Advent 3A prayers and other texts

Some explanation and background can be found here.  Texts for Advent 3A here.  With any luck there might be some connections.

Call to Worship: (adapted from Isaiah 35, Psalm 146, and James 5)

One: The desert shall blossom abundantly.

All: Our souls are so dry.  How can anything bloom there?

One: Teach us the patience of the farmer waiting for the crops to grow.

All: Be patient, Lord, with our weary, waiting souls.

One: We have hope in the Lord, who made heaven and earth, deserts and blossoms and growing crops, all teaching us how to wait.

All: Thanks be to God.

Prayer of the Day:

Great creating God, maker of all that grows, be present among us this day even as we wait with difficult patience for the coming of your Son into our world.  Teach us the patience to wait for your movement among us, to wait for your time of growing and blooming and maturing.  Let our energies be devoted to pursuing your justice in your world, and to restoring all people and all of creation to right relationship to you.  These things we seek in the name of your Son for whom we wait, in the power of the Spirit, Amen.

Prayer of Confession:

Holy and everlasting God, we fail ourselves and we fail you in more ways than we can count.  We run ahead when we need to wait for you, and yet we are indulgent and tolerate injustice when you call us to demand justice.  Our stewardship of creation is destructive, violating your sacred land so nothing can bloom and flourish.  Our gratification of our desires exploits the poor and impoverishes our spirits.  And we take offense when you call us to justice.  Good Lord, forgive us.  We need your Spirit to help us repent and live rightly with all you have made. 

Assurance of Pardon:

Hear this good news: the wilderness and the dry land will still rejoice – not because of anything we have done, but because our God is a restoring God, making highways through the rough places and opening blind eyes.  Our Lord Jesus does not condemn us but calls us to be one with him in bringing forth justice and peace in God’s creation.  For this good work, in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.  Amen.

Prayer for Illumination:

Dearest God, open our blinded eyes, open our deafened ears that we might see and hear your word to us in the words of your scriptures.  Amen.

Communion – The Great Prayer:

Hear these words from scripture: (James 5:7-8)

Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.  The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.  You also must be patient.  Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.

When our world seems its driest and dreariest, when justice is mocked, the poor are punished for their poverty, and the ones oppressed hear no good news, we are called to be bearers of hope and justice.  We become blossoms in the desert, testifying to the opening of our blind eyes and the softening of our hardened hearts.  Our witness at this table, sharing bread and cup across all the divides the world can build, shows God’s promise to be coming for all who cry out. 

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Holy and Great Creator, we give thanks and rejoice in your unending provision for your people.  From earliest times you delivered your people from deserts, sending food to eat and providing water from the rock when they faltered in the wilderness.  You parted seas and rivers to deliver them from oppression.  Time and again you opened your heart to give good things to your people; fruitful and abundant lands, bountiful seas, and winds and rains to bring refreshment and nourishment to your people.

Still we your people fail you, squandering your good gifts and spoiling your creation.  Yet you do not forsake us; you call us back by the voices of the prophets, the songs of the psalmists, the proclamation of your disciples. 

Teach us to sing in hope with all of your creation:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory;

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

We give thanks for your Son Jesus Christ, who came into this world to proclaim your good news of new sight and hearing, liberation and cleansing and new life.  In the waters of baptism he claimed humanity alongside us, and in breaking bread and sharing the cup from the vine he showed us how that humanity is to live at one with him and with one another.  In his words, his deeds, his living and dying and rising, he delivered us from sin into new resurrection life.

Great is the mystery of faith:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Send your Holy Spirit among us, Lord, upending our settled ways and satisfactions and reorienting us to your justice, where wilderness cannot threaten and where good news is for the poor and oppressed.  In your Spirit turn us around to be agents of that justice, and right stewards of all you have made. 

Glory to the One who creates, the One who redeems, and the One who sustains all, Three in One, One in Three, now and forever.  Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Bread and the Cup:

Once a farmer waited patiently for the precious crop of grain, tending soil, watering and replenishing it, until the harvest came forth.  Those grains have become the bread that Jesus breaks and blesses, ministering to us through the power of the Holy Spirit, and showing us how to be ministers to one another.

