saturday evening inspiration

"Sometimes you feel inadequate, because you are inadequate."

Dr. Haddon Robinson, Harold John Ockengea Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

brushback pitches

pedro is going to win 22 games this year. and it isn't going to mean a damn thing.

his last start aside, i am starting to question the wisdom of the mulder trade. i am slowly realizing that we traded a young tim hudson, and perhaps a neo-natal mike piazza, for an aging mulder. please forgive me, and my close friend walt jocketty, for being wrong on this one.

teams i would least like to face in the playoffs. if i'm the cardinals (and I am): florida, atlanta and houston. we haven't seen pitching staffs of this quality and depth since the bravos of the early 90s. if i'm the red sox: minnesota, oakland and new york. the first two because of pitching, the third because of godzirra and his massive attack.

it appears that paul depodesta knows what he's doin'. it's time for the national media to cut him some frickin' slack!

carlos zambrano is andujar reincarnate, wood doesn't have a high enough iq to be an ace and prior is about as durable as nancy drew. even before nomah's injury i knew that the cubs were in trouble.

terry francona's a horrible tactician...but at least he's one helluva nice guy! ortiz will finally win the MVP this season. could the curse of the bambino be replaced with the plague of the fever pitch? enough about the red sox.

in case you're wondering, i'm still pissed that they named them the nationals.

feel free to add your thoughts.

memorandum from captain random:

fact: if you are a little person (read: midget) with a penchant for acting you will never be unemployed.

i have decided to give up smoking...as soon as dizzy gives up nipping. a man needs accountability.

i can't help but laugh my head when i read sentences like this: "the amazing love of God for me penetrated my heart in a new and deep way that night." there are so many things that i could say about this sentence, but none of them are appropriate. so instead of being vulgar, i'm going to move on to the next chapter, "arousing adam." john and stasi eldredge bring so much to the unintentional comedy table.

if you aren't watching the office on tuesday nights, you're missing out. us collard people love it!

alex took me to the sox game on tuesday to celebrate oklahoma land run day, earth day or my birthday. i can't remember which. the convergence of these days makes celebrating my continued existence rather complicated. anyway, i enjoyed the fenway experience as always and was relieved that fever pitch has left nary a mark on the fenway faithful. our section was filled with interesting conversations about pitch counts, arguments about a certain player's age and the liberal spiking of coca-cola. there was no evidence of either a conga line or an under accomplished comedian in section 13. that being said, we were not left without a big mouthed (i am tempted to say something else that wouldn't be very nice) idiot in our section. when shea hillenbrand, a red sox product who was traded in 2003 for bk kim came up to bat she stood up and yelled "traitor." when i reminded her that hillenbrand did not leave of his own volition, but was traded, she wittily retorted, "he's still a traitor." she needs to get her big...mouth back to the bleachers, where she belongs.

unfortunatery, there were no godzirra sightings at fenway.

you know you're getting old when one of the kids in the middle school youth group you sponsored decides to up and get married.

in the last week the pixie agreed to let me put seats from busch stadium in the living room, watched the clemens/oswalt duel with me and bought a panoramic, framed photograph of busch stadium to commemorate land run day. did i mention that she wants to play strat-o-matic with me? i married the right girl. now, if i can only convince her that watching baseball and chewing red man golden blend are inextricably linked...

musing

yesterday i almost wrote a post about how frustrated i am with punctiliar (read: stop/start) models of conversion. my frustration is partially rooted in theology, but its primary impetus proceeds from my experience. i cannot point back to a single moment in time in which i was "saved," but can, and do, tell stories about how the refreshing waters of the Spirit have slowly altered the riverbed of my soul. anyway, it's a good thing that i left the post unwritten for wendell berry's living analogy of restoration, as told to us by gordon macdonald, "shows" this truth much more powerfully than i could ever "tell" it. you can check out the gordon macdonald article, in which he also includes a kind word for brian mclaren, here.

this journal article, and the post on jamie's blog have reminded me once again that i need to give macdonald a close read. as neal windham and rick would be quick to add, berry's books deserve a place on my shelf as well.

ct has also featured a piece about the life of lonnie frisbee, one of the most intriguing early leaders of the calvary chapel and vineyard movements. you can check out that piece here. i am so glad that the three dimensional testimony of this sinner and saint is being told.

may the peace of Christ be with you on this beautiful (in new england at least) spring day.

the unexpected sermon

late afternoon sun
  the dog is romping
  i am reading

eight year old voices
  and the metallic grind of scooters
  reverberate

feet on the window sill
  buechner sliding into a crescendo
  and then, and then

the dog tears the curtain
  an eight year old startled
  i am revealed

amen. i am revealed

reasons to get up in the morning

the older i get, the earlier i rise. although this practice keeps me from exercising my spiritual gift (read: sleeping), i think it is more beneficial than not.

in order to provide self-motivation for the days i do not want to either rise or shine and in order to remind myself of the beauty of this exercise we call life, i decided to jot down a short list of reasons to get up in the morning.

