Icons

Monday, February 8, 2010

From time to time, certain words and phrases emerge in our media age and catch on, almost like hit songs on the pop charts or the latest ninety second video on YouTube.  Once obscure, coming from a more scholarly or literary source, the single word goes viral.  It catches on in print and on the air with an aura of sophistication, as though the writer or speaker is documenting in the narrative that he or she has indeed been matriculated in some elite graduate school.

An example emerged way back when G. W. Bush ran for his first term as President.  Everyone asked, “Yes, but does he possess the gravitas to be the President?”  I tried to uncover who was the first to use this high sounding noun: gravitas.  I never did identify the source.  Back then, it was a new word to most of us.  Not even my spell check would recognize “gravitas.”  But that has all changed.  It became a standard line.  Gravitas emerged a primary qualification for high office.  (Definition: seriousness, dignity)  My electronic dictionary soon included it, thanks to an Internet update to my software.

These days, the word “icon” has achieved similar status.  We tuned in to the Grammy Awards the other night, and I heard the word repeated again and again to describe musicians who achieved “iconic” status.  He is an “icon.”  They even had a segment called “Salute to Icons.”  But what is an icon?

Yes, thanks to WYSIWYG computing, we all know what an icon is.  We click on it to open a program or a folder or a file.  Every day.  What would we do without icons?

Simply stated, an icon is a symbol.

But before Bill Gates borrowed the term for his new graphical interface, it had a much broader meaning.  In fact, icons are largely responsible for the first major church split – East and West went their separate ways.  The resulting mega-factions of the emerging religion called Christianity: Eastern Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Church.  Icons were central to the debate that never got resolved between the two.  Rome had their statuary.  Constantinople had their icons.  Never the twain shall meet.

At the entrance of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (the old Constantinople) is the oldest extant image, a mosaic fresco, of Jesus Christ.  It stems from the Constantine era, at a time when it was an extreme controversy to attempt to reproduce an likeness of the Son of God.  Not only was it an exercise in speculation, fraught with the danger of misrepresentation, but many considered such a portrait to be a blatant violation of the Commandments handed down to Moses on Sinai; specifically, the prohibition against idolatry.  Icons were doubly offensive because, as was the custom in the ancient city, they were gilded in pure gold.  Theologians argued long and hard over the question.  Some postulated that the image was a simple aid to worship, and since it was a representation of Jesus, it was certainly not an “other god.”  But that did not satisfy horrified critics.  Idolatry was forbidden in any form.  Pure and simple.

The Eastern Church went back and forth on the question.  Some bishops accepted the proliferation of “icons” as fine art and objects of adoration, reminders of the saints who had gone before and modeled purity and piety.  But others wagged and clucked their tongues and warned of harsh judgment.   It was the “iconoclastic controversy.”

The Eastern Church eventually accepted icons as an essential part of community life.  In the absence of written books, biblical stories would be preserved and told in a series of iconic imagery.  Heroes of the faith would be remembered from generation to generation.  Bright colors and gold edges enhanced the remembrance, and made houses of worship seem sacred.  Holy ground.

I cringe a bit when I hear rock stars and country legends called icons.  Even Mick Fleetwood.  But it goes further.  On the news, a way to pay tribute at the passing of a nearly forgotten celebrity is to call him or her an icon.  “An icon of the civil rights era…”  “An icon of literary moment…”  “An icon of the industrial age…” Well, you get the idea.

I prefer legend.  Or even luminary.  Or star.  Then are the variations on the star theme – mega-star; super-star.  We are a nation enraptured by the superlative.

But “icon” goes beyond hyperbole.  It connotes adoration.  Worship.  The sacred.

It really ought to be reserved for just that.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2010

Old Guys Who Get Back Up

Monday January 24, 2010

When Brett Favre a announced his retirement after sixteen years as popular quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, most people understood.  It was time.  He made his mark.  His steady performance, rocket launcher arm, laser beam eye, lightening fast release, dead on precision and general likability had run its course.  It was a bittersweet farewell to an organization that is a legend boasting a legion of fans who are so loyal, so devoted, they will readily don a triangular facsimile of a block of yellow cheddar on their heads as a solemn sign of their allegiance.  Shameless Cheesehead dedication.

Shortly after his Packers “retirement” announcement, a press conference featured Favre in a New York Jets cap, all smiles.  He changed his mind.  Sitting out a season was too much.  But by the end of the forgettable 2008 schedule for the Jets, Brett called another press conference, and retired a second time.

Until the Vikings made a call.

This made him the butt of late night jokes.  All year, Favre’s inability to retire inspired one-liners that triggered laughter and the wagging of heads.  Even advertisers got in on the fun.

