Mission Accomplished

Monday, September 19, 2011

Three years ago, the seed idea sprouted its first shoot.  It was, as my friend Scott Last likes to call it, a BHAG.  Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.  Our team got together and agreed – “Let’s make a movie.”

Frankly, if we had known in advance the obstacles, the barriers, the resistance, the seemingly insurmountable, the flat opposition – I’m not sure our guys would have proceeded back then.  There is something to be said for naïveté.  In the three years that followed, there were a hundred excuses for quitting – maybe more.  And most everyone would have understood.  But it was a powerful dream.  A compelling vision.  The impossible emerged as a possibility.  The door cracked open.  Our guys barged on through – with a team of prayer warriors holding them up all the way.

I’ve had a close look at this thing from the beginning.  I had the incredible experience of two personal trips to India in the interim.  This weekend, the official two minute thirty second trailer was introduced to over four thousand eager enthusiasts.  It’s been a long wait.  The guys nailed it.  They call it NOT TODAY.

Brent Martz, road weary and worn, beamed as he launched the video short.  Just a few weeks ago, on the flight back from India and a premier showing (to rave reviews) for the good folks who hosted the six-week on-location shoot and thirty American cast and crew (not counting the local actors, technicians, and support staff), Brent felt awful.  The day after his arrival home in Yorba Linda, he was admitted to the Emergency Center with a near burst appendix.  The doctors performed a surgery just in time.  But this weekend, Brent stood strong and tall – and as the trailer ran, the folks were flat blown away.  This is a real movie.  A powerful message.  A compelling story.  A fast paced journey, learning all the way.  A heart-tugging experience of India.  People you care for.

Back in the planning stages, we all looked around.  We could see it.  The church is abundantly blessed with artists, musicians, actors, writers, technicians and all the equipment anyone would need to make a feature film.  Most important, there was a message.  Global Freedom!  Free the Dalits!  This became our rallying cry as a church body.  And in the message of freedom is the essence of the Gospel.  Transformed lives lead to transformed culture and a transformed world.  Reaching out across the globe had a corresponding effect on the local neighborhood.  Our team agreed.  A documentary would be good.  But a full-length drama would be better.

Brent and his partner, Jon Van Dyke, were commissioned to write a script.  I read it for the first time while attending the first graduating class of Dalit students (high school) in Hyderabad.  I loved it.  A privileged Orange County millennial (Caden Welles) goes to India on a fluke with his partying pals.  They play the “ugly Americans,” Caden leaving behind a caring Mom and girlfriend. He stumbles across Annika (an eight year old Dalit – played by a student in one of our schools) and her father on the mean streets.  At first, he shuns them.  But they come back.  He grows attached to the little girl.  And when he learns that her father, thinking it best, accepts cash and a promise that she will be better off from an agent who takes Annika away, Caden does his homework.  He staggers, surmizing from an Internet search that the innocent little girl has become the victim of human trafficking – children snatched from their families and tossed into a world of unimaginable torment.  Off balance, Caden becomes obsessed with her rescue.  He and Annika’s father, Kiran, join forces as an unlikely pair in the hunt.

I couldn’t put down the script.  I spent the next week traveling with Brent and Jon scouting film sites and locations for the movie.  Then the next ten months researching and writing a book with Matthew Cork on the story of Global Freedom.  I spoke regularly with our partners in India who were enormously helpful in the research.  Next came the casting.  Then delays in filming (getting “permissions” to bring the film crew into India and through customs).  Then more challenges with time constraints and weather conditions, sickness, unreliable permissions on site, language barriers, clashing visions, debates over locations and scene selection, transportation, and every other distraction you might imagine.  Then in the editing room.  What to cut?  Keep the story moving, with all the hints and details just right.  And finally, post-production – color corrections, animated sub-titles, original music for the sound track, smoothing out the dialogue, adding street sounds and highlights.  And this paragraph barely begins to identify the monumental challenges.

It was an unfortunate banner – “Mission Accomplished.”  If former President G.W. Bush could do it over, the announcement would not have been so apparent on that aircraft carrier as the nation celebrated the fall of Hussein’s reign over Iraq.  Because, in retrospect, the work wasn’t done.  The mission still incomplete.  To this day.

So, when I congratulate our team with a  “Mission Accomplished,” I am compelled to add some qualifiers.  In many respects, the work is just beginning.  The movie needs to be seen, and should be seen by a mass audience.  The message needs to get out there. We’re eager (and sometimes impatient) as we watch the plan unfold.

But for today, just for today, our team has accomplished that BHAG. Kudos! It is nothing short of amazing.  We like to call it a God-sized vision.  Impossible, apart from His clear passion for a world in need – prompting us all to see beyond ourselves to something more – and His power to enable us to go far beyond what we can imagine.  Mission accomplished.

A great film is “in the can.”  Ready for prime time.  Who would have imagined it?

Well, some did.  And here we are.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2011

VIEW NOT TODAY TRAILER

A Decade Later

Monday, September 12, 2011

Where were you?  You know the answer.  Me, too.  I know exactly where I was when I first got the news that the World Trade Center was hit.  I didn’t comprehend the magnitude of the event then (a small plane crashed into the World Trade Center, they first speculated), but the memory is indelible in my mind, even at this age, as it is for you.