1. prayer (i realize this sounds overly pious and "preacherish," but i ain't gonna lie)
2. npr's morning edition
3. equal exchange coffee
4. west coast baseball scores
5. morning kisses from dizzy
6. morning kiss from kellie
7. trader joe's rasberry preserves
8. seeing the sun rise over the packy (read: package store or local liquor merchant)
9. hot water and consistent pressure
10. my morning shit (i know, i know, but it's my favorite shit of the day)
11. tom's of maine, wintergreen flavor
12. looking for good words from friends (read: obsessively checking for blog updates)

that's all for now. i'll try to post something more meaningful tomorrow.

link-o-matic

if you've ever been involved with campus ministry, like to laugh and don't mind being offended or making fun of others, you'll love which circle!

back in the days of the horse and buggy, there was a blogger named miah who introduced me to this site. he was a good man, that miah.

oklahoma, circa 1986

i've never thought of myself as a sentimental person. long distance commercials do not phase me, i would never attend high school reunions and the room doesn't get "dusty" when espn classic airs reruns of the 1985 world series (filled with profanity maybe, but not dusty).

that being said, for the last week or so, i've been immersed in memories of my childhood. i've been waking up on summer mornings only to find my baby brother, snug in his yoda underroos, sleeping beside me. i've run through the two and a half neglected acres we called the jungle, where i've redug the trap doors that fooled no one, found dirty condoms on "rock island," sent my brother home after he fell through thin ice lest he get hypothermia, and caught crawdads, hundreds and hundreds of crawdads, and subjected them to horribly creative deaths (slingshots, the blacktop death march and dismemberment are just a few of the options). i could go on. i could tell you about mavis jarvis and in-house suspension, what my friend gabe taught me about my vocation, officiating floor hockey games in the gymnasium, but i won't.

i will, however, confess that i am becoming a bit sentimental. as the years pass the edges of my childhood experience, the fear, failure, my inability to hold my own in honors math, are wearing off and leaving me with a deep sense of wonder. and wonder ain't half bad. in fact, wonder seems to be leading me just a bit closer to the holy and hidden heart of it all.

overheard

"i keep hearin' whispers, that everything's gonna be
all right. you put some goodness back and you take your stand and you hold on to him for dear life."
~bill mallonee, songwriter (numb)

"you cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and experiences."
~w.h. auden as quoted in mark miller's experiential storytelling, pg. 77

"i was no longer stasi. i was sacagawea, indian princess of the west, a valiant and strong woman."
~stasi eldredge in captivating, pg. 3

pitcher as pedagogue

if only i'd known what life would throw
i would have stood still in that box
feet planted, head still, anticipating the schoolyard four seamer

if only i'd know that seams imprinted
could never compare to a ruptured heart
hands back, bat still, short stride

if only i'd known life that life could throw
exploding sliders, cutters in on my hands, shit you can't explain
i'd have taken my cuts, legged a few out, counted the r.b.i.

out of fear i recoiled from the pedagogue
terrified of failure, timid towards pain
backed out of the box, dropped the bat, walked away

but i no longer have a choice
feet planted, bat still, short stride
i have to take my cuts

fear and failure be damned.
i'm going to take my cuts.

fever pitch, part deux

second, it does not work as a romantic comedy. this is true for at least two reasons. first, even a second rate preacher, such as myself, can tell you that you should not wait twenty five minutes to introduce the primary conflict that drives the story (this applies to other genre of literature and film as well). the failure to raise the conflict between fallon's rabid fandom (which is about as realistic as elton john's rabid heterosexuality, by the way) and his broad's yuppie sensibilities, sinks the film from the start. second, fallon and barrymore have less on-screen chemistry than prince charles and lady die. hell, they have less chemistry than me and airport girl! note to the farrely brothers, when viewers have a hard time believing that the main characters would engage in a one night stand, it's going to be a bit difficult to convince them that they would be involved in a long term relationship. for some reason the directors also thought it was a good idea to turn the gender roles on their head by having "the girls" in the movie spend time rock climbing and boxing, while the guys nanced around in an apartment, begging for tickets like strippers for singles, and the lead character faced rejection with pathetic tears instead of a twelve pack of sam adams. playing with gender stereotypes is one thing, but making it difficult for the women in the audience to identify with the female lead and making absolutely verboten for any hetero man in the audience to identify with the male lead, causes more problems than it solves.