Until those Vikings started to win.  Favre’s receivers pulled off miracle routes and impossible catches.  The old magic came back, and Brett had only one more hurdle: The New Orleans Saints.  Beat them, and the aging warrior would appear in a third Super Bowl:

I hadn’t paid much attention to all this until I watched the old man (forty is the NFL’s sixty-five) spring to life a couple of Sunday afternoons late in the season.  The fire in the eyes.  The team protecting their quarterback.  Receivers zig-zagging around the defense, finding an open spot, Favre rifling the ball at the bulls-eye, right in the pocket.  Ten, fifteen, twenty yards at a crack.  The closer he came to the final minutes, the more intense and accurate the routine.

Brett Favre.  Super Bowl?  Could it be?  No way.  Way.

So I have been a Minnesota fan for the past couple of weeks.  I have spent so much of my life in Lake Wobegon that it just felt right.  Inspiration for an old guy, and plenty of it.

The New Orleans Saints have earned a reputation as the bad boys of the gridiron; like the Raiders, brute force is the name of the game.  Hit hard.  Take the calls for late hits and head butts.  It’s worth it in the end.  Trash talk follows the crushing blows.  The Saints knew that if they were to overcome the Viking threat, they would by necessity target the veteran quarterback.  Punish him.  Start to finish.

So all night long, in spite of the determination of his linemen, Favre took a pounding.  Just after release, the ball took flight like a heat-seeking missile towards its intended target and bam, a three hundred pound defenseman would hit Brett in a full body blow, like a freight train or a Mack truck, pick your metaphor.  And then from the other side.  Sometimes both.  Left and right.  Cut him in half.  Slam him to the ground.

The camera often turned to Brett’s wife Deanna and their daughter Brittany as they grimaced with each grueling hit.  Families of football players could all relate.  Back in the day, when it was our son on the football field, he was the only one I watched.  As Favre took hit after hit, it was as though these two women felt it, too.

One particular blow in the third quarter drew a flag.  A New Orleans defender got to Brett just after the throw, buried his shoulder pad into Brett’s rib cage, grabbed both thighs from behind with muscles bulging, lifted the quarterback on impact, pulled his legs out from underneath and drove him into the ground with the full force of his three hundred pound mass.  The slow motion replay from several angles made the point.  The Saint got up and stood over him like a Goliath, flexing and grunting and gloating.  Favre rolled over in agony, wind knocked out of his lungs, body crushed, and laid there for a moment.  Deanna covered her eyes.  Brittany reached for her mother.

Brett got up.

He limped over to the sideline.  The team trainer was ready.  All night, they were patching him up, re-wrapping his ankles, rubbing out his limbs.  And the old warrior got up again walked back and forth and then trotted back onto the gridiron for more.

And the passes kept on connecting.  The stats were lopsided.  Favre threw for more than three hundred yards that night.  But it wasn’t enough.  Most people will remember the errant final pass, from field goal range, picked off by New Orleans.  Brett had the win and the Super Bowl in his sights, but it disappeared in one fleeting moment in the final seconds of regulation time in the Championship game.

And in the end the old warrior with gray stubble covering his chin trotted across the field to congratulate Drew Brees.  He smiled.  He loves the game.  A class act.  A bittersweet, memorable night.

And for me, an aging warrior in my own rite, I will always remember it as the night the old guy got back up and kept on fighting all the way to the end.

He may have missed Super Bowl XLIV, but he had Deanna and Brittany waiting.  And that’s good enough.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2010

Songs in the Night

Monday January 18, 2010

I don’t know how many Christian missionaries there must be in Haiti.  What I do know is that in a forgotten country like that island near the Bahamas and just beyond Cuba, workers are driven by a powerful, mysterious motivation.  There are rewards that exceed the cost.  People who give their lives to this sort of service understand.  The veterans don’t talk about it much.  They just live it.

Frank and Jillian Thorp would be examples.  The Haitian Ministries for the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut has been working in Port au Prince for nearly twenty five years.  Their goal is “to collaborate in building a new Haiti, born of suffering, courage, hope, love, compassion and justice – a new Haiti standing as a dignified member of the global community.”  Jillian served as acting director of the mission house.  Her husband, Frank, had been an intern at NBC in New York.

When the earth shook at 4:53 in the afternoon last Tuesday, Jillian stood in the office of her colleague Chuck Dietsch. A sudden roar peceeded a sharp jolt.  “What?!” she called out.  The rolling continued.  Chuck grabbed Jillian by the arm and shouted “Earthquake!” and pulled her into the doorway.  The two story building collapsed.  As the missionaries stood rigid under a beam, concrete snapping, windows shattering all with a deafening roar, both of them believed they would die.  But as the building settled into rubble, a small space remained around the wall and the crumpled doorway.  Chuck’s leg was pinned.  Jillian was free to move.  She checked around her.  No exit.  It is a confined, small dark space with little beams of light.  Now that space filled with powdery dust, choking off the supply of oxygen.  Jillian, relieved that she was not crushed, believed that the two of them would suffocate.  They covered their faces with fabric, attempting to breathe.  They heard screams for help just outside.  They prayed.  Jillian thought about her husband, Frank.  He had traveled the day before to a village a hundred miles away.

