Human Spirit

Deep inside my being, where he can't be seen in public, is an ugly, greasy, short-tempered troll who likes to throw things at television shows that celebrate the "The Human Spirit. " I keep the little creep in check most of the time. But since I know the kind of malice he's capable of, I generally avoid writing about the routine uplifting, feel-good, made-for-TV movie about Normal People Coping Despite Tremendous Odds for fear that I'll end up sounding less like Pauline Kael and more like Al Bundy.

In its best, most redemptive moments, sports will shine a light on the unbending and indomitable human spirit, and in so doing repair our sad sense of innocence lost. Just about the time we have given in to despair, when all seems irreversibly soiled by the dopers and head-butters and steroid freaks, someone will happen along to cleanse and disinfect. That current someone is named Floyd Landis. He is a wiry, hawk-nosed, tireless bit of gristle with a capacity for enduring pain that is beyond our comprehension.

Excerpts from Nelson Mandela's victory speech on Monday: To all those in the African National Congress and the democratic movement who worked so hard these last few days and through these many decades, I thank you and honor you. To the people of South Africa and the world who are watching: This is indeed a joyous night for the human spirit. This is your victory, too. You helped end apartheid, you stood with us through the transition. . . . I am your servant. I don't come to you as a leader, as one above others.

A few months ago, I finally got around to doing something I had long intended. I looked up a long-lost friend. Bernard Gotfryd and I, once very close, talked by telephone. "How nice to hear from you," he said in a voice that was recognizable, but a bit formal for someone I had known and respected for many years. "Same here," I said. "I think about you a great deal and decided to find you. " While our long absence from one another had not exactly made us strangers, there clearly was a need for us to become reacquainted.

At Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, on the first Tuesday of every month, they spread a large piece of canvas on the floor of Congregational Hall. Imprinted on the canvas is a pattern that replicates the labyrinth embedded in the floor of the great cathedral in Chartres, France. From 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., members of the congregation and the public are invited to walk the labyrinth. Janet Brown tends the labyrinth during those hours. She describes herself as a facilitator, or guide, and says she has witnessed a wide variety of reactions.

ONCE AGAIN, our city has endured the painful loss of one of our finest. I'm saddened about the loss of life and lawlessness that has plagued our beloved city. We are living in desperate times, citizens feel hopeless and afraid. We need change: a change from bureaucracy, a change to galvanize people of all faiths and ethnicities for a common cause, "the good of humanity," and a change to strengthen and energize the human spirit. Without it, we are destined for a world of more violence, destruction and death.

With the sun coming up at 7:15 and setting at 4:38, tomorrow will be the shortest day in the calendar year. The time in between represents the fewest hours that the sun shines down on our planet - until the same time next year. On this abbreviated day, autumn ends and winter begins. The time for pumpkins, squash, nuts, apples, turkey dinners and all of the other of nature's generous bounties is over. Ahead are the barren, bone-chilling, snow-driven days of winter, with galoshes, mackinaws, hard-to-start cars, colds and Jack Frost painting all kinds of scenes on window panes.

Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's first TV interview - on 60 Minutes - made it clear why he has captured America's imagination. The reasons go deeper than the obvious: his incredible feat of landing U.S. Airways Flight 1549 safely on the Hudson River. Despite his discomfort with his new role, Sullenberger said he understood why the global response to his heroism has been so overwhelming. In him, Americans have found a reminder of the old can-do spirit that overcomes near-impossible odds.

Play well, live well. That's how I look at it. Play is an essential human activity not bound to any necessity except that of the human spirit. Play - whether it's rolling a bocce ball, lifting weights, dancing, hiking, or rock climbing, liberates and reveals. Until I started coaching the boys' varsity team at International Christian High School four years ago, I was merely a spectator in basketball. I'd played 4-5 games a week for nearly 40 years. Then a torn knee ligament sat me down.

When a natural disaster strikes a part of the world that is already struggling, news footage tends to make the misery faceless. In And Life Goes On, a unique documentary filmed amid the rubble of the 1990 earthquake that took 50,000 lives in northern Iran, Abbas Kiarostami tells stories that render the suffering individual and vivid. And Life Goes On celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and movingly expands the traditional limits of the documentary. Kiarostami shot an earlier film in a now-devastated village, and in this work, he chronicles his search for the two boys who starred in it and who are now somewhere - alive or dead - in the ruins.

At Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, on the first Tuesday of every month, they spread a large piece of canvas on the floor of Congregational Hall. Imprinted on the canvas is a pattern that replicates the labyrinth embedded in the floor of the great cathedral in Chartres, France. From 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., members of the congregation and the public are invited to walk the labyrinth. Janet Brown tends the labyrinth during those hours. She describes herself as a facilitator, or guide, and says she has witnessed a wide variety of reactions.

THANK YOU, Jenice Armstrong, for your enlightening column on Kwanzaa. Contrary to the numerous misunderstandings about the holiday's significance, many families and church communities throughout our nation do observe the seven principles or "nguzo saba. " In that spirit, here is my prayer for the new year: 1. For the unity (umoja) of the human spirit that transcends race, culture, religious and political affiliations. 2. For self-determination (kujichagulia) cultivating a strong sense of individual pride and integrity.

All around the region yesterday people went outside to celebrate a sunny day when the temperature hit 56 degrees. Ilya Bondarenko and Sofia Udovenko, both 26 and living in Center City, made a wooden bench look incredibly comfortable. They spent the afternoon snoozing and snuggling in Fairmount Park's Azalea Garden. It was too early for shrubs to bloom, but not the human spirit after more than 70 inches of snow and lots of cold weather this winter. "We are very happy," Bondarenko said.

As Ebenezer Scrooge (not to mention The Grinch), Jim Carrey aims to put a lump of coal in the Christmas stocking and a lump of emotion in the throat. That he fails is not for lack of effort. In Disney's A Christmas Carol , Robert Zemeckis' visually immersive but emotionally uninvolving spectacle, Carrey's performance as the miserly misanthrope is lost amid effects more typically encountered in theme-park and video-game adventures. (P.S.: Is it just me, or does it also peeve you that the Mouse House claims proprietary rights on Dickens' title?

Eunice Kennedy Shriver could've coasted through life on her family name, enjoying the perks and privilege that come with being the daughter of a wealthy U.S. ambassador to England, sister of one president and two senators, the wife of a vice presidential candidate and Peace Corps director, and the mother-in-law to California's governor. Instead, her inspiration and life's work came from one of the least known members of the storied Kennedy clan, her older sister Rosemary, who was born mildly retarded in 1918, about a year after John F. Kennedy.

There is no shortage of viewpoints about how best to resolve the current economic crisis, and one nagging point of contention is the extent of the federal government's role. Will the stimulus package and industry bailouts move us closer to European democratic socialism, or are they temporary necessities to shore up U.S. capitalism? The debate over the role a central government should play in a capitalistic economy goes back to Adam Smith's masterwork, The Wealth of Nations, and has yet to be resolved.

Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's first TV interview - on 60 Minutes - made it clear why he has captured America's imagination. The reasons go deeper than the obvious: his incredible feat of landing U.S. Airways Flight 1549 safely on the Hudson River. Despite his discomfort with his new role, Sullenberger said he understood why the global response to his heroism has been so overwhelming. In him, Americans have found a reminder of the old can-do spirit that overcomes near-impossible odds.

ONCE AGAIN, our city has endured the painful loss of one of our finest. I'm saddened about the loss of life and lawlessness that has plagued our beloved city. We are living in desperate times, citizens feel hopeless and afraid. We need change: a change from bureaucracy, a change to galvanize people of all faiths and ethnicities for a common cause, "the good of humanity," and a change to strengthen and energize the human spirit. Without it, we are destined for a world of more violence, destruction and death.

Dear South Korea: Please stop apologizing. It is not your fault. Don't get us wrong. It is touching and impressive how you, as a nation, seem crestfallen over the trail of death left on an American college campus by an immigrant from your land. You have held candlelight vigils at our embassy and your president has expressed shock - three times, so far. But, really, the suspect came to America as a child. He was raised here. Maybe we should be apologizing to you for not taking better care of him. Or maybe the ugly twists that the human spirit can take are just unfathomable.

American men, at least some of us, have always wanted to stay part boy. That's why men at 40, 50 and 60, though relatively sane, keep playing games - basketball, softball, running, triathlon, biking, tennis, golf. Such men will be among the 15,000 running the Philadelphia Marathon on Sunday, testing the remains of youth at the expense of their bodies - arthritic knees and hips, painful backs, strained Achilles tendons. These guys still want the morning sun to shine on their marathon or 10K run, on their jump shot, their backhand, their breakaway on the bike.