On this ten-year anniversary, we will not forget.  Retrospectives fill the airwaves and print media.  They bring back all those days of uncertainty, images of a terrible moment like Armageddon, when we wondered if this was The End.  And for far too many, it was.

I was in the habit of writing a weekly LeaderFOCUS back then.  These days, the current of LF version is trimmed down.  Some years before September 11, 2001, I established a discipline that got me in the habit of writing on a regular basis.  My goal: fifteen hundred to two thousand words a week – that’s three to four single-spaced pages with a twelve-pitch font for those of you not conversant in word count.  Today, my weekly essays are pared down to less than half that, knowing that you have plenty to read.  But that pivotal week, in the aftermath of the massive spectacle of horrors, I let it go.  I couldn’t stop.

This week, as part of my little personal memorial, I went back and read the two thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four (2,724) words I wrote on September 17, 2001[1].  I got carried away that day, but what writer wouldn’t?

Here’s one of my musings on the Saturday morning that followed the Tuesday we will never forget…

For a couple of decades, we [“Boomers”] crammed our naïve but ardently held ideas (which we thought were new and bold) down the unwilling throats of the Greatest Generation (we didn’t think of them in those terms back then) and embraced this rather ambitious notion that our heady enlightenment would usher in the Age of Aquarius and be the dawning of a new day of global brotherhood and sisterhood and the elimination of hunger, poverty, disease, violent conflict and every other sort of nasty contamination.  Sadly, all that has gone the way of the tie-dyed t-shirt and the flowered VW Microbus. 

As the dust of the ruined towers settled back then and we all looked into each other’s eyes in stunned disbelief, we wondered out loud – where will we all be in ten years?  Twenty years?  Well, we do not yet know about twenty, but here we are: ten years later.

And we were right.  The world has changed.

Ten years ago, most of us did not know the name Osama bin Laden.  Ten years ago, Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq.  Ten years ago, we barely noticed the proliferation of Mosques in our own country.  We knew little about Islam.  Ten years ago, we believed the “Internet Bubble” would be the worst of our economic troubles, and that it was behind us.  Ten years ago, at least half of us were not confident that the election gave us a legitimately elected President.  Ten years ago, I was not a grandfather.  (Now there are ten with two more on the way.)  Ten years ago, I had no real understanding of the plight of Dalits in India.  Ten years ago, I did not anticipate that a fire would sweep through our little town (The Paradise Fire of October 2003) and change the direction of my life.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking considerable heat for his decision to exclude “clergy” from the roster of the tenth anniversary memorial.  Righteous indignation abounds.  As a quasi-clergy myself, I can’t say I blame him.  My esteemed clergy colleagues spend far to much time clamoring for a prime spot at the head table, asserting their view that certain others ought to be excluded for the sake of principle (or “truth”) and bemoaning about how the rest of the world falls far short of their lofty standards.  Bloomberg may be right about shifting the focus from competing “world views” to the people for whom the event was created in the first place.  Anyway, clergy’s best work happens person to person – not in the spotlight.  (I’ll never forget the moving image of those collared priests, covered with ash, ministering to the dying.)

So if Bloomberg’s intent was to eliminate God (as many have charged), it didn’t work very well.  God got honorable (and powerful) mention from the people, most of whom were family and friends of those lost in the flames and rubble of the attack.  In the shadow of the new structure and beside the water spilling into the footprint of Towers One and Two, the names were read, bells rang out, bagpipes wailed, songs went up and if you paid attention, God was in the midst.  “A very present help in time of trouble,” read President Obama (quoting the Psalmist).

President Bush made no speech, other than to cite the words of Abraham Lincoln to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, who lost five sons in the Civil War.

“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp, 2011

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[1] Read the entire LeaderFOCUS from September 17, 2001 – “What is America?”

The Velodrome

Tuesday September 6, 2011

We generally don’t think about the impact of anti-Seminitism on the occupied territories of Nazi expansionism. This weekend, we got a double dose. In a session on the history of Israel, we saw the stats. The countries that opposed the formation of the Israel as an independent state in 1948 became inhospitable for their Jewish populations. In countries like Egypt, Libya and Saudi Arabia, as Arabs fled Palestine so Jews fled their home countries to what we now call Israel. (Jewish populations are nearly non-existent in Arab states). We know about the pogroms in Germany and Poland, but few of us know about the round up of Jews in occupied France. It happened in July of 1942, when French police assisted the Nazi army in extracting more than 13,000 Yellow Starred Jews from their homes and businesses and corralling them in a public stadium in Paris, the giant velodrome called Vél d’Hiv. The Nazi’s convinced city officials to halt the games, and use the facility as a holding station while the deportation was arranged. The conditions more than rivaled the horrible days that followed the catastrophic storm of 2005, Katrina, when thousands gathered for shelter at the Superdome in New Orleans.

Most of those detained in Paris during the war were shipped to camps (like Auschwitz) and few returned at war’s end. Sometimes it takes a combination of fiction and history to draw us in to the power of these historical events.

