I love my God …

Primal Quest is an adventure race, an offshoot of the French sport that spread abroad in the mid-1990s. It appeals to would-be explorers seeking to test their resolve against weather, uncharted terrain and chance run-ins with wild animals. Ultra-endurance racing has grown fivefold in the past decade, with more than 400 races a year. During the Gobi March, for example, runners face sand storms and brutal heat as they cross 155 miles of China’s Gobi Desert. There’s a 150-mile race through subfreezing temperatures in Antarctica. And in California’s Badwater summer race, runners risk heat stroke and worse in a 135-mile march through Death Valley.

The sport draws mostly amateur athletes in their 30s and 40s, men and women who have honed the mental discipline to race for days. Most have full-time careers, but they devote three to six hours a day to train. Some work out in sports labs that circulate the lower levels of oxygen found at high altitudes. The most fanatic have their toenails surgically removed to head off foot injuries and infection.

Ultra-races test minds as well as bodies, says Timothy Noakes, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town Medical School in South Africa.   “In ultra-endurance races,” he says, “you’ll find that the winners are the most mentally fit.”

Source: WSJ July 26, 2008

In 1988, 16-year-old Piyush Jindal totaled his father’s new car a few weeks before graduating from Baton Rouge High School. Piyush — who then and now prefers the nickname “Bobby” he adopted from “The Brady Brunch” sitcom — had to assess more than fender damage with his parents.

“Which God do you have to thank for your safety?” Mr. Jindal, now governor of Louisiana, remembers his mother, Raj, a practicing Hindu, inquiring after he escaped from the wreck. For the child of Punjabi immigrants who had announced his Christian beliefs the previous summer, the question was difficult.
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Hinduism is a diverse religion, with varying interpretations. Mr. Jindal, speaking from his office in Baton Rouge this month, said his parents raised him “in a monotheistic home with a firm belief in a God with traditional values — the same sort of values you find in the Ten Commandments and other mainstream religions.” Recalling their religion as “not a faith that was necessarily tied to a particular historical scripture or revelation,” Mr. Jindal said, his parents “made their faith their own.”

It is rare for Hindus to convert to Christianity or any other religion. According to a survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life earlier this year, eight in 10 American Hindus who were raised in the faith remain so as adults.

“I did not have an overnight epiphany like so many people do,” said Mr. Jindal, calling his conversion a “very intellectual-based journey,” where he studied countless religious texts. “Given my background and personality, that was an important part of the process.” But, he notes, “I don’t think you can ‘read’ yourself into faith. I had gotten to the point where I knew what history had to say about this person named Jesus and what he had done on Earth. . . . I think at some point you have to take a leap of faith.”

As a teenager, Mr. Jindal said he sought out chaplains at nearby Louisiana State University as he grasped for a religious identity to call his own. During a youth group’s Easter season musical production in 1987 at LSU’s campus chapel, a black-and-white video of the Passion played during intermission. “I don’t know why I was struck so hard at that moment,” said Mr. Jindal. “There was nothing fascinating about this particular video. . . . But watching this depiction of an actor playing Jesus on the cross, it just hit me, harder than I’d ever been hit before,” he said. “If that was really the son of God, and he really died for me, then I felt compelled to get on my knees and worship him.”

“It was liberating,” said Mr. Jindal about his moment. “Up until that point, my prayer life was like a child talking to Santa Claus — making deals with God saying ‘I’ll be good, but this is what I want in return.’” Soon after, Mr. Jindal began to pray and fervently read the Bible, principally parables in the New Testament. “It was like the words were jumping out of the page. It was literally as if it had been written just for me,” he said.

Revealing his Christianity to his parents was difficult. “I was scared to approach them,” said Mr. Jindal. “I didn’t know how they’d accept it. I wanted to make sure they didn’t view it as a rejection of them, that I still loved them and still shared many of the values they instilled in us.”

Source: Excepts from WSJ July 25, 2008

There ’s a saying Ilike,” he continued: “In God we trust.  All others bring data.”
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Find something that teaches, humbles, and exhilarates you. And don’t despair if you career path doesn’t follow a straight line.  Plenty of successful people are doing things that are radically different from where they started.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

As columnists, we appear before you twice a week on these pages as simple bylines, but, yes, even columnists have mothers. And in my case, much of the outlook that infuses my own writings was bred into me from my mom. So, for once in 13 years, I’d like to share a little bit about her.

My mom was gripped by dementia for much of the last decade, but she never lost the generous “Minnesota nice” demeanor that characterized her in her better days. As my childhood friend Brad Lehrman said to me at her funeral: “She put the mensch in dementia.”

My mom’s life spanned an incredible period. She was born in 1918, just at the close of World War I. She grew up in the Depression, enlisted in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, served her country in World War II, bought our first house with a G.I. loan and lived long enough to play bridge on the Internet with someone in Siberia.

