That title jumped off the the cover of the latest issue of Best Life magazine yesterday, so I picked up a copy, and I found the excellent article “Chasing the Athlete Within” by Charles Hirshberg. Looking for anything to help me stay motivated in my pursuit of middle-aged flabby fitness, I jumped right on his article. And I found this great and relevant quote on page 45…

So in my 40s, as I stared at my humped, flabby self in the mirror, it was as plain as the ample nose on my face: What I hated was not exercise at all but the tight-jocked, trash-talking, mean-a** sports culture that often surrounds it.

Yep, it’s time for another installment of Guy Kawasaki’s wisdom. Check his post about public speaking. I love this line…

I hope that many of you are are called upon to give speeches–it’s the closet thing to being a professional athlete that many of us will achieve.

It’s also a great post because it points the way to this article by – ready for this? – Mike Evangelist on what it’s like to prepare to be a part of Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches.

Remember a few years back when Fellowship Church made the news for painting the church name on the roof?

They were trendsetters, apparently!

Today marks the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin. I’ve read his Autobiography, but I plan to jump back into it again today in honor of his 300th.

After leaving the Y this morning, I stopped at Starbucks to hang out/work/look busy and I did something I’m not in the habit of doing: I read the New York Times PRINT EDITION! (I gotta tell ya…I love reading the news digitally, but there will always be a certain charm, if you will, about thumbing through actual pages and getting the ink smudges on your fingers.)

Anyway, I read a pretty neat little op-ed contribution by Stacy Schiff all about Dr. Franklin.

Here are some clips…

Franklin was, too, the founder who came the furthest. He alone spent six decades as a British subject before embracing the revolutionary cause, to which he applied the zeal of a convert. He neither hailed from an elite nor subscribed to one.

…

For all his ingenuity he was less a manufacturer of ideas than a purveyor of them…

…

Where it is unclear if James Madison even had a personality, Franklin is all pluck and charm. Irony was his natural idiom.

…

He was equal parts Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Bugs Bunny.

Schiff includes this rather obscure, but still apropos quote from Franklin himself…

We are fighting for the dignity and happiness of human nature. Glorious it is for the Americans to be called by providence to this post of honor.

More from Schiff’s article…

A few years later he offered up what may be the best one-line definition of this country. The New World, he asserted, judged a man not by who he was, but by what he could do. And what Franklin could do was staggering. His legacy is not a political philosophy but a protean existence, act after act of bold curiosity, brash risk-taking, raw ingenuity. Once those constituted a definition of the American character. Today they would more likely be termed “hypomania,” a fair diagnosis for any individual who manages single-handedly to found a library, fire company, police force, hospital, university, insurance company, sanitation department and militia.

Schiff concludes with this…

How dear is he to us? Well, who would you rather have in your wallet, George Washington or Ben Franklin? He makes us feel rich.

Happy 300th, Ben! You do indeed make us all feel rich…

Gute Nacht. Buonas noches. Bonne nuit. Buona notte. Boa noite.

And to think he didn’t even say “Good night!”

See y’all later…I’m pooped!

OK, the Falcons (and the suddenly-mortal Michael Vick) had their little meltdown. Other than that, I’m not a real big NFL fan. But I thought the Colts were going to win today. And I thought Da Bears were going to win today. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. In the words of our church’s resident deputy sheriff/comedian…

I’m not taking any stock market advice from you, either!

That was after I publicly picked the Colts to win it all during this morning’s service. But I digress…

Anyway, I was on the elliptical machine at the Y when that dude in the picture made what appeared to me to be a clean interception with about 5:26 left in the game. Apparently, the game got a little more interesting after that.

But at any rate, since I don’t really have a dog in the fight anymore, and in honor of that Troy Polamalu-humuhumu-nukunuku-a-puaa–mele-kalikimaka guy and his hair, and in honor of my bud, Chad Canipe, I’m officially jumping on the Steelers’ bandwagon from here on out.

(Just hurry up and get on with the commercials…)

OK, this isn’t going to be very politically correct, but it is kind of funny! The picture above is a screen shot of a typical Blogger comment page. You know, the place where you have to decipher some sort of coded message in order to leave a comment, thanks to the stupid comment spam out there?

