Actor Highlight: Jon Gries

I would like to recognize an actor who spends most of his time on screen in support of the main characters. I realized some time ago that any movie or television show is only as good as the depth of it's cast.

Jon Gries has spent much of his career in these supporting roles. I am thankful for it. I first paid attention to him when I was watching The Pretender in it's first run. He was Broots the geeky tech guy on that show. I would argue that he paved the way for some of my other favorite tv characters such as: Chloe O'brien (24), and Marshall Flinkman (Alias).

In the movie Napolean Dynamite Mr. Gries portrayed Napolean's Uncle Rico. We may not be able to watch this film any more do to over-quoting of it's lines but, his comic timing is undeniable in it.

Most recently Jon has been making an impression as a troubled father figure on ABC's LOST. We have seen him as a mourning single father, and a mean drunk in this layered dramatic performance. LOST is hands-down the best show on TV anyway, and he doesn't disappoint as Ben Linus' dad.

In truth I may not seek out shows/movies based on the fact that Jon Gries is in them, but, if I was riding the fence, it would seal the deal for me.
Recommendation?: Go back and seek out old episodes of The Prentender. It was a good show made better by a deep cast. And, keep an eye out for Jon Gries in future projects. He always delivers a solid performance.

- Posted from my iPhone

Umbrella Anyone?

It was raining again today. I know it's a vicious stereotype but it does rain a lot in Southwest Washington/Northwest Oregon. Today was no exception.

One of the unspoken side effects of all this rain is that we become hardened to the feeling of water falling on our heads. Unless you are playing 18 holes somewhere or happen to be watching your kids play soccer, we don't use umbrellas. At least that's what I thought. Today I saw them.

As I walked through downtown Portland I witnessed at least 5 people using these bulky aberrations. This led me to believe that, either these pedestrians were from out of town or, city-folks are simply a weaker ilk than those of us in the suburbs.

I'm just saying...

- Posted from my iPhone

(Still) Thankful To Be An American

Indulge me for a moment and imagine a couple of scenarios...

President Obama issues a decree stating that following Easter no one will work Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. This is on top of the Thursday and Friday that were already consider a part of the holiday weekend. At first it might be met with mirth and glee, yeah, a 7 day weekend. Then it sinks in. That's a week without pay. Now you're bugged and maybe a little nervous about getting your bills payed. Then someone explains that Obama's new heavy handed government style put emphasis on socialism and militaritism and neglected basic infrastructure. The already anemic power grid of your country, that ill-advisedly almost completely relies on Hydro-power, is failing. There is a drouth. A particularly nasty drouth that caught your "eggs in one basket" leaders somehow by surprise. Now your mad but it's too late. You and your circle of friends can do nothing more than sit on your hands and hope that the goverment takes care of you down the road.

Or this... You go to your mailbox to see what is there and still no mail. In fact, there hasn't been any mail for the last two and a half months. The last time anything was in there was the middle of January.
You go down and talk to your disgruntled Postman and he fills you in. When the earthquake happened a couple months ago it destroyed a bunch of bikes, some scooters, and a couple of trucks. Also, the post office collapsed and, though there was a group of postal employees who tried to salvage the mail from the wreckage, noone has even considered rebuilding yet. He assures you, however, that they are starting to try and deliver the mail again now. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that you leave this exchange feeling heartened and impressed by the progress that you have seen and heard there. After all, you recall one of your friends mentioning that none of those postal workers have gotten a paycheck since October, a full two months before the earthquake even happened.

I was listening to a news program entitled The World today and both of these stories were reported to be taking place somewhere in our world.

In Venezuela, the gruff dictator Jugo Chavez is running the world's seventh largest oil producing country into financial obscurity by his cruel and disastrous policies. His answer to a failure in their power grid? They are imposing fines on businesses that use too much power and forcing everyday people to stay home from work.

In Haiti, a previously inept goverment has been brought to it's bony knees by a 7.0 earthquake. This, former French colony, was poorest country in the Western Hemisphere before the disaster. Now, thanks in no small part to the corruption and incompetance of a pathetic excuse for a governing body, Haiti has suffered an estimated 230,000 deaths and $14 billion in financial losses. But, they started delivering the mail again this week.