Once a vintner waited patiently for the precious crop of grapes, tending and pruning the vines, waiting for sun and water to do their work until the harvest came forth.  The fruit of that vine has become the cup that we share in Christ, flowing among us like life itself, and showing us how to live with one another in the Spirit.

The table is ready.  Come, let us share the blessings of Christ’s table.

Prayer After Communion:

God of the desert and the wilderness, of grains and fruits and all that grows and lives and is, we thank you for your unyielding love for us shown to us in your gifts of grain and vine.  Let your gifts unsettle us so that we will not rest in a world of injustice and oppression, but will overturn the world so that all will eat, all will live in your freedom, and all will know your peace.  Amen.

Advent 2A prayers and other texts

See the previous post for explanation.

Call to Worship:

One: A shoot shall grow from the root of Jesse.

All: In creeping winter we wait for this shoot to grow and blossom.

One: Seeds of hope sprout into blooms of joy.

All: Praise the God of new life and growth. 

One: Let us worship the God who brings life.

All: Let us worship God.

Prayer of the Day:

God of all that blooms and sprouts and grows, show us your hope in the unexpected. We seek the signs of your presence with us even as we wait in hope for the day of peace. We look for signs of life in our dry and dreary seasons.  We pray for your coming to us as we await your Son, and long for the presence of you Spirit, Three in One, One in Three, now and forever.  Amen.

Prayer of Confession:

One: Holy God, we confess that we have sinned against you.

All: We have lived in despair when you call us to hope.

One: We see a shoot of green in a world of gray,

All: But we stamp it out or pull it up.

One: We live in a lush, prolific and plentiful world,

All: But we spoil it, befoul it, pollute it, exploit it, and degrade it.

One: You give us Enough, as you are Enough,

All: But we trample one another to get More.

One: We plead for mercy for our sins against you and your world.

All: Forgive us, gracious Lord, and set us against our old ways of fear and exploitation.

Assurance of Pardon:

Hear this good news: hope still blossoms.  The Advent of Christ still springs forth as a new sprout, growing into full and gracious life in God.  For this new sprout of hope, know that in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.  Amen.

Prayer for Illumination:

Holy God, break into our dreary world like new springs of green, growing and taking nourishment from your earth, that we might see and hear you aright in the words of scripture before us today..  Amen.

Communion:

Hear these words from Scripture: (Romans 15:4-6)

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the midst of a dark, sad world, hope gathers us around this table.  We come to partake of the gifts of God’s earth because shoots of hope sprout up in our lives despite our best efforts.  We come because God welcomes us, without walls or bars, to God’s own table, to share in God’s bounty.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Creator God, maker of all that is, your provision for us is displayed throughout your creation.  The fertile soils, rushing waters, and gleaming rays of the sun you created bring forth our sustenance and nourishment since humans first worked the ground.  You have sprung forth hope in dry places, springs of water from rocks, manna from the heavens to provide for your people.  Your people found not just drink and cleansing, but deliverance in the waters, when they crossed through the Red Sea. 

Yet we continue to live in despair and apathy and ignorance of your graciousness to us.  When we fail in hope you call us back in the promises of prophets, the songs of psalmists, the preaching of disciples, in the renewing of your creation in seasons and growth.

Good Lord, renew in us the hope to sing with all of your creation:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory;

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

We thank you for Jesus Christ your son, who burst into this world live a living green shoot from a dry and dead stump.  Living as one of us he felt our joys and sorrows, our hopes and our despair. He plunged into the waters of baptism, made the wine of celebration out of the water of life, and from bread made from the grains of the earth he gave us yet a new sign of hope.  In his living, dying, and rising, he banished death and despair, and set new life into us.

Great is the mystery of faith:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Give to us, O Lord, your Holy Spirit, blooming forth with new life and hope. Set us right in your Spirit, binding us to all that you have made, and teaching us the peace and harmony of your holy mountain where lamb and lion lie down together and a little child leads them.