Anyway, the secret decoder ring message on this one reminded me of Rush Limbaugh’s very descriptive term…

hyphenated, furry-legged femgals…

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course…

The Village Vanguard was – and is – one of the hotbeds of jazz. The funky little 123-seat triangular venue has become a mecca for musicians and music lovers alike. And some reviewers/listeners think that John Coltrane’s 1961 stint at the Vanguard represents the best live jazz ever recorded. It ain’t too bad for a Sunday night unwind…

Dick Staub said this on his site recently…

People are talking about spiritual things. Gallup says in America alone, 82% of us are on a spiritual journey; 52% have talked about it in the previous 24 hours. The same pattern can be seen around the world. Ever notice that Jesus tapped into the conversation in a variety of ways?

He goes on to show that Jesus addressed and carried the spiritual conversations of His day in different ways, at different times, with different people.

It really seems to be true: people all around us are engaging in spiritual – though not necessarily Christian, or even religious – conversations. But just as in Jesus’ time, the key to furthering the conversation is to listen when people talk and meet people where they are. If it worked for Jesus, why are we so interested in doing something else?

How are you engaging in the spiritual conversations of those around you?

(NOTE: If you’re (a) not a Southern Baptist, or (b) don’t give a rip about SBC goings-on, please accept my apology in advance. Feel free to proceed on to the next post…nothing to see here. Thank you.)

In light of the recent and ongoing “business” involving our International Mission Board, I found this Baptist Press article interesting. And maybe somewhat disturbing. It’s this line that makes me go “hmmmmmm…”

In reality, sober involvement with these issues holds promise for greater purity of fellowship and purpose and promotes a stronger, more singular witness to the world.

Nettles lists nine “tracks on which the Southern Baptist reformation must move forward.” Here are the nine tracks (Some cursory comments by yours truly may follow at a later time today.)

— Baptists must remember the depths to which they had sunk before the conservative resurgence. The SBC must not fall into a lethargic holding pattern of premature satisfaction, Nettles writes, but must remember that the church is to be always bringing itself into line with Scripture.

— Baptists must hold fast in teaching and living out their confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Nettles writes, recounting how Baptists have been a confessional people since their beginning at the outset of the 17th century.

— Baptists must build their churches with doctrinally informed expository preaching as the cornerstone. Nettles notes that the embrace of inerrancy does not necessarily guarantee biblical preaching.

— Baptists must recover the work of evangelism that is biblically authentic. Nettles spends two chapters showing the dangers of pragmatic, formulaic approaches to evangelism and calls for the proclamation of a full-orbed message that exposes in sinners the depth and terminal nature of their illness and sets forth the healing balm of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. A fully biblical approach to evangelism will produce regenerate church members, versus formulaic approaches to evangelism that offer cheap grace, he writes.

— Baptists must recapture the complementarity of Law and Gospel. That is, Baptists must return to preaching the Law to show sinners their ruined state and drive them to Christ, Nettles writes. There is a fundamental relationship between Law and Gospel that must be part of the preaching and teaching within the SBC, he writes, noting that Baptists throughout their history have preached with a careful articulation of both.

— Baptists must recover a grace-centered theology. Nettles calls Baptists to return to the biblical message that salvation is completely a sovereign work of God that involves all three persons of the Trinity.

— Baptists must, in their proclamation and teaching, clearly articulate a fully Trinitarian doctrine of divine revelation and salvation. A major aspect of this, Nettles writes, is a commitment to a Christ-centered hermeneutic — interpreting the entire Bible in terms of redemption that consummates in Christ Himself.

— Baptists must build their doctrine of the church upon the whole witness of Scripture. Nettles calls on Baptists to return to their foundational principle of regenerate church membership that includes calling doctrinally astute pastors to teach and lead. Baptists also rediscover biblical church discipline to uphold a biblical standard of holiness within the body, he writes.

— Baptists must recover a theology that will allow them to develop a comprehensive Christian worldview not only philosophically but in personal spirituality. Contemporary Baptists must have their minds renewed by Scripture and be equipped to view all of life through its lens, Nettles writes.