Entangled: Deepak Chopra, Appointment TV, and Pumpkin Spice Lattes

Deepak Chopra was in San Antonio this week, speaking at a fundraiser for the Battered Women's and Children's Shelter of Bexar County. People paid money to a great cause to hear the famous "well-being expert" give his thoughts on the future of health and wellness.

I am not sure what qualifies someone as an expert on well-being and I am not intending to hate on what Chopra brings to the table. I just don't get it.

What I am sure about is that 1200 people came to listen to Chopra, hoping to be inspired, stretched, and enlightened. Here is an excerpt from a San Antonio Express-News story on the event:

Chopra began with the basics of his views on mind-body, spirituality and consciousness, “the true nature of being.”

“It's all entangled,” he said.

The founder of the Chopra Foundation and the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, in Carlsbad, Calif., opened by talking about the human body's “dynamic exchanges with forces of the universe.”

On the atomic and subatomic level, he said the human body is constantly recycled — and not a fixed structure. “The human body is a process,” he said, “a biosphere that recycles itself.”

Human genes “are the memory, the record of evolution.”

Chopra went deeper, tapping “the mystery of consciousness.” For him, consciousness equals the soul. But just as often, he was light and playful, offering ways to increase happiness, as well as simple meditation to reach “the space between your thoughts.”

The space between my thoughts is confused.

I can't tell if Chopra is really incredibly profound or merely poetic. I start to break down the words he uses and wonder if "dynamic exchanges with the forces of the universe" is any different that saying that Cletus "got himself a sunburn by sleeping in the truck stop parking lot again". The sun ("a force of the universe") has a "dynamic exchange" (UV rays piercing skin) with Cletus. Right?

I am sure Chopra has great wisdom, so I don't want to act as if he is some hack and that I've got all the answers. I just get the sense that we're so incredibly anxious to be sold something that we'll buy whatever is presented in the prettiest package.

So speaking of pretty packages...

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Ever been hooked on something?

Welcome to the fall, home of Pumpkin Spice Lattes and new television programming. Warm sugar and caffeine flows through your body (your "biosphere", remember?) and beautiful people are paraded through your television screen at an ever-increasing rate.

As a former barista, I cannot tell you how many times people would tell me how they were "hooked" on Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

As a human being in 2011, I am also a bit embarrassed to admit that I think I'd like to get "hooked" on a television program.

The fall brings new shows and new chances for us to bond with characters, empathize with fictional people, and admire the Utopian beauty of a place where every woman is 5'8", 27 years old, and nicely toned and every man is 6'2", 32 years old, and obviously sporting a regular workout regimen. She eats salads (dry) and he actually rotates between upper body and lower body at the gym. "You watching this, honey?"

We want to buy into this world and I can only surmise that it helps us escape ours.

We eagerly await something to "hook" us. Please. Anything.

My wife and I sometimes watch The Office on the internet weeks after the episode airs, but probably wouldn't notice for a few months if the show was pulled. We try to watch Survivor (the shame I bear in the shadows...) but it appears at the confluence of evil known as 7pm - not early enough to avoid toddler bath-time and night-time rituals and not late enough to actually allow us to conclude those rituals and sit on the couch.

So we remain unhooked. But, secretly, we wish we had "a show" together, a space in the week where we could meet transcendence. I believe this would be called "appointment television".

I don't know why we want so badly to consume something so breathlessly. We know that the show will get canceled or moved to a crummy time slot or will just become stale. We've been burned before and we've seen the rise and fall of so many likely lures. And yet, we yearn to join the masses who tell the masses on Facebook about the new show that has absolutely "hooked" them.

Almost like getting in early on a hot stock...except the return on the investment is, well, a lot of missing hours and maybe a reflection of reality that can be recognized through looking backwards. Maybe.

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We want so badly to catch the wave of the larger truth or the movement that will bind us with all of the billions of others who feel as listless and empty as we do.

