Remember the other day I said how I love Asian cinema? Well I couldn't resist sharing the theme song of one of my favorite Asian cinema stars...Mothra (or Mosura as he's known in his native land). You gotta love Mothra, he's got his own groupies!
Last night I write a post about unity in the body of Christ. This morning God leads me to Psalm 133:1 in my morning scripture reading...
How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!
In the film, we see Li's character as a child growing up in the home of his father, a wushu master. In once scene we see the father battle with the head of another household who argue that their style of wushu is superior. Even as the boy becomes an adult these battles over who is the greatest master continue, escalating until Li's character kills another master during a battle motivated by revenge. The circle of revenge then continues, and members of Li's family are also killed. To make a long story short, our hero goes away for many years and eventually returns with a new outlook on life. It was during a scene where he is meeting with an old friend after being away that God spoke. He says to his friend (at least according to the subtitles): "We have to be very strong for us and for our people. The reason foreigners look down on us is because we are not united. For several years now, we surely were our own worst enemies." Immediately my brain went to one of the things that has troubled me the most in my spiritual journey of the last year or so…the subject of the lack of unity in the body of Christ. I seem to encounter people, fellow believers, who spend way too much time looking for things to complain about concerning other churches way too often. Everything from style of worship music to how a pastor dresses to whether or not someone ended a prayer with "in Jesus name…" seems to be fair game. In all honesty, it's making me sick. Pastor Craig Groeschel from Lifechurch.tv said well it when in one of his messages he pointed out that Christians are known more for what we are against than what we are for, and unfortunately, what we against the most is each other. We are our own worst enemies. Why do so many have no interest in the Gospel ? Why do so many look down on it? We are not united. Groeschel preached a sermon earlier this summer called "Lord Make Us One." The whole sermon is great (check it out here), but one thing he pointed out really hit me. Every Christian needs to hear this. We need to remember that as believers we have just one enemy. It's not the church that likes their music a bit louder than you like. It's not the church where they use King James only. It's not even the church down the road that has triple your attendance. His name is Lucifer, and I'll be he likes nothing more than seeing Christians arguing with each other over the stupidest things. "Lord Make Us One," what a great prayer. Add to that the name of the movie that in a strange way brought this all to mind for me again…"Lord Make Us Fearless." 
I love the cinema of the Asian world. Whether from China, Hong Kong, Japan…their animation, their giant monsters, and especially their martial arts films intrigue me. The other night I was finishing watching the movie "Fearless" staring Jet Li. I was just sitting back enjoying this beautifully photographed and skillfully choreographed martial arts epic when suddenly God snuck up on me. As a big movie fan, I love it when God brings something to my heart through a movie.
Politics is a subject the interests me a great deal, but I don't generally talk about it too much on my blog. This, however, I could not pass up as it is perhaps one of the sickest things I've ever seen in my life. Watch if you can as Michael Moore, appearing on Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC calls the fact that Hurricane Gustav may hit New Orleans as the Republican National Convention starts "proof that there is a God in Heaven."
That was just a short clip. The entire segment featuring Moore's appearance can be found online as well, in which Olbermann even goes further to point out how ironic it is this is happening after one of the gang over at Focus on the Family called for people to pray for rain during Obama's speech at Invesco Field a few days ago. Now that story, I'll give you, was stupid, childish, and, quite frankly, Dr. Dobson should be ashamed. But with this hurricane, we're dealing with lives at stake. This is not a political issue. I don't care who you align yourself with or you plan do vote for...if you believe there is a God in Heaven, pray for the people of the Gulf Coast region.
Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise has called on Moore to apologize and I second that. Olbermann too, for that matter. I guess the Democrats can be thankful that nobody actually watches MSNBC.
I flew back to Denver from our Puppet Ministry Summerfest in San Antonio this morning (I'll try to post some stuff about the festival later). I was anticipating that DIA might be a zoo today, what with the Democratic National Convention starting in town early this week. Even on Thursday when I headed out there were volunteers all over the airport with signs that said "Ask me for help." The TSA people even had shiny new blue uniforms on. Today there was a lot more people there representing the convention, and I even encountered two celebrities.
As I got onto the train to go from Concourse B to the baggage claim area I noticed someone who looked familiar getting onto the next car over. Turns out it was none other than the "reverend" Al Sharpton. I snapped the above picture from my part of the train. He had a full entourage, as you can see. He spotted me taking the picture and smiled and waved. I agree without almost nothing the man says, but I smiled and waved back.
He posed for photos with a bunch of orange-shirted convention helpers. There were plenty of news photographers all over the main terminal.
As I came up the escalator from the train I saw many people looking for convention travelers. Most of them held "Obama 08" signs, which for the life of me I can't figure out how that would assist in finding the people they are looking for. Right in the center someone held a large sign that said "Fox News Channel." It caught my eye, and then I saw someone walk up to that person...it was Alan Colmes from "Hannity and Colmes." Now if it had been his partner, Mr. Hannity I probably would've run up, shook his hand and said "you're a great American." I settled for just snapping a pic of Mr. Colmes.
This was probably the only brushes with celebrity I'll have during this whole convention thing. I am just so glad I don't work downtown!!!
I'm sitting here watching the Olympics as I mess around on the computer and you can officially count me in the ranks of those really having a hard time believing these Chinese girls in the gymnastics competition are 16. My kids go to school with girls that look older than these tumblers!
I don't usually get into the Olympics that much, but I am enjoying watching some of the competitions this year. However, catching this video today has me itching for the Winter Olympics. Just two years to go!
