“Steve McQueen: American Icon” is a documentary feature film about the Hollywood actor’s spiritual journey, which included a meeting late in his life with evangelist Billy Graham.

By Tim Funk

Actor Steve McQueen, who personified cool during his nearly two decades as a Hollywood superstar, retreated from the glamor and excesses of the movie scene late in his short life and embraced Christianity. When he died at age 50, McQueen was clutching a Bible – one given to him by Billy Graham.

In fact, it was Graham’s personal Bible, the one he preached from at crusades. The Charlotte-born evangelist had handed it to the actor, then gravely ill with cancer, during a private meeting Nov. 3, 1980 – just four days before McQueen died after surgery in Mexico.

Nearly 37 years later, the story of Steve McQueen’s faith journey is finally about to be told on the big screen – the medium that made him internationally famous as the action hero in hits such as “Bullitt” and “The Great Escape.” …

Viewers are told that McQueen took along the Graham Bible – with a prayerful note from the evangelist on an inside page – when he traveled to Juarez, Mexico, for the operation to remove a tumor.

The actor died of a heart attack shortly afterward, on Nov. 7, 1980. And when Grady Ragsdale, the manager of McQueen’s ranch in California, went to retrieve the body, he pulled the sheet back and found that McQueen had died clutching the Bible to his chest. …

In an 1980 interview with the Asheville Citizen not long after McQueen’s death, Graham called his meeting with the actor “one of the most heartwarming stories of my ministry. I think it illustrates how lonely most well-known people are, how guarded they must live and how they really are searching for something. Steve McQueen found what he was searching for.”…

Steve McQueen became a movie star in the 1960s, establishing his image as the King of Cool in the roles of the motorcycle-riding POW in “The Great Escape” and the Ford Mustang-driving police detective in “Bullitt.” Other McQueen hits in that decade and in the 1970s included: “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Cincinnati Kid,” “The Sand Pebbles,” “The Thomas Crown Affair,” “Towering Inferno,” “The Reivers,” “Le Mans,” “The Getaway” and “Junior Bonner.”

To read Tim Funk’s Charlotte Observer full article, click HERE.

Art by Zela Lobb http://zelalobb.com

In memory of Johnny Cash who died on this date in 2003, this is the obituary that I wrote for National Review after his death.

By Steve Beard

“We’ve seen the secret things revealed by God/ And we heard what the angels had to say/ Should you go first, or if you follow me/ Will you meet me in Heaven someday?”

Johnny Cash wrote those lyrics many years ago for his wife, June Carter. The song is entitled “Meet Me In Heaven” and it testifies to the irreplaceable bond of love, trust, and devotion that was shared by the couple throughout their 35-year marriage.

On Friday, September 12, Johnny Cash died at age 71 of complications from his longstanding bout with diabetes. Nearly four months after the passing of his beloved wife June Carter, the legendary Man In Black discovered the answer to his lyrical question.

It is strangely fitting that his last album, “The Man Comes Around,” will epitomize his legacy. It deftly embodied the gritty and brooding sound that marked his remarkable career.

Although Cash justifiably received numerous accolades for his rendition of Trent Reznor’s song “Hurt” and its accompanying video, the title track of the album has been widely heralded as one of Cash’s greatest songs.

“The Man Comes Around” is about the Day of Reckoning and the notion that there will be an accounting for the way in which we live on earth. It is described by Cash collaborator Marty Stuart as “the most strangely marvelous, wonderful, gothic, mysterious, Christian thing that only God and Johnny Cash could create together” – perhaps the finest tribute that can be paid to a songwriter.

“Everybody won’t be treated the same,” Cash wrote, “There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down when the Man comes around.” The swinging ladder from above never was an unfamiliar sight to Cash — dodging death numerous times from drug-related addictions earlier in his career to health-related maladies in his later years.

If American music had a Mount Rushmore, Cash’s distinctive profile would be prominently chiseled into the rock. He is most widely known for hits such as “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Ring of Fire,” and “I Walk the Line,” selling more than 50 million records throughout his career. He is the only person to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His audiences have included presidents, prisoners, and everyone in between.

