problem, which was my narcolepsy. I am not clinically diagnosed, but I have fallen asleep in the car at red-lights (never on the motorcycle, which is why I may be the only person for whom a motorcycle is actually a safer mode of travel).

I tried the classroom first. Walked in, closed the door, sat down at a desk and discovered problem 3: I had no idea what I was doing. I just sort of tried to quiet myself, figuring that meditation could not be just praying (talking to God), nor could it be reading something thoughtful and thinking about it. Of course it could have been, but I didn't think so at that point.
I woke up in the dark, embarrassed but alone. I waved my arms around to get the motion detector to turn the lights back on and left.

For my second attempt, the next day, I entered the restroom, entered the single stall in the restroom, put the seat-cover down and settled into what I thought might be a good meditating position.

This time, when I woke up, it was pitch black and I didn't know where I was. I waved my arms around but since I was in the stall, nothing happened. Then I stood up and ran into each wall of the stall before I came to my senses, managed to feel my way to freedom and gave up on "meditating."
I think the reason that I don't make it a priority to connect to God some days is not a lack of time. Time is there (see below). I think it is because I don't always believe that it will matter, or make a difference for me. This means that I am seeing the connection to God as a self-serving device for my gratification or assistance, rather than the possible benefit that might be passed on to those around me. Sometimes, it is because I am experiencing what Buddhists have called "monkey-mind." I try to settle into a mental and physical posture of connection, but my brain won't stop grabbing at things (that I "need" to do, want to do, or am worried about).

Interestingly, the bathroom is still the primary place I go to make a brief connection with God every day. It is really the only place where my children MIGHT respect my privacy and need for quiet. It also has a fan, which creates great white noise. I no longer have the narcolepsy issue in the same way, though occasionally it still strikes.
The following "advice" could make me sound like a "real spiritual person" but I assure you...
Well, lets put it this way... I didn't really do any of the following this morning and when Beth got up, she looked at me and asked: "Are you mad about something?" The nice thing about being alive is that there is always another day to get some small thing right - like in Groundhog Day.

My daily connection with God usually amounts to 4 things.
In the morning:
1. Try to be aware of God's presence. This often involves willing myself to belief that God is truly everywhere, no less in my bathroom than in my favorite church or on my favorite hiking trail. It involves rejecting an impulse to look upward for God or to direct my thoughts in some direction.

2. Submit my day. I say something like: "God, take my life today to use as you will. Free me from bondage to self so that my life will show others your love, your power, and your way of life.
Give me wisdom and insight to know you, sense your presence and do your will."

3. Read something thoughtful and think about it. For me this means scripture or something related to scripture.

At night:
4. Thank God for the day and recite either the 23rd Psalm, the Lord's Prayer or something else I have committed to memory, until I fall asleep.

You could also build other connection points into your day:
1. Make it a habit of connecting to God as you go in or out your door. Religious Jews often keep a text of scripture in a small box or mezuzah, that they touch upon entering or leaving. You could buy one or create your own practice. Think to yourself "Let's go!" as a way of reminding yourself that you aren't leaving God at home. Your family members or mates might also appreciate it if you reminded yourself upon arriving at home, that God is still with you all.
Put meaningful statements on your dashboard, refrigerator or bathroom mirror.

2. While you're waiting for anything. Why not just offer up your anxiety or impatience? Some people like the serenity prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

3. With friends (and maybe enemies). C.S. Lewis, keeping in mind the idea of being created in the image of God, said, "You will never meet a mere mortal." I certainly experience God through other people, whether they know it or not. When you are with other people, briefly invite God to be present also. God IS present. Inviting God is just a way of reminding us and setting our mind to the "welcoming" position.

4. Taking a breather. Is it possible that the frenetic pace we keep is less productive than a pace that allows us to step back, breathe and say a b'racha before we continue?

5. Twitter God. Just whatever you might feel like saying. God can handle it. Your friends might not "get it" but who cares? It might be the most interesting twitter all day. If you don't Twitter (I don't) just write whatever you might want to say to God in reply to the most annoying spam email of the day. The point isn't to publicize, and certainly God knows what's going on with us. The point is to be mindful of God by actively directing our thoughts to God at various points in the day.
6. On the drive home. What else are you doing? Minimally, you could say a b'racha for the music you are enjoying or ask for God's mercy and grace to enter whatever situation you are hearing about on the news.

