Pictured below are two options for signage on a large, ClearChannel billboard located at the edge of our property where we are constructing the new CitySquare "Opportunity Center."

The billboards have been provided at a great price and point to our new development.

Here's the question: which one do you like the best and why? Your responses will help us make our selection!

Super Bowl on CityWalk wall!

Tim Russert

My Sunday mornings will never be the same again.

Tim Russert, NBC journalist and host of Meet the Press, died yesterday of an apparent heart attack while at work.

It is hard for me to describe what Russert meant to me. I've been heard to remark that Russert served a pastoral role in my life. That may sound strange, but he had the rare ability to digest large hunks of information and interpret what he had learned in a fair and insightful manner. He helped me make sense of the world.

I watched his Sunday morning program every time I could. When he appeared on other NBC programming, I turned up the volume instinctively.

Russert grew up, as I did, in a blue collar working family. His father, "Big Russ (about whom he wrote his best-selling book) labored for years as a sanitation worker in Buffalo, New York. No doubt, Russert inherited his breakneck work ethic from his dad.

Shortly after his death I heard James Carville, one of his best friends, describe Russert's approach to life as that of "childlike excitement." Whether it was the Wizards, the Nationals, the Bills, his son--Luke, his family, his hometown of Buffalo, N.Y., or a visit from the Pope, this hard-nosed journalist engaged life with joy, exuberance and fairness.

Renowned theologian Karl Barth is reported to have said on more than one occasion that Christians should approach life with "a Bible in one hand and the morning newspaper in the other."

Russert, a devout Catholic, lived that code.

He helped me understand things.

As I say, Sunday mornings will never be the same for me.

Thanks for your help, Mr. Russert. You will be missed. The void will be enormous in the morning.

.

YouTube and Central Dallas Ministries

If you have a moment, check out the Central Dallas Ministries' YouTube site at:

http://www.youtube.com/cendalmin.

Tell me what you think about it!

Race baiting. . .the remaining cancer of the nation

Don Imus is long gone.

Maybe Rush Limbaugh should follow him.

Somehow, I doubt that happens.

Take a look at the following link:

http://www.alternet.org/stories/50998/.

Limbaugh played this audio stream on his radio program numerous times over the past several days.

Poking fun at African American political leaders, while demeaning the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, the song's fundamental basis, intent and spirit remains thoroughly racist. The issue here has nothing to do with partisan politics, at least not to me.

Will our nation ever move beyond such hateful evil?

I am drawn to a passage from Dean Koontz's novel, Brother Odd:

"In this world where too many are willing to see only the light that is visible, never the Light Invisible, we have a daily darkness that is night, and we encounter another darkness from time to time that is death, the deaths of those we love, but the third and most constant darkness that is with us every day, at all hours of every day, is the darkness of the mind, the pettiness and meanness and hatred, which we have invited into ourselves, and which we pay out with generous interest" (page 149).

Imus

The statement Don Imus made recently about the Rutgers women's basketball team was thoroughly racist and sexist. He was trying to be funny.

He wasn't.

For me, the debate about whether or not Imus is a racist misses a much more important and sobering point.

To be sure, Imus sounded racist and sexist. His words certainly were. Words come from inside where we really live.

But, beyond this, and even more disturbing is the fact that Imus played to his audience and to the marketplace. His "shock jock" genre responded to a precise, scientific understanding of what those who listened enjoyed hearing.

Imus had made such comments before. This time he picked the wrong group to attack. The community responded, thankfully. Advertisers read the writing on the wall. The networks fired him. Thank God for capitalism! When all else fails, money still talks. At least occasionally, it says the right thing.

Imus is not the only one guilty of such foolish, mean-spirited, demeaning, racist pollution. But, he is the one we're talking about today.

Surely, we can do better as a nation, as a people, can't we?

As the controversy was boiling last week, I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's last book, A Man Without a Country, his brief autobiography.

Vonnegut describes a conversation he had with a young man named Joe who approached him with a simple request:

"Please tell me it will all be okay."

"Welcome to Earth, young man," I said. "It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of: #$%&^* it, Joe, you've got to be kind!" (page 107)

Maybe Imus understood my generation and its inherent, genetic racism and sexism. Maybe that's what his marketing folks knew and so counseled him to be what he was. Maybe his entire mission was to market to the low road running through our souls.

But, maybe, just maybe, we can face ourselves and simply decide to go a different way.

Maybe the younger generation--people the age of my daughters and younger--will show us the power and beauty of simple human kindness. I don't know.

But, I do know that we can do better.