In your Spirit us to live in justice in your creation, to welcome the unwelcome, to lay aside the weapons of enmity and take up the banner of love.

Glory to the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer, Three in One, One in Three, now and forever.  Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Bread and the Cup:

Jesus took bread, once a new sprout out of old ground, and broke it and gave it to his disciples, giving us a new sign of hope in him.

Jesus took wine, pressed from vines once growing and twisting their way towards the sun, and poured it and gave it to his disciples, giving us a new sign of hope in him.

The table is ready; Jesus bids us come and eat.

Prayer After Communion:

God of growing things, we are grateful for your gifts to us.  Teach us to lay aside despair, to live in hope, and to share that hope with all of your creation. Amen.

Advent 1A prayers and other texts

Note: Back in May I took a course on Ecology and Worship, the principal activity of which (other than a lot of reading) was writing liturgical materials with a particular awareness of creation and ecological concerns.  The tricky part was infusing the prayers and texts with such awareness without getting out of whack with the occasion.  I'm not always sure I succeeded but the effort was itself the reward, and I even managed to adapt part of one for use in my parish internship this past summer.
This past Tuesday I attended, as part of my current non-parish internship, the Living Waters Interfaith Summit hosted in Richmond by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.  In one session, pondering the question of how to bring home to congregations the significance of the environment that surrounds us (in particular the waters of the Chesapeake watershed, but it's hard to separate) I was reminded of that  May class, and ultimately moved to resume the activity of writing liturgy with that balance in mind.  What follows is a first effort for next Sunday, Advent 1A.  Make of it what you will.  You might check the scriptures for the day from the Revised Common Lectionary as well, as some references to those are found below.

Call to Worship:

One: Our eyes are shrouded, as in a haze on the high mountain.

All: We long to see you, O Lord.

One: Our senses are uncertain, feeling and even smelling the coming rain in the air.

All: We yearn to feel your presence, O Lord.

One: We are awakening, slowly, as dawn overtakes the darkness.

All: Come to your people, Lord, like the dawn of a new day.

One: Let us worship the God who molds the mountain, refreshes us with rain, illumines our lives with the sun.

All: Let us worship God.

Prayer of the Day:

Creator God, our hearts are dry.  Our eyes are heavy.  Our souls are asleep.  Refresh our hearts with the drenching rains of your promise.  Open our eyes with the dazzling light of your presence among us.  Awaken our souls that we may be alert to the dawning of new life, longing still to be united in truth with your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Spirit, Three in One, One in Three, now and forever.  Amen.

Prayer of Confession:

Holy God, we are guilty of so much.  We claim to wait for your coming, but we do not wait for anything.  We claim to love your creation, but we devour its resources and spoil its waters beyond what it can bear.  We say we love your children, but we ignore the poor, marginalize the homeless, scorn the prisoner, and act venomously towards those with whom we differ.  For all the ways we sin against you and disobey your will, forgive us.  Heal our own brokenness, and make of us vessels for the healing of your world.  Amen.

Assurance of Pardon:

Hear this good news: our sinfulness is not the last word.  Christ, who could condemn us, loves us instead, and restores us to right relationship with God and with God’s creation.  For this new life, know that in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.  Amen.

Prayer for Illumination:

Holy God, break in upon us like the sunrise to brighten and illuminate the reading and hearing and proclamation of this your word.  Amen.

Communion Liturgy: 

Hear these words from Scripture: (Romans 13:11-12)

You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.  For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

God calls us to this table, God’s own table, to partake of the grains of the earth and the fruit of the vine, and here to learn to live at peace with one another and with all of God’s creation.  There are no doors or gates to bar entry to this table; all who heed God’s call, hear God’s son, and crave God’s spirit are welcome here.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Creator God, maker of all that is, you gave to us a good and fertile world.  Throughout history you have provided good for your people even when your people have rebelled against you.