In 2002, Julia Jarmond stumbles across the story when she and her husband rent an apartment in Paris. She learns that the building was stormed by police during the war and that all the occupants who were Jewish were removed from their homes and taken to the famous Velodrome (long since destroyed) and then shipped off to Germany. She remembered that President Jacques Chirac publicly apologized to the Jewish people in 1995 in a well publicized speech. An American journalist living in France, Julia convinces her managing editor to commit to an exposé in the historic incident on the sixtieth anniversary of the episode. Her younger colleagues knew very little about the events surrounding the Holocaust. She got the green light, and pursued her research and writing, producing a piece that got a wide audience and high praise.

Sarah, age ten in 1942, is terrified by the invasion of their home. Her father hides in the cellar. Her mother tries to fend off the police. Sarah and her younger brother are perplexed, but they understand the danger. Sensing that they will be taken, she hides him in a closet, and then, along with her mother and father, are taken against their will to the Velodrome with thousands of others where they suffer in waiting, no facilities or food, for more than a week.

In her novel, French author Tatiana de Rosnay develops a story that is an intentional mixture of fiction and non-fiction. It is a story of family and loss and love and hope. This year, the novel is now a full length feature film. Carolyn and I talked for an hour, trying to unpack the reasons why it had such a powerful impact on both of us.

The critics, it turns out, haven’t been so kind. It’s just as well that we did not read them before we sent to see the film. They complain that the two story lines don’t mesh. We don’t agree.

History understood impacts the way we live, they way we think and the way we interact with others. Our world, it seems, has little time and little sense for historic perspectives. I wish I knew why I needed to get to this stage in life before I understood the power of history.

Sarah’s tragic journey is a gripping tale about the bond of family that inspires courage and determination. Julia’s quest for understanding leads to a new degree of self-awareness, breaking open secrets to find healing. And in the often tragic sweep of history, stories of bravery emerge, inspiring us to find our own courage against all odds.

Sarah’s Key unlocks many doors. Don’t read the critics. Go see for yourself.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2011

 

The Help

Monday, August 15, 2011

Most of the women in my life have read the book, The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s mega-best seller.  I have not.  But I overheard so many conversations about the novel that I knew I’d want to see the movie.  The trailer got me.

For the first twenty or thirty minutes or so, I realized why there were so few others of my gender in the packed theater.  As I scanned the room for other guys I thought to myself, this one is a serious, unapologetic chick flick of the first rank.  (The stranger next to Carolyn struck up a conversation over the shared experience of reading the book, and then expressed shock that her husband [I] was there seated beside her.  Hers, she explained, came up with a convenient excuse for missing the movie.)  As The Help’s sound track quieted down for the dialogue scenes, I could hear the sub woofer explosions and rapid shots of automatic weapons firing in the next theater over.  I figured all the other dudes must be over there watching some digital world blow up.  But there I was, next to Carolyn, feeling like I had been secretly ushered into a bouquet jammed, flower scented, boutique sitting room to listen in on a pack of polished, coiffed, manicured, chattering women blissfully unaware that there was a male present.

I actually whispered a prayer of thanks that I was created male.  Those opening scenes.  Women can be so catty, so cruel.  With a glossy smile, they can cut each other to pieces.  Us guys do the same thing, I guess, but mainly on the field of athletic competition utilizing physical contact or scoring skill as our primary mode of establishing superiority.  On a woman’s turf, the damage can be just as severe.  But the warfare is verbal and the bloodshed emotional, even psychological.

Discrimination is a major theme of the book and the movie.  That first part of the film, as I have explained, I was most acutely aware of the gender discrimination, which was, in the Jackson, Mississippi of the early 1960s, as pronounced and stark as all those other segregations and stereotyping.  This is a woman’s world.  No men allowed.  Maybe at no other time in history – the white, post-Gone-With-The-Wind South – were gender roles so clearly differentiated.

But as I grew accustomed to the company of these women, I tuned in to the powerful performances and the great characters.  Minny and Aibileen transform from necessarily passive housemaids to a powerful pair of warriors: Aibileen, quiet, simmering, intelligent; Minny, take-no-prisoners, quick-witted and daring.  Minny’s outspoken, independent spirit gets her fired more than once.  Her strength emerges when she takes on the ditsy blonde outcaste, Celia Foote.

This film (and the book) is really about that other discrimination – racial discrimination – when schools were as segregated as the public transportation and drinking fountains and diners.  Stockett contextualized the film through her main character, Skeeter Phelan, whose college education has sensitized her and dreams of becoming a writer energize her research.  Through her, we are reminded of the Jim Crow laws that had been protected by a Supreme Court ruling since the Reconstruction era in the aftermath of the Civil War.  This was the early sixties, when Medgar Evers was murdered in the streets of Jackson just after President John Kennedy’s speech called for Civil Rights.  The Help makes domestic workers a metaphor for the epic social change unleashed nearly fifty years ago.

Bryce Dallace Howard was interviewed on how she could possibly play the role of that despicable social butterfly with a supremacist’s determination.  She explained that the breakthrough came when she realized that her character, Hilly Holbrook, really believed that her obsessive commitment to segregation was in everyone’s best interest.  She believed she was right.  She considered her activism noble, courageous and virtuous.  She also got the confirmation of the political establishment, and enjoyed the admiration of her friends.  Her proposed legislation, to require every household to provide separate toilets for (colored) domestic helpers won wide support.