Throughout his illustrative life, Cash wrote books, hosted a popular television show, starred in and produced movies, and recorded 1,500 songs that can be found on 500 albums. His appeal is recognized by everyone from rappers to roughneck steel workers because of his charismatic magnetism that has spanned five decades of popular culture.

“Locust and honey…not since John the Baptist has there been a voice like that crying in the wilderness,” is how U2′s Bono described him. “The most male voice in Christendom. Every man knows he is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash.”

His songwriting orbited around the universal human condition of sin and redemption, murder and grace, darkness and light. His recent three-album collection is titled “Love God Murder.” What you see is what you get with Cash. There was never a manufactured feeling to his art. When he sang, you could almost taste the hillbilly moonshine, smell the gunpowder of a smoking revolver, and feel the drops of blood off the thorny crown of a crucified Christ.

In 1968, he recorded his now famous album “Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison” and produced “Live At San Quentin” the following year. The prison albums were some of his most expressive and impressive work. “I was in the prison band in San Quentin when I first saw Johnny Cash,” remembered country singer Merle Haggard. “I was impressed with his ability to take five thousand convicts and steal the show away from a bunch of strippers. That’s pretty hard to do.”

“My biggest selling albums have always been the prison albums,” Cash once told Rolling Stone. “I think there’s a little bit of criminal in all of us. Everybody’s done something they don’t want anybody to know about. Maybe that’s where it comes from.” Cash had a special affinity for the outlaws and down-and-outers. He recalled the inspiring moment when an inmate at the Tennessee State Prison told him, “I believe I can make it another five years. I know somebody out there cares, cares enough to come in here and sing for us.”

Of course, Cash spent his fair share of time behind bars for incidents surrounding his alcohol and drug use — mostly overnights in holding cells. He turned to drugs as his career began to take off in 1958. At first, he looked upon them as a divine favor from above. He once told Larry King, “I honestly thought it was a blessing — a gift from God.” But it did not take him long to realize that he was deceiving himself and that the drugs were trinkets of the Devil, luring him deeper into retreat mode from unresolved issues in his life.

“Drugs were an escape for me, a crutch — a substitute for what I now feel. I was looking for a spiritual high to put myself above my problems,” he recalled, “and I guess I was running from a lot of things. I was running from family, I was running from God, and from everything I knew I should be doing but wasn’t.”

Throughout this entire time, he never stopped singing gospel songs. He was stoned on amphetamines while he sang “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord,” one of his most beloved songs. “I used to sing all those gospel songs, but I really never felt them,” he recalls. “And maybe I was a little bit ashamed of myself at the time because of the hypocrisy of it all: there I was, singing the praises of the Lord and singing about the beauty and the peace you can find in Him — and I was stoned.” He was in a drug-addled hell but these old gospel songs were etched deeply in his DNA. “They were the first songs I ever heard — and I know this sounds corny, but they’re the songs my mother sang to me.”

Cash’s freedom from long-term drug addiction came through of the power of prayer and the stern hand of his wife who walked by his side through the dark night of the soul. Looking back on the difficult years, Cash says that the drugs “devastated me physically and emotionally — and spiritually. That last one hurt so much: to put myself in such a low state that I couldn’t communicate with God. There’s no lonelier place to be. I was separated from God, and I wasn’t even trying to call on Him. I knew that there was no line of communication. But He came back. And I came back.”

Back in the 1970s when he became more serious about his faith, Cash says it was Billy Graham who advised him to “keep singing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ and ‘A Boy Named Sue,’ and all those other outlaw songs if that’s what people wanted to hear – and then, when it came time to do a gospel song, give it everything I had. Put my heart and soul into all my music, in fact; never compromise; take no prisoners.” Cash subsequently sang in the sold-out honky-tonks of the world and the jam-packed arenas of the Billy Graham crusades — never allowing himself to be too easily pigeonholed by the holy or the heathens.

Johnny Cash was an irreplaceable American original who will be remembered as a cross between Jesse James and Moses – an enigmatic man in black, with a heart of gold, and a voice that could raise the dead. Now that the Man has come around for him, one imagines he’s met his June in Heaven.

