Good Things Happen...?

I love basketball.  I just can't help it - those fifteen years of playing around the clock, around the year got down deep in my bones.  Today I recall fondly my multiple stages of sports fanaticism - reading Sports Illustrated cover to cover; shooting baskets for hours in the hot, stuffy hayloft; brooding over losses and dreaming about wins; beginning friendships that still exist today. 

Yet as some of you know, I've had my share of wrestling with the game, or more, wrestling with what the game is about.  Beginning about my junior year in college, or actually the second semester of my sophomore year, right when I was getting into Religious Studies, things started to look different.  Maybe it was that I'd reached a new level of brain development or, after twelve years, I was getting burned out.  More likely, I was waking up to a new world that went far beyond winning and losing and rendered such basketball-like paradigms quite troubling. 

Oh, there are the usual responses to my objections.  It's a game; it's supposed to be fun.  It teaches values like hard work and teamwork.  Sports bring communities together.  It helps cheer people and/or society up, providing relief and enjoyment in a serious and/or boring and/or stressful world.  Or for the more theological, we live in a fallen world and therefore must participate in institutions that are broken, even as we recognize their brokenness.  Yes, I've thought of and even tried to believe most of them.

Thus, the struggle rages inside of me.  Basketball has shaped my very being, but so has faith and critical engagement with the systems we participate in every day.  This year, I gave in to the young and innocent, sports-loving me.  I have watched basketball more in the last two and a half weeks than my last two years combined.  It's been lovely, really lovely, almost a return to self. 

Underneath, though, the skeptic reigns, and these darn coaches and players don't help much.  In a t.v. interview after their victory over Kentucky for a trip to the Final Four, Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale said this, "It's like (one of my players) said the other day: Good things happen to good people."  Really?

This is asinine in light of homelessness, poverty, racism, heterosexism...  Read a little Cornell West, Wendell Berry, or bell hooks, why don't ya, and then get back to me.  And yet it's one of the myths that props up our cultural fascination with competitive athletics.  Does it really take a good person to win a championship?  Really?

Sports would be better off if words like "deserving" were eliminated from athletic discourse.  

I wrote a paper last year about basketball.  It was for a theological ethics class, and I still consider it one of my last and greatest masterpieces.  I wrote how language affects our realities, how the words we use influence what we see and think.  For example from a theological perspective, to use words like battle and fight to describe an athletic contest frames competition into a harsh, oppositional worldview.  Is that really what we want from our sports?  Do we really want to be celebrating at the expense of another team or community?  One of my best friends from college recalled this notion after a particularly upsetting loss by saying, "Well, at least the other team is happy."  Think about that, next time you're upset when your team loses a game.  

I believe strongly that our sports could use a little more empathy.  That, and new metaphors to help us see new possibilities and new ways of being together on the basketball court.  What if, instead of battling, we were dancing?  Think about it: to win, you need someone else, a partner.  To score on a defense, you need that defense.  To be able to celebrate a victory, you, by definition, need the team that lost.  In basketball, we are ever indebted to those on the other team.  It's kind of like Paul's notion of indebted love, which is what I argued in my paper.  Think about that, next time you win a championship. 

To Accompany Shadows

I learned in divinity school that homiletics (def. the art of preaching) is much more than standing up to speak about a biblical text.  It has to do with capturing your own voice and fitting it into oral language and a structure that moves in a particular way.  For Anna Carter Florence, preaching is testimony; for Lenora Tubbs Tisdale it is local theology and folk art; for the great Fred Craddock, it's inductive and story-driven; for my teacher, John McClure (also great), the preacher often plays the role of host.  Sermons are moments that happen in steps and moves that conform to the oral/aural nature of of the event and which aren't that difficult to understand but are difficult to execute well in both form and content.  I don't share this to scare any lay folk away from preaching.  I firmly believe anyone can preach and should preach, and that congregations are enriched by a variety of voices and perspectives (bless you, Seattle Mennonite, for the way you share the role).  I write this, rather, to share a small glimpse into my training and into my expectations for my own preaching, which have the most need for improvement in form and structure.  It is hopeful to think about how I might improve over a lifetime of sermon-giving, especially if the opportunities for preaching and pulpit (lectern) supply ever increase.  That's one life path, anyway. 

With that, here's my latest homiletic composition, written for the listener more than the reader. 

"To Accompany Shadows"
March 28, 2010 (Palm Sunday), Seattle Mennonite Church.  