You have given us abundance in nature, even as we squander it and make scarcity in its place.

You have given us a vast and plentiful world to share, but we war over it.

You have given us prophets and psalmists and disciples and apostles to teach us what your good created world looks like and how to live in it, but we ignore their teaching.

Teach us, good Lord, to sing with all creation:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory;

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

We thank you for the gift of your Son, Jesus Christ, whose life and teaching we celebrate by anticipating his birth even as we mark his undying love for us in anticipating reunion with him.  Living as a human, with a body of flesh and blood, he showed how to live in harmony with all of your creation. He received baptism in water like us.  He gave us this sign and sacrament of bread and wine, gifts of creation, to bring us together in a fellowship in you that cannot be broken, a fellowship that embraces all you have created.  Dying, he showed us unlimited love.  Living again, he showed us unlimited life.

Great is the mystery of faith:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Grant to us, O Lord, your wildly rushing and untamable Spirit, binding us to each other evermore, all creatures and plants and mountains, and oceans and winds and rains singing your praise in concert, living in the harmony You intended.

May that Spirit drive us:

            To live rightly in the world, so that none take too much and none have too little;

            To extend your divine hospitality to those who are sick, imprisoned, homeless, estranged, or lost;

            To live in your world without swords or spears, anything that divides or excludes or separates us from You and Your good created world.

Glory to the One who creates, the One who redeems, and the one who sustains, Three in One, One in Three, now and forever.  Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Bread and the Cup:

The soil and rain of the earth nurtured and fed grains that were gathered and used to make thie bread that Jesus broke and gave to his disciples, a sign and token of his life given for us in living, dying, and living again.

The soil and rain of the earth nurtured and fed grapes that were gathered and pressed and made into wine that Jesus poured and gave to his disciples, a sign and token of his life ongoing and flowing through us.

The table is ready; Jesus bids us come and eat.

Prayer After Communion:

God of mountains and valleys, rivers and oceans, we thank you for these gifts of soil and sun and water that You give us.  Teach us, like those who nurture and tend the grains and grapes and then wait with anticipation, to do good work in your world, and to anticipate with eager longing the advent of your Son, through whom we pray, Amen.

A quickie: The guest cat

We've had a guest cat of late.

She lives somewhere in the neighborhood, we're pretty sure.  At least we think so.  Nonetheless, she's been spending most of recent days outside our house, increasingly often curled up on our porch.

Yeah, it was stupid to feed her.  But not as unacceptable a choice as letting her go without, which was evidently the case before.

She's tiny compared to our two monster boys.  Cute.  Black and white, sort of a "tuxedo cat."  Unlike most cats accustomed to roaming this neighborhood (and there are many, strangely), she will generally be quite affectionate (and this was before getting food).

It's heart-wrenching not to let the cat in, especially as the weather gets colder.  But she's not our cat.

Our two cats do observe her from the windows.  They don't like her, or she doesn't like them.  Hissing is involved.

She's clearly been an "outdoor cat" for some time, affectionate or not.  She's certainly not suited to be taken in.

Still, it's hard.  We're pathetic.  

She may even be out there right now.

It's getting awfully cold.

Ordinary Name Syndrome

Earlier today while trying to read (I say "trying" because our older, larger cat decided I'd make a good pillow about that same time) I had the radio turned on and was somewhat listening to the public-radio staple Performance Today.  My distraction was momentarily resolved when a piece for flute, oboe, bassoon and piano caught my attention and held it for the quartet's full twenty-minutes-or-less duration. I was particularly struck by the quartet's meltingly lovely second movement and rompingly fun third movement.  Having missed the name of the composer (clearly it was a relatively new piece, though not of the variety of "new" that demands harmonic thorniness or other sorts of unease), I was curious to hear who had created it.  At its end the host (a substitute for the regular, which for me made the show easier to listen to) identified the composer as one Bill Douglas.  A quick Wikipedia search and location of the composer's website fleshed the name out as a musician with fingers in a bunch of different musical activities, from jazz piano to some vaguely new-agey recordings to mixed-influence classical pieces like the quartet I heard, a not-all-that-atypical story for a modern composer.