On Sunday Obamacare became law. Since then I have been frustrated and disenchanted with the country, that is all around me. Today God helped me to gain some perspective. While we might say that we have begun down the slippery slope of bad government that is bankrupting Europe, suffocating Venezuela, or quite literally killing Haiti, we would do well to remember that we still do not live in any of those places. Did any of us truly believe that our fore fathers had written a perfect constitution or had setup an infallible system of government?during one of the debates this weekend someone pointed out that many of the processes in our goverment demand that everyone involved engage in fair play and observe a certain amount of gentleman-like self control. Guess what? We live in a country run by lawyers for whom phrases like "fair play" have no meaning. Someday our nation will fail. All man made institutions fail. The second law of thermodynamics states that "the entropy of an isolated system, that is not in equilibrium, will tend to increase over time". In other words, everything is breaking down. This mainly applies to our physical earth, but I would say it applies to our government too. We live in a fallen world people. However, Christ came here and validated our human existence. Phil. 1:21 says "To live is Christ, and to die is gain". Enjoy life and remember that it will only get better once we move through death.

- Posted from my iPhone

The Patience of Pouring

When I got to work this morning I grabbed my coffee cup and went to drink from the coffee well. In truth my source was a two quart airpot. These airpots are standard issue in the restaurant business, you have probably used one yourself. For some reason today, instead of my pumping action that I normally employ for such a task, I gave the handle one long sustained push. Out of the spout I drew a long satisfying draught of coffee. In fact, that single action was sufficient to fill my entire cup. A simple task simply completed with very little effort. The new ingredient that made this morning's cup different, from every other time I had used a pot like that, was patience. Patiently seeing this action through to it's completion.

As I sipped that cup of black coffee, I found myself asking how many other things I waste energy on trying to force them to happen? What things in my life might naturally reach their potential without my impatient meddling? I think sometimes you just need to take action in confidence and patiently see the results play out in their own time.


- Posted from my iPhone

My Wife

My wife is a stay at home mom. She is a somewhat non-traditional stay at home mom, since she is a part time hairstylist, but she is the primary care provider for our children. It needs to said, however, that a stay at home mom is so much more than the provider of childcare. Having a wife at home loving and rearing your children in a beautiful and responsible way is invaluable.


Every man should be so lucky as to have a wife with strong faith in God and a firm grasp of what is most important in her life and in her kids lives. A nanny or a grandma can never fully understand what it is that your kids need and what it is that you want them to have. No surrogate mom can pour out the love that can be felt from a warm biological mother. No substitute parent will work as diligently to instill the values that you want your little ones to pick up on. Certainly you wouldn't expect any daycare worker to do as good a job balancing the one on one time that every kid needs to learn and develop. At this point you are probably asking why I felt it neccessary to reel all this off. I haven't said anything more than a simple list of platitudes that you could read in any number of Mother's Day cards. The truth is that this should read more like a Valentine's Day card. I am expounding on the incredible qualities that my wife possesses, but even more so I would like to try to explain why this makes me love her all the more.

I am not trying to convince you that she is perfect. Diana is not perfect. Funny thing is that she would be the first to tell you that. Noone is more self-critical. Noone has more trepidation over whether she is making the right choices for our children than my wife herself. What I hope to help you understand is that this self-evaluating, humble behavior is one of the things that makes her qualified to be a mom. Her realistic outlook on life is also one of the things that makes her an outstanding spouse.

I have noticed a tendency, in the moms that I know, to devalue themselves as a wife. As though the more they settle into the role of mothering and being a "mom", the less they feel valuable as a wife to their husband. Even more to the point, they begin to see themselves as undesirable. Somehow society has convinced them that the two things are diametrically opposed. They have been sent the message that being a motherly figure is not sexy. Filling sipper cups, changing diapers, and rehearsing the alphabet, are all things that are said to drain them of their sexuality. I beg to differ.