It is good to be with you today, for today we follow Jesus.  There he is on the dusty road into Jerusalem while palm branches wave in celebration of his triumphal entry.  Peering past the people all around we see him riding a colt, and we cannot help but sing out, “Jesus is coming, Hosanna.  Jesus is coming, Hosanna.”  Standing there, we are mesmerized by this man, this man who has freed the captives, carried good news to the poor, forgiven debts, and proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor.  There he is, a servant king, for the robes and garments he walks upon are not fine silks and linens.  They are worn thin and dusty, like we who have gathered to cheer him on. 

Later, we can almost taste the meal, for there he is, at the table, breaking bread just like us.  We know instinctively that it will be his last meal.  And we wonder, is that fear in his eyes? that shadow that we see flickering as he gives thanks for the food and drink and takes a bite.

We imagine touching him as we approach Jesus from a distance toward a garden on the Mount of Olives.  We long to touch him, to reach out and offer comfort.  He has been praying, we can see, from his fervent posture, and he stumbles as he stands up to greet his adversaries.  His presence is soft and gentle, and holds a bottomless sorrow that follows him as he is marched to trial. 

We can smell the fear that floats through the air, underneath the boasting of the men who strike him.  It grows with each beating, with each insult.  They didn’t need to blindfold him.  They didn’t need to hit him so hard.  It smells ugly, like decay. 

The tension in the air builds unbearably, and we feel it as it elevates.  First as Jesus is questioned.  Then as he is handed over.  And then as the cross is assembled.  And then as Jesus breathes his last. 

The silence in the air becomes so loud that we can hear it. 

The story of Christ’s passion sometimes surprises us Sunday church people.  There’s not always time to make it to a Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, or Holy Saturday service, and so it’s tempting to skip directly from the processionals of Palm Sunday to “Up From the Grave He Arose” and the empty tomb.  We are Easter people, after all, and with the Resurrection so soon upon us, Jesus’ journey to the cross becomes a dim shadow of an afterthought, lost between the Easter basket, the pastel colored eggs, and honey baked ham waiting to be carved. 

And yet, here it is today, the cross thrust into our consciousness.  Today’s worship has ushered us from loud hosannas and enthusiastic praise to the breaking of bread to the shadows of betrayal, denial, temptation, and mockery.  Here is where our holy scripture has brought us.  Sitting here in the valley of the shadow of death.  We have followed Jesus to this place; our feet too are dusty from this journey, and we wonder, what are we doing here? 

The great American poet Robert Frost reminds us there is more than one road…

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both 

And be one traveler, long I stood 

And looked down one as far as I could 

To where it bent in the undergrowth…

Robert Frost’s poem reminds us that there’s another road, a happier road, the one we might have taken had we not decided to walk into the story of Jesus Christ this morning.  I suspect you can still get back to that other road if you wish.  Turn left and wade through the bushes, and after a time you will see it. 

By all accounts, it’s more familiar, paved with progress, paved with pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness.  It’s so well lit that you see no shadows.  The road signs say, American Dream, twelve miles.  Along the way, the visitors centers provide us with self-help literature: how to be your best self now!  Then ten habits of success!  How to lost ten pounds in ten days!  The cell phone signal is good here, which assures us that we can always be plugged in.  We never actually have to present in the place where we are, because we can always send a text message or check our email or log in to facebook. 

This road smells clean.  It is regularly swept and dusted and sterilized.  It feels comfortable, painless.  As we travel this road, all of our needs are met, and no sacrifice is required. 

Toward the beginning of Lent, I was visiting with some folks about the Lenten season.  We discussed the tradition of sacrifice, the way many Christians intentionally give up something, fasting to make room for Christ, taking time for introspection and to deepen spiritual practices.  A question was raised: “Why should we give something up?  Why in the world should we deprive ourselves of what we’ve worked so hard to earn?” 

The pursuit of happiness tells us to follow our own desires.  The pursuit of happiness would have us march down the road of comfort, barely pausing to notice then injustices to our left and right.  Always swerving to avoid conflict and confrontation.  Obeying ourselves alone.  When we see those shadows of betrayal and denial, those gray places of violence and abandonment, we turn away, back to the pursuit of happiness.  This is how it often goes, isn’t it?

And yet, and yet if we tiptoe back to the other road, the dusty, shadowy one, we see a faint map, worn with creases, stained with tears.  Philippians chapter two: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, emptying,      kenosis in Greek,       taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness,      human likeness with its sadness, betrayal, injustice.      And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” 

The path to the cross is one of struggle.  It is a difficult way in a culture of convenience.  It doesn’t match the progressive spirit of our age.  But ever so much more than the way of happiness, the journey of the cross shows us how to live.  Pay attention to the world around you, and you will see it too.

This, my friends, is what it means to be human.  To struggle.  To lose your way.  To wonder what you are doing here.  To see ugliness.  To doubt.  To lose faith.  To lose hope.  This is the way of the cross.  Self-emptying, obedience, the dusty shadows of human life. 

