Kevin Stilley

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Archives for January 2013

January 9, 2013 by kevinstilley

Movies for Fathers and Sons

In the book Teknon and the Champion Warriors, Brent Sapp recommends the following movies for fathers and sons to watch and discuss together. What do you think of his recommendations? What would you add to his list?

  • Ben Hur (1959) G
  • Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde (1943) not rated
  • The Four Feathers (1939) not rated
  • High Noon (1952) not rated
  • The Robe (1953) not rated
  • Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) not rated
  • The Searchers (1956) not rated
  • Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) G
  • Ten Commandments (1956) G
  • Deep Impact (1998) PG-13
  • Hoosiers (1986) PG
  • Man From Snowy River (1982) PG
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982) PG
  • Apollo 13 (1995) PG-13
  • Chariot of Fire (1981) PG
  • The Hiding Place (1975)
  • Iron Will (1994) PG
  • October Sky (1999) PG
  • Rudy (1993) PG
  • Sergeant York (1941) not rated
  • The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) PG
  • Stanley and Livingston (1939) not rated

Filed Under: Blog, Family Tagged With: Family, film, Movies, Parenting, video

January 9, 2013 by kevinstilley

Did your parents . . . ?

I am no psychologist, but I try very hard to understand the people around me and I believe that you cannot understand someone in isolation.  Maybe I have been effected by the family systems theory of Salvador Minuchin, but I find it very helpful to consider their family relationships when trying to really understand people; especially a person’s relationship with parents.

Here are twenty-two questions that one psychologist discovered “elicited the most productive and revealing responses.”

  1. Did your parents view the world as irrational?
  2. Were you taught how to develop your mind?
  3. Were you encouraged to think independently?
  4. Were you free to express your opinions openly?
  5. Did your parents ridicule your opinions?
  6. Did your parents treat your thoughts with respect?
  7. Were you psychologically visible to them?
  8. Did you feel you were a source of pleasure to them?
  9. Did your parents deal with you fairly and justly?
  10. Did your parents physically punish you?
  11. Did your parents believe in your basic goodness?
  12. Did they believe in your intellectual potential?
  13. Did they take cognizance of your knowledge and context?
  14. Did your parents cultivate guilt within you?
  15. Did they produce fear within you?
  16. Did they respect intellectual and physical privacy?
  17. Did they want you to have self-esteem?
  18. Did they make you realize that what you made of your life was important?
  19. Did your parents encourage a fear of the world?
  20. Were you encouraged to openly express yourself?
  21. Were you encouraged to like your body and sex?
  22. Was your masculinity or femininity reinforced?

I cannot imagine ever asking a friend several of the questions above.  However, a few of them should be great conversation starters.  In fact, #8 “Did you feel you were a source of pleasure to them?” is very similar to a conversation that I have had with many friends.

What do you think?  Is it important to know about someone’s family in order to really know them?

 

 

Filed Under: Blog, Church Leadership, Family Tagged With: parenthood, parents, relationships

January 8, 2013 by kevinstilley

Prose or Poetry?

I love this exchange from Molier’s play The Bourgeois Gentleman . Monsieur Jourdain is requesting help from a more educated man, a philosopher, in composing a love letter. The philosopher asks if Jourdain would like the letter to be written in prose or poetry. “I wish it written neither in prose nor verse,” Jourdai replies. Upon learning that all writing is either one or the other the following exchange takes place.

“And when one speaks, what is that?”

“That is prose, Monsier.”

“What! When I say, ‘Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my nightcap’; is that prose?

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Well, well, well! To think that for more than forty years I have been speaking prose, and didn’t know a thing about it. I am very much obliged to you for having taught me this.”

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Communication

January 7, 2013 by kevinstilley

What do you read?

How do you select what books you will read? To avoid wasting his time on bad books, Ralph Waldo Emerson used three criteria when selecting.

  1. Never read  a book that is not at least a year old.
  2. Never read a book that is not famous; and
  3. Never read anything but what you like.

What do you think of his criteria?

What would be on your list?

__________

No worse thief than a bad book.
~ Italian proverb

__________

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Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: Books, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Reading

January 7, 2013 by kevinstilley

Reason and Reasoning – select quotes

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
~ William Drummond of Hawthornden, in Academic Questions

To generalize is to be an idiot.
~ William Blake

Reason is the mistress and queen of all things.
~ Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationum, 2.21

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
~ Samuel Johnson, Letter to Boswell

The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.
~ Proverbs 18:17 (NIV)

All the tools with which mankind works upon its fate are dull, but the sharpest among them is reason.
~ Carl Van Doren, in Many Minds

Women are unreasonable; ask any man.
~ Unknown

__________

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: quotations, quote, reason

January 5, 2013 by kevinstilley

Favorite Quotes from The Hobbit

Book CoverStill it is probable that Bilbo, her only son, although he looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father, got something a bit queer in his make-up from the Took side, something that only waited for a chance to come out. The chance never arrived, until Bilbo Baggins was grown up, being about fifty years old or so and living in the beautiful hobbit-hole built by his father, which I have just described for you, until he had in fact apparently settled down immovably.

* * *

By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green . . .

* * *

“Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

“All of them at once,” said Bilbo.

* *

“We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them…”

* *

As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the heart of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountain, caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.

* *

… even to Old Took’s great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul’s head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.

* * *

“Farewell!” they cried, “wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey’s end!” That is the polite thing to say among eagles.

“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks,” answered Gandalf, who knew the correct reply.

* * *

His rage passes description — the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.

* * *

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

* * *

“May you ever appear where you are most needed and least expected! The oftener you appear in my halls the better shall I be pleased!”

* * *

“A little sleep does a great cure in the house of Elrond,” said he, “but I will take all the cure I can get.”

* * *

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Quotes Tagged With: Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Tolkien

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