When I look at my wife I see a real woman. She's not a high school girl anymore. Praise the Lord! Nothing against high school girls, mine was one when we fell in love, but they do not possess the traits that make a good wife. Do you remember the old country song "Older Women Make Beautiful Lovers" by the Statler Brothers? It sounds trite and maybe even insulting to say this about my wife, but it's true. I think that song may have been about the virtues of cougar hunting, but I mean it in the most straight forward way possible. I would never want a doe-eyed young girl to follow me around bobbing her head in mindless agreement to everything that I said. As a man I need a partner who is an intellectual equal. I need someone who is willing to put me in my place when I need it. I need someone who can sense when I need support and be there to hold my elbow and help me along. There is almost nothing as powerful and devastatingly heart-warming as knowing that a mature, beautiful, clever, and real woman, like Diana, is making a conscious to decision to continue being with me each day. She isn't here because she is a scared young girl or a trapped old vixen. She is a gift from God, and she is purposefully making a choice to be my wife.

I can't speak for every man out there. I don't even think I have exactly said these words out loud to anyone before so I can't even tell you how they might react to what I am saying here, but I have a very strong suspicion that most men would agree with me. Deep down we all desire "to have and to hold" a real woman. My wife Diana is real and I thank God daily that he has sent her into my life.


-Posted from my iPhone

Think of nothing.

I sat in my livingroom the other day watching my 2 week old daughter, Olivia, sit in her Boppy pillow. She was not sleeping, as is usually the case, she had her eyes wide open staring at the front door. She would occasionally hold one of her hands up, and look at it quizzically, twisting it slowly at the wrist. Mostly, however, she just sat there blinking the sleep out of her eyes and exuding innocence and contentedness. She seemed to be thinking about nothing and doing it with some skill. In fact this is probably not true. Given her limited motor skills and her raw undeveloped sense of reason, this whole scene in her Boppy pillow could have required a great deal of effort on her part. I would like to think she was just relaxing though. I would like to think that she was taking a moment to think about nothing at all.

Quite a few years ago my Pastor taught a world religions class to a group of us in High School. The book that we used in that class was called The World's Religions and was written by a man named Huston Smith. It is an excellent resource on many things religious and I continue to refer to it to this day. In this book Mr. Smith describes one of the "yogas" of Hinduism know as Raja yoga. In Raja yoga the purpose is to find your way to god through psychophysical exercises. In fact it actually includes the exercises that most of us associate with the term yoga. The thing is to use all different means to accomplish a state of relaxation and meditation. I am over simplifying here but, the Hindu believes that you can focus your brain beyond the physical self and commune with god on a purely spiritual level. While I am not a Hindu, and I think they take it too far, I do wonder if we couldn't do with a little relaxation and meditation. Even one of the Biblical fathers, Isaac, is recorded as having used some similar practice. In Genesis 24:63a we read "And Isaac went out to meditate in the fields toward evening."

I will bet that watching me throw Isaac into the same new age colored, bag as the Hindu makes you a little uncomfortable. It probably should. The world doesn't need another wishy-washy, "many paths to the same god", speech. That is all we seem to hear anymore. What I am saying is quite different. I just think that the misled Hindu can give us great insight into what the human mind is truly capable of. I find their experiments in psychophysical exercises intriguing, and sad. They seek truth in the method of looking deeper into themselves to see god. In fact, on a grand scale they would even have us believe that we are god. This is where we must part ways. I will never follow the Hindu into the blasphemy that we need no more god than is already in ourselves. I am convinced, however, that meditation can, and even should, have a place in the Christian life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it in a beautiful matter of fact way in his book Life Together, "The period of personal meditation is to be devoted to the Scriptures, private prayer, and intercession, and it has no other purpose. There is no occasion here for spiritual experiments". I couldn't agree more. I do not think that we should try to dig deeper into our spiritual selves in some kind of experiment. I think that we need to do as Paul suggested in 2 Corinthians 10:5b "take every thought captive to obey Christ". This scripture is speaking to the idea that we should try to take control of our thoughts and our minds and hold them captive to Christ.

Sometimes there is no better thing to do than to clear our minds and listen to God. Try to follow Olivia's blissful example and think of nothing.



- Posted from my iPhone