Caleb was his name.  He was an infant, the child of two young parents.  He was a younger brother and a grandson, and the recipient of baby gifts.  He was happy and alive and breathing one minute, and then he was not.  She found him rolled over against the wall, without breath one January afternoon.  They life-flighted him to the nearest children’s hospital and thought he was improving after a sleepless night and faint signs of brain activity.  But by the next day he was gone, to be taken off life support as soon as the rest of the family arrived.  In the family room on the fifth floor – neonatal intensive care – the three survivors grieved.  The older brother played spider man.  The mother moved in and out, up and down.  And the father spoke between sobs, “I know he’s in a better place.  I know he’s in heaven.  I just have to let him go.”  He sat helplessly, in the shadow of death. 

You too have a story like this, a memory of the shadowy cross-like place between life and death.  You could share it too, it’s just I who happen to be speaking today, giving my own testimony to what I’ve seen and heard.  Perhaps you walk in that shadow place now, your journey in the footsteps of our emptied out Jesus Christ. Perhaps you, like me, have stories so fresh they are not yet fitting to tell.  Yet we hold them anyway in life.

Perhaps you have forgotten this place or blocked it out, obscured by the pursuit of happiness.  Truly I would not blame you, for it is a scary thing, to accompany shadows. That is why these stories are necessary.

Her name is Donna, but some call her Grandma.  She is well into her eighties by now, her skin wrinkled with age and wisdom.  Her hands the author of countless pies and at least one Raggedy Ann doll for each granddaughter.  Two years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer and given three years to live.  It’s harder to stand now, more difficult to get up out of bed or a chair.  Now life is more about medicines and blood transfusions than baking and sewing.  Even in her eighties, even with a life well lived, it’s scary to feel the cycles of life swirl around, there in the shadow of death. 

Her name is Jenni, Jenni spelled with an “I” and not a “Y.”  She is one of the strongest people I have ever known.  Before I knew her, her dad died, and so when her mom was diagnosed with cancer when she was twenty, she knew how to handle it.  She kept going to school, kept playing basketball, kept working and working and working at life, because life didn’t always come easy to her.  Her mom died in the middle of the basketball season, December right around Christmas.  We took a bus down to the funeral to see her weep with her head in her hands, an orphan at twenty-one.  There, feeling alone, in the shadow of death.  Why do I tell these stories?  How else could one share of the cross, except through story?  What else can I hope to do but show you whose road we follow, whose footsteps we walk in when we accompany shadows.

Jesus was his name.  An itinerant preacher, a rule-breaker, a devout Jew, a prophet.  His life is the stuff of legend and faith, and his death is no different.  The powers that be could not stand the challenge he presented as he walked directly into the shadows of betrayal, denial, mockery, conflict, and violence.  His life was lived in and out of these shadows, which he approached sometimes boldly and sometimes with hesitation.  But he always approached them, following his purpose, following his God.  Today we call him Christ and follow him as our Lord down dusty and sometimes uncertain paths.  Then he stood in agony and submission, there in Jerusalem, in the shadow of death.

The Problem with BBQ

Jamie and I have made it a practice to eat out about once a week for the last couple of years.  Sometimes we try a new place; sometimes we find a place we like enough to make a return trip.  Some places are really uncomfortable to walk into for the first time (for us, pubs have this quality), and some places we fit right in.  We've made some amazing discoveries - Hot Kabob's Middle Eastern/Persian in West Nashville was a spontaneous, serendipitous experience.  Oh, and what I wouldn't give to be able to take Bobbie's Dairy Dip with me wherever I live for the rest of my life.  If I weren't a pacifist, I'd kill for those shakes and sweet potato fries. 

And on to the present Seattle, oh place of dining delights - Burrito Loco right by the Valero station on Crown Hill at the top of Holman Road is the best random, unassuming Mexican I've ever had.  The Four Spoons Cafe on 85th is good enough that we're contemplating becoming regulars.  LC's Kitchen over toward Lake City is a charming place to take visitors, and the cook has Anabaptist ties to boot.  Then of course, we've found good Thai food, decent and cheap Chinese, and surprisingly enough, some seafood we actually enjoy.  However, there is one major problem.

Tuesday was our day to dine out this week, and we decided to try for BAR-B-Q.  I'd heard good things about a little place down in Ballard, Smokin' Pete's down on 65th.  I'd been wanting to try it for a while and Tuesday was the day.  We walked in with high, high hopes.  There's nothing like a craving for good BBQ, even for vegetarian Jamie who just wants to eat baked beans and dip french fries in barbeque sauce.  After some confusion about where and how to order/be seated (FYI, order first, sit later, whoops), we purchased pulled pork and vegetarian plates respectively. 