All of us cheered the victories of Minny and Aibileen over Hilly and her detached, insensitive battle for superiority; her tireless efforts to preserve a separation that she argues will her prevent the “contamination” of the races.  As Aibileen explained, her strength “came from God.”

Both the book and the film have critics from both ends of the political spectrum.  Some believe the story exaggerates the problem.  Others believe Stockett’s book and the film understate the problem and leave out too much.  But this is a work of fiction.  This is storytelling.  A novel will never satisfy the academic crowd on either side.  That’s why, in addition to the novel, we have the dissertation.

As the world shrinks and our neighborhoods become less and less homogenized, we still have much to learn from the Civil Rights era.  The Help presents us with an ideal.   Barriers can be eliminated. “Let the walls fall down,” wrote Billy Batstone.

When we listen, when we care, we develop mutual respect… even affection.

As Aibileen took little Mae Mobley in her arms, she taught her to say, “I’m kind.  I’m smart.  I’m important.”

Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp

Note – a good friend and LeaderFOCUS reader, Jim Adkins has written a terrific book in which he addresses the issue of racism. Take a look.

Basic Christianity

Monday, August 1, 2011

Basic Christianity, in fact, was a little more accessible to me as a twenty-something than Mere Christianity.  Both C. S. Lewis and John R. W. Stott were Brits, and in their utilization of the English language left their American counterparts well behind.  Stott, perhaps more than Lewis, went directly do the point.  In those early, impressionable years, both influenced me deeply.

As a youngster, Stott aspired to be a diplomat.  Lewis, a literary critic.  Both of them converted to Christianity as unlikely candidates.  Both had been thoroughgoing skeptics.  But they became convinced, and opened their hearts.  The rest is history.

While Stott’s attempt to summarize the Christian faith for a disbelieving audience (Basic Christianity – first published in 1958) didn’t sell quite as well as Lewis’ (Mere Christianity – first published in 1952), it sold 2.5 million copies and has been translated into 50 languages.  Royalties from the sales of the book did not enrich Stott who, as everyone who knew him would affirm, lived simply.  His favorite pastime – bird watching.  The proceeds from the brisk sales of the book were poured directly into a non-profit organization (or better, organisation) he called Langham Partnership International – designed to provide theological education and encouragement to international church leaders with little access to either.

News of Dr. Stott’s passing just this week released a flood of memories.  He was, without reservation, one of my favorite seminary professors.  All three years, he was professor in residence the third quarter.  One year, we lived in the same apartment building on campus.  (Occasionally, his discarded tea leaves would clog the drains.)  I realize now that between lectures that year, he was working on the Lausanne Covenant which in 1974 became the basic document binding together a global association of evangelicals.  He and Billy Graham convened that conference which drew more than twenty-five hundred leaders from over one hundred countries.  This week, Christianity Today said, “Stott’s skill as a diplomat was never more in evidence, as he chaired potentially fractious meetings, getting people to listen to each others’ views. He worked tirelessly behind the scenes to draft and redraft the covenant, finding wording that would capture various points of view without doing violence to any… Lausanne was a defining moment in global evangelicalism. Billy Graham was the indispensable convener, but John Stott was the indispensable uniter.”

Dr. Stott combined all the best qualities of a scholar, theologian, pastor and professor.  He explained things.  He read widely.  He knew the philosophers and the influencers.  He demonstrated an understanding of the issues with which we grappled.  His sermons/lectures would begin with a statement of the problem – usually controversial.  He did not address solutions or responses until he exposed the challenge.  Sometimes his analysis was so convincing, so precise, we wondered how we might ever find our way out.  Then he would proceed to apply biblical insight and the fog would clear.  He modeled a faith that investigated fully – listening intently, reading broadly, assessing deeply – to interact with concerns of the day.  He saw no distinction between evangelism and social action.  They were one in the same.  He did not envision theocracy as the goal of this life.  “That Kingdom is yet to come,” he would say.  The gospel is not something we impose on the world, we invite.  Stott prepared thoroughly.  He reasoned carefully.  He disagreed gently.  He taught us to do the same.

I knew him as a professor, and as a neighbor.  Then I witnessed his role as pastor of a congregation of some twenty-thousand collegians when he led us to the Communion Table in the great conference hall at the University of Illinois (Urbana 1981).  He raised a loaf of bread, and broke it.  He drew us to the table of mercy and grace, forgiveness and hope.  I’ll never forget it.

Carolyn and I were on the hunt for Charles Dicken’s Museum in London in 1994 (our twenty-fifth anniversary trip).  We rode the London Double Decker through the city and by no advanced planning, stumbled across All Soul’s Church.  We saw the name on the map, jumped off the bus and walked to the domed worship center, wondering – could this be the place?  The marquis identified John R. W. Stott as rector, and announced that he would be speaking the following morning (Sunday).  After visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, we just assumed it would be another ecclesiastical museum, long on history, short on worshippers.  We thought we would “pad” the audience for our old friend.

We arrived promptly at eleven the next morning.  But there were no seats left.  Every spot, including all those in the balcony, were taken.  Crowds waited in the lobby.  We were ushered to the front and invited to take our place on the floor.  Dr. Stott preached that morning, as promised.  We enjoyed an unforgettable conversation afterwards, reminiscing over the Trinity years.

