Chariots of Fire is an unbelievable movie. I just picked it up at the public library and watched it tonight… If you haven’t seen it, it is an incredible film.

Maybe I like it so much because of my interest in running, or because of my deep intensity… The movie is about essentially two characters, a Jewish man and a Christian man, two runners with passion enough to power a steam engine…

The Christian man, Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), runs for divine ecstasy… with little form, he churns past everyone else with raw determination and love — really unbelievable to watch… and he preaches after his races — he tells people of the spirituality of this running… If he didn’t run, he would be disobeying God.

And yet, near the end of the movie, (this doesn’t entirely spoil the plot, but don’t continue reading if you don’t want to know what happens near the end…), Liddell refuses to run on the Sabbath.

And the Jewish man, Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), runs with a passion born out of anger — out of his need to replace the discrimination and anti-semitism in society with something — and he vows to beat everyone — his quest is to win — also for something greater than himself…

The movie takes place around 1920, right after the great war, and remarkably deals with the incredible moral dispersion of British/Scottish society… Jewish and Christian, country and city…

I was moved again not only for all of these things — for the powerful meaning of the running, and for the movie’s incredible grasp of the divine — but for a more personal reason.

My father is the best runner I have ever known. Not that he always won. But that there was this fierce determination, this joyous love, and incredible breath and blood and muscle caught up inside of him, and it burst out with the steady pounding of his legs on the pavement, or on grass, or dirt.

My father ran in airport terminals. He ran in tuxedos rented for weddings after the party was over. He ran to school at age 3. He ran a sub-5 minute mile at age 50. He lived for running. He lived for the sweat, for the heat and the cold, the pounding of his feet on the pavement.

And my father and I were in a terrible car accident about 4 years ago. And the doctors said he would never walk again.

And today when I watched the scene in Chariots of Fire when Liddell is pushed off the track, sprawling on the lawn, and he gets up, and he runs with the passion of a ‘wild animal’, driven on by his faith, and by the passion he said was straight from God, with all the speed he could pull from his heart.

And my father is the same way. He walks to communion every Sunday. He bikes almost as fast as he used to, going out for hours through the city and the hills of Tulsa, OK. But he will never run again.

It makes me want to cry every time I think about it. I was with him in the car, and I wasn’t hurt at all. My wrist broke, but it healed perfectly, and my body was bruised, but I healed. I wish I could give my dad use of my legs for one run, for one time tearing through the streets…

But I know all of us have certain parts of us that fade away, certain traits that go, certain people that we lose touch with. And often, those things are exactly the parts of us we would love to keep most.

When Liddell in Chariots of Fire was given a choice, he chose to stay with his morals, to stay with his character, to run only for God, and not for his own glory… And he couldn’t run in the race that had been the focus of his life.

We always have something. We always have God. And beyond that, we have our own love, and our passion. Mine is for my music. My dad’s is for that feeling he gets when he is riding free on his bike, when he used to run with every ounce of strength he had. And we have our love for each other.

God bless.