Barry's Blog: Family Life and Culture

Within a week, the screen adaptation of C. S. Lewis'  book, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," will make its way to the big screen. Articles and movie trailers abound (it is a bit odd hearing Al Michaels on ABC's Monday Night Football talk about Narnia and Aslan!), and a recent Wall Street Journal article suggests that  the Disney and Walden Media joint venture has pulled out all the stops in marketing the film, not only to Christians,  but also through school systems  and retail venues throughout America. 

The film is the first in a planned series of seven, and is reported to have cost $150 million to make, with profits expected to exceed $800 million including DVD sales - and they thought Tolkien's trilogy was a cottage industry! Meanwhile, HarperCollins, the publishing house of the C.S. Lewis Company in London, is publishing 170 books by or about Lewis in 60 countries. Peter Ross, writing in a November issue of the Sunday Herald in England, suggests that if we were to knock on that window of the Kilns in 1950 (Lewis' residence in Oxford) and inform the author of his widespread fame, he would think us "liars or lunatics!" Those familiar with Lewis'  writings will pick up on his allusion. The latest hubbub even has it that a letter was recently recovered, supposedly written by Lewis to a producer following a 1959 BBC radio adaptation of one of the Chronicles books, in which he expressed great disdain toward any movie adaptation of the books. The plot thickens...

But returning to the Chronicles of Narnia books, all seven of the books were written  over a six-year period between 1948 and 1954, and today they have sold almost 100 million copies. Clearly, Narnia today has become a byword for fantasy and the imagination. Lucy and the other Pevensie children making their way through the magical wardrobe into the land of talking animals  has become one of the most famous stories in all literature.

Much has been written about the companionship between Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, and a fellow member of the Inkings literary group in Oxford. While Lewis would find "success" for his books a rather difficult  and humbling thing to accept, Tolkien never felt at ease with celebrity. One could make a good argument that one of the reasons for  their friendship cooling over the latter part of their lives was due to the overseas success in America of Lewis' Chronicles. What is more, Tolkien would labor over his trilogy some twelve years, while Lewis wrote the entire Chronicles series of seven books in less than half the time. Both men would, of course, achieve great literary (and cinematic) success, but mostly after their lifetimes. In many ways, Tolkien viewed the Chronicles as a rather simplistic, "preachy" fairy tale series that was too overtly Christian in its message. And while those familiar with the Christian story will see the clear connections between the Christian faith and the magical world of Narnia (Lewis did not consider the books as allegory, but used the idea of "supposal," Aslan the lion as Christ, the children as disciples, etc.), enjoying the books does not require one to read them through a Christian lens.

But what could a children's book-turned-film about fairy tales and magic have to do with finding hope and purpose in life? What  message could possibly help us along our way as adults? Why is it that children and adults alike have found these books, irrespectful of religious background, so comforting and moving through the decades since they were first published? The answer lies - and I mention one of the primary "vehicles" that Lewis employed - in the Wardrobe. It is through the Wardrobe that the Pevensie children sometimes (but not always) enter the magical world of Narnia. It was Lewis' belief that with the Wardrobe, the "inside is bigger than the outside," for it opens up into a whole New Country, a whole New World, beyond our own world. What was he saying? I think he was suggesting to us several things. First, genuine faith has a mystery and transcendence to it. We don't ever get it "figured out," for God Himself is bigger, larger, even than what we may come to believe about Him. Secondly, Lewis wants to remind us that we all need fantasy, mystery, hope, and our imaginations to understand that this present world is not all that there is. That somehow, someway, Another World awaits us, a world where there is no longer pain, frustration, disappointments and hurts, but a world where all things are eventually, "made right."

In many ways, he was telling us something that we all need to hear. For you see, deep down inside of us we all have an understanding that  life is more than simply our net worth, our achievements, accomplishments. Deep down we know that life is more than "bread and circuses." Deep down, we all believe, or want to believe, or need to believe, that this present temporal life is but a preparation before another world dawns.

In the November 21 issue of The New Yorker magazine, Adam Gopnik gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the formative influences in Lewis' life. He concludes his article, "Prisoner of Narnia: How C. S. Lewis Escaped," with an insightful observation, reflecting on the magical world of Narnia, one that I am sure Lewis would agree:

"It is here that the atheist and the believer meet, exactly in the realm of made-up magic. Atheists need ghosts and kings and magical uncles and strange coincidences, living fairies and thriving Lilliputians, just as much as the believers do, to register their understanding that a narrow material world, unlit by imagination, is inadequate to our experience, much less our hopes."

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” 
                                                                                                            -C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

 
For FinishingWell,

Barry

"Happy New Year!" We've probably already used that greeting many times as the year winds down, and we look forward to what 2006 will bring. And if we think about this simple greeting, we might ask ourselves, but doesn't every American want to be happy? And happy ALL the time? An article in the Op-Ed section of today's New York Times by Darrin McMahon entitled, "In Pursuit of Unhappiness," gave me reason to reflect on the phrase, especially during this festive season of glad tidings and good cheer. The article, taken from McMahon's forthcoming book, Happiness: A History, not only gives us a historical perspective on the pursuit of happiness in America, but also gives us insight about ourselves, what is important to us.

While our emphasis on mirth might seem like a timeless wish, as though seeking happiness is synonymous with being human, McMahon points out that this preoccupation with endless bliss is a relatively recent phenomenon. He quotes Thomas Carlyle, who observed in 1843, "'Happiness our being's end and aim' is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two centuries old in the world."  Carlyle was pretty accurate, as history suggests that it was not until the 17th century that "happiness," in the form of pleasure or good feeling, became not only morally acceptable, but commendable in and of itself.

This shift in the cultural landscape was profound, and its implications far reaching. While in an earlier day happiness was perceived as belonging to the Next World, as people saw signs of God's blessings in earthly satisfactions, the heavenly vision was dimmed, so that suffering was no longer understood to be our natural state. "Happy" was now the way we were meant to be, not in the life to come, but in this temporal life. Among the implications of this new perspective, the holiday season was transformed from a time of pious worship into one of unadulterated bliss.

According to McMahon, Carlyle's major insight, that the new doctrine of happiness tended to raise expectations that could never possibly be fulfilled, is without question as relevant today as it was in 1843. Despite having more time-saving devices, far better living standards, and more avenues for pleasure than ever before, we are arguably no happier than our ancestors. And yet, come January, as in years gone by, the self-help gurus through their books and seminars will promise to make us happier. Interestingly enough, the very fact that there is such a demand for these products would lead one to believe that they aren't really working. And if we are honest with ourselves, we might even admit that all the talk about holiday cheer (with those TV commercials with perfect families where everyone gets along great) creates more depression, blues, and sadness, than cheer.

Thomas Carlyle's long-time rival, and sometime friend, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, came to a similar conclusion about the false promises of holiday cheer. Yet, rather than resign himself to gloom, Mill committed to look for happiness in another way: "Those only are happy," he concluded, "who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way."

McMahon, a professor of history at Florida State University, ends his fine article with a wise word for us all: "For our own culture, steeped as it is in the relentless pursuit of personal pleasure and endless cheer, (Mill's) message is worth heeding...So in these last days of 2005 I say to you, 'Don't have a happy new year!' Have dinner with your family or walk in the park with friends. If you're so inclined, put in some good hours at the office or at your favorite charity, temple or church. Work on your jump shot or your child's model trains. With luck, you'll find happiness by the by. If not, your time won't be wasted. You may even bring a little joy to the world." 