In 2005, Time Magazine listed Stott as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.  In his response, Billy Graham stated that Stott’s work is foundational to the explosive growth of the church in the developing world.

It saddens me today to think of the loss.  His family was by his side.  They all listened to Handel’s Messiah as Dr. Stott breathed his last.  His legacy lives in the hearts and minds of everyone who knew him, everyone who read any of his fifty books, all of us who aspire to be ministers of reconciliation.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2011

Don’t Stop Believin’

Monday, July 25, 2011

Back when little Arnel was born in September of 1967, friends and family in Sampaloc, Manila gathered for a Filipino celebration.  The new mother and father had little, but they could sing.

From the earliest days, Arnel’s mother filled her sparse home with music.  It brought joy and laughter into the room.  When the boy showed his ability to hold perfect pitch, she squealed with delight, showering him with affection and cheers.  By the time could put a sentence together, he was entertaining the neighborhood with vocal solos all day long.  His favorite singers were Barbra Streisand and Karen Carpenter.  He mastered their riffs, their melodies and their lyrics.

The boy’s mom suffered rheumatic heart disease.  The Pinedas did what they could to educate their children in the best schools.  But when he was only thirteen she died unexpectedly.  Her protracted illness resulted in crushing hospital bills.  After the memorial service, Arnel’s father called the family together.  They were six months behind in their rent.  “We must leave our home and live with relatives,” he said.  Arnel volunteered to drop out of school to save money.  He set out to make it on his own.

In 1980, barely a teenager, young Arnel was not alone in the mean streets of Manilla.  Many nights, he would sleep on the streets.  He picked up odd jobs where he could.  He gathered paper, bottles and plastics for what few pesos he might earn.  He worked on the docks for whoever would employ him.  Hunger followed him everywhere.  But he never stopped singing.

His clear, energetic, clean voice caught the attention of a small group of musicians who called themselves the Ijos Band.  Before long, at age fifteen, Arnel and his new friends were winning competitions.  As they matured, so did their music and their reach.  They changed their name to Amo, playing clubs all over the Philippines, China and Hong Kong. For the next twenty years, he sang nearly every night.  He became a local Asian star.

In 2007, some fans put a video recording of Arnel’s rendition of a popular song called “Don’t Stop Believin’” on YouTube.  By this time, his Filipino band’s name was The Zoo.

* * * *

In 1973, Herbie Herbert, manager of the rock band Santana, put together a new band when Santana broke up.  The new group: Journey.  In spite of the spectacular talent and track record, the band struggled until 1981 when three of their cuts hit the top of the charts in the same year:  “Who’s Cryin’ Now”, “Don’t Stop Believin'”, and “Open Arms.”  That one-year run would secure their career.

Rock bands are notorious for their breakups.  Journey did just that in 1984.  But ten years later, the band would come together, reviving their greatest hits and adding more.  For the next dozen years, their popularity as a mainstream rock band held solid, even with the rotation lead singers.  Between 2002 and 2006, the two lead vocalists both had chronic throat problems, leading many to charge that Journey used pre-recorded vocals in their concerts.  The second quit.

Journey desperately needed lead singer – it had to be someone extraordinary.  The band scoured the nation for talent and came up empty handed until Neal Schon stumbled across a YouTube video and a vocalist from an Asian band called The Zoo.

The singer was Arnel Pineda.

* * * * *

When the former street kid from Manila sang his first concert before tens of thousands of screaming fans in Chile, he was terrified.  But critics raved.  “Arnel brings the magic of the band’s originator, Steve Perry, back to life,” they said.  To this day, the concerts just keep getting bigger.

By 2008, “Don’t Stop Believin’” had become Journey’s signature song.  Arnel looks back on all those years of struggle and obscurity and heartache, and considers it his life’s theme as well.

And he chokes back the tears when he speaks of his mother, who way back then from a little shanty in Manila, believed.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2011

Rory

Monday, June 20, 2011

Just last April, Rory McIlroy teed off for his Sunday (fourth) round of the Masters and like today, the whole world was talking about him.  His textbook swing.  His Irish charm.  That four-leaf clover in his wallet.  He led the field by four strokes and all eyes were on him as he put his drive on the fairway more than three hundred yards out.

No birdies on that front nine; and just one bogie.  Not bad.  More than acceptable.  And at the turn, he still led the field, but only by one stroke.  He still had a reasonable shot at a Masters win.

But on the tenth hole, golf did to the twenty-two year old professional what golf does to most everyone who plays the game.  One hole it all it takes.  One tragic, unexpected, unwelcome meltdown.  A triple bogey.  Deflated, young Rory never recovered.  McIlroy opened the Masters with a stunning 65 first round following up with a 68 and then a third round 70.  His poise and consistency, power and precision, picture perfect swing and boyish magnetism earned him high praise and talk of “the next Tiger Woods.”  But he finished the round with an eight over par 80, dropping from a comfortable lead and predictions of greatness to a shocking fifteenth place.  It not only cost him the coveted Green Jacket, it cost him well over a million dollars in prize money (from $1.4 million to the winner to a paltry $128 thousand for 15^th place).

