Movies Watched

The category "My Rating" reflects a combination of how much I enjoyed the film and how well I thought the film was done.

Date	Movie	Lead Actors/Directors	Year	My Rating
1/20	Big (in Spanish)	Tom Hanks	1988	67%
2/10	The Hunt for Red October	Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin	1990	89%
2/11	Drive	Ryan Gosling	2011	92%
2/25	Lars and the Real Girl	Ryan Gosling	2007	64%
3/9	Hugo	Martin Scorsese	2011	86%
3/11	Rise of the Planet of the Apes	James Franco	2011	72%
3/14	Troll Hunter	Norwegians	2010	41%
3/18	Super 8	Kyle Chandler	2011	88%
3/23	The Hunger Games	Jennifer Lawrence	2012	91%
3/30	Juno	Ellen Page, Michael Cera	2007	72%
4/1	Bend it Like Beckham	Kiera Knightly	2002	58%
4/7	Analyze That	Billy Crystal, Robert DeNiro	2002	62%
4/29	Date Night	Steve Carell, Tina Fey	2010	70%
5/5	The Avengers	Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr.	2012	63%
5/9	I Am Legend	Will Smith	2007	76%
5/14	Snatch	Brad Pitt, Jason Statham	2000	37%
5/26	The Descendants	George Clooney	2011	83%
5/29	The Woman in Black	Daniel Radcliffe	2012	48%
5/31	Captain America	Tommy Lee Jones	2011	59%
6/1	Thor	Natalie Portman	2011	63%
6/23	Brave	Kelly MacDonald	2012	73%
7/17	Spider Man	Tobey Maguire	2002	71%
7/28	The Fellowship of the Ring	Peter Jackson	2001	92%
7/29	The Two Towers	Peter Jackson	2002	77%
7/30	The Return of the King	Peter Jackson	2003	87%
8/1	Field of Dreams	Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones	1989	90%
8/3	The Wizard of Oz	Judy Garland	1939	78%
8/4	The African Queen	Humphrey Bogart, K. Hepburn	1951	83%
8/25	The Pirates of the Caribbean	Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom	2003	76%
9/1	The Lion King	James Earl Jones, Matt Broderick	1994	93%
9/2	War Horse	Steven Spielberg, Emily Watson	2011	64%
9/8	ET: The Extraterrestrial	Steven Spielberg, Drew Barrymore	1982	90%
10/3	The Artist	Jean Dujardin, John Goodman	2011	85%
10/9	The Ten Commandments	Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner	1956	89%
10/19	The Godfather	Marlon Brando, Al Pacino	1972	95%
11/8	Skyfall	Daniel Craig	2012	78%
11/16	The Godfather Part II	Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro	1976	75%
11/17	The Godfather Part III	Al Pacino, Andy Garcia	1990	64%
12/1	Moonrise Kingdom	Wes Anderson, Bruce Willis	2012	91%
12/6	Miracle on 34th Street	Maureen O’Hara, John Payne	1947	91%
12/15	The Hobbit: Unexpected Journey	Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan	2012	94%
12/19	Seeking a Friend/End of World	Steve Carell, Kiera Knightly	2012	62%
12/21	Lincoln	Daniel Day-Lewis	2012	89%
12/27	Last Ounce of Courage	Marshall Teague	2012	20%