At that point a silly random thought entered my head: how many people can accept a composer named "Bill Douglas"?

A jazz pianist named "Bill Douglas" probably presents little problem, but classical music (entirely through its own fault, I sometimes fear) makes it hard for folks who sound like ordinary women or men to get a real hearing in the ears of those, not part of the inside world of classical music, who might nonetheless enjoy hearing what those composers have to offer.

This isn't the first time I've had such silly thoughts before.  As I've blogged before, my main research interest back in my musicologist days was a composer named George Chadwick, active around the turn of the twentieth century.  In some of my down moments in research, despairing at the degree to which Chadwick was neglected in various eras, I would idly wonder if part of the problem was that "George Chadwick" could just as easily have been your accountant.  (For the record, other composers who became focal points in my study at other times were Frederick Converse, which just makes people think of athletic shoes -- I think he might have been distantly related to those Converses -- and Edgar Stillman Kelley, who I'm privately convinced used the "Stillman" to keep from sounding too ordinary -- he was eccentric enough to do that.)

Such wasn't necessarily always the case.  Chadwick was actually fairly successful in his lifetime for an American-born composer in a concert culture besotted with Germans.  Personally, I blame what sometimes gets called the "music appreciation racket" (a term possibly coined by Virgil Thomson, who might have suffered from "ordinary name syndrome" to some degree).  For so long concert patrons got drilled with the notion that one should only be bothered with Great Composers, and those Great Composers tended to have fairly exotic-sounding European names, the kind best rendered in capital letters -- BEETHOVEN, BRAHMS, CHOPIN, LISZT, WAGNER (pronounced with that German initial "V"), MOZART and so forth.  Obviously some American composers of the twentieth century did get over, but there was occasionally something just exotic enough about the name to set them apart, maybe more with italics than caps -- Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein; while Howard Hanson sounded more like a Nebraska dentist and so forth.

Anyway, my tangent-prone mind of course took off elsewhere.  Is Ordinary Name Syndrome a thing?  Does an ordinary, accountant-y sounding name have its own particular psychological weight?  Does having a mainstream name sometimes work to weigh down its bearer with mainstream expectations?

My name is Charles Freeman.  Nice enough name, but nothing particularly special about it.  That squares fairly well with my usual perception of myself.  Nice enough guy, some things I am good at doing or saying, but nothing particularly outstanding or noteworthy about me.  Fairly ordinary in many ways, not bad ways, but fairly ordinary.

I was a bit of an achiever in elementary and junior high and high school, the kind of thing that was really useful at getting into college and then faded into the background in the face of real life.  I am blessed/saddled with a wildly introverted personality that is fascinated with the world and sees so much in it, but lacks the outgoingness to strike forth and say what I see, outside the occasional confines of this blog and the other one, recently started.  I sometimes wonder, in my sillier moments, if I'd somehow be able to find a little more push in my life if my mother had come up with something different to call me -- "Alonzo," say, or "Jackson" (not merely "Jack"), or who knows what.  Probably not, but who knows?  I'd have been mercilessly tormented as a child, I suspect, but perhaps it would have led to a measure of cool and assurance I don't always have, if I'd survived it.

Or perhaps I should go the three-word name route.  Charles Spence Freeman.  As a kid I was mortified of that middle name.  Now I tend to think it's damn cool.  At one point in college I came close to adopting it as my call-by name.  Three-word names do seem to carry a little extra cool, whether through hyphenation or otherwise.  Of course, it helps to have three names that sound fairly cool together.

I am being silly, I do realize.  Still, as I get towards the end of this seminary time I suppose I'm wondering who the heck I am anymore, ordinary name or otherwise.  I don't particularly feel like a pastor at this point, which is just as well because I'm not one at this point.  I'm reasonably good at some of the tasks of the pastor, not so much at others.  I clearly am not free of certain academic habits or modes of thinking.  I could still teach in the higher-ed classroom, though I'm frankly grateful to be free of some of the other burdens of academia.  Still, I certainly don't feel like a musicologist anymore either.

