Beach blonde highlights, I know you’ve had some rough

Flights and turbulence has been carrying these days but I

Can see in your eyes you’ve been looking for recompense and

A redo from the deleted days of your haze, now Italian in style

You claimed it wasn’t worthwhile and you have it away, now a baby

On the way, 15 hour shifts to come, living low income riding the

Bus, 405 freeway was yesterday, now you have a better getaway

Aborting an option, escaping not today, running most certainly,

Incredibly loud it is now your voice in my rear view mirror, its

All I want to hear, your heart exposed now, in rows and rows of

Understanding, you keep paddling with reprehension moving your

Way, but slowly its creeping in those bleached beached highlights

They gotta go cause I love the old you, it was the closest to you,

Sand shifting in between my toes, you backing out with lights on

Now, life inside your shoes gives me clues to love you better the

Next time you let me in again, words shifting, feet loose to this

Walk down a new view with a new you, blonde is so Orange town,

Please turn it around cause I am struggling to love you without a

List of conditions, stay the same the way its in the yearbook, now

I gotta run and change my look

B ank Lady

Bank Lady set it steady and stern

You got to come hither and learn

Pennies down, shame in town,

Relatives sent money, wasted away on sweet

Honey, she said you’re in the red, I said I am

Better off dead sue me instead, Valley Views

Been coming in, shadows lurking who am I trusting

I am now rusting and splitting at the seam, who is on my

Team, widow’s mite ain’t my spite or my claim or my name

Rather I feel the same sound coming down my spine, where

Has all my money gone and why all the dine in wine and

Wasted time, but it keeps coming with free coffee in hand

I walked out that door to smell the soar and sly look in my

Mind, this day forth I am gonna stay poor instead and

Assume the position that I got to get humble to the max

Out and credit out the blood I owe like mud stuck in slidding

And used to gliding free of murky waters but now its clear

In the gutters, I’d rather be used to poverty then sweating

The prosperity and living the dream all the time, for what

I have is what I am accounted for not the what’s and should

Haves of tomorrow but what I’ve been given today

She said it loud for all the eaters to hear, wearing her favorite clothes

Was the best her toes could grip in a foot in the right direction, best friends

In my section, sunsets chasing instead, now all I got is regret from past days of not

Loving you the way you were anyway, birthdays come and go, loved ones always pressing

And testing the loving inside of me cause recently I have had a problem with dying for it

Hasn’t happened that often and I’ve glistened and listened to the wrong voices of self and

Introspection, wasting away it seems in a haze as a young adolescent when the world is

Vibrant ready for me to conquer, delayed infantility has brought some hostility, now I can

Silly see what’s gotten into me, been planning to be apart of greatness just been having a hard time

Getting out of bed and thoughts in my head say instead I should be changing it all now and going

Out with a bang, but thoughts still hang, she wore her favorite for her favorite people, she thought and

Regarded the best intentions for the best friends, love is waiting, will I participate, who will I dress the best

For, for I believe its rent on the floor of despair and suffering, for love has been asking: what have you done for

Me recently?

Thanks to my redboxed hyped up vacation and the after effects of morphing back into Kansas City life I saw the preview for Courageous. As in coming next week and all I knew was creators of Fireproof, hmm… I must check this out. The first 3 films from the Kendrick brothers. And this is an overview, not a line by line of three movies, were in my opinion not very good. Now, money/production costs were are are mind blowing.

Flywheel in 2003 grossed 10 million dollars and was made for 10,000. Flywheel I have not seen I have just seen the trailer and that’s about that. I can understand your first film being that way. And in a recent interview with Stephen Kendrick(writer/producer) he said “it was a bit disorganized.” So, no worries guys. After learning from it they both realized that they needed to do something a bit more epic. In 2006 they released Facing The Giants. Now, this film was a great cliche concept but was horribly executed in acting and well acting. Its not that Hollywood does it right but one thing they do do right and they do jettison away from quality many times but they do find great actors that can deliver even the most insipid of story lines.

Facing The Giants was about a coach, a Christian man, struggling with a wife who can’t have kids, literally and a team that stinks and a broken car. All glossed over with really loud Chris Tomlin And Third Day songs. I didn’t hate this movie I liked it a ton its just quality was a little abysmal but I respect these filmmakers because they are making an effort and I think this one made 10 million.

in 2008 Fireproof blew up in terms of a small budgeted 500,000 movie making 33 million when it was all said and done. But again, acting was a little bad and a lot bad in some parts. The story was awesome, Godly, good, cheesy at times but Kirk Cameron I love you but you are a bad actor. Fireproof was about a fireman who was struggling in his marriage and pornography and priorities. He realizes his marriage is not fireproof as he is a fireman and goes into fires all the time and gets recreated very well midway through the film. In the end Captain Kirk realizes that the love dare book his dad gives him is the answer. In the end God is the answer. He needs Jesus and that is how he solves his marriage.