Pretty good advice for living in a narcissist, pleasure-seeking culture.

For Finishing Well,

Barry Morrow

"In Pursuit Of Unhappiness," by Darrin McMahon, The New York Times Op-Ed Page
Thursday, December 29, 2005, p. A27
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/opinion/29McMahon.html 

Robert Hutchins once observed, 'When I feel like exercising I just lie down until the feeling goes away." We may chuckle at his remark, but all too often our lives resemble his sentiment. Like it or not, Mark Twain was not far off the mark when he declared: "The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not do."  Calvin Trillin remarked, "Health food makes me sick!" Well, maintaining our health may not be that bad, but few would question that a key to finishing well in our lives is to do all we can to maintain our health for the coming years.

We've all seen the many articles at the start of the new year stressing the need to make course corrections in our lives. An article that I recently came across made some significant observations about the extent of heart disease, and how to fight it. In the U.S. alone, heart disease accounts for a whopping $400 billion annual cost of heart treatment and lost productivity; 900,000 heart attacks and strokes; 1.2 million angioplasties; and 500,000 bypass operations. According to this study conducted by Salim Yusuf, a heart disease specialist at McMaster University in Toronto, nine risk factors account for 90% of the heart disease in every population in the world. While the risk factors are not new (we have heard them before: smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, stress, a deskbound job and a diet that is rich in processed foods, etc.), what is new is the powerful evidence of the toll they take. The evidence comes from Yusuf's Interheart Study, a worldwide examination of heart disease risk factors involving more than 26,000 volunteers in 52 countries. Based on the study, Yusuf says, "we know virtually all of the risk factors in every population."

Clogged arteries are a "societal disease," Yusuf says, "brought on by cities built for automobiles and ease, fearturing urban sprawl, high pressure sedentary work, passive entertainment and lots of cheap, tasty processed food." Surprisingly, family history - believed by many to be the biggest heart risk of all - accounts for just a fraction of the 10% of remaining risk, the study shows. The Interheart Study, observes Richard Milani, director of preventive cardiology at the Ochsner Institute in New Orleans, "focuses on things we can do something about. We're all dying from a disease that's primarily a disease of choice, of lifestyle."

To that end, here is a brief description of the 9 factors that affect our heart's health:

1. Bad Cholesterol - Good Cholesterol - High cholesterol roughly quadruples heart attack risk. Bad cholesterol (LDL) carries fats into the artery wall, while good cholesterol (HDL) carries it away. A sedentary lifestyle and fatty diet increase LDL, while exercise and a healthy diet switch the ratio and keep the arteries clear.

2. Diabetes - Diabetes doubles a man's risk of having a heart attack. Diabetes, liking smoking, causes platelets to stick together, resulting in scores of tiny clots. These clots clog the smaller blood vessels that feed nerves and arteries, which is a key reason diabetes destroys circulation. 

3. Psychosocial Stress - Stressfrul life events, behavioral disorders, and depression nearly triple the risk of heart attack. Depressed people with heart disease are four times more likely to have a heart attack or die. 

4. Abdominal Obesity - Abdominal obesity more than doubles the risk of heart attack in men. Milani observes, "It's not a big rear that will get you in trouble; it's a big belly." Abdominal fat is hormonally active, "begetting diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol." 

5. Smoking -  Smokers are two to three times more likely to have a heart attack than non-smokers. Cigarette smoke damages the artery wall, paving the way for inflammation and cholesterol build-up. It also narrows arteries, and activates platelets, sticky cells that cling together and promote clotting. 

6. High Blood Pressure -  High blood pressure nearly triples a man's risk of having a heart attack. Narrowed blood vessels force the heart to work harder, slowly wearing it out. 

7. Alcohol - While  modest amounts of alcohol reduce a man's heart attack risk by 12% (and a woman's by 60%!), too much (more than a drink a day)  can promote heart disease, cancer, and alcoholism.  

8. Eating Fruits & Vegetables - Want to cut your risk of heart attack by 30-40%? Eat fresh fruits and vegetables. They lower  bad cholesterol, improve blood sugar, and replace foods that are not as healthy.

9. Yeah, You Knew the Last One...EXERCISE -  Believe it or not, moderate exercise reduces a man's heart risk by 23% and a woman's by twice that amount. "We're not talking about marathons," Milani says. "Even just a nice walk in the park." Exercise improves cholesterol, staves off diabetes by improving blood sugar, and promotes blood vessel growth.

So how are we doing? Why not spend some time thinking about how you can implement better eating habits, handle stress more effectively in your life, and make exercise (even moderate) a part of your daily regimen.

 For FinishingWell,

 Barry Morrow

Actress Natalie Wood once observed, "The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby." We may find the remark amusing, and yet, deep down, we realize that she may be on to something. I'm not suggesting that we never change things in our lives, but there is something deeply embedded in us that makes us resist change at all costs, especially when it is encouraged by our wives (often those who love us the most). But let me make it clear that I'm not blindly defending the American male. For I believe a lot of the challenges and spiritual struggles we face as men are rooted in our stubborn, prideful refusal to change. We want to maintain the status quo, to simply be left alone. Many of us are so consumed with our work and other diversions so that only in retrospect do we see, with clarity, what we have sacrificed in years gone by.

And yet, I am reminded of how challenging it is being a man, a father, a husband, in today's culture. Not only are there tremendous expectations placed upon men from every direction (running a business, financial pressures, spending quality time with our wives and children), but there also seems to be a strong sentiment against men in general. Truly, male-bashing is in vogue! And one can only wonder how previous generations of men ever survived without the abundance of personal & religious self-help books to "improve" them - make them better men, better husbands, better fathers.

As I meet with men who are working hard "juggling the balls in the air" of their lives, I'm reminded of our need for companionship with other men along the journey. And while our wives can do much to encourage us in our lives, they really don't know what it is like to be a man. A number of years ago, Garrison Keillor wrote an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times that  expresses well what it is like to be a man today in America:

"This was not a great year for guys...Guys are in trouble. Manhood, once an opportunity for achievement, now seems like a problem to be overcome. Plato, St. Francis, Leonardo da Vinci, Vince Lombardi - you don't find guys of that caliber today. What you find is terrible gender anxiety, guys trying to be Mr. Right, the man who can bake a cherry pie, go shoot skeet, come back, toss a salad, converse easily about intimate matters, cry if need be, laugh, hug, be vulnerable, perform passionately that night and the next day go off and lift them bales onto that barge and tote it. Being perfect is a terrible way to spend your life, and guys are not equipped for it anyway. It is like a bear riding a bicycle: He can be trained to do it for short intervals, but he would rather be in the woods doing what bears do there."

If you sometimes feel like the bear riding the bicycle, we hope to provide some encouragement along the way, and perhaps, even a map back to the woods.

For FinishingWell,

 Barry Morrow

Years ago actor Steve Martin's character in the film, Grand Canyon, observed, "All of life's riddles are solved in the movies." While the films of Woody Allen hardly attempt to solve the riddles of life, his latest film, Match Point, raises significant, albeit serious questions, about the kind of universe we live in. Is life all chance or is it a dance? Because Allen's early films are some of the funniest ever made, it is often assumed that he is a comic at heart, which has often led to misunderstandings about his films. But now and then, Allen attempts to remove the confusion by producing films which, sometimes elegantly and sometimes brashly, present his view of the world that is essentially nihilistic (without meaning and purpose). In film after film, he has announced an absolute lack of faith in any moral ordering of the universe - and still, people think he is joking.

