Past Ruminations...

January 23-26, 2003
  

Super Bowl Sunday. It's half-time and I see a pattern. The best games, like last year and the one three years ago, are when the two teams don't have the best defenses. Tampa Bay this year and Baltimore two years ago had the league's best defenses and in the pressure cooker of the Super Bowl, these defenses are stifling. Maybe there is a truism there. It seems that under intense pressure it is easier to defend than to attack.

Well, the game followed the first half although Oakland did have an abortive comeback attempt that the Tampa Defense succeeded in smothering.

The stats tell the story. Seven of eight times previously the best defense has faced the best offense, the defense has won. Now make it eight out of nine.

Daughters. My daughter came over for dinner last night and brought a movie she wanted me watch. It is called "A Walk To Remember" and it she cried through most of the second half. She wanted my opinion.

I had to look at the cover to see if this was really made by Hollywood. It was. Warner Brothers made it, but it was decidedly un-Hollywood like. The movie was different than most modern "love" stories in that the characters were not obsessed with sex and the most provocative thing that happens is a kiss. The language is mostly clean, though there are crude allusions at times. The biggest difference is that there is a girl who has a strong Christian faith and it is presented fairly. Though the story line has her ridiculed for her beliefs, the film itself doesn't make fun of her or trivialize her faith. I found that refreshing.

I could see why my daughter liked the film. As a believer herself, here was a film that portrayed the decision to stand your ground as a positive thing that still allows dreams to be realized. 

Irregularity. It is more than a plumbing condition, often it is also a creative and intellectual condition. Writers have called it a bloc, the missing muse, and a number of other things over the years. My excuse was that I finally asked myself why I was doing this. I have never been a journal keeper, more of a anecdote writer, which by its nature is incident or impulse driven. Not being sure of why I was putting all this energy into these ruminations, I lost the energy to continue.

I decided if I wasn't doing it for me then I couldn't continue to do it. Other, external motives don't keep me going in anything I do for very long. It was a hard lesson to learn. We all do things for so many reasons, to please so many people, alive or ghosts, present or absent, that we are not always sure of what our real reasons are. I guess if I am going to continue to do this, I will have to do it for me. It is the only way to sustain it. I want to be successful (which to means I write well whatever I write) and if I don't take personal pleasure in creating these objects of wordplay, then all the external encourage won't sustain it. Oh, it might cause it to flower for a brief period, but without the engine of personal motivation, it will wither and die forthwith.

Another thing I discovered was that while I can write about almost anything that strikes my interest, politics, social situations, etc., what I really care to write about is my faith and my life as a result of that faith. I guess that means I would be considered a "religious" writer. So be it. It is what I am. It is why I changed the subtitle above to include the search for faith. It's me. No apologies offered. Along that line, there are new postings in religious studies.

So, we will see what happens.