I'm really behind on updating everyone on this year's I-Fest, The International Festival of Christian Puppetry and Ventriloquism. One Way Street sponsors this conference every year and it takes a lot of work. Every year is a challenge, but this year we knew going in there were going to be some big issues to deal with. So I'm really feeling bad I haven't updated the blog world on how well the conference went. Mainly I'm feeling bad because the awesome week we had was result of the fact that God came through big time. He's faithful 100% and we want to give Him all the glory for a great week!
Our theme this year was "Fully Committed," and God displayed that He was fully committed to his children throughout this incredible week. Between construction on the college campus which eliminated the normal cafeteria from use, and the challenges of the economy and the impact of gas prices...we wondered at times how we would pull off this year's festival. Fact is, we didn't...God did!
At the One Way Street website you can check out the "Virtual I-Fest" reports that we sent out to our customers a few weeks after the event. It gives you a chance to check out some of the highlights, see some of the new products that were introduced, and download some free workshop audio as well as the audio for the morning devotionals. Here are the links:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
I wanted to share a few photos of my own as well. It was a great week!
Ventriloquist Tony Borders with his buddy Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear (read that one again, always loved that name) opened up the festival on Monday night.
Here's Dave Privett and his buddy Milo from PlaySoup teaching one of the many puppet manipulation workshops.
Carrie Murphy was a One Way Street intern with me waaaaay back in 1993. Here she is teaching some advanced choreography. She also directed this year's Puppetry Dream Team.
Ella Havell from the UK and her team, Smile Puppet Ministry, shared during the International Night program on Wednesday.
Philip Haught is co-directing our One Way Street Ministry Team this summer. He picked up a new character at I-Fest, Sammy the Shark.
Brian Cockerham was a Louisiana State Trooper until a few years ago when he felt the call to go into full-time ministry at I-Fest. Now he travels all over with his ventriloquist partners. He was a featured performer on Tuesday night.
David Hellyer from the UK was another one of our international guests. David is an amazing puppeteer and puppet builder. We were thrilled to have him share in some of the workshops this year.
The one and only Amy Harder teaches on the finer points of Stretch-a-Belly puppet choreography. She ought to know how to do it, she invented the things.
The One Way Street Ministry Team performed once in the evening program, once in a showcase without curtains, and served as conference assistants throughout the week.
This team came all the way from Puerto Rico, and shared a performance on International night.
Evangelist Mel LaMar is not only an accomplished ventriloquist, but also an amazing juggler. This year his daughter Ali joined in the act.
Friday night featured a performance by the P.O.W.E.R. Company puppet team, which is the team I grew up on. It was actually the final performance for the team under the direction of Christy Watkins. I got to present a special award to Christy for over 25 years of commitment not just to her team, but to helping train many other teams around the world. I cried like a baby.
This evening I've been watching the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics. First a side note, there is something seriously wrong with the world when BMX biking is an Olympic event but not baseball. OK, off the soap box.
I always find the creativity of the opening presentation to be interesting, if not a little weird, and this year was no exception. But as I was watching tonight I started to feel like something looked familiar. I saw this giant glowing ball with people floating and swirling around it and suddenly I'm picturing Star Wars Episode III. Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Pagueis the Wise?
I suppose my Star Wars geek brain has cooked in the Tatooine suns too much, but this year's opening ceremonies had me picturing Episode III's "opera." That scene had me scratching my head a bit. I mean it looked a bit like they were watching some sort of soap bubble performance artist being accompanied by the chants of Tibetan monks. Turns out it may have been the opening ceremonies of the Coruscant Olympics.
Ryan Frank is the man behind Kidz Matter which publishes the awesome new children's ministry resource K! Magazine. He blogs about children's ministry along with Jim Wideman and Evan Doyle over at thewayweseeitblog.com. He's also the children's pastor at his church in Sweetser, IN and our One Way Street Ministry Team had the opportunity to minister at his church last Sunday night. Ryan wrote a great post about their visit which also talks about how to have an effective puppet team in your church. Go check out the post here.
Yikes, it's been like a month since I've posted anything. Bad blogger, baaaaaad blogger. Well I've been busy. I'll share a bit about what I've been busy with as soon as I get my pictures a bit more organized. Anyhow, this week I've been slowly getting back to the office, but also getting some rest. Part of "rest" was to take in "The Dark Knight" on opening day! No that's not me in Joker garb above.
In the summer of 1989, I lined up on opening day to catch Tim Burton's "Batman" at the first show of the day. Back then midnight shows were not as common, if my couch potato brain remembers correctly this show started around lunch time. Burton's film is a classic! As entertaining today as it was when it was released 19 years ago (ouch...I just felt a hair turn gray).
When the series relaunch, "Batman Begins," was released a few years ago I wanted to see it, but I didn't hurry out to the theater. In fact, I ended up having to wait for the DVD. "Batman Begins" was an excellent film. I think it's fair to say it's a better film than Burton's, but the two exist on different levels. My fondness for the "Batman" of 1989 has not diminished. Burton's film is otherworldly, taking place in a Gotham that could never be reality. The Gotham of the new films seems like a real American city.
I think the reason I had to see "The Dark Knight" on opening day was the return of the Joker. While the Batman of the comics has dealt with many different baddies, it's the Joker that makes Batman...well Batman. In one scene the Joker even tells the caped crusader, "you complete me." We're not talkin' "Jerry Maguire" type of "you complete me" here either.
I almost hesitate to say it, but the 30 year reign of Richard Donner's "Superman" at the top the heap of superhero films may be over. "The Dark Knight" is quite possibly the best superhero movie ever made. It had me on the edge of my seat for 2 1/2 hours. It's tense, gritty, disturbing, and even funny at times. I look forward to seeing it again.