In Match Point, arguably his most satisfying and best movie since his critically-acclaimed Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), the director again brings us the bad news, with the setting in London instead of Manhattan, Brit actors instead of Americans, and with a dark humor that rivals any of his previous films. As a review in The New York Times put it, "this is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine."

The film stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton, a poor boy from Ireland turned social climber,  who is a former tennis pro who left the tour and now works as a club pro at a posh country club in London. As he helps the rich members polish their ground strokes, he meets rich young Tom (Matthew Goode), an amiable yet unserious heir to a business fortune, who invites Chris to attend the opera with his family. Tom has a pretty sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), eager to become romantically involved with Chris.  Presiding over this upper-crust London family is a corporate giant of a father, Alec (Brian Cox), who would be quite happy to find room at the top of the family business for this book-loving future son-in-law (Chris is seen reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment early on in the film). The snake in this Eden is Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), an American actress whose difficult challenge to make it big on the London stage is softened by enjoying the privileges that come with being Tom's plaything of a fiancee. Tom likes Nola, but one wonders to what degree? And do his parents approve? And these two outsiders, Chris and Nola, who are attempting to make inroads into the London high-society scene, as fate would have it, become more attracted to each other than to the wealthy family siblings. Suffice it to say that all is decided in the fullness of time, and  I'll stay mum on the details in order not to spoil the film's twists and turns, which are clever, but hard to anticipate.

Instead, let's consider briefly the underlying philosophical issues embraced by Allen in this film. As Roger Ebert has observed in his review of Match Point, "One reason for the fascination of Woody Allen's Match Point is that each and every character is rotten. This is a thriller not about good versus evil, but about various species of evil engaged in a struggle for survival of the fittest - or, as the movie makes clear, the luckiest." Ebert is right when is observes that, "the movie is more about plot and moral vacancy than about characters."

While in Allen's earlier film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, he raises the age-old question of whether a man can commit a heinous crime and live with himself, without genuine guilt and remorse, in Match Point he seems to have moved further away from any kind of worldview that embraces a moral Right and Wrong. In a December documentary titled, Woody Allen: A Life in Film, conducted by the celebrated Time Magazine reporter Richard Schickel, Allen brazenly notes that he does not even believe in God. To Allen, Fate, Chance, or Blind Luck has become his god. "I'd rather be lucky than good," Chris tells us as the movie opens, and we see a tennis ball striking the tape at the top of the net -sometimes luck has it that it goes over the net and you win the point, and other times it falls on your side and you lose the point. If you think you know where this mind teaser of a movie is going, think again. Allen's Match Point  in some ways serves as a "meditation" on a world where Luck plays a greater role than an absent God. By the film's end, if you are like me, you may find it morally repugnant that your expectation for justice is not realized in the shocker of an ending. 

You may be wondering, though,  what in the world does Allen's Match Point have to do with finishing well in life? Let me suggest that it makes all the difference in the world. For if we do not live in a moral universe, where there are Rights and Wrongs, where we at least have the hope that our labors and aspirations will be rewarded, if not in this life, then in a life to come, then this life is nothing but a futile existence, signifying nothing. If all is determined by a Blind Fate, it further suggests that our hopes and desires to find meaning and purpose in life, to work with excellence and integrity, to raise our children with the hopes that they will be godly, law-abiding contributors for the good of society, is but an empty shibboleth. Allen would do well to remind himself of Dostoevsky's most famous maxim: "If there is no God, then all things are permitted." I'm not convinced that he truly lives his life in such a way.

"What difference does Heaven make to earth, to now, to our lives? Only the difference between hope and despair in the end, between two totally different visions of life, between 'chance' or 'the dance.'  At death we find out which vision is true: does it all go down the drain in the end, or are all the loose threads finally tied together into a gloriously perfect tapestry? Do the tangled paths through the forest of life lead to the golden castle or over the cliff and into the abyss? Is death a door or a hole?" -Peter Kreeft

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"It was great, Dad."

"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.

"Oh, yeah," said the son.

"So tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father. 

The son answered, "I saw that we have one dog, and they have four."

"We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden, and they have a creek that has no end."

"We have imported lanterns in our garden, and they have the stars at night."

"Our patio reaches to the front yard, but they have the whole horizon."

"We have a small piece of land to live on, and they have fields that go beyond our sight."

" We have servants who serve us, but they serve others."

"We buy our food, but they grow theirs."

"We have walls around our property to protect us, yet they have friends to protect them."

The boy's father was speechless...

Then his son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are." 

 
"Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed." -1 Timothy 6:17-19

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

Rarely have I been forwarded an article by so many of you men as the article that follows about a courageous friendship between a father and a son, Dick and Rick Hoyt. You may have seen the video of this moving story in recent months (see the link at the end). Rick Reilly, one of the best sports writers in America, wrote this piece in tribute to this father and son. Who says that sports and competition cannot be a fitting venue for bravery and courage, and the bonding of a father and son? Here is Reilly's article in full, which appeared in the June 20th, 2005 issue of Sports Illustrated:
 

"I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared to Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars - all in the same day. 

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father? Not much - except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.  "He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution." But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks." That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"  And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?" Here's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together. This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 - only 25 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. 

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century." And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries waw 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, " you probably would've died 15 years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. "The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

-Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated, June 20, 2005 

For a video of this story, please go to:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WjPrL3n63yg 

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

In Pleasantville, a 1998 fantasy-comedy written and directed by Gary Ross, a brother and sister from the 1990's, David and Jennifer (played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) find themselves literally sucked into their television set, and suddenly find themselves in Pleasantville, a quaint little town complete with new (pleasant) parents, old fashioned values, and loads of innocence and naivete. David and Jennifer have landed in a "Leave It To Beaver" world, popularized years ago by the TV series of the same name. Interestingly, this new town of Pleasantville is literally a black-and-white world, but as the two teens attempt to become a part of this "backwards" town, strange things begin to happen. Suddenly, color begins to creep into this black-and-white world, and curiously, the more the "rules" of society are broken, the more colorful life gets in Plesantville, USA.

I'll leave it to you to weigh-in on the significance of the "coloring" of Pleasantville, but it reminds me that we no longer live in such a simple and innocent world.  I came across an excerpt from an actual 1950's Home Economics textbook, that was intended to teach high school girls how to prepare for married life. The ten guidelines are as follows:

1. Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal-on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him, and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home, and the prospects of a good meal are part of the warm welcome needed.

2. Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

3. Clear away clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives, gather up school books, toys, paper,etc. Then run a dust cloth over the tables. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too.  

4. Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces if they are small, comb their hair, and if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.

5. Minimize the noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. Greet him with a warm smile and be glad to see him.

6. Some DON'TS: Don't greet him with problems or complaints; Don't complain if he's late for dinner. Count this as minor compared with what he might have gone through that day.

7. Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or suggest he lay down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice. Allow him to relax and unwind. 

8. Listen to him. You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first.

9. Make the evening his. Never complain if he doesn't take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his need to be home and relax.

