A Real American hero

I have always been a fan of boxing as a truly American sport…like baseball. I actually like boxing and baseball movies more than the actual sports…go figure! I had never heard of ‘Bulldog’ Jim Braddock until I recently saw the movie: Cinderella Man. Braddock was a heavy weight boxer in New York in the late twenties and thirties. The movie tried to stay true to the events in Braddock’s life and, I have to say, made Braddock one of my heroes. A hero is someone who inspires you to hold on just a little longer.

In Braddock’s case he was a strong contender in his career until the infamous stock market crash of 1929. He, like so many other Americans, lost everything including his boxing license, and ended up in a soup line. Braddock had a wife and three small children. He didn’t walk out on them because things were too tough. He swallowed his pride and did what he had to do to feed his family. He resisted going on public assistance until he was forced to.

Braddock was given a second chance in his boxing career…and he came out fighting! He fought his way to the heavy weight championship of the world. He went back to pubic assistance and paid back every penny. He went on to serve honorably in WWII and then into building his own business. I won’t try to retell his story here. It can be found at his official site: http://www.jamesjbraddock.com/ It is well worth reading and remembering.

Braddock was a father, a husband, a fighter and a man of honor. Jim Braddock was a hero to his generation…he inspired them to hold on just a little longer. The values this man exemplified to a generation of Americans are sorely needed today. His story should be told and remembered, and his values taken to heart.

There is nobility in the human spirit. Men like James J. Braddock shine the light on it...

The Big Screen

I love movies. Not all of them. Many aren’t worth the cellulose they are printed on, but the well-crafted ones can truly be works of art. They’re not just meant to entertain, they explore what it means to be human. They have the power to show us that we are not alone no matter what we struggle with. They can reveal where our culture is and where it’s going. They draw from the well that is humanity and show us ourselves. Old movies, new ones…they all tell our stories. Movies are the novels of our age.

While I love the stories about the broad sweeps of history with famous people, sometimes the very best movies, the best stories, are about unknown people. Most of us will never be included in any history books. Most of us are just ordinary people who live our lives affecting the people around us and not much else. Movies can give us glimpses into the lives of ordinary people who make up the vast majority of humanity.

There are stories of love and compassion. There are stories of courage and commitment. There are stories of failure and redemption. The thing is, these things happen all around us every day. The man across the street, the woman who sits in back of you at work, the old man you pass on the street corner. They all have their struggles. They all have their stories.

We see so much of the worst humanity has to offer every day. Just turn on the evening news or pick a newspaper. As a species we have so many flaws. But, we have nobility in us too. There are stories that deserve to be told.

It’s not the actions we take at a crucial moment in history that define who we are, it’s the little things we do every day. It’s in lending a helping hand to another human being when no one else is watching. It’s in giving a cup of water to someone who’s thirsty. It’s in giving up your seat on the bus to someone who needs it more. There is nobility in the human spirit and it shows itself most often in the quiet, little actions that go unnoticed everyday all around us.

Movies have the power to shine the light on our actions. They point out the weaknesses that we’re all prone to for sure. They can glorify sex and violence to titillate us. They can also show us something of the heights we can strive for. The good stuff in us may not make the evening news very often, but it’s alive and well. The places where it thrives are in the people whose stories we wouldn’t know if books and movies didn’t bring them to us.

Movies have the power to teach us we can all be better than we are. We don’t have to go to war or travel to distant lands to do so. We can all be a hero to someone we know. We can uphold what is the best and the noblest among us in our everyday actions. Those are what fill most of our lives after all, everyday actions.

Most of us go to movies simply to be entertained but, with a true work of art, we can take away much more than that. We can come to see life through someone else’s eyes. We can learn to appreciate what is common to all of us. Best of all, I think, we can come to understand that most of our struggles and our triumphs don’t make the history books. It’s the little stories that give history its context. Great deeds ultimately come from great hearts and those aren’t born, they’re grown. Those stories too, are worth being told…

Finding Grace...

I love the concept of grace. I even love the word. Without Gods grace I wouldn’t be here writing this. It is His absolutely unmerited love. Dervishes will sometimes say: “the Baraka is with me”. That is to say the very presence of God is with me, blessing me. Some say things like: “I feel the breath of God” or “the hand of God”. And, one of my favorites: “I feel God smiling on me.” These are those moments in life when we feel connected to the Creator of the universe Himself in our actions. These are moments of grace.

To say that an athlete is graceful might be to say that they are so connected to some universal force that they move in complete harmony with it. You might say grace is to ‘Dance with God’. In those special moments we can feel our connection, our place, in the grand design of the universe. In those moments all is as it should be.

I have found Gods grace in His forgiveness. I have felt His grace in the sunlight on my face. I’ve seen it in the smiling faces of little children. I've even felt Gods grace in the death of a good friend.

I began to write this about getting older and all I that came to mind was grace. We know from the time we’re children that we’ll get older. We know, though most of us do our best not to think about it, that we will die someday. We know those things but they don’t really ‘sink in’ until after about 40. Then, the reality of aging and our mortality, the inevitability of death, begin to change the way we see things.

It is depressing at first, realizing that we have fewer years ahead of us than behind us. To grow as human beings we have to come to peace with that fact. We have to find the grace in it. God won’t abandon us in this either.