I hope some of this inspires you to set the bar LOW. You don't need to "meditate" for 20 minutes a day. Maybe someday you'll want to (and so will I), but it is said that God says:
"When a child of mine comes to me walking, I am already running."

and:
"The Lord knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust."

Give yourself, your loved ones and the world a gift today by trying to make some sort of connection to God.

Connecting with God - Part I

Ari Goldman writes about the Jewish practice of saying a b'racha (blessing).
"Blessed are you God, King of the Universe, who... (brings forth bread from the ground, creates the fruit of the vine (wine) ...etc.)" There is a b'racha to be recited before virtually everything.

A.J. Jacobs is/was a secular journalist who wrote the Year of Living Biblically, in which he decides to try to follow every command in the Bible as literally as possible for a year. One small piece of this is gratitude. In a fascinating video/talk, Jacobs describes the way the consistent practice of giving thanks has transformed his life and turned him into a "reverent agnostic" as well as a more grateful person. The question has been posed: when an atheist feels just generally grateful, to whom does the atheist give thanks?

I believe that connecting to God on a daily basis is part of the whole health of a human being.
We are selfish creatures in my experience... Okay, fine. I'm a selfish creature. I need to connect to something outside myself to awaken me to the fact that I am not the center of the universe.
Notice how limp Adam's hand is in comparison to God's in Michelangelo's famous painting of the creation of Adam? In the Christian scriptures there is a sense that God is the constant animator of life. Paul, quoting a Greek philosopher, states that in God "we live and move and have our being." But in this, we are relatively passive.

My desire is to try to be a more equal partner with God in God's animation of my life.
By partner, I mean that I would not be working against (passively OR actively) God's purposes, but for them. By "more equal" I mean that maybe instead of a 1,000,000/1 ratio of God's work to my partnership, maybe we could reach a 1,000,000/2 ratio (which would double my personal investment). But achieving this takes "mindfulness;" a conscious attention to God's presence and a discerning of what role I might play in God's will for a situation.

One way of being mindful is the ongoing practice of looking for things for which I can be grateful.

Today I had each member of my class say a b'racha in introduction: "Blessed are you God, King of the Universe, who... (gives me great friends, has given me a great family, gives us coffee...)
As I look out my window right now it is my favorite time of day. The sun is low and shining which gives all the green things a glowing emerald appearance. I will go outside to say this b'racha.

What are you grateful for? Wouldn't the world be a better place if we were only a tiny bit more grateful?

Evolution of a lifter - III

So, in the last "Lifter" post I was transitioning from bodyweight exercises to using weights.

My new inspiration was The New Rules of Lifting by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove:

 The authors don't claim any of this is really new, but that a lot of popular training articles and programs have deluded people.  In a nutshell, here are the "new rules" without giving you the actual "new rules" since there are at least 19.

1. Focus on large muscle groups - (ie. chest/shoulders, back, quads, glute/hamstrings) these programs have VERY few curls or tricep exercises.  The theory is that when you do any sort of upper-body press, your triceps HAVE TO work hard.  When you do any pull/chin up or row, your biceps HAVE TO work hard.

2. Focus on exercises that imitate (relatively) "natural" movements: push - pull - squat - bend - lunge etc. 

3. Weights are tools to help achieve fitness goals and machines are relatively ineffective tools.

Use dumbells and barbells and occasionally a cable station or exercise ball.

4. Strength is the foundation of all movement.

5.  You should set a personal record every workout.

6. A workout is as good as the adaptation it forces upon your body.  Incidentally, this is why resistance training is better than "cardio" for fat-loss.  You body adapts to it more slowly and it increases your metabolism WAY more than "cardio." 

7.  Warm-up, but don't stretch, before your workout.

I love these principles and I enjoyed these workouts and made progress, but the workouts were still just a bit too long for a grad student with a wife and a baby whose demands seemed so disproportionate to his size.

The missing piece I needed at the time was a workout system called Escalating Density Training (EDT).  The program is described in basic form in several places online and was published in the book Muscle Logic by this guy, Charles Staley, and boasted, "Cut your workout time in half, with better results." This may be an exaggeration, but it did cut my workout time down. I did get better results and I loved the way this system makes you compete with yourself successfully and have continual progress.

Here's EDT in short.  When I do EDT, I also have the "new rules" in mind.  This seems complex at first because it is counter-intuitive, but when you get into it, it is amazingly simple.