10. The goal. Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can relax. 

I'm serious, This is not made up! Could this truly be the mindset of the 1950's and 60's? Whether this was the way things really were (or perceived that they should be), I am not sure. My purpose here is not to even remotely suggest that women today are no longer committed to their husbands and families, etc., but only to observe how strange such words sound to us today. Truly, times have changed! Truly, it was good to be king!

How do you weigh-in on this? What societal influences have caused this shift in the way we look at life? How has the blur in the distinction between the roles of men and women in society impacted our perspective? Do you think a lot of the differences can really be attributed to busyness?  If I hear from enough of you, I'll post the "updated" version for today's modern woman!

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

In spite of the increasing political clout on the national stage, along with packed megachurches across America, evangelical Christian leaders are giving warnings that our teenagers are abandoning the Christian faith in droves. As reported in a recent  article in The New York Times, in a series of unusual leadership meetings in forty-four cities this fall, more than 6,000 pastors are hearing some dire forecasts from some of the more luminary representatives of the conservative, evangelical movement in America.

One of the more alarming trends noted by some of these leaders is that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be "Bible-believing Christians" as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with the 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and the 65 percent of the World War II generation. While some youth leaders believe the statistics are greatly exaggerated (one evangelical magazine for youth pastors has dubbed the findings as "the 4 percent panic attack"), there is little doubt among most evangelical leaders that teens of today do not share "their father's world." They look at life, including their faith, through a different set of glasses.

Ron Luce, who founded the youth ministry outreach called Teen Mania, observes that: "I'm looking at the data, and we've become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We've been working as hard as we know how to work - everyone in youth ministry is working hard - but we're losing." And many Christian teenagers and youth pastors are sounding a similar genuine alarm, admitting that they find it difficult to compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about their Christian faith, as well as the casual "hooking up" approach to sex, and a culture that glamorizes alcohol and drugs. Oftentimes, evangelical teens feel like a tiny, beleaguered minority in a sea of relativism.

Yet, the phenomenon may not be that young evangelicals are abandoning their faith, but that they are abandoning the institutional church. So says Lauren Sandler, author of Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, who writes that she has found the movement "frighteningly robust," in spite of the fact that she sees herself as a secular liberal. Ms. Sandler, an editor at Salon.com, suggests that "this generation is not about church. They always say, 'We take our faith outside the four walls.' For a lot of young evangelicals, church is a rock festival, or a skate park or hanging out in someone's basement."

According to Christian Smith, evangelicals are the envy of Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Jews, when it comes to organizing youth. Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, specializes in the study of American evangelicals, and conducted extensive surveys of teens for his book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford Press, 2005).

Smith says he was skeptical about the 4 percent statistic cited earlier, and observed that the figure was from a footnote in a book which was inconsistent with research he had conducted and reviewed, which found that evangelical teens are more likely to remain involved with their faith than are mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews and teens from almost every other religion. "A lot of the goals I'm very supportive of," Smith said of the new evangelical youth campaign, "but it just kills me that it's framed in such apocalyptic terms that couldn't possibly hold up under half a second of scutiny. It's just self-defeating."

While the statistics can be debated ad infinitum, there is little doubt that our secularized culture has a profound impact upon all of us, and especially our teenagers. We would do well to see that they have the opportunity, whether in a church or parachurch setting, to have quality biblical instruction, authentic community, and youth leaders who serve as significant role models.

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

"I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one." So reads the memorable first line of My Losing Season, best-selling novelist Pat Conroy's 2002 memoir of his 1966-67 basketball season at The Citadel, where the team finished with a miserable 8-16 record. This Friday, Conroy and his Citadel teammates of 40 years ago will gather for a reunion, as one writer has observed, "in defiance of natural law." Muses Conroy, "It is the winners who have reunions...the losing teams of the world disband without fanfare or any sense of regret." Yet Conroy has good reason for celebration and inviting his old friends to the season opener, as his first cousin, Ed Conroy, himself a celebrated basketball player at The Citadel, is the Bulldogs' new coach.

In many ways, this is the story of a score-settling novelist and the father and his alma mater which he simulaneously loved, hated, and exposed, all mind you, through his literary genius. In Conroy's, The Great Santini, he presented his father as an ex-Marine who was overbearing to his wife and children, to put it mildly. His best-selling, The Lords of Discipline, revealed The Citadel as a military "spit-and-polish" school where first-year knobs were often abused to mold them into Citadel men. Conroy would again take his father to task in his non-fiction work, My Losing Season, but offered up on the sacrificial altar Coach Mel Thompson as a surrogate, who was fired after the 1966-67 season.

Ironically, it was Conroy's mercurial ex-fighter pilot and father, Don, who took his nephew Ed under his wing in the 1980's, encouraging The Citadel to recruit Ed. He then proceeded to watch 46 of Ed's college games (according to a family count), which was 45 more than he saw of his own son Pat's. "I think he was doing for Ed what he did not do for me--or could not do for me," Conroy offers. "Dad would have loved to see Ed become coach of The Citadel. He would have been out of his mind for it."

Don Conroy died in 1998, and while he was at first furious about "Colonel Bull Meecham," the character from The Great Santini based on his life, Pat believes that his father used his 1976 novel as a blueprint to reinvent himself.  "Dad showed few human characteristics" until then, Pat says. "That's when he became a Santa Claus figure to his nieces and nephews...I think it was Ed's hero worship of my father that got him to come to The Citadel."

There is little question that writing for Conroy (and he is a tremendously gifted writer) has served as a healing, cathartic experience, to exorcise the "demons" from his past troubles with his father and his alma mater. But one doesn't have to read far to feel his pain. We all have been impacted by our own fathers, both for good and for not, have we not? What are the messages and life lessons we have received from them? Have we been able to separate the wheat from the chaff? And what are the messages and life lessons that we are effectively sending to our own children? Bertrand Russell once observed, "The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them." Could he have been right?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow

"Sports books are always about winning because winning is far more pleasurable and exhilarating to read about than losing. Winning is wonderful in every aspect, but the darker music of loss resonates on deeper, richer planes. I think about all the games of that faraway year that played such a part in shaping me, and it is the losses that stand out because they still make their approach with all their capacities to wound intact. Winning makes you think you'll always get the girl, land the job, deposit the million-dollar check, win the promotion, and you grow accustomed to a life of answered prayers. Winning shapes the soul of bad movies and novels and lives. It is the subject of thousands of insufferably bad books and is often a sworn enemy of art."

"Loss is a fiercer, more uncompromising teacher, coldhearted but clear-eyed in its understanding that life is more dilemma than game, and more trial than free pass. My acquaintance with loss has sustained me during the stormy passages of my life...Though I learned some things from the games we won that year, I learned much, much more from loss."