Cubans recover belongings in Havana after the passage of Hurricane Irma. (Yamil Lage / AFP/Getty Images)

Hurricane Irma killed at least 10 people during the 72 hours that it battered Cuba, damaging nearly every region of the island nation and leaving parts of Havana’s picturesque historic district still underwater Monday, authorities said.

Its collision with Cuba and other Caribbean islands sapped some of its energy, possibly saving Florida from worse damage. By the time Irma made landfall on Marco Island, on the Florida peninsula, its winds had dropped from 185 mph to 130 mph. While still a massive storm — it was about 400 miles wide — Irma ended up causing less than the catastrophic damage that many had feared.

Cuba, however, was not so lucky.

The storm first hit there at 9 p.m. Friday, slamming the island’s northern coast and becoming the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in Cuba in more than 80 years. Irma did not leave the country until Sunday afternoon.

Given the storm’s immense girth, few parts of the island were spared. Even Havana, hundreds of miles from where the hurricane first struck, suffered severe flooding and wind damage, with waves up to 30 feet lashing the seaside boardwalk known as the Malecon.

Read Kate Linthicum’s entire Los Angeles Times piece HERE.

Ken Jacobs carries 5-year-old Astrid Galperin from a rescue boat on Thursday. Jacobs, who is operations director for a kayak tour/rental business in Houston, was one of many everyday residents who played a role in rescue efforts. John Taggart For The Washington Post

Kevin Sullivan and Peter Holley describe an “unprecedented do-it-yourself relief effort that came to define Hurricane Harvey. After the storm blew into Houston, a remarkable network of boat owners with smartphones, worried neighbors with laptops and digital wizards with mapping software popped up to summon and support an army of good Samaritans who motored, rowed and waded into dangerous waters to save family, friends and total strangers.”

“The ‘We the People’ response seemed distinctly Texan, an outgrowth of the state’s almost genetic disinclination to rely on the government for anything – and in some cases, resolute willingness to defy it. Just as some Texans defied mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the storm, many rescuers ignored repeated official warnings to stay off streets flooded with treacherous and fast-flowing waters.”

To read entire Star-Telegram story, click HERE.

First responders sit down for an extraordinary free meal at B&B Butchers and Restaurant.

Ben Berg’s house flooded waist-high last Sunday. After settling his family with friends, Berg’s next order of business was to open his popular steakhouse, B&B Butcher and Restaurant, as a feeding station for first responders.

He opened B&B Butchers with a special three-course menu with generous selections offered free to Houston’s heroes. The tableside service was offered throughout the weekend during which he had fed steak and salmon dinners to more than 200 police officers as of Saturday afternoon.

For the first responders who could not make it to the restaurant, Berg and his staff have continued to prepare and deliver hot meals — more than 2,000 through Saturday — to the sheriff’s department and the neighboring fire and police stations.

“Although I am exhausted trying to move forward after my own family’s losses, I am dedicated to feeding these brave men and women who have risked their lives for Houstonians, including myself, over the past several days,” Berg said in a statement. “I created this menu because I wanted the first responders who could get away to come in, sit down, be waited on, and just feel really appreciated.”

To read Shelby Hodge’s complete Paper City Mag story, click HERE.

Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr., Bono and the Edge. Photo by Sam Jones, New York Times

It appears at a moment when popular culture is gathering its spirit of righteousness and resistance — a moment that could well be suited to U2, whose pealing guitars and martial beats have, through the years, become rock’s sonic signature of idealism. “Songs of Experience” merges personal reflections with tidings from the wider world, and it calls for compassion, empathy and rectitude. “The wickedness in the world, we just let it perforate the album,” Bono said. “But it still had to be a very personal album, not a polemic.”

***

“You’re putting out a song about your girlfriend when the world is on fire?,” Bono asked, anticipating one reaction. “Yes. Joy is an act of defiance.”

***

Many of the songs, Bono said, are like letters addressed to specific recipients: his family, his friends, the audience, America. Above all, the new album posits “joy as an act of defiance,” Bono said. “That’s the heart of rock ’n’ roll, that’s its life force.”