For most of my childhood, my mom appeared to be a typical suburban housewife of her generation, although I knew she was anything but typical. She sewed many of my sisters’ clothes, including both of their wedding dresses, and boy’s suits for me. And on the side, she won several national bridge tournaments.

My mom left two indelible marks on me. The first was to never settle for the cards you’re dealt. My dad died suddenly when I was 19. My mom worked for a couple of years. But in 1975, I got a scholarship to go to graduate school in Britain and my mom surprised us all one day by announcing that she was going, too. I called it the “Jewish Mother Junior Year Abroad Program.”

Most of her friends were shocked that she wasn’t just going to play widow. Instead, she sold our house in little St. Louis Park, Minn., and moved to London. But what was most amazing to watch was how she used her world-class bridge skills to build new friendships, including with one couple who flew her to Paris for a bridge game. Yes, our little Margie off to Paris to play bridge. She even came to see me in Beirut once, during the civil war — at age 62.

The picture of her in Beirut makes me think back in amazement at what my mom might have done had she had the money to finish college and pursue her dreams — the way she encouraged me to pursue mine, even when they meant I’d be far away in some crazy place and our only communications would be through my byline. It’s so easy to overlook — your mom had dreams, too.

My mom’s other big influence on me you can read between the lines of virtually every column — and that is a sense of optimism. She was the most uncynical person in the world. I don’t recall her ever uttering a word of cynicism. She was not naïve. She had taken her knocks. But every time life knocked her down, she got up, dusted herself off and kept on marching forward, motivated by the saying that pessimists are usually right, optimists are usually wrong, but most great changes were made by optimists.

Six years ago, I was in Israel at a dinner with the editor of the Haaretz newspaper, which publishes my column in Hebrew. I asked the editor why the newspaper ran my column, and he joked: “Tom, you’re the only optimist we have.” An Israeli general, Uzi Dayan, was seated next to me and as we walked to the table, he said: “Tom, I know why you’re an optimist. It’s because you’re short and you can only see that part of the glass that’s half full.”

Well, the truth is, I am not that short. But my mom was. And she, indeed, could only see that part of the glass that was half full. Read me, read my mom.

Whenever I’ve had the honor of giving a college graduation speech, I always try to end it with this story about the legendary University of Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant. Late in his career, after his mother had died, South Central Bell Telephone Company asked Bear Bryant to do a TV commercial. As best I can piece together, the commercial was supposed to be very simple — just a little music and Coach Bryant saying in his tough voice: “Have you called your mama today?”

On the day of the filming, though, he decided to ad-lib something. He reportedly looked into the camera and said: “Have you called your mama today? I sure wish I could call mine.” That was how the commercial ran, and it got a huge response from audiences.

So on this Mother’s Day, if you take one thing away from this column, take this: Call your mother.

I sure wish I could call mine.

Tom Landry is the former coach of Dallas Cowboys and he served on the Dallas Theological Seminary board. He was a humble man of quiet strength and dignity, and when he chose to say something, an entire room would stop and lean in to hear what he had to say.

Once during a breakfast with a group of men, Coach Landry was asked how he was able to forge individual players into a team so that they would win — something he managed to do for twenty-plus years. His answer was unforgetable. The table grew silent as he paused for a moment and then said, “My job is to get men to do what they don’t want to do in order to achieve whatthey’ve always wanted to achieve.”

The something that those men wanted to achieve was a victory at the Super Bowl. What they didn’t want to do was the grueling work it would take to get them there. Achieving anything requires discipline–determined, deliberate, definable actions with a clear goal in mind. A good coach helps the team achieve its goal by outlining the exercises and motivating the players to stick to the plan. Facilitating and encouraging discipline in order to win, that’s what coaching is all about.

(typed in from a letter of the Monthly Partners Friends of Insight for Living)

A story about a liquor store/a pub built next to a church. Christians told the owner that they were going to pray that God would intervene and take care of the problem–and wipe them out.

The next night,a great thunderstorm came and lightning stroke the pub and the place burned down. The owner took the Christians to court; saying that it was their prayers that caused the lightning.

What did the Christian do? They hired attorney, and they said “We are not responsible for this pub burning down.”

The judge said: “I don’t know which way it’s gonna go, but one thing seems clear: the bar owner believe in prayers and the Christians don’t.”

From: Running To Win - The Discipline Of Prayer #1 of 3

There is a story about a frustated basketball coach, Cotton Fitzsimmons, who hit upon an idea to motivate his team. Before the game, he gave them a speech that centered around the word, pretend. “You guys, when you go out there tonight, instead of remembering that we are in last place, pretend that we are in first place; instead of us being in a losing streak, pretend we are in a winning streak; instead of this being a regular game, pretend this is a playoff game.”

With that, the team went onto the basketball court and were soundly beaten by the Boston Celtics. The coach was upset about the loss. But one of the players slapped him on the back and said, “Cheer up Coach! Pretend we won!”

Source: http://www.moodychurch.org/radio/newsletters/Vol2No3.pdf