-Pat Conroy, My Losing Season

"There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime. Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made out of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them."       -P. J. O'Rourke

"Early in life I developed a distaste for the Cratchits that time has not sweetened. I do not think I was an embittered child, but the Cratchit's aggressive worthiness, their bravely borne poverty, their exultation over that wretched goose, disgusted me. I particularly disliked Tiny Tim (a part always played by a girl because girls had superior powers of looking moribund and worthy at the same time), and when he chirped, 'God bless us every one!", my mental response was akin to Sam Goldwyn's famous phrase, 'Include me out.'"  -Robertson Davies

"A little girl said she like Santa Claus better than Jesus because 'you have to be good for Santa only at Christmas, but for Jesus you had to be good all the time.' Much of the Christmas observance at church is not far removed from that attitude." -Vance Havner 

Dear Mary: Just a very hurried line-- (1). To condole with you on the loss of Fr. ________. (2). To tell a story which puts the contrast between our feast of the Nativity and, all this ghastly "Xmas" racket at its lowest. My brother heard a woman on a 'bus say, as the 'bus passed a church with a Crib outside it, "Oh, Lor'! They bring religion into everything. Look...they're dragging it even into Christmas now!" Love and sympathy from us both. Yours, Jack.                -C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady 

"What you do not understand, treat with reverence and be patient, and what you do understand, cherish and keep." -Augustine of Hippo, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany  (4th century)  

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

This Sunday when millions of viewers tune in to watch Super Bowl XLI from Miami, chances are good that they will witness similar, and instructive, leadership styles from  the Colts' head coach, Tony Dungy, and the Bears' Lovie Smith. These two coaches have remained close friends over the years as Dungy, after securing his first NFL head-coaching job in 1996 with Tampa Bay, gave Lovie Smith his first job in the NFL as an assistant in charge of the Buccaneers' linebackers. 

Both Dungy and Smith stand out in the National Football League's scream-and-holler culture, where they both believe that they can get their players to compete more fiercely and play more productively by calmly giving directions to players and treating them with respect. An article a few days ago in The Wall Street Journal pointed out that their laid-back leadership style doesn't mean that they aren't demanding or have high expectations for their players. Mr. Dungy has a grading system that counts players' "loafs" (not running at full speed, failing to hit an opponent when he could have, etc.), and it's hard to get through a game without getting at least one. Smith, when he became the Bears' head coach three years ago, implemented a similar system to Dungy, and told players he wanted them to lift more weights and eat better because he wanted a slimmer, faster team. And when Smith gets angry, he is known to give what his players call the "Lovie Look," which they admit is a warning, and more frightening than a littany of angry words!

While executive "screaming" is not as common as it was a few years ago, some of the recent leadership changes at a few of the nation's largest companies remind us that it is still an often used style to get one's way across. Frank Blake, Home Depot's new CEO, is far more mild-mannered than former CEO, Bob Nardelli, and Disney's Robert Iger is at least perceived as fair, compared with his mercurial predecessor, Michael Eisner.

When business executives ridicule and scream at employees, they don't realize how often it results in lost productivity, discouragement of innovation, and a talent drain at their companies, says James Clifton, CEO of the Gallup Organization. "There's a big difference between saying 'you made a stupid mistake' and screaming 'you're really stupid,'" says Gary Hayes, co-founder of New York consultant Hayes Brunswick. He worked with a New York law firm where a senior partner flung heavy law books across the room at an associate. "The associate told me it was all right since the partner intentionally threw to miss - not to hit him," says Mr Hayes. "But the associate soon moved to another firm."

For some executives and coaches, screaming is their means to show that they are in charge, and it may be the behavior that  is expected from their bosses. The Colts' Mr. Dungy says he didn't get some jobs earlier in his career because he was considered too laid-back and polite, and didn't believe being a great coach "required him to sacrifice his family or his faith." In an interview years ago, one NFL owner asked him if he would make the team the most important thing in his life, and he said no. "I figured I probably wouldn't get that job, and I didn't," he said last week at a press conference. "I think your faith is more important that your job, family is more important than your job. We all know that's the way it should be, be we're kind of afraid to say that sometimes."

The Colts and Bears play "tough, disciplined football, even though there's not a lot of profanity from the coaches," says Dungy.  "There's none of the win-at-all-costs atmosphere. I think for two guys to show you can win that way is important for the country."

So who said we couldn't find something encouraging and redemptive from the Super Bowl this weekend?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow

-Why not forward this to a friend! 

Augusta National officials say they are often asked what trees line the club's famous driveway, Magolia Lane. They're magnolia trees, of course - 61 in all. In the light of the Masters Golf Tournament that begins tomorrow, The Wall Street Journal recently published their 18-hole "Augusta Challenge," so one could test their knowledge of this wonderful golf spectacle. See how you do on six of the most intriguing trivia questions:

Question 1- What is the lowest score in a round at the Masters?

1. 62 by Jack Nicklaus in 1962. He holds a record six titles but didn't win that year.

2. 64 by Craig Wood in the second Masters in 1935, tied by Sam Snead in 1953. Each won in those years.

3. 64 by Tiger Woods in his debut as a pro in 1997. He won, of course.

4. 63 by Nick Price in 1986, and by Greg Norman in 1996. Neither man won.

Question 2 -  Who was the oldest Masters winner?

1. Jack Nicklaus at age 46

2. Gary Player at aage 48

3. Arnold Palmer at age 44

4. The first Masters winner, Horton Smith, at age 43 

Question 3 -  Why is the Masters played in early April?

1. Bobby Jones, the Masters founder, liked the descriptions of the color of the azaleas in those first radio broadcasts.

2. Mr. Jones picked early April because sportswriters heading north from baseball's spring training in Florida would be willing to stop off to cover the Masters.

3. It wasn't at first, but when CBS signed up to broadcast the Masters, the network insisted that the tournament move to early April.

4. Mr. Jones liked having the year's first major golf event, making it similar to baseball's opening day. 

Question 4 - Why are the holes at Augusta named after flowers?

1. Club co-founder Clifford Roberts was an amateur botanist.

2. The seller of the property to Messrs. Jones and Roberts insisted on it.

3. The property had been an indigo plantation, and then a nursery.

4. An early tournament winner, Walter Hagen, liked to stop and smell the flowers. After he mentioned this to officials one year, they named the holes after flowers in his honor. 

Question 5 - During World War II, the Masters wasn't played in 1943-1945. What were the grounds used for?

1. Drill and marching groups from nearby Camp Gordon (now Fort Gordon) paraded up and down the fairways.

2. German POW's were camped there.

3. Cows and turkeys grazed the land in support of the war effort.

4. Much of the land was plowed under, and cotton was grown to be used for soldiers' uniforms. 

Question 6 - The 13th hole is appropriately named Azalea. Approximately how many of these shrubs line this often-photographed 510-yard par-five hole?

1. About 700

2. About 1,100

3. About 1,600

4. It used to be about 1,800, but since the tee was moved back 25 yards a few years ago, it's now over 2,000 

Pulittzer Prize-winning author John Updike has been writing on golf for almost fifty years, in such publications as Golf Digest and The New Yorker. While golf has been the subject of many books and the province of many experts, few have written as sympathetically, as knowingly, about the peculiar charms of bad golf, and the satisfactions of an essentially losing struggle, as Updike. I've found his musings on golf and the human dilemma to be both humorous and insightful. From his essay, "Moral Exercise,' he writes:

"Most of us don't really know how well we're doing, in real life, and imagine we're doing not so bad. The world conspires to flatter us; only golf trusts us with a cruelly honest report on our performance...The game and your swing provide a barrage of criticism that there is no evading..."

"Our bad golf testifies, we cannot help feeling, to our being bad people - bad to the core. Socrates or his mouthpiece Plato thought that to know the good was to do the good, automatically. But, like a character out of Dostoevsky, we perversely continue to play with wild and self-punishing imperfection..."