We cheer on our sports teams of highly paid men in matching spandex trousers (or worse, highly paid college "students" that we pretend are not paid). We fall head over heels into television, our mental lives becoming indecipherable from those on our 42" flat-screen. We attend lectures and read books of the finest minds vocabulary can create, hoping that some magic phrase, some perfect poetry, will unlock the knot in our souls and allow us peaceful sleep at night.

I don't really know how to resolve this tension inside of myself. Maybe I should say that we're just chasing interaction with the dynamic forces of the universe and that, perhaps, it's all entangled.

Bourbon Chicken is Our Enemy

"Bourbon Chicken!" one yells out.

"Sample, sample - two entree four dollar," cries another.

"Gyro? Gyro?," asks yet another.

These are the sample people at the mall food court. They are at the the mall I go to and the mall you go to, both the one you grew up going to which is now too ghetto for you and the one you go to now that is, admittedly, a bit too pricey for you.

These sample people, poor wretched souls hawking fatty hunks of sugared meat on toothpicks for $7 an hour, may just be one of the defining pictures of our society.

You see, they've figured us out. We can't help ourselves. We have to consume things. Give me a taste and I will almost surely want to own my own corner of the sugared fatty meat commodities trade.

I see this everywhere. And we are getting duped by this all of the time.

Let me smell the cologne. Yes, I'll take four bottles, please. Give me a ride in your car. I would like a car like that. Hear a song I like...then race to "own" that song (you know, just in case the modern world falls apart, I have a copy of the song on my hard drive...and cloud storage drive in case that fails...and in my external hard drive in case the cloud breaks down...and backed up onto CD in case we regress technologically). Get the point?

In leading a mission team to South Africa this May, we had a running joke about the American need to consume. We were feeding starving children, delivering the Gospel to prisoners, and giving 10 days of our lives to see the local church of Johannesburg encouraged. And around every corner, the team was asking me if there were souvenirs for each event in which we took part.

Can we buy a South African prison jumpsuit? Where did those street kids get that scarf? Can we stop there? Can we eat that? Can I own one? We laughed at how pathetic we were. Secretly, though, we cried.

We couldn't escape our American (human?) need to consume. We had traveled all the way around the world, sacrificed so much to do humble ministry, and then succumbed to the siren song of our modern lives.

Bourbon Chicken?

Rich, Sad Clowns?

“The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physiognomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clownmobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns... Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. Bang! You're dead!”

― James Howard Kunstler

Euro No More: Or How We Can Learn to Stop Hating and Love Major League Soccer

Over ninety-thousand spectators gathered in the Rose Bowl to watch a US sporting event.

Nine. Zero. Zero. Zero. Zero.

That is a lot of people to attend anything. Especially anything not named the Super Bowl. When many hear that the throngs showed up for soccer, for the Gold Cup final, they will be very surprised indeed. They would not be so shocked, however, had they been paying attention recently.

Soccer is legitimate in America. Forget legitimate, actually. It is BOOMING.

Attendance is up yet again and MLS is playing at levels previously unseen on this continent. The quality of the product, on and off the field, is at an all-time high, the league is growing in every direction, and, unlike the NFL and NBA, the sport lacks all of the drama of lockouts and handbags between millionaires.

Soccer is on in America. And it is time to join the party.

America actually has a ton of soccer fans. Unfortunately, too many of these folks fit the label of "Eurosnob". You know this guy. Maybe you are this guy. This is the guy who drones on and on about how if MLS had any decent players or anywhere near the quality of the Premiership or La Liga, well then maybe he would watch. This guy talks about "Total Football" and UEFA and steers every American soccer conversation to Alexi Lalas to avoid revealing that he hasn't paid much attention domestically since, oh, 1996.

I actually don't argue with this soccer fan. He is knowledgeable and passionate and loves a good product. He appreciates the European atmosphere and the skill of the players who ply their trade overseas. Good for him.