I've had cancer, and for the moment I don't seem to have it, but I certainly don't feel like a cancer "survivor" (whatever that means).  Blessedly, at the moment I don't really feel like a cancer patient, either.

I certainly don't feel like a writer, though I'm now straddling two blogs, so clearly there is some itch to do something with the written word in there.  An itch, perhaps, but not a need?  There is a dribble of hymns with my name on them, but it certainly isn't a flood or a river or even a decent-sized creek.  Is it just a thing, a phase perhaps, or is there something more to it?

Standing at unknown places is more, typically, than our fragile souls can bear.  Even when the thing beyond the known border is good, or likely to be good -- even to be the thing we've been wishing or dreaming or praying or preparing for -- it is a tremulous moment, that one just before you can see it.  Ordinariness stares me in the face, in the absence of that yet-unknown next place.  It has its own taunts, not those that torment the ones given to wracking doubt and fearfulness.  It'll be okay, I guess.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  It may not be the first call, or the second, but you'll get to a decent point, and you'll do fine.   This is where the absence of tone of voice in a blog is so paralyzing; "fine" needs to be heard with descending pitch, the absence of encouragement without quite being its opposite.

I have skills and I have talents.  I know this much.  Getting from having them to using them, aye, there's the rub.  I don't particularly need to be famous, or rich (although a bit more financial sufficiency would be good, with the bucketloads of medical debt impending), or handsome or many of the other cheap goals that consume so many people.  If I have any fear at this point, I guess it is a fear of squandering something, and I'm not exactly sure what.  Such is the natural result of the kind of reckless transition I'm making, I suppose.

At any rate I can only guess that the thing to do is to step forward again, in the hope that light will shed itself upon that unknown thing.  Ordinary name or not.

Remarks on a hymn and a church

Today's chapel on campus served as a dedication service for our new hymnals.  Amidst the many new hymns being explored from the new book were a few words on singing in the church and the role of music in Christian life and such.  The meager remarks below were my contribution.  In this case they were in reference to one specific hymn new to the Presbyterian book, and how it reminds me of the role one of my past churches played in my life even as I didn't completely realize at the time.  So, a little appreciation for "Old First."

"Look Who Gathers at Christ's Table," which we will sing at communion, was commissioned by First Presbyterian Church of Tallahassee, Florida, in honor of the 15th anniversary of the pastor, Rev. Brant Copeland (a Union alum).  The image of people from all across the faith -- saints and sinners, all together around the table of the Lord -- was one often stressed in his preaching and observance of communion.  The church commissioned the text from renowned hymnodist Thomas Troeger, and the church's organist and choirmaster Michael Corzine composed the tune.


My wife and I came to First Presbyterian after a couple of years in Tallahassee at the invitation of one of my professors (well before the commissioning of this hymn).  Even so, that sense of welcome and hospitality was one of the first things that became clear about the church.  We were attracted by its music, of course, but knitted into the community by its unflagging hospitality and outreach that came not out of a program, but out of the congregation's innate sense of mission and of its place in Tallahassee and in God's greater church.


For me, this was an incredible and well-timed turnaround.  Many of you know I'm not a cradle Presbyterian, and some know I've been to seminary before.  That was not a particularly welcoming experience.  PC(USA), you may not realize, is not the only denomination to have trouble holding it together.  That previous denomination's battles did not end in a split, but a purge, which came to the seminary just as I was settling in.  After three years mostly filled with recrimination, dishonesty, anger, and violent rhetoric in the name of doctrinal and scriptural purity, it would have been easy to walk away from not only any sense of call, but from any sense of "church" at all, and I came a lot closer than even my wife realizes.  The welcome and care of that church in Tallahassee played a huge role in that not happening, and this hymn will always be a beloved and valued reminder of that.

