Holiday Reading

The Christmas holidays and the miserable form of Australia's cricket team has afforded a great opportunity for reading over the past week!

I've just finished 'A Short History of the 20th Century' by Geoffrey Blainey, which I thoroughly recommend! It's a fascinating read, very well written and gives a great general knowledge of the last 100 years, without getting bogged down in the details. Another book by Blainey, 'A Short History of the World' will definitely be on my reading list for 2009.

Today I also finished Lance Armstrong's 'It's Not About the Bike', which I found incredibly inspiring. His journey from cancer patient to Tour de France champion provides compelling reading.

Lessons which I learnt from Lance Armstrong's story:

1. Public Prizes are earnt in Private Discipline
In his preparation for the 2000 Tour de France, Armstong had a severe crash while training on the Hautacam, the Tour's most difficult ascent.

'A month later [after the crash], I went back to the Hautacam, alone except for Johan [Armstrong's coach], to complete my training ride... It was a bitterly cold and rain-splattered day, and it took me four hours of hard riding to get to the top. Johan pulled up in the follow car and handed me a jacket and some hot chocolate. "Great job - now let's get you warm," he said. But I didn't feel right about it.
"I don't think I understood the climb," I said.
"What do you mean?"
I meant that I didn't feel I had fully mastered it...

"What do you want to do?" Johan asked.
"I'm going to do it again," I said.

And that's what I did. We drove back down, and I climbed it again, another four hours of uphill work. I was pretty sure I was the only fool who was willing to climb it in that weather even once, much less twice. But that was the point.'

2. The Difference is in the Details
From weighing his food before eating to ensure that calorie input was lower that energy output, to preparing his bike with pedantic precision, Armstrong shows an enormous attention to detail, earning him the nickname 'Mr Millimeter'.

3. Pain can be Productive
Naturally, most of us pray that our lives be problem free, mistakingly thinking that a pain-free life is the greatest life. Armstrong defies this.

'The truth is that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don't know why I got the illness, but it did wonders for me, and I wouldn't want to walk away from it. Why would I want to change, even for a day, the most important and shaping event in my life?'

'The truth is, if you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.'

I'm keen to read 'Every Second Counts', Armstrong's second book. Has anyone read it, and would you recommend it?'

On Meeting God

I enjoyed this, written by Hardy Shaw in his shell-hole in the midst of the horrors of the Vietnam War:

Lord God, I have never spoken to You,
But now I want to say how do You do.
You see God, they told me You didn’t exist,
And like a fool I believed all this.
Last night from a shell hole I saw Your sky,
I figured right then, they had told me a lie.
Had I taken time to see the things You made,
I’d have known they weren’t calling a spade a spade.
I wonder, God, if You’ll take my hand,
Somehow I feel that You’ll understand.
Funny I had to come to this hellish place
Before I had time to see Your face.
Well, I guess there isn’t much more to say,
But I’m sure glad, God, I met you today.
I guess zero hour will soon be here
But I’m not afraid since I know You’re near.
The signal! Well, God, I’ll have to go
I like you lots, I want You to know.
Look now this will be a horrible fight,
Who knows I may come to Your house tonight.
Though I wasn’t friendly to You before,
I wonder God, if You’d wait at your door.
Look, I’m crying, I’m shedding tears,
I’ll have to go now God, goodbye.
Strange now that I’ve met You I’m not afraid to die.

Creed of the Modern Thinker

English journalist Steve Turner writing in a secular newspaper on society’s absence or right and wrong, or any absolute point of reference. 

Here is the creed for the modern thinker:

We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin. 

We believe that everything is okay as long as you don’t hurt anyone, to the best of your definition of hurt and to the best of your definition of knowledge. 

We believe in sex before, during and after marriage.

We believe in the therapy of sin; we believe that adultery is fun; we believe that sodomy is okay; we believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary.  The evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there is something in horoscopes, UFO’s and bent spoons.  Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammad and ourselves. He was a good moral teacher although we think basically that his good morals were really bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same; at least the ones we read were.  They all believe in love and goodness, they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation. 

We believe that after death comes nothing, because when you ask the dead what happens, they say nothing.  If death is not the end, and if the dead have lied then it’s compulsory heaven for all except perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Kahn. 

We believe in Masters and Johnson - what’s selected is average, what’s average is normal and what’s normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.  We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed. American’s should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good, it’s only his behaviour that lets him down.  This is the fault of society, society is the fault of conditions and conditions are the fault of society. 

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly.  The universe will readjust; history will alter.  We believe there is no absolute truth, except the truth that there is no absolute truth.  We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.  

If Chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is His rainbow in the sky.  And when you hear “State of Emergency”, “Sniper Kills Ten”,  “Troops on Rampage”, “Youths Go Looting”, “Bomb Blasts School”, it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.