He felt a tremor out there in the hill country, and shrugged it off.  Only a few minutes later did he hear about the sudden devastation in the city.  “A rumor,” he called it then. He knew Jillian was there, potentially in harm’s way.  He jumped into the four wheel vehicle, heading home.  It would take eight long, agonizing hours to reach the mission compound.

* * * * *

Twenty-five year old Chista Breslford, a graduate student from the University of Arizona, had been in Port au Prince since the first of the year.  Along with her brother, Julian, she worked with young Haitians in an English literacy program.  Her workday came to a close as the clock approached five.  At 4:53 PM, she thought at first that a bus hit the two story building.  When someone screamed “Earthquake!” she headed for the stairs, and as she ran, the building collapsed around her, trapping her leg under a slab of broken concrete.  When they extracted her from the rubble, her leg, just below the knee, was barely attached by fleshy muscle.  She was bleeding badly.  Her rescuer was her brother, Julian.  Julian hatched a plan.

They tied a tourniquet around Christa’s nearly severed limb.  Julian scooped his sister up in his arms and ran to a friend who owned a motorcycle.  He started up the two wheel machine as Julian climbed on the back, still holding Christa.  They raced through the potholed streets of the city in ruins, through the dust and the collapsed buildings on both sides and the cries and the debris for over two miles to the United Nations mission, where Julian knew he would find help.  Later Christa said, “my leg was flopping around,” as they hit the ruts in the road.

When Frank finally arrived, workers had been digging and chipping and chopping and clawing to get to Jillian and Chuck.  In the darkness, Frank saw the opening the workers created to bring fresh air to the two trapped missionaries.  He called Jillian’s name.  She sighed at the sound of his voice.  “I love you,” he said.  They both wept.

It would take another hour.  Jillian and Chuck finally emerged from the rubble.  Jillian and Frank embraced.

* * * * *

From a Florida hospital, Christa described her journey.  The leg was gone.  Her captivating smile disarmed Matt Lauer.  She expressed gratitude to her brother, her rescuers and the medical team.  But mainly, she expressed her concern for the tens of thousands of Haitians who still wait.

As we all do.  These are devastating images.  But they are more than images.

So we pray, too.  Some of us go.  We give.

We live in a world in conflict.  Even tectonic plates are on a collision course.

Crisis brings tragedy, and inspiration.

In the dark night, with no power, no generators, only darkness under the Caribbean stars, reporters hear haunting voices from refugee camps where jittery crowds distance themselves for the night from crumpled structures that still move in the aftershocks.  It is singing.  It is praise.  It is a plaintiff cry.  Directed heavenward.  The Haitians in their grief and fear find solace in the voices, in the harmonies, in the rhythms that have sustained them through generations of hardship.

And the hardened reporters, equipped with satellite dishes and lighting systems and digital wizardry, plenty to eat and drink, who share this dark night far away from home, are moved.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2009

Creativity

Monday, January 11, 2010

You may wonder why Google stock is so expensive ($598.58/share as of last Friday; compare YAHOO at $16.59/share).  Ken Auletta’s new book Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, gives us a clue.  A major clue.

This year, it is expected that Google’s gross advertising revenues will exceed twenty billion dollars.  In our world of bank bailouts and auto-industry turmoil, that number may not get your attention.  What is stunning is this: Google’s income from advertising sales is more than the total take of the television networks prime time revenues, that’s CBS, NBC, ABC, combined. Now that Google owns YouTube, Eric Schmidt, Google’s enthusiastic CEO, tells the author that Google is scheduled to be the first one hundred billion dollar media company in history.

No wonder NBC execs are all shook up.  It’s much more than Jay Leno and Conan O’Brian and the losing battle to keep up with CBS crime shows.  NBC is in frantic pursuit of more of that television market share.  But that share is dwindling rapidly.  Advertising dollars are drying up.  More and more of us are looking somewhere else for entertainment and information.

Like you, I access Google multiple times a day.  I research and write.  And now I have Google in my pocket.  In fact, I don’t even need to type in the text for my search.  I speak it.  (There’s an app for that.)  It’s free.  Well, apparently not.  Come to think of it, someone is paying.

Television shows are free, too, right?  Well, not really.  Advertisers shell out.  But thanks to my digital recorder, I routinely fast forward through the commercials.  I’ve become a commercial illiterate.  I hear some of them are pretty good, but I wouldn’t know.

All this helps me understand why the traditional media is facing such unprecedented upheaval.  Newspapers, book publishers, print magazines are in retreat mode; right along with the major television networks.  For a long time, we believed that the big three networks were too powerful.  Then it was Microsoft.  Now it is Google.

I’m certainly not qualified to call myself a futurist, but I’ll give it a try anyway as we begin a new decade.  I like to think the whole trend gives rise to a new sort of democratization.

The affable Charles Osgood, sporting his bowtie, suggests on CBS Sunday Morning that we Americans have come this far because of our creativity.  We are irrepressible.  It stems from our egalitarian notions about freedom.  We demand progress.  We reward innovation.  We celebrate new solutions.  We promote the entrepreneur who finds new products and services that meet needs.