1. Pick the exercises you want to do for your large muscle groups.

2. Put them in "antagonistic pairings" or roughly opposite exercises.  Example are bench/row, lower-body push/upper-body pull.  You will do these exercises back-to-back in what is called a "superset" moving back and forth between them.

3. Each pair, or superset also indicates a 15 minute "personal record" or PR zone.

4. Use your 10 rep max for each exercise (this can vary depending on your goals).

5. Structure your workouts based on these pairs but, you will NOT perform any exercise to failure.  You should always feel like you could perform at least one more rep on all but maybe the last set of a PR Zone.  

6. Start each set doing HALF of your rep max, moving the weight as fast as possible for each rep and moving back and forth between exercises with as little rest as possible between sets.  Decrease reps-per-set and/or increase rest periods as you fatigue.  Aim for around 45 reps per exercise, but the program is self-correcting BECAUSE....

7. If you beat your previous record by 20%, you increase the weight by 5% or 5lbs., whichever is less, and keep going!

NOTE: Even though the weights and reps are not maximal, moving them as fast as possible means you exert maximal FORCE for each rep.  (Ex. You may exert 140lbs of pressure to move a 100lb weight as fast as you can).

Here's what your workouts might look like then:

Monday:

PR Zone 1-

Squat/Pullup

PR Zone 2- 

Bench/Row

Wednesday:

PR Zone 1-

Deadlift - doesn't really need a pair

PR Zone 2-

Lunge/Military Press

Friday - repeat Monday and then repeat Wednesday the next Monday etc.

I've never done this exact workout, but its not bad.  If you did a 3-5 minute warm-up and rested 3-5 minutes between PR Zones, you'd be in and out of the weight-room, or your basement, in around 40 minutes or less.  If you need shorter workouts, do slightly shorter PR Zones.  I think people could make progress with as little as 10 minute zones though you might want to start out doing 6-7 instead of 5 reps.

I'm doing some other things now that mix up a bunch of these principles with some other things I've learned, but these are the basic building blocks.  My pastor recently preached on taking care of ourselves, so maybe this will help someone do that...

My advice to everyone is to do the exercise you enjoy.  Play, run, lift, jump, march, whatever.  But if you DON'T like what you are currently doing, try something else!

I haven't even talked about nutrition, but I have gained 25-30 pounds since I got back into lifting and I don't think my body-fat percentage has increase much at all.  People might ask, "what about cardio-vascular health?" and even though I only run about once a year, I went out and ran 5 miles with a running friend a few weeks ago and felt pretty good!

So, if you're into working out, let me know what you've learned or found helpful!  I'm always trying to learn new things.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask...  

Evolution of a Lifter - II

My friend Bob Gorinski ("So Whattya Think Robert?"- see my links) posted a great blog on weight-training not too long ago.  Bob blogs on life, faith, family and sometimes lifting.  He is a SICK athlete,a thoughtful Christian and a great dad.  He's also a great PT and he blogged about the toll that lifting takes even as he hit an incredible personal best in the squat.  Anyone considering PX90 or whatever it is, should see his review of that program.  

Yes, there is a masochist element to most of us who like exercising whether we are runners or lifters or whatever...  But, I think there are ways to at least maximize our pain to payoff ratio, and one major way to do that is to maximize time.

Once upon a time, I would work out for an hour or more and I know lots of runners and others who exercise for long stretches even though they don't enjoy it because they think they have to in order to reach their goals.  Here's how it went for me...

When I worked out with my dad in the basement we did a few sets of a few exercises (mostly upper-body) with repititions like this - 12, 10, 7, 5.  Not a bad way to go.  When these sets got easier, we added weight.

Somewhere along the way I got Bill Pearl's Getting Stronger which is a great book in its own right with workouts for beginners and up, bodybuilders and every imaginable sport.

The problem with the book is mostly that Pearl is a bodybuilder.  He thinks in terms of individual muscles and individual exercises to target those muscles.  In the end then, the training is less functional and you end up doing a LOT of different exercises in a workout.  

I used to follow programs like this and I would do exercises aimed at "isolating" the muscles I wanted to work.  When you think this way, you have to do a LOT of exercises.  That takes a LOT of time.  You also end up treating all muscles equally.  You spend just as much time on your biceps, which are a very small proportion of your body, as you do on your hamstrings, which are much larger.