As they grow older, some people find new ways to see life through the eyes of their children and grandchildren. Those of us that don’t have children can still see life through the eyes of children. Children are such a blessing in so many ways! Children are full of grace.

I have found a kind of grace in creating too. Bringing something new and beautiful into the universe is so exhilarating! I have an art professor that says it is ‘expressing’ or pressing something out of our hearts. That’s where creating comes from. I’m new to the art world and I’m still searching for exactly what it means to me, but I certainly appreciate his thoughtful perspective on it. He’s a remarkably creative man and a brilliant sculptor. When I first saw his art I was convinced that that was why he is on earth! Such grace!

I only know of one way to feel more like God than in creating and that’s in forgiving. Forgiving involves knowing someone’s worst, and still loving them. What could give us more insight into God than forgiveness? In forgiving and in being forgiven we experience real grace.

I’m only beginning to understand how all these aspects of grace are connected. My heart only knows that grace is at the core of their connection. Grace flows from Love. And Love flows from God...

The Gates of Paradise

It’s been an age-old dream of mankind to find, or create, the perfect society. The word Utopia, used by Thomas Moore for his book of the same name, has become a part of our language for the ideal society. The myths of Shangri-la and Atlantis, wherein all the inhabitants live, or have lived, in harmony have filled us with the dream. Ironically, some of the most horrific events in the history of our race have been committed in the name of the search for Utopia. The search has always begun with a false premise. Perhaps, we reason, if we just find the right set of laws and the perfect economic system, or eradicate the genetic flaws in humanity, we’ll finally find peace and reach our true potential. In fact two of the greatest myths in modern thinking have been responsible for untold suffering and misery in the last century. One is that economics can change our nature, the other is that race can. Both ignore the fact that human nature is common to all who have ever lived. We all draw from the well that is humanity. Utopia is a nice dream…but it will never happen while human beings have human nature.

We human beings are a fundamentally flawed species. Wherever we go we take our built-in flaws. If you’ve ever felt jealousy, envy, lust, greed, hate, revenge or any other of the darker qualities common to mankind you would take those things with you no matter where you chose to go. Sooner or later those darker qualities would show themselves again and Utopia would cease to be Utopia. There will never be an ideal society run by man unless, or until, the fundamental nature of human beings is changed.

Some philosophies and religions teach that we’re OK just the way we are. Those that do so flatly ignore the facts of history and live in denial. Some teach that the nature of our race will change if enough individuals do. We will all be ‘uplifted’ when the number of people who have become enlightened reaches a ‘critical mass’. Those that claim this kind of enlightenment say that they perceive the world differently...otherwise they don’t appear any different from anyone else. The number of individuals becoming personally enlightened would have to outpace the birth rate if their claim were true. In what is one of the greatest ironies in the world of religion, the folks that seek ‘enlightenment’ for themselves often ignore the suffering of other human beings. One need look no farther than the countries where those beliefs thrive to see the effects of their ‘enlightenment’. These people practice their own self-centered, versions of ‘spirituality’. Any enlightenment they claim to achieve doesn’t seem to produce any real change. They certainly haven’t made the world a better place to live in.

The reality is that races don’t become enlightened, only individuals do. The only ‘real’ enlightenment is exercising the will that is guided by wisdom. (In short, true enlightenment is in actually doing what is right…) Every human being has the potential to do that. That’s just as much a part of us as our baser nature. Real enlightenment can’t be achieved by hiding on some mountaintop meditating. It can’t be done for us by someone else. Even with real enlightenment our nature doesn’t change…it’s only controlled. Cease to exercise the will guided by wisdom and anyone can slip back.

Think of the scenes you’ve seen of third world villages for example. Those that are the most memorable have had trash and raw sewage in the streets. The people in them are often sickly as a result of disease caused by living among garbage. You may think, “If only these people could be moved to a place where it’s clean, they would be disease free”. Did you ever wonder who put the trash and raw sewage in the middle of the street? If the people of the village were moved they’d soon be turning the new place into an open sewage pit too. Even if they are educated to understand the laws of sanitation and quarantine the people must still exercise their wills to observe those laws. If they don’t…they revert back into the condition from whence they came. That is the history of our race…

Knowledge and technology accumulate with every generation and are passed on to the next generation, but wisdom always begins at square one. The birth of every human being is a starting over at the beginning. That’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because with every newborn child there’s a chance to start over and do it right. It’s a curse because every newborn child must start where every human being who has ever lived started.

We are not OK just the way we are. That’s obvious to anyone who takes an honest look at our race. We need divine guidance and divine help. We need divine intervention. We need to obey God and His laws. Where some other religions and philosophies would have us focus only on ourselves, Judeo Christian values make us focus on both growing ourselves and in aiding our fellow man to do so. We are to always struggle with what is right and wrong. We are never to forget that God is in control and that we are all His children.

The promise of Judaism and Christianity is that a Messiah will come and save us from ourselves. Eventually our very nature will be changed. Even the nature of predatory animals will change. “The lion will lie down with the lamb…” That is the promise of scripture…that is the hope of our faith. We will be rescued from ourselves.

In the meantime, we are to do all we can to obey the laws of God, to grow and aid our fellow man. A true religion doesn’t tell us that we’re OK. A true religion causes us to focus on our Creator and His will for us. It is God’s will that we ultimately inherit a Utopia beyond our dreams. We will only do so by our willingness to put God first in our lives…and by His grace.