So we have access to the tools of creativity that make us less dependent on the old institutions that once controlled the process.  It was once well beyond our reach.  Not anymore.  To use a new cliché, we are empowered.

So today, on this Monday morning, let’s dream big.  There are open doors all around us.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp, 2010

Up In The Air

Monday, January 4, 2010

When Walter Kirn released his novel to mediocre reviews, it was September 5, 2001.   Six days later, the whole world changed.

His book makes air travel a metaphor for modern life.  It is a bona fide subculture, whose members know themselves and each other, but rarely by name.  If we are not card-carrying members ourselves, we all know someone who is.  These high altitude, high speed jet-setters live in a world of anonymity, detached and unfettered, except for their loyalty to aircrews and private lounges, reserved for those who have accumulated enough of airline currency to gain entrance and revel in the perks of warm baked cookies, overstuffed seating, free WiFi and drinks, all compliments of hard earned frequent flier miles.  The book’s protagonist, Ryan Bingham, calls bonus miles “private property in its purest form.”  They are non-taxable.  Inflation-proof.  An intriguing badge of success; a peculiar brand of conspicuous consumption.  The Holy Grail for the seasoned road warrior.

“Where do you live?” a fellow first-class passenger asks Bingham.

“Here.”  Bingham answers with a nod and a grin from his upgraded wide seat paid for by miles.  He’s not joking.

When Kirn’s 2001 book became the basis of a new hit movie in 2009, some updating was required.  The main character, Bingham, kept his original job.  His “core competency” as a “transition specialist” (that is to say he is a hired gun who fires people) remains the same.  But in a post 9-11 world, air travel has been transformed by high volume, intrusive security measures.  The pre-board screenings were a minor part of the story in the book, but became a high profile focal point in the movie.  The economy jittered at the turn of the century, but the fiscal earthquake hit only recently.  Downsizing was a profit making strategy for corporate mergers and takeovers then.  Now, downsizing is a global tsunami.  Kirn’s Ryan Bingham was a nuisance then.  Now, he is everyone’s nightmare.  The part was made for George Clooney – the amiable Dr. Doom.

Up In The Air is a film for our times.  Our mobility has wrenched us away from meaningful, human connectedness.  The corporation’s promise of long-term security has gone bust.  The glamour of air travel has been reduced to mass transit.  A new digital generation views the Internet as a global cure-all.  Casual encounters as common as movies on demand.

Two women invade Bingham’s over-managed world.  Alex is as detached as he; just as cynical, self-absorbed and quick-witted.  She is a match to Ryan’s untethered, nomad existence.  The other, Natalie, fresh out of graduate school, tackles corporate challenges as though she is competing in the boardroom, doing whatever it takes to avoid getting fired by Donald Trump.  But she is all brains and no know-how.  An “A” student with no experience.  Equipped with rapid-fire charm and a thorough business plan, she convinces Ryan’s boss to go digital – meeting with clients via videoconference feed rather than in person.  This will save the company millions in airfare, hotels, car rentals and per-diems.  The call centers can originate anywhere.  This paradigm shift, of course, threatens to render Ryan’s obsession to accumulate mileage points, not to mention those five star hotels and fine restaurants, an exercise in futility.

Ryan surprises himself by inviting Alex to join him for his sister’s wedding in Northern Wisconsin (not far from where I married Carolyn).  Alex surprises him by accepting.  Ryan’s family is hilariously dysfunctional; but it is family.  The entire pre-wedding scene is the complete antithesis of the life Ryan leads.  It is Lake Woebegone all over again.  Uncharacteristically, Ryan and Alex are irresistibly drawn in; you can’t buy this with frequent flier miles.

To everyone’s shock and dismay, the groom gets last minute “cold feet.”  Hours before the scheduled nuptials, Ryan is recruited to convince the groom to go ahead and marry his sister as planned.  At first, he declines.  Ryan has little regard for marriage as an institution.  He offers every excuse in the book.  But because he the most skilled negotiator in town, and because he just cannot resist the challenge, he reluctantly sits down with the young groom, Jim, for a pre-marital counseling session.  Man to man.

“You know, I was just thinking,” Jim says.  Fidgeting.  Staring at the floor.

“Yeah.  Tell me,” says Ryan.

“Well… first you’re born.  No one asks your permission.  Ya sit in a boring classroom all those years.  And then you think you are an adult.  You get a job.  You get married.  You get a house payment and a car payment.  You go to work in the morning.  You come home at night.  Then there are kids.  Then they grow up, and they do the same thing you did.  And then you get old.  You get sick.  They put you in a senior center.  And then you die.”  Jim pauses, tux and no tie, collar open, and keeps his gaze on the floor.

“Yeah?”  Ryan asks.

“So what’s the point?”  Jim wants to know.

Ryan stares out the window.  They sit on small chairs in a Lutheran Sunday School class room.  Ryan is the king of the comeback.  But this one seems to stump him.

“Jim,” Ryan finally speaks.  “There is no point.”