the movie also fails on the third level insofar as it is a miserable adaptation of a nick hornby novel. nick writes wonderful novels about how terribly narcissistic, single men discover their humanity and open up their terribly narrow souls. as we have seen with high fidelity and about a boy this theme can be done by american filmakers, and done well. but to turn a nick hornby novel, with the exception of how to be good, into a chick flick is a cinematic sin of the first order.

in sum, i hated this film. in my humble, subtle opinion, ebert and roeper can take the two thumbs they extended in support of this film and stick them up their asses.

whew. i feel better. i should also admit that while i hated the film, i loved the evening. hanging out with kellie and leanne is was tonic for the soul.

dear reader, do sit on your hands until the next edition of jaded reviews, when i will provide my thoughts on john and stasi eldredge's captivating. just to whet your appetite, in the first three pages stasi has already described a conversion experience in which she realized that "i was no longer stasi. i was sacagawea, indian princess of the west, a valiant and strong woman." it was at that very moment that i realized this book is going to be good.

my long awaited review of fever pitch part 1

the primary problem with fever pitch is that it does not work on any level.

first, it does not work as a baseball movie. as most of us have experienced personally, and even more of us vicariously, a baseball field is a beautiful and often magical place. if you ask any true baseball fan, they can tell you about the first time they exited the tunnel at yankee stadium and saw the deep green expanse of left center, walked up to bush stadium and viewed the arch inspired facade or wound their way up to the upper deck of royals stadium, where they were greeted with a magnificent view of the fountains (not to mention I-40 I-70. thanks uncle cade!). unfortunately the cinematography of fever pitch fails to convey either the physical beauty of the field or the lyrical beauty of a perfect wind-up or the sweet moves of a short stop turning two. the stock footage of the games is decent enough, but the shots that the farrelly's directed were horrible. i'm convinced that the blind imbecile who willingly purchased petey the bird could have made more of those shots. in true fenway fashion i would have to say, cinematographer, cinamatographhhher, cinamatogrepherrrrrrrrrrrrr....you suck! furthermore, the portrayals of the fenway faithful were utterly unbelievable. i've been to fenway and have sat close to where the quirky, irrepressible fans sit, so i can assure you that their dialogue is not pg-13 material. i have heard profanities at fenway that i never knew existed and the hometown faithful have made me blush more times than i can count. fans at fenway do not fail to use the f-bomb, they do not talk about "the curse" (they leave such ignorant talk to mindless muckrakers such as Shaughnessy) and they do not fail to discuss subtle nuances of the game, such as whether a one out sacrifice is mathematically sensible or whether lefty-lefty pitching substitutions make an ounce of sense. the fans at fenway, and i'm talking about the real fans--not the beachball pounding, wave joining, blathering idiots who populate the dunkin dugout environs of the bleachers--know baseball better than any fans in the world. when i am there, i am proud to be one of them. turning them into jibber-jabbing, non-cursing, conga-line dancing idiots is reprehensible. on second thought, its worse that that...it's filthy! finally, it does not work as a baseball movie because the narrative ark of the season is never in doubt (hence, no suspense whatsoever) and the filmmakers profane the game by subliminating the story of the season to an idiotic, insipid romance. if you're going to make a baseball movie, make a baseball movie. the narrative arc of the baseball season can sustain a love story here and there (think jake taylor and his sexy librarian, crash and his nun of the "church of baseball"), but do not subliminate the baseball to some player or fan's affection for some broad. okay, i need to get to work. more to come...

finding solace on the smoking porch

around noon on a saturday afternoon, i tried to find solace in a warm cup of coffee, a warm spring breeze and the four thousand incendiary ingredients in my cigarette. but alas, i felt almost crushed by the weight of monotonous work, ministerial responsibility and academic drudgery. but then, whispering through the soft northern breeze i heard the voice of my Savior, "come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and i will give you rest. take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for i am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest in your souls."

in that moment, i collapsed into Christ, wherein i found rest from:

pastoral responsibility
the accusations of conscience
the persistent, piercing voice of self-rejection
the futility of punching buttons
my failure to be present to those i love
the consequences of past sin
my fear of commodifying Christ
the parable that i am to pen for homiletics class
my barely submerged longing for home
my failure to listen and speak life into those i love
my increasing fear of death
the pervasive doubt that consistently counters my faith
and the list goes on.

dear God, i am so thankful for this momentary experience of the rest that both is and is to come. send your Spirit to guide me towards a deeper understanding and experience of the rest that is available in Christ.

my prayer for you, sinners and saints, friends and foes, commenters and lurkers, is that you too will collapse into Christ and so find rest for your weary and burdened souls.

an existential car ride

my occupation arrested my vocation, he admits,
suspended between sentimentality and hope.

what once brought me pleasure
now renders me fat and tired.

