kennethbaucum

I'm still looking for commentary on your life's passion on my website, LifesPassion.org.  Drop me a line and I'll get it posted for others to read and enjoy as well.

Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.  Be careful to ask what matters most.  Be careful not to ask for things for the wrong reasons.

"...ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume [it] upon your lusts." -- James 4:2-3

Fireproof: Never leave your partner behind

As a single man, this may seem like a silly idea to write a review on a movie about marriage.  I agree.  Silly me.  I had the opportunity to watch Fireproof today, and found it delivered so much more than I ever anticipated, and I haven't even fallen in love the first time.

Kirk Cameron plays the role of Captain Caleb Holt, the husband and firefighter who keeps demanding more love and respect, but hasn't yet realized that he can't give what he does not have.  Erin Bethea solidly wraps up the part of Catherine Holt, the wife who wanted so much to marry a brave man, but feels she has been left out to dry.

Caleb's father challenges him to a "Love Dare", a 40-day experiment to see if Caleb can revive their marriage.  To tell more would ruin the movie.  But I'll say this, there is no way to be disappointed with this well thought-out and thought-provoking movie.

Then, right when you think it's all done, and the curtains is going to close, it just keeps on turing up surprises that strengthen the relationships and put the world back together one more time.  Read more at FireproofTheMovie.com.

When you wake up hearing your own music, when you are driving or
walking around town and think others are playing your music, when you
sit down at a piano and the music is already playing and when you rise
from the piano bench and the music still goes on — you can know you are living your passion for music.  You are one of God's instruments in the Orchestra of Life.

"When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating.  And I think I have one thing to say.  If you wish to be useful, nevertake a course that will silence you.  Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, wether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a univeristy.  Retain the power of speech no matter what other freedom you may lose.If you can take this course, in so far as you take it, you will bless this country.  In so far as you depart from this course you become dampers, mutes and hooded executioners.

As a practical matter a mere failure to speak out upon occasions where no opinion is asked or expected of you, and when the utterance of an uncalled-for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrance in palable iniquity.  Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound.  It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct.  It is a note from a friend of your father's offering you a place in his office.  This is your warning from the secret police.  Why, if any of you young gentlemen have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think that they must save their strength and wait.  They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard.  'In a few years,' reasons one of them, 'I shall have gained a standing, and then I will use my powers for good.'  Next year comes and with it a strange discovery.  The man has lost his horizon of thought.  his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say.  I give you this rule of conduct.  Do what you will, but speak out always.  Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged.  The time of trial is always.  Now is the appointed time."

--John Jay Chapman, Commencement address to the graduating class, Hobart College, 1900