I enjoyed these workouts and made some progress, but they just took too long!

Then I entered grad school and had a 2-3 year hiatus from working out.  When I decided I needed to get back into it, I had no equipment and I had no intention of joining a gym.

SO, I go into bodyweight exercises, push-ups, pull-ups, bodyweight squats and crazy variations of all three.  It was really fun and, coming back from a "keyboard-only" workout regimen, I made a lot of progress.  I still like the simplicity of bodyweight workouts.  A person can get incredibly fit without ever picking up a "weight."  One great resource for this kind of thing is this primitively published manual by Ross Enamait.

My only real criticism of this book is that Enamait uses a LOT of equipment in some of his workouts, even if the equipment isn't weights.  But its still a great book, with a ton of great information as well as exercise ideas to get your creative juices flowing.  You really could be "Never Gymless" although I don't know how anybody could go without a good pull-up bar or branch or fire escape or something.

Still, there is something about lifting heavy stuff.  It is hard to chart your progress on raw strength doing bodyweight exercises.  I mean, its awesome when someone can do 100 pushups, but it takes a lot of determination to decide you're going to do 1 arm push-ups and I never got there.  Maybe someday.  Anyway, I cruised craigslist, found a weight set I wanted and made a low-ball offer.  $90 got me 2 Olympic bars, a bench/squat rack set-up and about 380lbs of plates.  I also reclaimed some weights I bought in high school that my dad wasn't using (he's still using a LOT) and he threw in a couple dumbells.  It was time to hit the iron again...

More on that in a future post.

Motorcycle Diary

This weekend I decided to ride the motorcycle down to Norfolk, where Beth and the kids are visiting with Grandma and Grandpa Crabtree. The "bike" gets 50 miles to the gallon, leaves when I want to leave, and (ideally) gets there in 6 hours, so it beat out the bus and train options by around $40-70 and 3-4 hours each way.
I got rained on a bit on the way down but the first 5 hours were cool. Hour six? My butt was killing me. This bike is a single cylinder 650, which means it vibrates quite a bit, and not a big comfy cruising bike in any case.
On the way back I decided to take a slightly different route. It was more "direct" but off the interstate. And it was raining again but about 15 degrees colder.
An hour and a half into my trip the bike started to "stutter" and backfire. Uh-oh.
"Please just let me get to a gas station."
Nope. It got bad enough that I pulled over and turned it off and tried to look the bike over.
Two small pieces of info:
1. I'm not mechanical. I tried reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" one time and I thought the writer was jerk.
2. Beth and I are sharing a cell-phone right now and it was her turn.

So, I'm broken down on the side of the road, in intermittent rain, in approximately the middle of nowhere, without a phone. So I pray, "Okay God, let's see how you're going to work this one out."

You know what? People don't stop anymore. I'm sure part of it is the whole "biker" thing, but there's something else. Since "everyone" has a cell phone, a person on the side of the road is probably just waiting for their.... whatever they called for.

I decided that the best case scenario was someone in a truck or pulling an empty trailer who would be willing to take me and my bike to the nearest bike shop, where I would sit all day (and hopefully not into the next day) until they got me fixed up and going.
I wanted to maintain my dignity though so my strategy became sitting sideways on my bike facing the road (12 inches from my boots) and waving casually whenever a likely truck drove by.
After about 30-40 minutes of this, a truck turned around and pulled in behind me and a young guy about 21 years old leaned out and asked if he could give me a ride somewhere.

I told him my situation and he offered to drive me up to the nearest gas station, which was better than the side of the road so...
It turned out he had a friend who worked at a cycle shop and he got his friend on the phone. The shop was closed but his friend said he'd drive out and take a look at the bike saying "We can't just leave you stranded."

After running a a quick errand with my new friend we met back at the bike. His friend was there, fiddled around with it, tightened one screw and it was fixed. I offered to buy them lunch but they turned me down casually, smiled at my gratitude and drove away.

Thanks Luke and Paul!

"For I was a stranger" and you cared for me.

The Nature of Our Beliefs

Beth and I watched 2 movies this weekend. On Friday night we watched Religulous, with comedian Bill Maher. Maher is an atheist, raised Catholic but has a Jewish mother. The goal of the movie is to show how religion (or religious beliefs) are ridiculous and dangerous. I think most religious people would find it (and Maher) very offensive for his language and sexual references but anyone might be offended by Maher's total lack of respect for many people he interviewed.