***

“What’s the difference between ‘Innocence’ and “Experience’?” Bono said. “The core of ‘Innocence’ to me is a lyric from our second album, which says, ‘I can’t change the world, but I can change the world in me.’ The core of ‘Experience’ is — and this is cheeky! — ‘I can change the world, but I can’t change the world in me.’ And so you realize that the biggest obstacle in the way is yourself. There are things to rail against, and there are things that deserve your rage, and you must plot and conspire to overthrow them. But the most wily and fearsome of your enemies is going to turn out to be yourself. And that’s experience.”

To read an entire New York Times article, click HERE

Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale answers the telephone at his original Gallery Furniture store in Houston on Sept. 2, 2017. RNS photo by Bobby Ross Jr.

“My faith defines me. It’s who I am,” Jim “Mattress Mike” McIngvale told Religion News Service. “How am I going to let my people drown? It’s as simple as that. I’m not going to let my people drown.”

McIngvale dispatched Gallery Furniture trucks to pick up victims. He opened his stores as emergency shelters, offering food, mattresses and clean restrooms to hundreds of evacuees and Texas Army National Guard troops.

He turned his stores into collection sites for disaster relief items, posted a “Pray for Texas” video on his Facebook page that received nearly 3.9 million views, and garnered heartfelt thanks and lifelong customers.

In the wake of Harvey, McIngvale said he has seen God at work.

“The best thing about this whole tragedy is the people helping each other and putting all of the left-wing and right-wing politics aside and caring about people, not about politics,” he said.

McIngvale believes Houston’s struggle will strengthen its spirit.

“This tremendous flood of biblical proportions brought this entire city together, and people aren’t fighting and bickering; they’re working with each other and opening the door for each other.”

Houstonians are acting the way Pope John Paul II had inspired people to act, he added.

“They’re loving each other. That’s the way it ought to be all the time.”

To read entire RNS story, click HERE

U2 in Detroit last night. “You can put a man on the moon or rescue people out of the flood water, anything is possible when you work together as one,” said Bono, dedicating “One” to the city of Houston and raising money for Red Cross flood relief. “With Hurricane Harvey, you discovered who you are and what America is.” (Photo by Stephanie Norton)

By Jonathan Miles

I once stumped Jimmy Buffett by calling him a saint. This was many years ago, somewhere in Texas, when during an interview I offhandedly deemed him the patron saint of beach bars. With an easy, elfin laugh Buffett demurred, saying he’d been called a lot of things over the years—but never a saint. (“Commit a little mortal sin,” he once sang. “It’s good for the soul.”) I still stand, however, by my canonization of Saint Jimmy: patron saint of beachfront dives, for sure, but also hammocks, blenders, cabin cruisers, rum hangovers, flip-flops, tropical-print shirts, and the idyll of hedonistic inertia. Millions look to Buffett and his music for what can only be called spiritual guidance, watching his stage shows with that “spindrift gaze toward paradise,” to crib from Hart Crane, relying on Buffett to point the way.

Read review HERE

As a deep lover of the ocean, I was intrigued that Christianity Today, the widely-respected evangelical magazine of record, posted a beautifully insightful article from Cara Daneel, a South African marine biologist. Here are a few paragraphs:

“Christians are not strangers to working with the complexities and resistances of the heart. Robert Sluka, a marine biologist working for the Christian conservation organization A Rocha, first introduced me to this synergy between environmental education and faith. Addressing a room full of secular conservation scientists in Cambridge, United Kingdom, he said, “In a way, you are evangelists too! You have a message you believe is important, knowledge you believe should change how people live, and you face obstacles as you try and help the people you are approaching.”

“As I’ve read about environmental education, I have been drawn to think of Jesus as the perfect teacher and changer of hearts. God fully entered into our context and gave us, by his love, the ultimate motivation to change our lives. Further, Jesus’ winsome example—his humility, compassion, and sacrifice—teach us how to reach out relationally to those around us. As a conservationist, this insight shapes my approach to community projects. As a Christian, it goes even further than this.”

***

“My time caring for just a tiny fraction of God’s world has helped me to praise him and challenged the way I had separated him from his creation,” she concludes. “Let us enjoy time in God’s presence through his works and declare our identities as children of the creator God by including stewardship issues in what we pray for and talk, sing, care, and preach about.”

To read the full article, click HERE.