the place i called home
has turned into a hospice

i've moved beyond becoming
in order to struggle with being

it is time for the past to impregnate the future
for becoming to issue forth from being.

happy haiku friday!

torn weezer t-shirt

tucked into brand-new gap jeans

past kisses present

memorandum from captain random:

kellie is going to make me see fever pitch. go ahead, laugh, i can handle it. i figure that submission in this instance will save me from later trips to see meaningless drivel like mona lisa smile and murder-in-law. i've heard that holli-brooke is hot to see the later. perhaps they can go together.

at least we won't have to pay for this abusive adaptation of nick hornby's work. we got free tickets for enduring sound problems during the previews for the upside of anger. i would give the latter three stars. fine performances, horrible plot twists. regarding the latter, let me be the first to say only southern children get stuck in abandoned wells.

while we were driving back from his grandfather's interment, josh told us that the receptionist at the mortuary had died unexpectedly the day before. he then said that "apparently, she was the life of the place." we about died.

funniest line of the week: "you had me at blood and semen." ~peter la fleur in dodgeball. is there any end to the entertaining mutations of line?

if you are a fan of crash davis, you'll love ball four by jim bouton. i hope that ron sheldon kicked some royalties bouton's way. otherwise, sheldon is a shameless plagarist.

i've been surprised to find myself returning to a number of christian practices, such as morning devotions, that i once rejected. i think that there is a lot of value in the faith of our evangelical mothers and fathers (pronunciation note: evangelical, pronounced eh-van-gel-i-cal is code for acceptable, Evangelical, pronounced EEE-van-gel-i-cal, often with a southern twang, is code for unacceptable) passed down to us. once we deconstruct the guilt and manipulation with which such practices were foisted upon us, i think that many of us will return to them. a positive, corporate, illustration of this assertion is the way that evangelical, but not Evangelical, churches have been rediscovering the beauty of christian liturgy.

there's twenty of them!

the way up is down

the moment i heard of his grandfather's death, i knew i needed to attend. so after speaking with crummy, i called a couple of friends and we decided to trip together. we planned to leave at 2 a.m. on tuesday morning and arrive home sometime before wednesday. i knew that a day trip of a thousand miles would shred me for the rest of the week, since i am much closer to thirty than i am to spring break at daytona beach, but suspected that the trip would be worth it. i was right.

i am honored to call crummy my friend. after scoring in the 99th percentile on the LSATs and matriculating at george washington, josh decided to go to seminary. at the seminary he struggled through the doubt, cynicism and damn-near despair that few students escape, but he kept at his studies and graduated within three and a half years. after completing seminary, josh had a decision to make. he could begin candidating (seminary-ese for applying) for pulpits or he could go home to carlisle, pennsylvania and provide home care for his grandfather, who was slowly dying of a brain tumor. josh made the right decision.

for the last six months josh has lived in his grandfather's home, overseen his grandfather's affairs and served his grandfather in every which way (up to and including changing his adult diapers). he also took an overnight inventory clerk at target so that he could start paying off his student loans. josh sacrificed the opportunity to work his way into a wealthy firm in order to serve God and His people. he then chose to sacrifice the christian ladder of success in order to serve his dying grandfather. his reward? serving his grandfather during his dying days and letting his grandfather die in loving, familiar arms. josh said he wouldn't exchange the last six months for anything. i am inclined to believe him.

i was so proud to sit in an aluminum sided assembly of God just of I-83 in carlisle, pennsylvania and hear my friend eulogize his grandfather. my intent was to honor my friend for eschewing the good in order to do the best. the tears in his eyes and the strength of his embrace suggested that my intent was correctly interpreted.

there are some people of whom you can truly say, "with friends like those, who needs enemies." i know such people, because i was once one of them. but in the years since i chose to stumble towards Christ and try to serve His church, i have been surrounded by friends who enable me to love and serve not only those who love me, but also my enemies. i am surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. for this i am so grateful.

overheard...a good word for my fellow bloggers (not to mention myself)

"one of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: 'i have nothing original to say. whatever i might say, someone else has already said it, and better than i will ever be able to.' this, however, is not a good argument for not writing. each human being is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. writing can be a creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.

we have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. we may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them."

~henri nouwen, bread for the journey, entry for april 29th

consider this an invitation to Reverend Billy's Church of Stop Shopping

pastor rick, i just received a vision of God's higher calling on your life. this spectacular vision simply appeared on boston.com. i would encourage you, along with all you other sinners and saints, to check this out!

overheard

alan creech of the vine and branches community has written an insightful piece concerning the individual and communal expectations that confront those who participate in communities like sinners and saints. if you are involved in this type of community or are interested in being a part of one, i would encourage you to read it.

please continue to pray for John Paul, our brother.