Their eyes finally meet.

“Marry the girl,” Ryan advises.

He does.

It is a turning point for Jim.  But for Ryan, too.  Up until now, there was no point.  But it’s this moment of warmth and family and commitment and relationship that is a tipping point for the calculating Ryan Bingham.  Maybe there is a point after all.

I won’t spoil the rest.

But as we begin another year, we are all up in the air.  Our high altitude, high speed, obsessive soaring in an endless rainbow chase is behind us now.  Our hot pursuit of frequent flier miles has left us empty handed.  If you have sat across the table, as I have, from the man wielding the axe, you’ll connect with those scenes played by real life folks who have lost their jobs.  It is painful.  Disorienting.  But it is not an end.  It is a beginning.

So, when Ryan flatly states to his soon-to-be brother-in-law Jim, “there is no point,” he is mistaken.

Now that we are back on the ground again, with a New Year ahead, what we have left is a Wisconsin wedding.  And with that, who needs bonus miles?

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp

Precious in his sight

Monday, December 21, 2009

When I make a movie pick, Carolyn goes to the reviews to check on what others are saying. She especially likes the reviews that assign a grade – like B- or C+ or whatever. Carolyn looks for B+ or higher. Our movie watching decisions are usually collaborative; you learn that sort of thing after all these years.

Both of us picked up on the high marks, well – thundering raves – that a little independent movie is getting all over the airwaves and in print. A solid “A.” Probably best that I didn’t know that it was an Oprah pick before I got to the theater. I knew about the unlikely star; an unseemly obese young woman from the mean streets of the city named Precious. Well, that’s her middle name. It’s also the name of the film. Precious is the primary character from a gritty novel, Push by Sapphire. Her full name is Claireece Precious Jones. (For young actor, Gabourey Sidibe, it’s her first role.)

So I was aware of the critical acclaim, and the extraordinary size of the film’s protagonist, but I was not prepared for the dark descent into an oppressive living hell. (Warning: the film is disturbing and earns its “R” rating.) I know there is a world not all that far from our little pleasant community where hopelessness reigns; a Darwinian, cruel world. But we rather efficiently block out the messy details. We avoid those neighborhoods. One reviewer called it shocking; but it only is shocking for those of us who live in cozy isolation from the harsh brutality of a neglected neighborhood devoid of hope.

It is a raw exposé of life in the ‘hood. In public housing with forgotten, underfunded schools, abusive, absentee fathers and ever-present violence, Precious gorges on deep-fried. Her feckless mother, Mary, occupies a couch where a color television set blares banal game shows. It is expected that Precious will be a young mother, too. At sixteen, she is pregnant with her second child. The father is her mother’s husband, and her father, too.

The root causes of out-of-control obesity become clear. Precious’ only retreat is her rich fantasy life, in which she imagines laughter, glamour, color, dancing and romance. Her mother treats her like an indentured servant, which she has become. In the mother’s hell-bent pursuit of self-annihilation, she is determined to take Precious and her children right along with her.

Social workers drop by from time to time to verify continued qualification for the subsistence check. Precious’ mother proves to be up to the task, maintaining the charade of innocent victim. Precious is as illiterate as she is fat, but she is street smart.

So when a teacher emerges who sees past the grim exterior, she arranges to put Precious into a class of needy peers; a collection of young women none of whom are candidates for upward mobility. She presses them to journal. No rules of grammar. No spelling requirements. Just write. Tell your story. Every day. We will write. Write. Write. Ms. Rain pushes and pulls and laughs and cries until the girls begin to discover their own capacity for self-discovery. It is no bromide. The victories do not come easily.

It is when Precious’ mother, Mary, terrified that she might lose some of the benefits accrued by illegitimate children that she presses for custody. To win the case, she must state it in the presence of a social worker, Ms. Weiss (Mariah Carey). As precious listens to her own mother’s sick version of life at home in the dank, musty hallways of unimaginable horrors, something new is born in Precious.

It is understated, but powerful. She quietly declares her independence.

This is no Remember the Titans, with the crowd cheering the big victory in the final seconds. This is deep seeded transformation. Precious has every reason to check out. Bail out.

But as the film fades to black, with a myriad of unanswered questions, you know she has found something. Her two children are in her arms.

They are on their way to a new life.

When I was little, and my parents took me on that non-negotiable trip to church on Sunday morning, they taught me a song. It echoed in my mind as Carolyn and I walked out of the theater.

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

“Precious in his sight.”

The Precious in this film is unlovely. We would turn away. We would find someone else. We would predict the worst.

But not Jesus.

Why not us?

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2009

Carol of the Bells

Monday, December 14, 2009

Two events jump-started our Christmas.  It is our “off” year.  The kids will all spend Christmas day with the “in-laws.”  This is one of the adjustments to this new world of ours.  It’s a life stage thing.

