Float like a Butterfly...

I think in another life I would have been a boxer.  I just got done seeing The Fighter tonight (which is worth seeing by the way) and it makes me want to getting into a boxing workout routine.  I would imagine it makes many viewers fantasize about being a boxer, whether it's getting into the ring or just hitting the speed bag.  I'm not looking to get in the ring or anything (don't think my face could take it), but it seems like boxing training is such a great workout.  I really admire the self-discipline of some fighters who are really trying to be the best and put everything into there endeavors.  I remember watching The Contender season 3 on ESPN and being inspired by one contestant's, Sam Soliman, devotion to his craft and the joy he received out of it.  Not only did he work out ridiculously hard, it was cool to see him helping and sharing pointers with one of the younger contestants on the show on how to train and how much one needs to put into training. I wonder at times if I'd have that discipline to do a 6, or 8, or 12 week training session, but I definitely would like to try.  Maybe once my shoulder is in the condition to be able to aggressively train, then I could do just that.  It's interesting though in boxing that one needs to be self-disciplined and self-motivated, but at the same time is encourage, pushed, and kicked in the butt at times by a trainer, sparring partners, or workout partners.  Boxing is an individualized sport, but often one has a team around him to prepare and train.  Almost like 2 sides of the same coin.  There always seems to be a camaraderie amongst boxers and those that train together in a gym.  And I think this seems to cause that each passing "generation" so to speak in the gym, want to pass on some knowledge to those coming up, to help mold youngsters, and pass on something that has been meaningful to them.

A Heart Attack on a Bun

My buddy, Josh, emailed me over a link the other day at work, about how next year the Akron Aeros will be introducing the "Three Dog Night," which is a hot dog, stuffed inside a bratwurst, stuffed inside a kielbasa, all topped off with sauerkraut.  It sounds delicious (although I'd top it off with Stadium Mustard, as opposed to the sauerkraut) although I'm pretty sure it may either kill you or add 20lbs to you before you left the park.  The calorie count has been estimated at over 3300.  WOW!  That's two days worth of meals for some people.  Regardless, I think I'll be making a trip to Canal Park this summer.  I just need to remember to block out a few hours each day for the next week to work off that dog-bratwurst-kielbasa combo.

Duty, Honor, Country

The other day I was catching up on a couple Boundless Show podcasts and heard a reading, in honor of Veterans Day, of General Douglas MacArthur's 1962 speech to the cadets at West Point.  I love reading and listening to great speeches.  I thought I'd share the words of that speech with you.  If you want to hear the podcast check out here or on iTunes - The Boundless Show - #146 - 11/11/10 (Begin at the 36 min mark for the reading).  If you want to hear MacArthur's in his own words, check out this video.


Douglas MacArthur's Thayer Award Acceptance Speech
Given To the Corps of Cadets at West Point
May 12, 1962


Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.

But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory - always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training - sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country, is the noblest development of mankind.

You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres and missiles marked the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind - the chapter of the space age. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a greater, a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; of purifying sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.

Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.

Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government. Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.

You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.

The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished - tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.

I bid you farewell. 

Christmas Songs

I took my little brother back to his dorm tonight and on the drive we sang/whistle along with the Christmas songs being played on the radio.  Our spontaneous sing-along got me thinking about what Christmas songs that I really enjoy.  Four popped into my mind, so here they are.  I am sure I'm forgetting some goodies, so share yours.


Carol of the Bells - Mykola Leontovych


Love the music and how this song is pieced together.  Good stuff.


Winter Wonderland - Felix Bernard/Richard B. Smith 

I always love singing along to this song.  Always puts me in a good mood.




O Holy Night - Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure (lyrics)/Adolphe Charles Adams (Music)


Such a wonderful song announcing the birth of Christ and his place as the King of Glory.




White Christmas - Irving Berlin


Bing Crosby does it up right here in Holiday Inn.




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A couple quick Christmas links:

Getting into the Christmas Spirit 


Christmas time date ideas

Trip Lee Concert

I went to the Trip Lee concert tonight.  Another great show!  Trip and all the guys at Reach Records do a great job of representing Christ and being passionate about bringing glory to His Name.


Like a G5 You rushed to rescue me
Took a cross in exchange for a throne to save me
You began a work and I know You'll finish
And make all things right when You come back
Cause You're my hero,
You already saved the day
Cause You're my hero,
And I know You're coming back for me.

~ chorus, The Invasion (Hero) by Trip Lee feat. Jai

Armenia

It has been two weeks since I returned from Armenia, so I thought it was time to start sharing some of the stories, pictures, etc...  Here I wrote a piece for High Mill's website that will give you a bit of an idea of what we did.  This should be one of many posts highlighting the trip, thoughts while I was there, and pictures of the beautiful surroundings and great people.  For now I just want to recount dinner with a few friends.  Here is part of a journal entry dated 6/17/2010, Vanadzor, Armenia.  More to come later.  Enjoy and God bless.


Today at dinner, I was sitting next to Z and his wife with their little girl, Sieona (I was told it meant Sinai in English).  It was so sweet to see his wife pray for the meal with their two year old daughter.  Mother and daughter folded their hands together and gave thanks to the Lord.  It is awesome and inspiring to see parents instructing their children at such a young age in the ways of the Lord.  It makes me want to do the same thing when I have children.  They exemplify Proverbs 22:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.

So precious!

RIP John Wooden

Legendary UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden, passed away on Friday night at the age of 99.  Over the weekend, I have read numerous articles and heard many stories about Coach Wooden.  The thing is most of the stories were about him as a man, not a coach.  This is interesting, considering that Wooden is considered the greatest college basketball coach of all-time and is in the conversation as the greatest coach in any sport.  He led UCLA to 10 national titles and a record 88 straight victories, not too mention being an All-American player himself and winning a national title while at Purdue.   So when most of the stories I've heard are about his affect on people and not on the X's and O's of the game, it makes me think he was an even greater man than he was a coach.

I thought about sharing links to a number of articles about Wooden, but there are so many, its too hard to choose, so I will just encourage you to google some for yourself and read about a wonderful man.

Coach Wooden was a legendary coach, wonderful man, loving husband, astute teacher, great man of faith, a leader, and great molder of men. He made sure his teams and players did things the right way and treated all that he met with respect, humility, and friendliness.  I will share one good article about the coffee shop in Tarzana, CA that Wooden was a regular at for years.  I love hearing the stories other patron shared about him and it makes me wish I would have had the opportunity to share a meal with him.  To talk about life from a man who showed so much wisdom.  I have his Pyramid of Success sitting at my desk at work and have read a couple of his books, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court and John Wooden's UCLA Offense.  I've gain good insights from these books and can just imagine what it would have been like to talk to him. Maybe I will get that chance in heaven someday.  He was a devout Christian and lived a life that was not wasted.  Basketball was important, but Christ was supreme in his life and how he had such an impact on people.  I think this quote sums it up...

"I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere."

~ Coach John Wooden.