Books Read

Jan 1 - Jan 20	Compassion	Henri Nouwen
Jan 5 - Jan  25	Undaunted Courage	Stephen Ambrose
Jan 26 - 30	The War of the Worlds	H. G. Wells
Jan 30 - Feb 2	Catching Fire	Suzanne Collins
Feb 2 - Feb 6	Mockingjay	Suzanne Collins
Feb 7 - Feb 28	The Rest of God	Mark Buchanan
Feb 7 - Feb 20	The Five Dysfunctions of a Team	Patrick Lencioni
Feb 17 - Jul 28	The Return of the King (read aloud to Kelsie)	J.R.R. Tolkien
Feb 29 - Mar 3	Comrades	Stephen Ambrose
Mar 4 - Mar 15	The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Grahame
Mar 4 -  Apr 13	The Meaning of Marriage	Timothy Keller
Mar 18 - Mar 22	Bossypants (audio book)	Tina Fey
Mar 28 - May 9	Tolkien and the Great War	John Garth
Apr 15 -  May 10	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain
May 1 - May 4	The Journey to the Center of the Earth (audio book)	Jules Verne
May 10 - Aug 19	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain
May 12 - Jun 1	World War II Letters	ed. Bill Adler
Jun 9 - Jun 9	The Time Machine (audio book)	H.G. Wells
Jun 17 - Jun 24	Unbroken	Laura Hillenbrand
Jun 30 - Jul 14	To America	Stephen Ambrose
Jul 19 - 20	Around the World in 80 Days (audio book)	Jules Verne
Jul 27 - Sept 22	Culture Making	Andy Crouch
Aug 6 - Sept 21	The Hobbit (read aloud by Kelsie)	J.R.R. Tolkien
Sept 23 - Sept 27	Saint Ben	John Fischer
Sept 24 - Dec 15	The Pursuit of God (read weekly with ResLIfe)	A.W. Tozer
Sept 28 - Oct 5	Lead... For God’s Sake	Todd Gongwer
Oct 5 - Oct 13	The Godfather	Mario Puzo
Oct 6 - Nov 4	A Long Obedience in the Same Direction	Eugene Peterson
Oct 15 - Oct 24	Wicked	Gregory MacGuire
Oct 31 - Nov 10	Dracula	Bram Stoker
Nov 5 - Nov 24	The Idea of a Christian College	Arthur Holmes
Nov 28 -	Connecting	Larry Crabb
Nov 29 -	Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoevsky

Year End Lists

The season of reflection is upon us and so here I will post my lists of books and movies that I have consumed this year.  It made an interesting exercise to know that I would be posting these publicly.  So in the following posts, you can see what sort of media have passed into my mind, as well as how long it took me to read various books, my rating of movies, and what times of the year inspired more media binges.  But in this time of scads of year end lists, you are welcome to briefly peruse it for your own favorites.  Enjoy!

Black Friday and Capitalism

In capitalism, each dollar is like a vote.  The dollars that we spend are powerful: they can help shape the future by investing in the things that align with our vision of the good life. You can give to the church, to aid funds, or to other beneficial organizations and here we recognize this principle of our money's power.  But when it comes to purchases for ourselves, the only thing that motivates us is how many dollars can we have kept to ourselves once the transaction is done.   

Most of us operate under this assumption that holding on to our votes is the best possible use of them.  We have been deceived to think that we must give our votes to the places that help us conserve our own voting power as much as possible.  

In this time of year between the beginning of the month's pull to "get out the vote" and the end of the month's pull to get the best deals and save money, it maybe be a good time to look at our understanding of money and what it does. 

Can you imagine that kind of system on election day?  What if everyone got 100 votes?  Wouldn't everyone use as many as they could to support their candidate? Yes, you'd need to use them wisely to be able to vote for Congressmen and women, mayors, and random amendments.  But how valuable would it be to walk away from that day with 95 votes left in your pocket?

Of course dollars (and life) last much longer than votes on election day and prudence is necessary.  But casting 500 votes for a huge national chain store (in return for a nice computer) seems odd when you could cast 700 votes for your friend's local computer store in return for the same computer. 

I am not advocating for frivolous spending: my friends know that I can be a frugal man myself.  But I am advocating that we readjust the priorities we have put on money.  Using it wisely is more powerful and responsible than not using it at all.  

That's why I would support Small Business Saturday over Black Friday.  The latter tells us to keep our votes to ourselves and to cast the few to the big guys whose ideals likely don't align with ours.  I'd rather put piles of support into locals than give small votes to those who represent big business. 

On being a "Master of the Arts"

This spring I left the goodness of a small group of excellent and intentional men.  We were the five men in our cohort of our grad program who lived in Upland and through our breakfast meetings, we got quite close.  We would update each other on our lives and struggles and very soon our only updates were on "the thesis" and "the job search".

These things nearly consumed our lives.