"Golf morality runs to paradoxes. He who hits down sees the ball soar. He who looks up tops the ball into the tall grass. He who tries to hit hardest loses yardage to the supple devil-may-care. He who strives to steer the ball into the hole winds up stubbing the putt. 'He who would save his life must lose it,' a rabbi once advised. 'Let the nothingness into yer shots,' the imaginary pro Shivas Irons instructed his disciple in Michael Murphy's lovely Golf in the Kingdom. Don't try too hard, we might more simply say..."

"Golf's ultimate moral instruction directs us to find within ourselves a pivotal center of enjoyment: relax into a rhythm that fits the hills and swales, and play the shot at hand - not the last one, or the next one, but the one at your feet, in the poison ivy, where you put it."

Little wonder that writer Scott Peck once likened golf to a spiritual exercise. Isn't it amazing that a game that can deliver so much joy and delight, can also excruciatingly reveal so much about ourselves?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

Oh, yes. The answers:

Question #1 - 4

Question #2 - 1 

Question #3 - 2

Question #4 - 3

Question #5 - 3

Question #6 - 3

N.B. - Email me if you wish to have the complete 18 - hole Wall Street Journal "Augusta Challenge" trivia quiz emailed to you in pdf. 

The shooting massacre at Virginia Tech last week has left our society numb, searching for answers of how this sort of thing could ever have occurred. Peggy Noonan's column last week in The Wall Street Journal on this horrible tragedy provides insights that we don't generally hear from the media. Here are some of her thoughts from her column entitled, "Cold Standard."

"I saw an old friend on the Acela on the way to Washington, and he told me of the glum, grim faces at the station he'd left, all the commuters with newspapers in their hands and under their arms. This was the day after Virginia Tech. We talked about what was different this time, in this tragedy. I told him I felt people were stricken because they weren't stricken. When Columbine happened, it was weird and terrible, and now there have been some incidents since, and now it's not weird anymore. And that is what's so terrible. It's the difference between 'That doesn't happen!' and 'That happens.' "

"Actually I thought of Thoreau. He said he didn't have to read newspapers because if you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with its numerous applications. If you know lightning hits trees, you don't have to know every time a tree is struck by lightning. In terms of school schootings, we are now familiar with the principle." 

"Dennis Miller the other night said something compassionate and sensible on TV. Invited to criticize some famous person's stupid response to a past tragedy, he said he sort of applied a 48 hour grace period after a tragedy and didn't hold anyone to the things they'd said. People get rattled and say things that are extreme. But more than 48 hours have passed. So: some impressions..."

"There seems to me a sort of broad national diminution of common sense in our country that we don't notice in the day-to-day but that become obvious after a story like this. Common sense says a person like Cho Seung-hui, who was obviously dangerous and unstable, should have been separated from the college population. Common sense says someone should have stepped in like an adult, like a person in authority, and taken him away. It is only common sense that if a person like Cho leaves a self-aggrandizing, self-celebrating, self-pitying video diary of himself to be played by the mass media, the mass media should not play it and not publicize it, not make it famous. Common sense says that won't help."

"And all those big cops, scores of them, hundreds, with the latest, heaviest, most sophisticated gear, all the weapons and helmets and safety vests and belts. It looked like the brute force of the state coming up against uncontrollable human will. But it also looked muscle bound. And the schools themselves more and more look muscle bound, weighed down with laws and legal assumptions and strange prohibitions." 

"The school officials I saw, especially the head of the campus psychological services, seemed to me endearing losers. But endearing is too strong. I mean 'not obviously and vividly offensive.' The school officials who gave all the highly competent, almost smooth and practiced news conferences seemed to me like white, bearded people who were educated in softness. Cho was 'troubled'; he clearly had 'issues'; it would have been good if someone had 'reached out'; it's too bad America doesn't have better 'support services.' They don't use direct, clear words, because if they're blunt, they're implicated."

"I wondered about the emptiness of the phrases used by the media and by political figures, and how pro forma and lifeless and cold they are. The formalized language of loss hasn't kept up with the number of tragedies. 'A nation mourns.' 'Our prayers are with you.' the latter is both self-complimenting and of dubious believability. Did you really pray? Or is it just a phrase? And this as opposed to the honest things normal people say: 'Oh no.' 'I am so sorry.' 'I'm sad.' 'It's horrible.'"

"With all the therapy in our great therapized nation, with all our devotion to emotions and feelings, one senses we are becoming a colder culture, and a colder country. We purport to be compassionate - we must respect Mr. Cho's privacy rights and personal autonomy - but of course it is cold not to have protected others from him. It is cold not to have protected himself from himself."

"The most common-sensical thing I heard said came Thursday morning, in a hospital interview with a student who'd been shot and was recovering. Garrett Evans said of the man who'd shot him, 'An evil spirit was going through that boy, I could feel it.' It was one of the few things I heard the past few days that sounded completely true. Whatever else Cho was, he was also a walking infestation of evil. Too bad nobody stopped him. Too bad nobody moved."

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

-Excerpts from Peggy Noonan's Declarations column, "Cold Standard," in the Saturday/Sunday, April 21-22, 2007 issue of The Wall Street Journal, page P16.

Widely hailed as the greatest drama ever created for television, The Sopranos came to an abrupt end last Sunday evening after 8 years, 86 episodes, and 18 Emmy Awards. Praise for the highly acclaimed HBO series has come from unexpected places, like Peggy Noonan, a regular contributor forThe Wall Street Journal. In her piece on The Sopranos last weekend in the Journal, Noonan offered: "The Sopranos wasn't only a great show or even a classic. It was a masterpiece, and its end Sunday night is an epochal event....It was real, Old Jersey real (Satriale's butcher shop,  not the mall) and primal. It was about big things, as all great drama is - the human hunger for dominance, for safety, for love; the desire to rise in the world; the need to belong to something,..Because it was primal, its dialogue was pared to the bone and entered the language. 'You disrespecting the Bing?' 'You wanna get whacked?' And other famous phrases, many of them obscene..."

But the abrupt finale, despite the high expectations, has been mercilessly bashed by fans and critics. Writing in The New York Times on the show's ending, Alessandra Stanley wrote: "There was no good ending, so 'The Sopranos' left off without one. The abrupt finale last night was almost like a prank, a mischievous dig at viewers who had agonized over how television's most addictive series would come to a close. The suspense of the final scene in the diner was almost cruel. And certainly that last bit of song, -'Don't Stop Believing,' by Journey - had to be a joke."

After so much frenzied anticipation of the finale, when the screen literally went black, with the music playing in the background as Tony and his family munched onion rings in a New Jersey diner, many of the 11 million plus fans were not amused. What to make of such an ambiguous ending? Theories abounded on the Net: Did the silent ending signal that Tony was killed, harking back to a conversation with now-dead brother-in-law Bobby Bacala, who said that when you die, "everything goes black"? Or maybe Tony was indicted, or his mobster life just went on, since his nemesis Phil Leotardo had been whacked.

For his part, Sopranos creator David Chase had nothing to say. He had fled the country, taking his wife out to dinner in France on the Sunday of the finale, to avoid "all the Monday morning quarterbacking" about the show's abrupt ending. In an exclusive interview (with The Star-Ledger of New Jersey) agreed to well before the season began, he suggested he had little to add to the controversial final scene he had conceived three years ago: "I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there."