Our friend the Eurosnob probably loves American soccer, if only in the form of the US Men's National Team. He sports a Landon Donovan jersey during the World Cup and waxes eloquently about craft beers and Lionel Messi. Really...good for him.

I sat my Eurosnob friend down recently. It had to stop. More than anything, my friend was missing out on the birth of something amazing.

I nicely explained that he needed to check out MLS one more time. He chuckled. I explained how 2011 is not 2005 and that if he would be so patient as to wake up to the new reality, he might just enjoy the ride.

Let me introduce you, I said, to Eric Hassli. He's a French dude. He plays for Vancouver. He scores unbelievable goals in front of 36,000 screaming fans.



Um, ya. My friend sat with his jaw on the floor. Ok, well...

"But what about the atmosphere," Eurosnob wondered? Is that just Seattle?

It's a good question, really. Half of the fun of any live sporting event is the atmosphere. Many still remember when every MLS match was seemingly played in a 60s era football stadium with 9,000 people in the stands. Oh, how times have changed.

New soccer-specific stadiums filled with incredible supporters' groups all over the country have made the beautiful game really beautiful in America. Fans pack stadiums in Toronto and Philadelphia, in New York and Los Angeles, in Kansas City and Salt Lake. And Portland. How to explain what is happening in Portland...



That should do.

Well, unless the argument is that there isn't some brilliant play happening in America. The entire league has risen in stature, but one player in particular has upped the class of MLS entirely. Thierry Henry is still very much a force. And Thierry Henry is worth watching all by himself.





Soccer in America is quickly catching up to the elite leagues of the world. Cities around the country are being lit on fire by the excitement that comes with a real club to support and a real stadium to capture the atmosphere. Incredible talents are finding their way to American clubs more and more. Incredible buildings are showcasing captivating skill. Incredible storylines are being written every week.

It is simply a matter of exposure. My Eurosnob friend downloaded the MLS iPhone app right there and then and has been catching up on 2011 highlights since. My neophyte friends are beginning to see that the beautiful game possesses an allure not found in other sports. My fellow Americans are waking up to a new reality.

Soccer is legitimate...and it is legitimately crushing the American sports scene.

A Rush of Blood to the Head: Of Brian Mullan, Broken Legs, and Forgiveness

"A rush of blood to the head"... Before it was a Coldplay album title, it was an English idiom. Still is an idiom, I suppose. Silly rock stars hijacking our popular phrases. Anyway, a "rush of blood to the head" basically describes when one gets overexcited or angry and, in a quick reactionary burst, does something silly (and oftentimes regrettable).

Colorado Rapids player Brian Mullan had a rush of blood to the head on Friday night. And it certainly led to regrettable behavior.

Upset that a foul was not called during the MLS match he was playing in, Mullan reacted by making a foolish, reckless, and altogether malicious tackle on a fellow player (who happened to be uninvolved in the original incident).

The photo above shows the result as it happened. The young, talented Steve Zakuani suffered a broken tibia and fibula as his teammates looked on in horror.

Immediately, the internet exploded in rage against Mullan's actions. The calls for punishment were swift and severe, with fans calling for anything from lengthy suspensions to formal criminal charges being filed.

The outburst is understandable, as we imagine that somehow our games, our sport, is safe from the nonsensical violence that plagues our society. And yet every so often we are reminded that the human condition doesn't politely remain outside of the chalk lines of a football pitch.

Fitting, I suppose, that it is Easter weekend. It is a weekend for forgiveness and remembrance that we all fall short of the standard and that we need Jesus to bring us back to wholeness. Steve Zakuani is a follower of Christ and I imagine that he will forgive his offender. Whether the rest of us will is another question entirely.

What is certain is that we all occasionally suffer a rush of blood to the head. Luckily, ours aren't placed on national TV for all to see and judge.

**Below is the video of the play. It is not for the squeamish. You've been warned.**

The Passion of the Christ

It is All About Jesus, Part 2: The Passion of Jesus