The crowd’s attitude that day went from exhilaration to pity those last nine holes.  As Rory holed out at eighteen that Sunday afternoon, he forced a smile, acknowledging the crowd, but the pain inflicted by a little white ball that refused to find the cup was evident.  Relative unknown Charl Schwartzel took the Green Jacket and the prize money and the accolades.

That same awful afternoon, Rory’s cell phone rang.  On the other end was the legendary Jack Nicklaus.  The Golden Bear just felt compelled to encourage the young player.  In an interview later, Nicklaus told reporters that he didn’t call to give advice.  (In golf, as in the rest of life, advice can be hollow, especially when the dark clouds of disappointment and despair close in.)  They shared a laugh.  Nicklaus, in his own words, let Rory know that he had something special. A gift. Only Rory and Jack know the exact substance of that call.

But just a couple months later, the young star born in Holywood, Northern Ireland on May 4, 1989, teed up for the US Open at the famed Congressional Country Club just outside Washington DC this weekend.  His father, Gerry, flew over from Ireland to watch his son compete.  Rory opened with an impossible 65.  Then followed it up Friday with a 66; then Saturday with a 68.  A jaw-dropping three days at the US Open.  Once again, the world spoke of Rory.  Northern Ireland tuned in, praying fervently that the tragedy of Round Four of the Masters would not be repeated.

Once again, Rory McIroy teed up in the final grouping (reserved for the leader) in the final round of the US Open.  This time, it was Father’s Day.  This time, he had Jack Nicklaus’ voice echoing in his mind.  This time, with an eight stroke lead.  Not one of the world-class competitors in the field, the best of the best, was even close.  He slammed his first drive onto the fairway and birdied that first hole, just to make a point.

Those of us who watch the majors on a Sunday afternoon are drawn in to the drama by the enormous pressure that closes in on a golfer during this final round.  We all sit on the edge, wondering: can he handle it?  Will he fold?  The line between and the joy of accomplishment and self-loathing, between the glory of victory and the agony of defeat, is so thin; which will it be?  Every stroke offers this level of drama.  The stakes are high.  And it’s only a game.  We were there, my brother and I, pampered on Father’s Day, watching together on his big screen in Wheaton.

The wheels fell off on the back nine of the Masters for Rory McIlroy; but not this time.  The rest of the field just gave up.  It was a crushing victory.  The Irishman broke at least twelve records.

On the final hole, just to give the massive crowd cause to stand and cheer in disbelief and wonder, Rory put a long put from the other end of the 18^th green within inches of the cup.  Then when he tapped in for par (beating the four round composite score record by four strokes).  He reached over to snatch the ball from the cup as the crowd went wild.  He looked up, searching the cheering throng for one face – and then he found him – his white haired father, proud as can be.  Rory broke into a broad smile.

Us dads know about this.  All it took was eye contact.  Father-son.  All the memories.  All the travel.  All those rounds.  And here, in the arena, a moment of release.  Triumph.  All the stuff.  Forgotten.  Worth it.  This is much more than a million dollar purse (although, let’s face it: a nice reward).  Much more.

And then, on the edge of the green, they embrace.  A large, long man hug.  Laughter.  Tears.  Pride.  Joy.  Gratitude.

So, with the officials spiffed in their standard issue jackets looking on, along with the rest of the world, the camera zoomed in for the close-up and Bob Costas asked the Champion what it was like to have his father there.  “It means the world to me,” Rory said.  And then he raised the trophy above his head, “Happy Father’s Day, Dad!”  He scanned the crowd.  “Wherever you are!”

The crowd laughed.

And brushed away a tear.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2011

Thumbs Up!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Some time ago, I wrote about every father’s responsibility to teach his son how to throw and catch a ball.  I still believe it.  But at this stage of my life, I better understand the residual sexism in that sentiment.  It was woven into my cultural worldview in those early years, a spillover from the patriarchal theology of my tradition, rarely spoken but clearly assumed. That this fatherly role would be restricted to my son would be “Exhibit A.”  More simply stated, could I do it all over again, which I cannot, I would spend as much time with my daughters in the game of catch as I did with my son.

One of the great awakenings in this seventh decade of life is the onset of such regrets for which there is little recourse, other than to admit one’s shortcomings and hope for mercy mixed with grace.

But alas, our two girls managed to learn the fine art of throwing and catching in spite of my indefensible neglect.  We are living in a whole new world where most women would much rather compete than cheer.  We once got away with the phrase, “You throw like a girl!”  Maybe we should be thankful for the political correctness movement.  Mercifully, that pejorative line has disappeared from the scene, gone the way of beauty pageants.

All that said, I have no regrets about the time spent with my boy tossing a ball back and forth.  These memories stay with me, and offset some of that guilt over regrets.  Early on, we used a harmless Wiffle Ball.  Kevin progressed as he learned the hand-eye coordination, and overcame the fear of being struck in the face by an incoming fly ball.  In a few years’ time, we were firing a hardball at each other with all our might, raising bruises on our catching hand through the leather glove, building up strength, accuracy and speed.  When Kevin advanced to the pitcher’s mound, baseball no longer bored me.  From the sidelines, I measured every pitch.