Like it or not, The Sopranos was a lot like real life. T.S. Eliot once observed that "Humans cannot bear much reality." I think Eliot was suggesting that we don't like ambiguity and untidy endings, in real life or our television dramas. We want to know what happened to Tony. Did this New Jersey mobster with a family, a business, and a therapist finally get his "just rewards"? Perhaps part of our discomfort with the ending is our deeply rooted sense of justice and righteousness. Does justice win out in the end?

The great Southern writer Flannery O'Connor once remarked that she had an aunt who thought that nothing happened in a story unless somebody got married or shot in the end. Yet life seldom provides such definitive endings. Life itself, like The Sopranos, is chocked full of ambiguity, and it takes maturity and faith to handle the absurdity, the chaos, the untidiness of life. And if we refuse to live with ambiguity, we may be excluding something very essential and dear, like the hazards of faith, even the mysteries of God.

What was the Oscar Wilde statement, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life." He may have been on to something...

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

"Within each man there is a dark castle with a fierce dragon to guard the gate. The castle contains a lonely self, a self most men have suppressed, a self they are afraid to show. Instead they present an armored knight - no one is invited inside the castle. The dragon symbolizes the fears and fantasies of masculinity, the leftover stuff of childhood."

In his book, The Friendless American Male, author David Smith tackles various men's issues, such as loneliness, isolation from others, our cherished privacy, and the individualism that perhaps exacts a greater toll than we men might realize. Smith observes, "Men find it hard to accept that they need the fellowship of other men. The simple request, 'Let's have lunch,' is likely to be met with the response, 'Sure, what's up?' The message is clear: the independent man doesn't need the company of another man...Even when men are frequently together their social interaction begins and remains at a superficial level. Just how long can conversations about politics and sports be nourishing to the human spirit?"

How did we get to this state of affairs? Many factors have influenced men's relational isolation. Early in life most little boys receive the cultural message that it is taboo for males to express feelings. "Don't be a sissy!" And men rarely ask for help. How often have our wives wanted us to stop and ask for directions when we were on a trip? There is an old saying that the reason Moses and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years was because he never would ask for directions! Another factor that works to the detriment of a man's relationships is the inordinate competition. A boy learns at an early age that other boys, and later other men, are his competitors and therefore, potential enemies. As Vince Lombardi once remarked,"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing!"

I came across a list that suggests how men perhaps subconsciously adhere to what might be called the "Commandments of Masculinity."

 • He shall not cry.

•  He shall not display weakness.

•  He shall not need affection or gentleness or warmth.

•   He shall never express his true feelings.

•  He shall comfort but not desire comforting.

•  He shall be needed but not need.

•  He shall touch but not be touched.

•  He shall be steel not flesh.

•  He shall be inviolate in his manhood.

•  He shall stand alone. 

So how are we doing? Which of these "commandments" do we find ourselves following? How might our relationships be adversely affected by embracing this view of masculinity?

"Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!...Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."  --Ecclesiastes 4: 9, 10, 12 

 I welcome your comments...

-Barry Morrow 

When John Harvard in 1638 bequeathed part of his fortune and 400 books to "the new college" in Cambridge, Mass., the intention of American higher education was to prepare men for the clergy and the kingdom of Heaven. Little changed until after the Civil War, when certainties about God began to fade and colleges started to incorporate new subjects and new ideas and offer students "choices," with specialized departments with subjects like English, philosophy, and modern languages, replacing the old fixed curriculum and its classical texts. This movement away from a classical education, and its implications, is the subject of Anthony Kronman's recently published book, Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. 

Kronman, a professor at Yale and formerly the dean of its law school, argues passionately that without a strong religious idea at the center of higher education, educators and their schools in fact lack a core mission. They seek to teach, as Woodrow Wilson once put it, "not so much learning as the spirit of learning." 

In Kronman's analysis, what followed was the century of "secular humanism," beginning with Charles Eliot's appointment as president of Harvard in 1869 to the campus revolts of 1968, with secular humanism attempting to find a middle ground between dogmatic belief in God and militant atheism. In many ways, this secular movement was illustrative of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's belief that the twentieth century world had "Come of Age," no longer considering belief in God as necessary to explain our world.

Kronman's comments on political correctness serve as a scathing indictment of what multiculturalism and misguided "diversity" have done to our universities' humanities departments: "The more a classroom resembles a gathering of delegates speaking on behalf of the groups they represent, the less congenial a place it becomes in which to explore questions of a personally meaningful kind including, above all, the questions of what ultimately matters in life and why. In such a classroom, students encounter each other not as individuals but as spokespersons instead. They accept or reject their teachers as role models more on account of the group to which they belong and less because of their individual qualities of character and intellect." 

While Education's End might seem a bit despairing when we consider the present state of affairs of higher education, Kronman does see a revival of traditional humanism, as he observes that there has been a revival of conservative orthodoxy which has "put spirituality and its ultimate questions at the center of the cultural debate."

Many of us rarely think of the purpose or role of education, largely because we, as a society, have not been taught to consider the concept of the summum bonum in education, the "greatest good." Most of us have gotten an education, and send our children to schools to get an education so that they can find a career that pays well. What else is there to live for other than bread and circuses? To modern sensibilities, there is no summum bonum, no telos (purpose), only thanatos (death). The modern answer to purpose for living is simply that there is no answer. Like the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, life is a "vanity, literally a "chasing after the wind," a wild goose chase, yet there is no wild goose in the end. Or to put it another way, when ultimate ends disappear, only toys remain (So why is Ecclesiastes in our Bible anyway?)

According to the British historian Arnold Toynbee, ours, the modern West, is the first of the twenty-one great civilizations that does not have or teach its citizens any answer to the question of Why they exist. Which is another way of saying that as our society becomes more pluralistic, it leaves us free to choose or create our own ultimate values. We know more about every thing, and less about Everything.

To this subject, Kronman makes a remarkable statement on the centrality of a purpose for living: "One cannot live a meaningful life unless there is something one is prepared to give it up for. People's lives are therefore meaningful in proportion to their acknowledgment that there is something more important than the lives they are leading: something worth caring about in an ultimate way. The question, of course, is what that something is or ought to be."

This, I believe, is where the mere Christian has something to offer. To provoke others on the journey of life, and not simply to offer glib, packaged answers. When Christ commanded us to be "as wise as serpents, and as harmless as doves," I think He was suggesting that He wants not only a child's heart, but a grown-up's head.

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

FinishingWell serves under the auspices of Reflections Ministries, Inc., a non-profit 501©3 organization. If you benefit from these posts, please consider making a financial contribution for the underwriting of this ministry. Please go to the "Donate" page on this website for information about contributions that can be made both by credit card or check. Your contribution is appreciated, and is tax-deductible. 

It was only a matter of time before it hit the big screen. Perhaps you've already seen the trailers for The Golden Compass, the first installment of Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, which debuts in theaters December 7th. Riding the wave of the record-breaking films of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Lord of  the Rings and C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, New Line Cinema has gone out of its way to link the new film to Tolkien's work, which the studio also adapted. The beautifully crafted official website of the upcoming release is sure to create interest and curiosity (www.goldencompassmovie.com).

I haven't read Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, but enough has been written to let the reader and filmgoer know that this work is no Narnia. Peter Chattaway, film critic for Christianity Today, wrote a recent article that gives us insight into Pullman's work, to which this article is indebted. His Dark Materials (the title taken from John Milton's epic, Paradise Lost) presents a vastly different kind of fantasy tale than those told by the Inklings companions, Lewis and Tolkien. Yes, the story begins with a girl hiding in a wardrobe, and continues with her adventures into other worlds, encountering witches, and ultimately, to an an end times battle between supernatural powers.

