Richard Rohr

On Tuesday evening, FI hosted internationally renowned contemplative, speaker, and Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr for a talk on “Spirituality and Politics.” As you may remember, I had the chance to visit Richard’s Center For Action and Contemplation back in November, though Richard wasn’t there at the time. It was nice to finally have the chance to meet him. Richard’s main thing (to put it incredibly simply) is to return to the mystic traditions of early Christianity (and other spirituality) which have been lost in rational Western thought. He seeks to connect people with their inner ‘contemplative’ selves as a means of connecting to God. Pretty heady and incredible stuff.

During the day he met with the staff and gave us a nice introduction to the 6 “Stages of Consciousness” before his public talk that night. I was surprised and pleased to hear him ‘rep’ the Emerging Church which he thinks favorably of due to its open nature (the contemplative mind rejects rational black-or-white dualism). (Of course, I don’t mean to imply that other religious movements are anything less, because that would be dualistic itself.)

Anyway, as I am a designer, I did the posters and flyers for the event — my not-so subtle play on the title:




The event was very nice and I was able to take everything in despite being on photography duty.



Lammert blogged about it over at Shema and Melissa posted a nice article on our website (all photos also by me) so I won’t go into a major recap. It was just nice to be involved in the festivities and have a chance to chat with friends afterwords (here, Richard talks with Julia and Lammert).

I Am Faster Than P. Diddy

Yesterday, after 5 months and about 543 miles of training, I ran my first full marathon in 3 hours 40 minutes and 1 second.

Not an especially amazing time, but not too bad either.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this race was a New Year’s resolution of sorts, celebrating the 5th anniversary of becoming a runner in the first place (which was my resolution back in 2002). Marathons are kind of a strange beast: thousands of people run them, yet they are pretty subcultural. Mainstream enough for episodes of sitcoms from The Critic to Seinfeld to be devoted to them, yet nothing that would ever get the media coverage of a team sport. The Geneva Marathon itself was a little different (smaller) than the half marathons I’ve run in, so the spectacle wasn’t there, but rest assured that 42.16 kilometers is the same thing as 26.2 miles. And it was nice to have several co-workers and Hashers out along the course for support.

Having now participated in both, I can say that a half-marathon is much saner than the whole thing. The race started out great and I managed to keep up with the 3.5 hour pacer for 33 km, but then my legs started to really bother me so I had to back it off a bit, with my mind losing the battle to my body. It was definitely the most physically challenging thing I’ve ever done, but I made across the finish line and can now cross another thing off the “Life Goals” list. Now I just have to someday qualify for and run Boston...

And, as you can see from the title, I am indeed faster than P. Diddy (who “ran the city” of New York a couple years ago in just under 4 hours 15 minutes).

I’ll probably post some photos over the next week or so as they become available from friends and the race website.

Spider-Man 3: Why the Backlash?

In a rare feat for Geneva, Spider-Man 3 actually opened here before the states, so of course I went to see it on Tuesday night. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, though it may be weaker than the second installment and is certainly no Batman Begins. I was interested, though, in what the public and critical reaction would be since I can rarely tell with this type of thing—the second movie is pretty campy at points after all, and everyone ate it up.

After reading a few reviews today and an online chat or two, it seems that people are really hating on this movie. I don’t really understand why. First of all, yeah, there are some pretty contrived plot points, but the movie is based on a comic book. A comic book whose main conceit is that a guy got bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him superpowers. So who cares if an asteroid conveniently crashes right next to him in this one? Or if the Sandman randomly stumbles into a particle accelerator experiment at night? Secondly, to the people who complain about the “dance sequences,” I would ask how better to convey the myriad of emotions they represent without making Peter an even more unsympathetic character. I could totally see that stuff appearing in a comic book. Peter’s a nerd, after all, so it’s not all that surprising that this would be his way of showing off or letting loose. I could go on.

But whatever.

Here’s a list of genre films I’ve seen that Spider-Man 3 is much better than:

• X-Men 3: United (or whatever the heck its lame subtitle was)
• Fantastic Four
• Batman & Robin
• Batman Forever (a movie I also actually somewhat like)
• Daredevil
• Spawn
• Blade
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time
• 300
• Hulk
• Superman Returns (which wasn’t bad, just unremarkable)
• Ghost Rider (okay, I lied; I haven’t seen this one, but there is no way it could possibly be better)

aaannddd, though not based on comic books,
• Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III


P.S. On an unrelated note, Monster Squad is apparently being released on DVD. For years I have been the only one who remembers this crappy (I assume, though I thought it was awesome at the time) 80s flick about neighborhood kids who gang up a la Goonies to fight just about every archetypal monster possible. Put it in your Netflix que this summer for a bizarre nostalga trip that, alas, will also not be as good as Spider-Man 3.

[UPDATE:]
I saw the movie again this weekend (continuing my unofficial streak of catching every Spidey flick twice in the theater) and I still think it holds up. Perhaps even better the second time around. I wonder if any other summer movies will have such deep messages about forgiveness versus revenge. Just saying...