This may sound trite or like I don’t care but I do care. There are two mediums: quality of production and quality of the artists. Or actors and storyline, script, plot, plotholes and all that involves what you see and hear. And the technical you don’t ever really notice unless its mega bad or you pay attention to angles and cuts and beats. All in all the quality you can’t tell its 500,000 but story and acting you can tell its so bad its hard to watch.

But in Courageous, just released this past year(2011) you can totally tell there is a difference. Something has chosen to shift itself in these two guys. Alex and Stephen bring it in this picture. Acting is better. Script is really better. Quality, all 2 million of it, is really there. This film felt like a film and a quality one too, with some cheese but not to much.

Courageous, the real review here is about 4 cops and a random hispanic guy that gets a huge part of the story all fending the streets of Georgia from its foes. Starts out with drug busting then unfolds into the inner workings of gang banging and its overall goal: fatherlessness and how it effects crime but also how it affects these men.

They are your typical Christian guys, a couple are somewhat sceptic and duplicitous but they come around in the end. Alex Mitchell, played by director/writer Alex Kendrick is your middle class man. Over worked and disconnecting from his family. Embarrased to dance with his daughter, who later dies from a car accident and ignoring his son’s running interests, literally a marathon runner in his dreams. Alex looses his daughter to a drunk driver and realizes that he wants to finish well with parenting. The other men in the force go through the same transformation. Shane Fuller is the partner to Alex and later gets busted for smuggling the drugs from evidence intake. Good intentions but fallen on the inside. He represents the divorced man already struggling with dysfunction and adds to it by going to jail.

Nathan Hayes plays the experienced cop with father issues from a messed up childhood. Saying no to a strange teen for wanting to date his daughter he clearly wants the best for his family. David Thomson is the guy on the edge of his faith, doubting God. He previously had a kid wanted an abortion but it never happened. He’s carrying that weight with him through the film. Javier the one non-cop in the force. Trusting God with an American smile Javier takes the leap and gets the work the Lord provides for him and his family. But all of them decide on resolution: to be the best dads they can be. There is an epic ceremony scene and after a little action shoot out in the end of the movie the movie ends with Adam Mitchell giving the invitation he gave to his four friends to the church. Sherwood Baptist, the church he works at has media director in real life(that’s my guess in the church shot).

All in all these films are attempting to make the Lord Christ present in the film world. My only question upon further looking for Christ in everything is how to we continue to craft these God glorying stories. How do we directly talk about Christ in indirect art. Not all art is indirect but sometimes it forms that way. Its what is hidden and latent that later becomes a concrete answer. Its the poet using metaphor.

Point being is that when we directly talk about God it makes us feel we are uncompromising in our message but sometimes it comes out kind of lame. God is not lame! That is not the point. Its an issue of interpretation and messaging. When you walk into a church you know you are going to here that vocabulary. When you walk into a film you might not. The solution for now seems to combine the church and the theatre experience. For a lot we are more open to art because we lack church or lack the power of the message.

The challenge for us artists is to find a medium between glorying God and the Gospel and not losing people or compromising but also how do we do this in a way that maybe has not been done before. I am greatly encouraged and inspired by the Kendrick collection and I look forward to more from them. Please read with regards to the end of this post. I want to leave challenged to make an impact for the future.

Life in the fast lane beating in me sweetly,

Tires changing, firestone calling my number,

No more free coffee, she said there was only one most high,

And cookies stacked up top in this grocery store life, all my idols need replacing,

All my time no more wasting, all my energy back inside His synergy, but bills to pay

The bills not coming in recently, she said it right that I had idols tonight, and I’ve pulled out the

Best of me for the rest of He, its been funny of wasted moments that the most high doesn’t get my sneeze or

My cheese or my appease, rather I feel decease coming down at me, lower it calls and idols are a fold, my house of card

Life has been sowing it right, where I belong playing in the stereo and the ariel view sinking in the purview of this

Cascaded mountain life, hiking on my own, living with regret in my own strength and appealing one last time,