Now pulled pork is kind of like chai tea for me.  It's what I get to measure a place, and I've had some amazing pulled pork in my day, not the least of which is my family's special pit barbeque recipe: burn down some hedge poles, slap on the wet rub, bury it overnight in burlap bags... oh my!  Then there's my most recent amazing pulled pork from a Florida-based Southern chain called Sonny's.  Oh my!  I expect a lot out of my pulled pork, and I should have known that Pete's wouldn't measure up.  It was a bit dry, the flavor was weak, and the barbeque sauce options were lackluster - either too runny or the wrong kind of kick.

Then, there was the grunge-y music that was turned up a little loud.  And, the lights were painted in yellow and black colors.  Why?  Also, they didn't have fries.  Hush puppies, yes, but no fries.  For another thing, the official name of the restaurant out on their canopy was Smokin' Pete's International something-or-other.  Hmmm.  And I just checked out their web site - advertising "traditional Southern BBQ."  I think not.  How can traditional Southern BBQ happen two thousand miles from the South?  Turns out the owners have ties to Alabama, but they are Northwest natives.  Maybe it's the air out here - not humid enough or not enough mosquitoes to turn out good BBQ.  I don't know. 

This all leads me to remember a conversation we had when we first got here.  A woman we know who grew up in Oklahoma but had lived for years in Tennessee and Georgia told the story of how she and her husband kept looking for good BBQ in Seattle.  They tried place after place and finally gave up.  Good fish?  Yes.  Good ethnic food of all kinds?  Absolutely.  But leave the BBQ to the South.  I mean, I don't go to Tennessee and expect good Dungeness crab, do I?  No. 

Out of this experience, Jamie and I have developed a few BBQ guidelines:
1. Never eat BBQ at a place that's not playing country, folk, or bluegrass music
2. Don't bother to try BBQ at a restaurant that includes "international" in its name
3. Don't eat Seattle BBQ... though we'd welcome your recommendations, because we are a long way from the South and every now and then, you just need good barbeque.

'Tis a gift to be simple

I hold a memory (be it a true or false one) of my parents' wedding, or hearing about it, that is.  The wedding was in my maternal grandparents' backyard one evening in early August back in the 1970s.  A beautiful picture floats around somewhere, complete with trees and sunsets.  From what I see and intuit, it wasn't an elaborate affair at all - elaborate has never been our style, anyway.  Rather, in keeping with the Shaker melody and its suiting words, it was "a gift to be simple."

Now I'm about to make an unlikely jump, so stay with me, dear reader.  It has to do with cats.  And primitive wall hangings.  And leftover yarn.  Do you see where I'm headed?

Our Seattle apartment is quite small, and comfortably furnished but humble.  I, myself of the open spaces, can tend to feel a bit cramped, and I'm sure that our younger cat Wyatt takes after me in this regard (not to mention his athletic ability and somewhat erratic mood swings).  He, however, has not followed me in regard to coping disorders.  While mine tend toward despair and sadness, his tend toward more manic manifestations, including frantic laps around the apartment, leaping over the back of the couch, and attacking scratching post, carpet, our older cat Betsy, and furniture with equal measures of reckless enthusiasm.  This is a problem.  As a result, we have protected our couches with tape, keep a squirt bottle handy for discipline, have given up hope of getting any deposit money back, and regularly wonder if Wyatt will mellow with age.

But now, there is a solution.  Or part of one.  Enter, primitive wall hanging.

Grandma Lu will remember this piece constructed out of scraps at the cabin a couple of years ago.  It's a little nine patch, and the main colors are light blue, navy, and what I think is known as mauve.  On Saturday I finally got around to hanging it up.  (Jamie likes it more than I do.)  Of course the dowel rod from the hardware store was much too long for this little piece, which, in the absence of a saw, I pared down to size using a pocket knife and a scissors.  The extra piece would have lived uselessly under the bed until our next move were it not for our trip to the pet store earlier that day.

Enter flamboyant, overpriced (elaborate?) cat toy.  For those of you non-indoor domestic pet people (most of my readership, I believe) you can indeed buy toys for pets.  These can be chasing toys, chewing toys, scratching toys, etc.  The toy in question is a feather tied to a string tied to a stick.  It runs about $7.99, less if you buy online (but then there are shipping costs).

Now do you see where I'm going?  When you add leftover dowel rod to extra yarn to rambunctious cat and mix it with simplicity and practicality and add a dash of bad photography, here's what you get:

I honestly think this is not unrelated to my parents wedding.  The legacy of the song lives on.

I have many more reflections on simple gifts: some more poetic, some more easily connected, but none, I think, more simple.  Tis indeed a gift.