On Saturday night we watched EXPELLED, with comedian Ben Stein, who is a Jewish theist (I don't know if he is "practicing" or not). The goal of this movie is to show how atheistic Darwinism has squelched free inquiry and operates today from a premise about the origin of life that is unprovable. I think most theists will want to cheer.

Neither movie attempts to be unbiased, but here is one fascinating aspect. Both men relate passionately to the suffering of the Holocaust and each places the primary blame on the other's side. So, Maher says it was a religious atrocity, or at least religious believers were the ones committing the majority of atrocious acts. Stein says that Darwinism was the underlying and driving theoretical basis of the Holocaust.

Both men seem right about the Holocaust which in part confirmed for me, a belief I've had for several years.

Here it is: I believe that most people believe what they WANT to believe.

This statement is circular. I can't even begin to prove it, and it applies equally to the belief I just stated and to me as much as anyone else. We all could cite examples that appear to contradict this, but I believe that the exceptions prove the rule.

SO… let me explain.

1. Most people do not have the time to really pursue the answers to most questions to great depth. This is true even for intellectual people who like to read and even for experts in one field who don’t have time to really become experts in another field.

2. Most people rely for their answers on human authorities who DO have the time to research their questions; "experts" that we come to trust. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but reading a book by an expert makes us feel like experts, even if the book was only written by someone who read other experts’ books instead of doing their own research.

3. Most of these experts started the same way we do and ultimately came to their conclusions because they already had a position that they had arrived at through the influence of someone who was an expert first; a “professor” so-to-speak.

4. In choosing reliable human authorities, we usually gravitate towards those who confirm what we already believe, unless we are somehow dis-satisfied with our current beliefs, then we gravitate towards those who (like us) might be critical of our current beliefs. That doesn’t mean that the arguments aren’t rational but that we probably start with some sort of commitment (we could say “faith”) before we have our good arguments. Religious dogma or scientific method, it doesn’t matter.

“You cannot criticize any claim to truth except on the basis of a truth that you claim, and with respect to which you suspend criticism.” Lesslie Newbigin

5. There are BRILLIANT people on both sides of most issues: A/theism. Creation/Evolution. Biblical Truth/Historical Criticism. Republican/Democrat. War/Peace. Homosexual Marriage/NO Homosexual Marriage. GrantCitizenship/Deport-&-Build-a-Wall. Jet Li/Bruce Lee. Half-full/Half-empty. Haveyourcake/Eatittoo.

6. Since we can’t really research both sides to the necessary depth, we have to settle down with belief of some expert; probably the one we agreed with at the start. Maybe we forge a half-way-between belief or agnosticism about the issue, but it doesn't really matter.

7. The belief we settle on is the one that is most APPEALING to us, at that point in time and the appeal of the belief is NOT the result of our own cogent reasoning or research.

8.It most likely has to do with perceived self-interest of some kind. In other words, its about what I want deep down. This want might be subconscious, it might be a matter of connection or distance (ie. I want to feel that I am a part of my: family, nation, party, church, social group OR I want to distance myself from these), it might be sexual (I want the belief that allows me the most freedom), or it might be financially motivated. That doesn't mean that the position is irrational. Wanting our view of the world to remain intact, is rational. So is wanting to change our life if it's unpleasant. However, in all of these cases the prime motivator for belief is not a commitment to reason, facts or certainty (which may be over-rated anyway).

9. We may believe that we believe something because of a real experience that we have had, but why did we interpret our experience in such a way that it confirmed or refuted a particular belief? For instance, I believe that the spirit of God can reveal things to people. I have had experiences to confirm my belief in God, but my belief in God preceded the experience and shaped my interpretation. Again, that’s not bad. That’s just the way it is, 99+% of the time; even for experts and scholars and comedians. People may claim to have undeniable experiences, but I wager that undeniability has as much to do with desire as reason. Even in the Bible, people who have direct encounters with God, doubt.

10. Nonetheless, some things are true and others are not. Conversions and paradigm changes do happen, for good or for ill. Some experts and comedians are right. Others are wrong. Therefore, so are we. That’s why we have to be careful! I believe in believing, and reading and even arguing and advocating. But if I’m right, then the crucial question isn’t: “How do I know my belief is right?” but, “How do I know if my wants are right?”

What do you believe? More importantly: What do you want to believe? And most importantly: why?