We quickly found that these professional pursuits were far more personal that we could have been prepared for.  We poured our time, efforts and hearts into the things we wrote in our research or in job applications.  It was pieces of our very selves that we submitted to strict thesis supervisors and heartless hiring committees. When the latest draft came back covered in red (or green) ink and we got a regretful email from yet another school, it was so easy to see our value diminish.

Thank God for our excellent professor of the semester before, Dr. Scott Gaier and his overwhelmingly true words: "My value is in Christ."

Amen.  When I received rejections from schools I really had an interest in or had (foolishly) allowed myself to imagine my new life there... it hurt. I would typically hang up the phone or close the lid to my computer and look off into space for a while.  Then I would take a walk.  It was a time of re-realizing reality and the potential future.

The same would take place when I had written a section of my thesis.  A good one too: I had known what I was going to say, I had backed up my claims with evidence from the data and the words had practically rolled from my fingers through the keyboard to the page.  It was great and I was proud of it. Until my thesis supervisor didn't think so. He liked to use green pen because it was less abrasive than red.  It still hurt. Again, it was a time of re-realizing reality (that he was much smarter than I and able to help through this criticism).

Degrees have such lofty titles that I always thought that calling oneself a "Master of the Arts" was pretty pretentious.  I still do.  But I can see where it's coming from a little better now.  I think that facing all that rejection this spring has helped me to hold my idealization of reality lightly and I can be more agile through trials.  But it will be a long time before I really consider myself a master.

And whither then? I cannot say.

The poem from which my blog takes its name has been all too true this summer.  The past few months have been all about "joining larger ways where many paths and errands meet". Since coming back from Ecuador in late January, I feel like I have been a flurry of activity applying to over 30 jobs, finishing my thesis, completing grad school, hosting a conference, getting married, interviewing for jobs, and moving when I finally landed one.

It's been only three months since I was a single man living in a house in Upland, IN with five other guys.  Now I am a married man overseeing a multiple building residence hall in West Palm Beach, FL. And as the helter skelter of training, move-in, and welcome weekend are dying down I am having one of the first chances in a long time to take a deep breath and look back at the paths that my eager feet have tread. Only a few nights ago I realized that I had still hardly debriefed from my January experience leading a missions trip in Ecuador. It is indeed a blessing to have a wife (for many reasons) because she can help me slow down and reflect on the things that have whizzed by in my life.

We all have those things that make us think, "Oh if only I can get to this point... then I will settle down and stop pursuing the distant future.  When I get there, I'll concentrate on the here and now a little more."  Well, this was that point and now that I am here, I intend to chill out on the forecasting for a little bit.  Don't ask me when kids are on the way.  Right now, my major plans are to meet with my Assistant Resident Directors for an hour, then go to a friend's house for a Labor Day cookout.

Additionally, I intend to blog about some major things in the past.  Maybe Ecuador.  Thesis/grad school/friends. Job search.  Marriage.  Moving.

Reflection is good for the soul.

Marriage

It truly is a sacrament.

Here's a beautiful post from Kelsie on it: "My One Thousandth Gift"

Thesis

As a part of the requirements of my master's degree, I've spent the last year and a half writing a thesis.  It had to be an original study based on scholarly literature, sound educational research methodology and then defended before a committee.  Terrifying things.

Things I have completed.

I was wise (fortunate) to have picked a topic that interests me and I actually enjoyed looking into the relationship between ministry and student development in higher education. The thesis' actual title is "The Impact of a Ministry Experience on the Personal and Academic Development of College Students".  Long, I know. 

It was a great way to consider some of my own collegiate experiences though and to put some scholastic muscle behind the things that seem valuable in helping students grow.  I've known that I want to be in ministry and student development is the route I am taking now, so this has been a great primer for me to learn how to get those two things cornered in good ole-fashioned mash-up. 

I might get the thing published.  After I leave it alone for a month or two (for my own mental health and sanity) I think I'll look into some of the Christian journals on higher education and student development.  I'll be sure to let you know if something goes down there.

But for now, it is great to be finished not only for the relief of it but also for the satisfying completion and the knowledge gained.