The prospect of Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning without children or grandchildren at this point in our lives would otherwise be a handy excuse to leave the boxes of Christmas stuff unopened and stacked out in the garage.  It’s not like we give up altogether on the off year.  This is not the first one.  We’ve learned from experience that a quiet Christmas Eve, just us two, is nothing to be dreaded.  It is actually pretty nice.

The first event was Andrea Bocelli with David Foster in high definition and surround sound – the highly advertised PBS Christmas extravaganza.  Foster’s “Carol of the Bells” may be my all time favorite version of the traditional piece.  It’s big.  Really big.  Best enjoyed with a serious full-throated subwoofer.  My sister made us a CD of her top picks several years ago, which included this orchestral rendition.  I snatched it for our Colorado Christmas video that year.  The highly edited amateur fifteen-minute digital recording still stands as my finest achievement in home spun entertainment.  The sunset over the rocky peaks from a frozen lake with snow laden pine branches in the foreground as our kids frolicked on ice skates to Foster’s Carol of the Bells has yet to be matched.

So Foster opened the show highlighting the full orchestra and all the glitz and excess that unlimited staging budgets can allow with that same Carol, and I was hooked even before Bocelli showed up with his rich Tuscan tenor voice.   The two hours flew by and when it was over, I was ready to unload those boxes.  Put up the lights.

Then we had another date night, that second event, on the occasion of Carolyn’s birthday.  We acted our age, arriving for the late afternoon showing before five, claiming our senior discount.  The IMAX Theater must have a thousand seats.  And right up to show time, it was just us two, donning our clumsy 3D glasses.  We laughed like a couple of high school kids in the empty hall.  Maybe the projectionist heard us.  No one else.  It was OK when five or six wandered in just as the feature began.  But it was just us.  Disney’s new A Christmas Carol in IMAX 3D was a knockout.  We cherish Dickens’ lines, and they were all there.  If it was Jim Carrey, it was hard to tell.  He found a convincing miserly voice, maybe even more compelling and riveting than George C. Scott’s.  “Are there no prison houses?”   “… decrease the surplus population!”  “Bah, humbug!”  Never better.

Scrooge’s conversion always gets me.  I’ve read the book to the kids.  I’ve seen it on stage, and in a half dozen adaptations.  I know that turnabout is coming.  But it still gets me.  Maybe because at this time of year when the days grow short, and the cold settles into my chest and the coughing interrupts my sleep and the darkness closes in and the pressures mount, maybe in the dead of winter, I need to be converted, too.  Sometimes the ghosts from Christmas past, haunting the present and predicting a dark future appear in my dreams, too.  Regrets are hard to shake.  Even with eternal security.  I need a rebirth.  From the cold hard realist, cynical, spouting rules, predicting doom, noting the dire consequences of irresponsibility with precision, scoffing at the antics of public servants and other notables, counting pennies, unmoved by the plight of the rest of the world to, well, an openhearted, dancing Fezziwig.  If it can happen to Ebenezer, it can happen to me, too.

So Bocelli and Carrey, Foster and Ebenezer, both new productions got me this year.  The fly-bys over 1850 London in 3D were spectacular, with St. Paul’s on the horizon under a fresh fallen snow. Bocelli’s rendition of Silent Night; snowflakes drifting down right on stage.  Light the candles.

I worked on a script this year.  It’s the story of an uncle who donates a part of his own liver to save the life of his five-month-old nephew.  Thanks to Stephen, little Liam will be with us this Christmas.  And the doctors believe he’ll live out a full life.  It will be a video short for four Christmas Eve services this year.  The house will be packed.

I am a sentimental man.  But the layers of harsh reality get me, too.  I’m quite capable of missing it.  Missing the whole thing.  Including the Manger.

When I caught our four-year-old grandson jumping merrily on our bed this weekend, I almost scolded him; as though he was doing some sort of irreparable damage.  And then I remembered Scrooge jumping up and down on his.

So I smiled.  And let him jump.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2009

The Man Who Has It All

Monday, December 7, 2009

Tiger Woods takes the phrase to a new level.

What is “The American Dream” anyway? Generally, it involves a house, a car, job security, a family, a neighborhood, a good reputation, social standing and physical wellbeing. The order of priority would be a matter of personal preference, I suppose. In general, spiritual wellbeing is not even part of the equation; not, at least, in the public square.

The old quandary for gift givers (what do you buy for the man who has it all?) would certainly apply in the case of Tiger. What would you buy?

When you ponder the question of achieving the American dream, thirty-three year old Tiger Woods would certainly be a candidate.

I have gone on record as being a fan. I’ll admit once more that I am one of the myriads of viewers who checks in mid-week to see if Tiger’s name is on the tournament roster. If so, then I’ll set the DVR. An open Saturday or Sunday afternoon is just that much better in high definition when Tiger is on the prowl on one of those picturesque courses made for wide-screen. Just the way he gets himself in and out of trouble keeps me coming back for more.

Maybe it’s the opulent houses, the choice of cars, the corporate jet, the picture perfect family, the access and the admiration of his peers. The rest of the guys on the tour gave up on catching him a long time ago. They all seem to have come to terms with the reality. Tiger Woods plays golf at a different level. He’s from a different planet, they’ll tell you. Our media drenched culture has rewarded him handsomely.

