Wading through life

We all love good movie quotes, some of us more than others. Here’s what the American Film Institute has to say on the topic, with their top 100 movie quotes ever.

http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/quotes.aspx#list

Naturally, film classics like Casablanca, the Godfather movies, The Wizard of Oz and others occupy a good portion of the list, but a few modern classics like When Harry Met Sally (#33), Silence of the Lambs (#21), Jerry Maguire (#25), Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (#85) made the list as well. See what you think.

I found the list of 400 nominations quite entertaining as well. Here’s a link to the PDF to download: http://www.afi.com/Docs/tvevents/pdf/quotes400.pdf. It’s only 85K, so it should load up pretty quick.

Some of my favorites off that list, which didn’t make the top 100 cut, include:

• "One million dollars." (by Dr. Evil in Austin Powers)
• "Have you ever danced with devil in the pale moonlight?" (by The Joker in Batman)
• "Okay. But I get to be on top." (by Josh in Big)
• "They may take away our lives, but they’ll never take away our freedom!" (by William Wallace in Braveheart)
• "Be the ball." (by Ty Webb in Caddyshack)
• "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" (by Max Cady in Cape Fear)
• "Yippie-ki-yay, motherf*****" (by John McClane in Die Hard)
• "First rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club." (by Tyler Durden in Fight Club)
• "I’ve been slimed." (by Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters)
• "Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next." (by Maximus in Gladiator)
• "I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?" (by Jack Byrnes in Meet the Parents)
• "I’m you number one fan." (by Annie Wilkes in Misery)
• "One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…" (by some kids in A Nightmare on Elm Street)
• "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." (by Inigo in The Princess Bride"
• "We all go a little mad sometimes." (by Norman in Psycho)
• "Bring out the gimp." (by Zed in Pulp Fiction)
• "They call it a ‘Royale with Cheese.’" (by Vincent in Pulp Fiction)
• "Get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’." (by Andy in The Shawshank Redemption)
• "I do wish I could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner." (by Hannibal in The Silence of the Lambs)
• "Do, or do not. There is no try. (by Yoda in Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back"
• "You’re so money and you don’t even know it." (by Trent in Swingers)

I’m sure many people in my life would say I struggle with this:

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." C.S. Lewis

I don’t know where Lewis said / wrote that; I pulled it from another blog that I read once in a while. But it seems to fit. My question is: what are the consequences of the "unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable" heart?

I’ve realized that in my life, I need to see somebody else’s life operating better than mine for me to desire what they have enough to want to change. So, while I’ll admit to burying my heart six feet deep, I haven’t actually seen the alive heart operating to such a degree in the lives of people around me that it makes me want to dig mine out of its casket. I see dysfunction that is roughly comparable to my own.

So, I’m left weighing the perceived consequences of sticking to my guns and hosting a stony heart. "Oh…I can make myself vulnerable to more pain…and have what they have??!??! Great…I’ll PASS."

Then there’s Jesus, standing off in the distance, arms crossed, foot tapping, heading shaking. And I know he’s thinking: "Joel, what the FRICK do you keep comparing yourself to other people for."

And I realize I need to go find a shovel and start digging after all.

My friend said he was, quote: "troubled" by the Pistons loss on Thursday. I don’t know that I was thoroughly troubled by it, but I was rather disappointed. Not sure if I’d rather have the miraculous loss of Game 5, where the Pistons should have won, but didn’t, or the completely trashy loss of Game 7, where the Pistons didn’t really play well enough to deserve a win, but could have pulled it out down the stretch had a few plays gone their way.

I screwed my back up yesterday playing basketball. Doesn’t look like it’s going to be anything significant since it isn’t hurting much today, but it was a bugger yesterday. It was the first time in my life that I apparently became injured for no good reason besides my body giving out in some way or another. And it’s sort of demoralizing. Makes me feel old. I planted to pivot for a jumper at the top of the key and my lower back suddenly hurt and I went to my knees. No pop, no awkward movement, no fall…just pain.

Mom said a chiropractor told her that most back injuries aren’t because of one occurrence–they usually are "a long time coming" and something finally triggers it. So, my back probably had been coming to this point from some of the heavy lifting we did when moving dirt for the retaining wall; maybe too the increased running I’ve been doing and the lack of weight training in my life the past few months. But, that’s all speculation.

It is hot around here.

I really appreciated what John had to say at church today. Good stuff. Inspires me to continue seeking what the Lord has for me to do to impact the people of Jackson by being the creator made in his likeness that I am. I also loved the concept that we often seek refuge in lands that we were never made to settle in. We find refuge in our churches and their programs, our relationships and their emotions, our jobs and their satisfactions. But we were made to take refuge in the Lord and his strength (and his comfort and provision and holiness and healing… . The list goes on.)

Does the person of strong faith perceive risk the same way I do? Are things not "risky" at all if a person has the faith of a mustard seed, or perhaps child-like faith? I’m thinking through this whole "made in the image of God" idea and weighing which characteristics I desire in my life vs. those that are actually godly / biblical.

One thing I’ve desired is to be a "risk-taker"–a person who isn’t swayed by insurmountable odds, the words of nay-sayers or a bleak outlook; someone who is best when his back is against the wall and puts things on the line when it counts most. And for a while I’ve equated my desire of risk with a desire for faith.

But in processing those ideas in light of what I mentioned above, I’m not sure if it’s a godly desire. Was God a risk-taker? Did he consider the act of creation to be risky? No; it was an outpouring of love. Did he consider sending Christ to be a calculated gamble…"Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t…but I’m going to ‘step out in faith’ and believe that it will…"? Nope. Did Jesus find ministering to the sick and needy risky? I don’t think so; seem more like acts of love and simple reflections of who he was. What about going to the cross? Did that stretch his risk-tolerance? Maybe it stretched his will (…not my will, but thine…), but I don’t think he thought all the chips were on the table when he was being nailed.

I seems to me that grounded spiritual faith should overshadow physical risk-perception. Great faith should say it’s more risky to doubt God in the spiritual than it is to step out on a limb in the physical. In other words, taking a risk in the world’s eyes (or our own fleshy eyes) should not appear as a risk at all through spiritual eyes.

If faith is what Hebrews 11 says it is: "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see," then there isn’t much risk involved at all, because we are sure and certain of the outcome, like God and Christ are.

So, I’ve resolved that my desire for la viva loca (the wild life) is pretty fleshy. It’s a scream for adrenaline masked as a longing for deep faith; it would actually be a faith-killer requiring ignorance rather than insight.

Well…I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while now. And I finally did. I gave my blog a summertime spruce up. Gone is the earthy color-scheme that fit so well when I launched my blog late last summer. It’s time for something bright and fun–like the screaming blue "Look-at-me-it’s-my-birthday" shirt I wore to work today.

I’m also slightly modifying my blog subtitle–reflecting the less-cynical attitude toward life I’ve been carrying for the past few months.

This also marks the high-water mark for blogs in a single day. I think this makes four I’ve posted today.

T-minus less than two hours. Go ‘stons!

Wouldn’t this just be nuts?

"…And I’m putting some mythical money down on Darko, too, but that’s just because I have a crazy theory about how Larry’s been setting us up for two years, and I have to hedge against the possibility that the kid is actually really good and he’s maybe about to come off the bench in the fourth and hit a bunch of jump hooks over a tired Duncan to put things away…"

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=neel/050623