Another responsibility that falls to the father[1] is to teach his children to ride a bike.  Like throwing a ball, this too is delicate.  It challenges a dad’s capacity for patience.  There is a biblical injunction warning fathers not to exasperate their children, and bike training is a poignant opportunity for just that.  Coaxing a frightened child on a two wheeler along the concrete or asphalt requires superior parenting skill; knowing when to hang on and when to let go; catching them just before disaster strikes; then sending them off to learn how to balance, lean into a turn, peddle for acceleration and gently apply the brakes for a clean dismount.  The first successful run is cause for an explosion of joy, a wild celebration.  A milestone is passed.  A ritual filled with mystery and wonder.  It is a metaphor as father and child will surely progress through many more passages to come.  A failure here can spell trouble ahead.

One dad caught that memorable moment on video and then posted it to YouTube.  Last I checked there were well over a million hits.  The little boy in helmet and riding gloves pauses over his bike lying on its side at the curb.  It was a clean dismount.  The training wheels are gone.  The boy, like Wilbur and Orville Wright after their first flight, emerges from his first solo run.  He’s managed a turn.  Under his father’s watch and careful tutelage, he basks in his moment of triumph.  His heart taps into something primal, the inner warrior, a taste of manhood, liberating independence, a glimpse of the power of self-reliance, the confirmation that his father’s prophecies ring true.  “I did it!  I did it!”

And as the camera rolls, the proud dad asks how his five-year-old feels.  The boy exclaims, “I feel happy of myself!”

“Do you have any words of wisdom?” Dad asks.  “What about the other kids who want to ride a bike?  Can you say anything to them?”

He pauses for a moment to gather his thoughts, and then he launches into a motivational speech that would inspire Zig Ziglar, Norman Vincent Peale, Oprah and Dr. Phil.

“Everybody!”  He catches a breath.  “I know you can believe in yourself!  If you believe in yourself,” (here you’ll detect a light lisp) “you will know you can ride a bike!  If you don’t, you just keep practicing.  You will get the hang of it – I know it!   And then, when you get the hang of it, you will get better and better at it.  And you can!  You can do it!  I know you can!”

“Give me some thumbs up,” the amazed dad says from behind the camera.

“Thumbs up everybody!” and with that, both thumbs go straight into the air.  “Let’s rock and roll!”

Today, this Monday morning, let’s rock and roll.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2011

Watch Thumbs Up for Rock and Roll! Video on YouTube

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[1] Disclaimer: This is certainly not to suggest that a mother should not be a part of the bike training, nor the ball throwing for that matter.

Not Today

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

When Matthew Cork visited India in October of 2007, his experience triggered a movement that has been gathering momentum and is about to break on the scene with powerful force.  About two and a half years ago, inspired by the success of a church in Atlanta, the creative team set out to make a theatrical, full length feature film to capture a wide audience.  It would be a drama, not a documentary, and would build a bridge half way around the world, connecting resources and a laser beam focus on the plight and destiny of a people group of nearly three hundred million – the Dalits of India.

Matthew announced the improbable goal – to eliminate the caste system.  When I first heard him say it, I was struck by the sheer enormity of it.  (“Impossible!” was my first reaction.)  But as we explored the problem and the grass roots movement that is expanding like an October Southern California brush fire, consuming long held prejudices and egregious traditions turning the old ideas of untouchability into ash, we began to understand that the impossible becomes possible.  In response, a single Southern California church, where Matthew Cork serves as Lead Pastor, pledged nearly twenty million dollars (most of it toward building schools for a whole new generation of Dalits) to fuel a campaign that will spell freedom and hope for millions.

What a journey.  Matthew commissioned two of his top creative lieutenants to write a script.  Brent Martz and Jon Van Dyke went to work.  They gave birth to a compelling story: Caden, a privileged, cynical, self-absorbed Southern California twenty-something, travels to India on a lark with his party pals and stumbles across an eight-year-old Dalit, Annikka, and her father Karin, while back home his girlfriend, mother and step-dad pray.  Repelled at first, Caden gradually becomes attached to the wide-eyed little girl and when Karin sells her away for a small fistful of rupees, thinking it will guarantee a better future than he can give, Caden is incensed.  As he connects to the Internet from his luxury hotel, his research gives him a primer on trafficking and the previously calloused Californian becomes obsessed with her rescue.  Together, Caden, the entitled Californian, and Karin, the Dalit father, set out to find Annikka.  Their search takes them all over India, and into the dark world of human trade where children are debased as a sub-human commodity.

The script led to a casting call.  Church folks volunteered to serve the project.  A cinematographer emerged.  Donations materialized.  Excitement accelerated.  Storyboards mapped out production plans.  Slum Dog Millionaire (a surprise hit film which introduced the world to India’s untouchables) stormed the Oscars.  Doors opened in India.  Cast members and crew appeared from both sides of the globe.  A location trip identified sites for filming.  Filmed on location, the movie would take characters through the slums, the marketplace, the trains, the bustling city streets, the dark shadows of the brothel district and back allies where human dignity is forgotten, trampled.  The team faced impossible odds.  Barriers and roadblocks have been encountered all along the way.  Murphy’s Law (if it can go wrong, it will) imposed itself time and again.  And in spite of all the challenges, all the objections, all the predictions of calamity, the seers of doom, all the delays, all the undelivered promises, all the reasons why the team could well have thrown up their hands in discouragement and simply said “never mind”, “I quit”, “this is too much”, “we can’t go on”… in spite of all of that and more, the movie is almost done.  And it is very, very good.