But there the similarities end, or more precisely, Pullman's trilogy represents the antithesis of Lewis's and Tolkien's vision. Writing in The Guardian on the occasion of Lewis's centenary in 1998, Pullman declared the Narnia books to be "one of the most ugly and poisonous things I have ever read...with no shortage of nauseating drivel." The brother of atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, Peter Hitchens, writing in The Spectator in 2003, named Pullman "the Anti-Lewis."

While Tolkien and Lewis wrote their fantasies with embedded Christian imagery, Pullman's trilogy, which has sold millions of copies and won numerous awards (including the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Prize), describes gleefully the death of God and the creation of a "Republic of Heaven," which has no need for a King. And while Tolkien and Lewis's works were subtle in their presentation of Christian elements, there is little subtlety in Pullman's trilogy. A former nun in one important scene informs two children that she left the Christian faith because "it's a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all."

Some have suggested that the latter two Dark Materials books, "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass," are even more brazen in the Death-of-God theme. In these books, Lyra discovers that Lord Asriel is mounting a war against God, and she meets a boy from our own world who acquires a knife that can cut through anything, including the barrier between universes. By the end of the trilogy, God is dead, and Will and Lyra have reenacted the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Yet here's the twist Pullman has put on his story: in their reenactment of the Temptation narrative, they save the universe rather than bring about it's ruination, as orthodox Christianity would posit. Could there possibly be a better rendition of the Human Potential Movement than Pullman's fantasy?

In Pullman's world, truth is not an authoritative written revelation from the sovereign God of the universe, but is rather discovered by the "alethiometer" (from the Greek, aletheia, meaning "truth"), an extraordinarily intricate device invented by a 16th century metaphysical scientist. The needle on the alethiometer (also known as the Golden Compass) seeks out, not true north, but Truth Itself. To Pullman, humanity, not God, is the final arbiter and discoverer of Truth. Someone, or Something, in that ancient Garden, we are told in Genesis, once said as much, and it wasn't Eve or Adam. 

While Pullman, like his fellow countrymen Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, despise the very notion of anything that hints of Christian orthodoxy, Tolkien and Lewis believed that only a Christian vision of life with a sovereign God at the very center of our existence gives meaning and significance to the way things really are. While Lewis is generally regarded as the most important defender of orthodox Christianity in the twentieth century, many forget that he also believed it to be fully rational for us to be responsive to the enchanting power of stories. He clearly penned the seven-book Chronicles of Narnia series with this intent.

On the purpose behind The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis wrote: "I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm...But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could." 

In the dedication of his book, A Preface to Paradise Lost (coming full circle to Pullman...), Lewis noted that "when the old poets made some virtue their theme, they were not teaching but adoring, and that what we take for the didactic is often the enchanted." As many writers have observed, it is this fusion of the moral and the imaginative, the vision of virtue itself as adorable, that makes Lewis (and Tolkien) so distinctive, and attractive, amidst our post-Christian culture. With the imaginative, Pullman has perhaps done well, but concerning the moral, he simply doesn't have a clue. 

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow

"I believe in Christianity as I believe in the sun, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."  -C.S. Lewis 

FinishingWell serves under the auspices of Reflections Ministries, Inc., a non-profit 501©3 organization. If you benefit from these posts and the ministry of FW, please consider making a financial contribution for the underwriting of this ministry. You can go to the "Donate" page on this website for information about contributions that can be made both by credit card or check. Your contribution is appreciated, and is tax-deductible. 

Mark Twain once quipped, "Golf is a good walk spoiled." The legendary Sam Snead once chided Hall of Famer Ted Williams, "In golf, you have to play your foul balls!"

As the media frenzy descends on Augusta National Golf Club for this year's 72nd Masters, the question on many people's mind is whether Tiger Woods, who is the even-money favorite to win, can begin the "Woods Grand Slam Express" in Augusta, where he has won 4 times in 13 appearances. While Woods has taken pains to point out that golfers lose far more often than they win (despite his well-documented belief that he can win every time he tees it up), Woods' 64 victories in 234 tournaments over 12-plus seasons on the PGA Tour (good for a winning percentage of 27%) is hard to argue with. As Larry Dorman writes in today's New York Times, at the same time in his career, Jack Nicklaus' total was 40 in 234, including two British Open victories the PGA Tour did not yet count as official wins.

It should be high drama to witness how this golf spectacle unfolds in Augusta over the weekend. As the PGA Tour commercials say, "These guys are good!!" For the rest of us "amateurs" who play the game, it still holds an allure that is hard to put into words. Here are a few statistics about the game, compiled by Shelly Banjo of The Wall Street Journal, that you may find interesting:

• There are about 28.7 million golfers in the U.S., and they play at 16,000 golf facilities, of which 11,500 are public and 4,500 are private.

•  Females make up 51% of the U.S. population, but only 25% of golfers.

• Half of the golfers in the U.S. play fewer than 10 rounds annually.

• Why do golfers shout "Fore!" when they hit an errant shot? The word fore is Scottish in origin, and is a shortened version of the word before or afore. The old Scottish warning, essentially meaning "look out ahead," probably originated in military circles, where artillery men used the call as a warning to troops in forward positions. Golfers as early as the 18th century adopted this military warning cry for use on the golf course. 

• The first U.S. Open Championship was won by Horace Rawlins in 1895, at what was then the Newport Golf Club in Rhode Island. As the winner, Mr. Rawlins received $150, a gold champion's medal, and custody of the sterling silver championship cup for one year.

• There are more golf courses in Florida alone than there are in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Wyoming combined.

• About 13 million individual irons were sold in the U.S. last year. The metal used to make the iron heads weighed 3,575 tons, or about 16 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty.

• Over the past 10 years, 13 billion golf balls were sold world-wide. Those golf balls, lying end to end, could go around the earth nine times! Alternatively, the weight of these balls totals about 280,000 tons, equal to about six Titanic-size ocean liners.
  

In golf, as in other leisure pursuits, we learn a lot about ourselves, and who we really are. Novelist Walker Percy believed you could learn more about a man from playing a round of golf with him than could be learned from spending a year of sessions on a psychiatrist's couch. Jay Tolson, in his excellent biography of Percy, Pilgrim in the Ruins, Tolson observes: "The triumph of golf in the South is itself a curious fact of cultural history. It is, as anyone who has ever played it knows, a penitential game, as much a trial of character and bearing as of skill...Fittingly, golf was invented by a Scotsman, for only a Calvinist could have found pleasure in a pursuit that required so much restraint for so delayed a reward."

If golf teaches us anything, it mercilessly shows us our shortcomings in life. While we may try to fool ourselves into thinking we are doing quite well, golf is not nearly so kind and forgiving. Could anyone more accurately describe the brutal honesty of the game than the novelist John Updike?

"Most of us don't really know how well we're doing, in real life, and imagine we're doing not so bad. The world conspires to flatter us; only golf trusts us with a cruelly honest report on our performance. Only on the golf course is the feedback instantaneous and unrelenting...In the sound of the hit and the flight of the ball it tells us unflinchingly how we are doing, and we are rarely doing well."   -From "Moral Exercise," in Golf Dreams

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow 

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