Sure, the opulence stirs the imagination of any one of us capitalist consumers. But my personal admiration has more to do with the game: that trademark performance under pressure. It’s hard enough for me to hit a shot when the other three guys are watching at the tee box. I can’t imagine striking a ball straight toward the pin while enveloped by a throng of eager admirers measuring every movement, just inches away. Then there are those cameras; the long lenses catching every subtle nuance, every inch traveled by a rolling white ball with the Nike logo. And on day four, when hundreds of thousands of dollars hang in the balance with every stroke of the club, every putt – the focus, the mental toughness, the eye-on-the-prize, the set up, the address and then the execution – it’s my kind of Sunday afternoon.

But now, Tiger is one more name on the long list of guys who by all appearances has it all, but doesn’t. Not really. Not anymore.

Which begs the question – what does it really mean to “have it all”? What is missing? And maybe that is a spiritual something after all.

There is lots of irony here. Who would have imagined that a one-hundred-sixty-three dollar traffic citation would mark the turning point? I have to admit it, I found myself in a state of denial as the news dripped out. “Not Tiger,” I said more than once and meant it. “No way.”

Way.

So now the one-liners are floating around like fireworks. Puns are back in vogue. With a name like Tiger, the possibilities are endless.

Maybe I just care about the guy. Not to let him off the hook or to excuse the inexcusable; but I’m just sappy enough to hope that in the crucible of this crisis, he figures some things out. Maybe it’s all those prayer meetings. Back in the day, we called this sort of thing an “unspoken” request. God knows. But we really shouldn’t talk about it. Not out loud. Not in mixed company.

Unspoken, unspecified requests are pretty well out the window anymore. Seems to me like the tabloid press has pretty well taken over the scene. Yellow journalism is print media’s last best hope. In the ratings game, Edward R. Murrow and Helen Thomas are relics of a distant, forgotten past. The media experts call for full disclosure – now. Sooner not later. We don’t have time to wait for film at eleven.

I hope that the Internet buzz has it wrong. The idea that Tiger can somehow buy silence or worse, buy back his stunningly beautiful Swedish wife, the mother of his two children, with massive bank deposits and a beefed up pre-nup misses the mark entirely. It will take considerably more than that if he wants Elin to stay with him as she has up until now.

They like to talk about Tiger as though he is a “brand.” He’s not a person in this view, he’s a publicly held corporation.

But there are some signals, however faint, that there is more. He seemed a little closer to it when he employed the ancient concept of “transgression.” Someone told me that he even used the word “sin.” I am hoping that maybe he’ll grasp other concepts like repentance. Remorse. Humility. Atonement. Rebirth. Forgiveness. Trust.

Transformation can happen. Even for the man who has everything.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp

Decade Horribilis

Monday, November 30, 2009

Queen Elizabeth addressed the Parliament in November 1992.  It was the fortieth year of her reign; a time for Kingdom celebration.  But in that formal room filled with specialists in the art of the stiff upper lip, she wearily announced to all that it had been indeed an annus horribilis. Hardly the stuff of rosy optimism or sunny royal cheer.

What prompted her rare attempt at self-disclosure?  Well, there was the fire at Windsor; but mainly it was the children.  Marital problems set the legendary British tabloid network ablaze with searing headlines and sordid photos.

Maybe she took her cue from the American President, normally self-possessed and sober.  Six years earlier, July of 1979, Jimmy Carter addressed the nation in a televised address to let us all know we had an attitude problem.  Apparently, all the bad news got to him.

“It is a crisis of confidence,” he declared.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

The following year, Ronald Reagan denied him a second term.

In another month, we will close out the first decade of the new millennium.  Good riddance, says TIME Magazine.  Andy Serwer’s cover story calls it “The Decade from Hell.”  Maybe those Y2K guys were right after all.  The calamities catalogued in TIME’s piece just about measure up to their apocalyptic predictions.  No, the computers worked all right, thanks to the upgrades most everyone had in place by December 31^st.  There was no immediate need for all that fresh water, non-perishable foodstuff and cash stashed in the safe.  But the New Year, January 1, 2009, signaled an avalanche of disaster, all rehearsed in detail in the nation’s influential weekly.

It is distinctly un-American to dwell on the negative.  Our capacity for denial matches only our resilience and aptitude for recovery.  We prefer not to dwell on calamities past.  We are the nation that escaped the injustice and tyrannies of Europe, crossed the great ocean and staked our claim in the New World.  And we’ve been building a New World ever since.

That’s why Jimmy Carter got the boot.  When the Monarch admitted defeat, we Americans privately cheered.  But the Brits figured it was time for the Monarchy itself to be cut loose.  Now TIME raises the banner of malaise, a decade horribilis.

It may well be that TIME itself believes the end is near.  The print media is facing the real possibility of extinction.