I throw it to the ground and worship you now,

Let there only be one most high,

For that’s all I know now

Projects of workmanship has my sportsmanship,

Been playing the game all my life called understanding,

How could you be good and allow this instead, misunderstood

Me and life of adolescence is weighing me instead, some more

Seroquel to keep me awake no more, been sleeping in more

Now that I don’t grow anymore, but the shores call out to me,

Baby in my arms teaching me to see life anew, how the little

Sister hasn’t been spoken for yet, for I am not grown yet,

Little Barbie dolls once those young girls were now prom

Night has kicked in and she’s been taken and claimed and

Named something else with a man that can’t love her well,

Innocence in those aisles in Orange town had me rethinking

Her destiny because she got rid of it you see and now its all

Gone now, youth are meant to teach us to not grow old,

To stay young forever, you said it mister Hine we ain’t got

Much more time, for rebels come and go, women change

With an aferlglow and aftertaste on sunny lit days, all that

Was once misunderstood now has legs and arms and

Brains and hearts on their own bleeding past us all,

Now I can’t keep it up on twitter and all I want is to

Be together with the children of innocence going by

To fast, like those little ones not so little now, let us strive

To love and not to understand all things

Solely my trust has been displaced again, at the end of the rainbow I’ve been waiting

For highschool crushes to wear off, cause those days were a big fuss and all the

Father wounds from the past they just rise up again over the ocean tide again

And all my enemies seem good enough but throwaway there lives again because

Daddy didn’t stop them, for identity is what we are all looking for and that man

In the rocking chair has something to say over the design of my hair and I swear

The highlights of the past run deep to eternity past, and they glisten and listen inside

The sound of eternal rejection, for fatherless America has to come clean and do

The hard time, family isn’t hostility unless the man runs empty, poverty in

The pauper produces and prince over the city, held for such a time and purpose

As this indeed is where the past is gone and the future lay ahold of me, the

Teen turns to a tween and time keep beating on, for me to continue to carry

On like this it will go on, the time inside of the slipstream and I will beat on

As this heart goes so I will go with it but books are waiting opened for me now

And I will carry on now, past the past and past highlights of what I was, all

I have is what I will become, lying down now in eternity past, ready for the

Best years of my life now

In the basement, facing the pavement,

Out of here you said, runaway no more but I had already

Hit the floor, demons to the bedroom, pillows uproar in zoom,

Days of sleeping did persist and days of questioning did come in,

All I ever wanted was freedom, all you ever said was I wasn’t good enough

Anyway, friendship did slip in those days and pain did come on the ocean

Tide days, thoughts of you did slip my my toes in the cover of the ocean

Tides, change was easy in 08 when you planned my getaway, bags always

Did accompany 435 north and deplored and explored did it get, Ambian

Just wasn’t enough then and Valium was overrated anyway, the party

Drug did get you into the club but matter of fact the most painful

Days were those of sleeplessness with the sound of fatherlessness

Down the stairs and shouts and yells as I pondered life’s purpose

Up there, then to the east it was settled, poor and disheveled was

I, but living without Christ was the worst kind of medicine, the ones

That could control the ambivalence, shoes to ensue me some more,

For it’s been to much running away now, and yeast settled in off

The 435 and I was home again with new weapons and new medicines

Bringing me in, the dawn of a new coming and the return of all

My best friends, for getting away was never that way, returning is

What I feel like I am always doing, facing poverty removes the pride

And hostility

In stock and in lock stock fashion, she wasted my time and called out

Upon the shores of wisdom’s house, beckoning that I waste my time with

The perverted arts again, seemed like sure fire manipulation and scandalous

Seduction, but it seems these days I’m running out of options, the swiss army

Romance only lasted for some months then winter came then you never

Were the same anyway, then I was wasted away on self medication trying to

Change direction and dedication but soon it will be over and my 28 cents

Will be washed over and accounted upon on receipt tape and shouted at

The gate, come in Son and crossover, here are the books of records for

Your life of intentions and judgment has come and opened me up again,

All the lights on, no more living in the dark, it hit the spark and red to me

Kindly on my kindle light and read me the pages of my moments of poverty

In this life and death comes quick and has no book on this but do I want to

Live away wasted away for me, no I’d rather make an impact and live under

The influence, 10 years later, still serving the gray chairs and still decked out

With wheat and tares, in between me I live for me and that’s exactly what He

Is correcting inside of me, this is just a test but soon its time to stand and that

Moment will be hard to understand