Joy in the moment: The Right Way To Play The Game is usually wrong about this

Note to the baseball-phobic: this post is mostly about baseball, though there might be conclusions drawn from it that are not baseball-specific.  Proceed with caution.

One of the sideshows that have played out over the course of this baseball season and, with some amplification, the postseason as well is the purported over-celebration of some players, or the curmudgeonly prudishness of others, depending on your point of view.

During the playoffs so far, the exuberance faction has mostly been represented by the Los Angeles Dodgers, with particular offense being committed by Yasiel Puig, an emigre Cuban outfielder and recipient of a large contract, who is prone to celebration upon hitting home runs, or thinking he has hit home runs.  At least once his celebratory bat flip ended up preceding not a homer, but a double or triple.

Puig is guilty of some mental lapses in his game and mistakes that have a direct effect on the course of play.  Possessed of a strong throwing arm, Puig sometimes lets his arm strength fool him into making crazed overthrows.  He also makes ludicrous attempts at spectacular catches only to have the ball bounce by him, sometimes with no more than a loping jog of pursuit after.  These obviously give the opposing team extra hits and bases and opportunities for runs, which isn't good.  These hurt the Dodgers, and the Dodgers need to get that kind of mental error fixed.

I'm just not quite certain what (aside from being wrong about having hit a home run) is such a horrible offense in a bat flip, short of one that hits another player.  For one thing it isn't always done even in celebration.  Tampa Bay Rays rookie Wil Myers got into trouble earlier in the season for bat flips that were no more than awkward attempts to get rid of the bat and start running to first at the same time.  The charge is that Puig is intentionally flipping the bat to "show up" the opposition, whatever that means.

Another incident in the series between the Dodgers and the St. Louis Cardinals involved some supposed shenanigans on the part of first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, normally one of the more stoic players in the game.  When one of the Cardinals accused Gonzalez of "Mickey Mouse" antics, Gonzalez responded in the next game by, after scoring a run, putting his hands to his head in mouse-ears shape.  The Cardinals, the latest self-appointed Keepers Of The Unwritten Rules, presumably found this an offense as well.

The Cardinals seemed to pick up that role from the Atlanta Braves, who inserted themselves into more than one incident during the season over the presumed Right Way To Play The Game.  Any kind of display after a home run seemed to bring out their particular ire, even though the Braves themselves fielded at least two of the biggest home-run preeners around.  The Braves only lasted one round in the playoffs, presumably not long enough to get hugely offended at the Dodgers' offenses.

I find this disturbing, mostly because one of my favorite parts of this season involved an unlikely starting pitcher for one of the worst teams in the league.  Jose Fernandez, age twenty at the start of the season with no experience above Class A baseball, ended up in the Miami Marlins' rotation to start the season due to injuries to other starters and (possibly) to an incompetent owner looking to curry favor with betrayed fans howling over the selloff of most of the team's actual major-league players during the previous season and offseason.  Fernandez had not only talent but also a compelling story; a Cuban defector, one who came across as a teenager in 2008 (on a third attempt, having spent time in prison after the failure of the first two) in an attempt that involved having to dive into the waters to save his drowning mother's life.

In one of those freakish scenarios that happen just often enough to tease sports fans into insanity, Fernandez not only succeeded, but thrived, wildly beyond anyone's expectations.  He represented the team in the All-Star Game and ended up being named National League Rookie of the Year by one organization.  He came close to a no-hitter in one start.  He racked up tremendous strikeout totals for a rookie, and crazy good stats for a pitcher of any experience level.

And the best part was, to me, that he enjoyed doing it.

He was happy when he won.  He was happy when his team won (which was seldom).  He was particularly happy when he got a base hit (for some reason pitchers get extremely giddy about hitting, considering they're usually so poor at it).  And he got really happy when he hit a home run in a September game against the aforementioned Atlanta Braves, this season's principal Defenders Of The Right Way To Play The Game.