While Serwer does a pretty good job of summing up the disasters – from market crash to market crash and everything in between – his attempt at a happy ending rings a little hollow.  It is tired stuff like “the market always moves in cycles” and “government regulation is sure to move in with preventative measures” and “America is still the World Leader” and “the other nations still want to be like us.”

But think it over.  I have been around long enough to remember a half dozen decades, and every one of them could have been summed up as the worst ever.  Every one.  Go back and count them.  1949.  1959.  1969.  1979.  1989.  1999.  2009.

Yes, we are all waking up to a brave new world.  Perhaps like never before, we are all in a process of reinvention.  We are adapting to new realities.  We are learning new skills.  We are thinking in new ways.

But certain realities remain; foundational things upon which we built a life.  Like last Thursday, when we held hands around a table still bountiful and drew our collective attention toward the faithful God who sustained the generations on whose shoulders we stand; the God who sustains us still.  We looked around the circle at the grandmas and grandpas and moms and dads and those giggly children.  Enveloped by the aroma of turkey and dressing and hot gravy and spiced cider we smiled in the presence of goodness and beauty and wonder and then we bowed our heads.

We expressed our thanks.

For a few moments, we let go of the dangers and toils and snares, and we felt gratitude.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2009

Remembering

Monday, November 23, 2009

Collective memory is powerful.  Shared experience settles somewhere in the recesses of our minds.   With that mysterious but effective mechanism, memories can be recalled and replayed especially in the company of someone else who was also there.

We marvel the ready access to mountains of information we enjoy at the simple push of a button via the electronic superhighway.  I now carry Google around with me everywhere I go.  I can even search by simply speaking my question out loud.  And I often do.  Carolyn and I wondered about Amy Grant’s age.  Within seconds, we had it.  She turns forty-nine on Wednesday.  Thanks, Google.

But as amazing as our technology is, we still have not plumbed the depths of the operation of the human mind and the software that drives it.  We are, as Ekhart Tolle says, caught in the now.  This is the only moment we possess.  But our minds are also recording devices, and we can call up the past, reminisce, rehearse and with a little imagination thrown in and a few photos as an assist, it is almost as though we relive it.

Not all those recollections edify.  I have been around long enough to wish more than a few of those memory files away; recollections tucked away in those mental subdirectories that require a password.  Would that the delete button on my failings would be as efficient as the one right here on my keyboard as I write.  I would happily dispatch those forgettable moments into cyberspace without a trace.

But then, we have the capacity to choose.  We can decide which memories we will pull up for review.  We can choose where we go.  With whom we associate.

Choice is, perhaps, one of our most basic duties as humans.  It is a duty and a privilege.  An opportunity and an obligation.  Some suggest that choice is simply an illusion; that forces from the outside control all of us, and ultimately we are helpless.  I have never subscribed to this view, though like you, I have been helpless before overwhelming circumstances before which I am powerless.  Sometimes it is hard.  But then there is serendipity, too; surprise by joy.  Like last weekend.

All these thoughts swirled around me as I sat with Carolyn on a crisp, sunny Sunday morning out in a valley on a farm near a pumpkin patch with the people who ten years ago responded to the call of a local visionary to start a church.  I resisted, at first.  Bill was likeable enough.  But I was weary of religion.  When Bill knocked on my door, I had pretty much given up on the idea that church mattered.

We were new in town.  We moved, happily, because that church situation we left behind was a mess.  Political infighting trumped joy.  Turf wars left good people broken and bleeding.  We started out with the right motives, but in time we became a sorry collection of Pharisees and Sadducees.  The factions all claimed to be in step with their hero.  Some were of Paul.  Some were of Peter.  Others, Apollos.  And that Jesus crowd was the worst.  All claimed to be biblical.  Mainly, our gatherings were occasions for debate, one-upmanship, spiritualizing, posturing and confrontation-in-love.  The forced smiles didn’t fool anyone.

Settled into our new home out in the country, I found a great big church where I reveled in my anonymity.  It was twenty-five miles away.   We could slip in any given Sunday morning and not meet anyone by name.  No one seemed to notice we were there.  I liked it that way.  On the Sundays we slept in, no one missed us.

But then, Bill, the ultimate networker, with an easy, natural way about him, began to pull us together.  We started meeting our neighbors.  We found out some of them had been praying that God would bring new neighbors who would be a source of spiritual encouragement and nourishment.

The first Bible study took place in our living room.

That was ten years ago.  We gathered to celebrate what happened since.  Hundreds of lives have been changed.  We pooled our resources and bought a fixer-upper up on the ridge.  We faced fire and rain and sunny days we thought would never end.*  And there we were, worshipping with abandon out there in the open air, celebrating God’s goodness.  In spite us.  In and through us.  Because of us.  We call it Ridgeview.

I have written a couple of books about those days out there in our very own Lake Wobegone.  Before long, you’ll find links on the Internet.  Stay tuned.

Paul had it right.

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2009

*Thank you, James Taylor.

Scripture quote from The Message, Eugene Peterson