As I write, the production crew is applying the finishing touches.  World-class composer Don Harper has completed an original score.  The mix is nearly complete.  The final edit is going through a color correction, which is tantamount to a Photo Shop of every frame.  The result is eye-popping clarity and crisp resolution.  Much of the dialogue, true to life, is in an Indian dialect.  Animated subtitles bring the conversation to life.  The team will be done mid-summer.  Focus groups will register their responses for final tweaking and presentation to the several major distributors who have already indicated keen interest.

I wish I could express adequately how proud I am of the production team.  I am attached to this project largely because I traveled to India twice these past two years; the first trip along with the writer, director, producer and cinematographer.   We located sites in Hyderabad, on the train, in Calcutta and Mumbai.  As the movie was made, for nearly a full year, I worked with Matthew to write a book that tells the story of Global Freedom.

One man’s vision, one that captured him in the middle of the night in a hotel room in the heart of India, has already moved a mountain.  It’s about to move a nation.

Maybe the whole world.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp 2011

Learn more: The Movie | The Book 

A Story in Every Life

Monday, May 15, 2011

Veteran motivational business leader Dan Cathy may have seemed somewhat out of place in a conference on technology-driven education around the world, but, after all, he was a prime benefactor in making the event happen. They called it the “Imagination Summit[1],” and invited some of the major digital companies to present and inform students, professors and administrators to some of the innovative technologies setting the pace in the new global economy. We heard from representatives at Cisco, Apple, Stanford University and Rethink Books, a digital publishing firm, among others.

There were definite “Wow!” moments as our facilitators walked us through some of the new tools for delivering academic content. Some of the most fascinating involve the penetration of remote, underprivileged, underserved places around the globe with high level, age-appropriate curriculum. In far away African villages, for example, with no connectivity or power supply, Stanford is opening doors and minds to a world of ideas. Cisco works alongside some of the most prestigious (and expensive) universities to bring the classroom experience with some of the nation’s most distinguished and innovative professors to sites all over the world. Online classes have become virtual classrooms, with live interaction and group video. Libraries are becoming digitized and accessible. In real time, lectures can now be transcribed and translated into several languages. Video recordings of speeches, simultaneously transcribed, can be searched according to outline and actual text. As information proliferates, it is becoming democratized, available for the asking, no longer the domain of exclusive, elitist associations. Those who resist technological advance are declining in influence. Those who integrate technology with their disciplines are expanding their reach in unimaginable ways.

Dan Cathy fit in, mainly because he runs his business from a smart-phone. He opened by giving us all his mobile number, which for a crowd of close to a thousand seemed a risky move. But it was all part of a tech-type contest in which he challenged us to send him a text message. The start would be signaled by the announcement of his phone number… first text in would win an iPad. You could feel the adrenaline rush as this collection of techies poised themselves, well, ourselves, to show our stuff. (I missed it – by a hair.)

But Cathy’s agenda differed from the rest of the presenters that day. The others were there to trigger the technological whiz-bang moments that would prompt collective Imagineering. Cathy brought in the human element. He challenged us to see technology, not as a master but a servant. Success in any enterprise, he said, means meeting the real needs of real people. Technology should enhance relationships. Our affection for our tools can be counterproductive, placing barriers between us and those we serve. Technology is no substitute for high touch. Connectivity must go beyond a digital login.

He speaks from experience. Mr. Cathy is President and CEO of one of the most successful business enterprises of the new millennium: the 3.5 billion dollar line of new restaurants – Chick Fil A. He is passionate about his business plan.

It must be a great sandwich, he will concede. But people will come back not simply because of a great product. He believes every visit to every store should be a great experience. So, they began with a highly intentional training program so that every manager, every server, every employee understands how to make every visit just that – a great and satisfying event. The sort you will speak of with enthusiasm to your friends.

One of the many training tools in Cathy’s box is a video that reminds his employees that every guest has a story. Even the unpleasant arrival carries unwanted baggage into the store. That burden may manifest in quirky ways. But the right question, a proper greeting, intentional assistance, an atmosphere of welcome and superior service will disarm most everyone. The video introduces us to a store filled with customers (a word Cathy avoids) and using animated text tells us something of each person’s back story – the man who just arrived from his chemo treatment, the tattooed teenager whose father walked out, the young couple struggling with infertility, the elderly woman eating alone whose husband recently passed away, the young mom with multiple kids trying to keep it together after the father of her children disappeared, the bright young high school woman who just got accepted at the university of her dreams, the grandmother herding her young grandchildren after a morning at the park and so on. At first, you see each simply as a patron in the store. When you read even a brief phrase summarizing the story, the patron becomes a person. And knowing the story, well, it triggers compassion and care. Boom. Cathy’s point.

So we live in a world of burgeoning technology. The possibilities energize us.

But let’s not forget the human dimension. Let’s look for those stories. Listen. Care. Smile. Hand ‘em a chicken sandwich. Waffle fries and ketchup.

Copyright Kenneth E Kemp, 2011

YouTube Video

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[1] Sponsored and held last month at Biola University