Fernandez, after hitting the ball, apparently took too long to start running.  This was apparently the judgment of Braves catcher Brian McCann, self-appointed Chief Enforcer Of Baseball Decorum.   Keep in mind this is a twenty-year-old rookie pitcher.  If you are tempted to chastise him with the expression "act like you've been there before," you are ignoring the fact that Fernandez most likely hadn't been there before.  Furthermore, apparently the Braves had no problem with their own catcher/outfielder, Evan Gattis, preening like Madonna in her prime (if Madonna looked like a lumberjack) after hitting a homer earlier in the game.  (According to later accounts, Fernandez actually said "wow" as Gattis's homer left the park.  And maybe some other stuff too.)  OK for me but not for thee, Braves?  To hell with the Unwritten Rules Of Baseball, you just violated all the rules of The Right Way To Play The Game Of Life, and your early playoff exit was richly deserved for that alone.

The Cardinals, at least, have kept their prudery limited to postgame comments to the sports media, even more craven than D.C. media in their mindless pursuit of talking points and clickbait.  They got to the World Series, where they get to play the Boston Red Sox, whose idea of lightheartedness is apparently to disguise themselves as Confederate Civil War generals.  Unless you're a big fan of big ugly beards, it's going to be a rather characterless Series, unless one of the Cardinals attempts to forcibly shave Dustin Pedroia or Mike Napoli mid-game.

Why must games be such joyless affairs?  Even before the emerging science on head trauma put me off football for good, the hyper-militarized regimentation mixed with real showing-up and taunting that characterizes most football games was already starting to put me off my feed.  Does baseball have to be so rigid as well?  The game needs a lot more Jose Fernandezes and a lot fewer Brian McCanns in my not-all-that-humble opinion.  The kid pitcher is embarrassing you?  Shut up and get a hit.  If you can't do that, act like a damn grownup, not a spoiled rotten child.

Life itself is far too often a joyless affair.  The trudge from day to day, most days ending with more weariness than sense of accomplishment.  The increasing sense for so many that there really is no hope for things to get better.  The paranoid hoarding of profit and treasure.  The inability to savor any achievement, because one can't stop pressing on towards the next.  The wearying mantra that "too much is never enough."  The craven envy driving people to strive after The Latest, The Newest, The Hippest, The Coolest, The Hottest.  The Way To Play The Game.  And just when the clouds seem to lift a little, the next bit of bad news, unidentified stuff on a CT scan or the downsizing at work or the whispered degrading gossip at school or online, the brutality, the hatred, the jealousy, the anger, the fear.

And yet for entertainment, for diversion from that grinding existence, we so often turn to stuff that is if anything even more relentlessly grim.  I have to admit I don't get the appeal of these oh-so-popular shows in the ilk of Breaking Bad or such.  Life is hard enough.  Why in the world would I make my down time even harder?

Where is the joy in life?

Not merely happiness, though that's good itself.  Where are we allowed to be joyful?

The church?

Sadly, that merits a "ha!"  Too often, too many times, it is overrun with Brian McCanns, jawing at the Jose Fernandezes for Stepping Out Of Line, for Excessive Celebrating, for Inappropriate Display Of Joy (or Inappropriate Display Of Sadness), for innumerable violations of The Unwritten Rules Of Religion.  The joy that comes not in some mere display of extroversion, but in the awestruck silence, the lone trickling tear even, simply doesn't fit into Proper Church Decorum, so it has to be chastised.  The sorrow that hangs like an anchor on the heart, dragging the soul into the cold murky depths, is Not Proper Church Behavior, and must be rebuked, or at best ignored.  We Have Our Rules And They Must Be Followed.

Before I go any more into Hunter S. Thompson mode, a stanza of "Blest Be the Tie":

We share our mutual woes,
Our mutual burdens bear,
And often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.

If you are in a place where you can find that, cling to it.

If you are in a place where you can "share our mutual joys" or let loose with a great resounding belly laugh with each other just because that moment that just happened could not be received in any other way, count yourself fortunate.  Those moments don't happen often enough to waste on somebody else's idea of The Right Way To Play The Game.