I apparently blog about sports a lot.
Recently I was for some reason paging through the seventy-odd posts I've written in about a year and a third, and indeed, sports comes up in a lot of them.
Not surprisingly, baseball is the most discussed of the sports I end up going on about, but football has taken its share of comment, particularly on the subject of safety and concussions.
Always concerned to be a little self-critical, I had to ask myself why I do that. After all, a lot of people who read this blog don't know diddly about baseball or at least do not follow it closely enough to get some of what I'm talking about. When I start talking about football and concussions and asking questions there, I frankly risk somehow getting branded un-American and possibly being forcibly deported, to judge by the way some people talk about the subject (though not directly to me, at least not yet).
One obvious answer is that I do enjoy sports, albeit selectively so. I've admitted ad nauseam that I love baseball. My relationship with football is almost none, anymore, between the safety issues and the sheer stupidity of how college football is run any more. I haven't followed the NBA since Dominique Wilkins left the Hawks, and while I do follow the college game, it's mostly as a filler once baseball season is over. Hockey? Never have figured it out. I'm learning soccer to some degree, but I don't follow the European leagues with enough maniacal passion to comment on them, and I know nobody reading this would have any clue what I was talking about if I wrote about, say, the experience of Sporting Kansas City's first game at Livestrong Sporting Park (which I did attend, for what it's worth; if I were going to do so I might start by observing that it was, by far, the most demographically diverse crowd I've ever seen at a sporting event of any sort). But those sports that I do follow, I follow with a decent amount of passion and intellectual attention.
But other reasons I tend to gravitate to sports for discussion are (1) that, whether the games themselves, the behavior of players or fans or owners or managers or whatever one cares to single out, sports are one venue of public life that draw in many passionate followers, and (2) in that process much of human nature is laid bare, for the best and for the worst, and in my fool's errand I cannot help but observe and learn from this -- indeed, I would be remiss if I did not.
There are times that the stories that come out of observing the sporting world are incredibly encouraging. From my time at Kansas, the experience of former Jayhawk basketball player Thomas Robinson immediately comes to mind; after the rapid-fire deaths of two grandparents and his mother, the young man found that his team became his family, and found that a teammate's mother stepped into the void made and took him in as her own son. Even when her own sons left for the NBA, Angel Morris stayed in Lawrence to be there for T-Rob. It was a story one couldn't help being affected by, and when it was capped on the court with an insanely improbable run to the national championship game, the story took on the trappings of legend. These things can happen. Sports can become a place of bonding, it's true.
On the other hand, one could practically illustrate the Seven Deadly Sins by reference to the behavior of athletes, fans, owners, and others involved in sport. (Gluttony might seem the hardest, but a few athletes have been known to eat themselves right out of their careers, and have you seen what kind of gluttony goes on in the stands?) For all that can be mined from the players, though, I find the mentality and behavior of fans to be the most ripe for examination (complicated, of course, by the fact that I am one). Sadly, much of what captures the attention of the broader world is fan behavior that ranges from shake-your-head depressing to downright horrifying. Every now and then, the positive side of fanhood can make itself known, but usually what draws attention is the negative behaviors of fans.
These can be pretty egregious. Rioting after a championship loss (or, even more bizarrely, a championship win) is probably the most obvious case of fan behavior scraping the bottom of the barrel, but it is hardly the only answer. To go by the cliches, Philadelphia fans (of whatever sport) are forever going to be tagged as the fans who boo Santa Claus; Yankees fans are a bunch of arrogant, entitled jerks; Red Sox fans were incredible whiners, until the team won a couple of World Series and they turned into Yankees fans; going to an Oakland Raiders game is likened to wandering into a gang war by some to whom I've talked. Verbal abusiveness sometimes seems endemic in the stands for most any sport. These are all easy targets.
What lies beneath this kind of maniacal behavior? In so many lives sports are being asked to fill a void that no athletic contest should ever be asked to fill, that much is obvious. While it's easy to pick on the pro sports, one is easily provoked to wonder if it's college football that comes closest to sheer idolatry among the fan bases involved. And no, I don't think idolatry is too strong a word, with the recent scandal at Penn State providing the most obvious example and the most damaging real-world consequences. (An aside: please don't try to talk to me about how his superiors should have exercised more control. I've spent a decent chunk of my adult life at two sports-crazed universities, enough to know that a coach in that position has no practical superiors. The fact that Paterno held on to his job through some truly bad seasons -- far worse than those that finally got Bobby Bowden eased out at Florida State -- only demonstrates his ultimate untouchability, until the Sandusky scandal came along.) From such horrifying events one can work one's way down the ladder to the kind of delusional fan who decides to take personal revenge on his team's rival by poisoning the trees on their campus, idolatry metastasized into sickness.
So in my humble defense I contend that sports has far too much to teach us about the human condition for me to ignore. But I was struck by another fact in surveying the blog. For a musician, I haven't written a lot about music. A few commentaries on hymns or the upcoming new hymnal, and one piece on a bit of Schubert Lieder, but not what one might think given my past.
On some level I guess there's some subconscious separation going on; I don't want to fall back too much on that past life, while I'm trying to move on in this new life. Another factor is that, while I have some definite things to say on the subject of music and the church, I'm holding on to those thoughts while my education progresses--keeping my powder dry for now, so to speak.
I suspect, though, I'm also affected by a bit of creeping Mendelssohnism. In a letter to a cousin the composer Felix Mendelssohn offered a bit of comment on how he understood and related to music, in an age in which talking and writing about music was what might today be called a "growth industry." The cousin had asked about some of Mendelssohn's "songs without words," short piano pieces in the style and structure of song but for piano alone; specifically, that cousin had asked, in effect, what certain of the songs "meant."
Mendelssohn's answer has always haunted me, since I first read it. He rejected his cousin's attempt to assign specific meanings to the Songs Without Words (their "meaning" to him was nothing separate from the musical sounds or notes themselves); the key idea is that the music that affected Mendelssohn most was "not too indefinite for words, but too definite." I do find that true to a great degree. Much can be said about the notes, rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and such, and theorists do this at great length. Volumes can be said about how people use music, and musicologists and ethnomusicologists, among others, do this at great length, and I have no doubt that at some point I will do so. But about music, the particular moment of music, there is blessed little that can be said if you're doing it right.
Of course, with my current course load and with chemo and radiation treatments starting tomorrow, there's little assurance I'll be blogging about much of anything through the fall. I shall be very busy, and my mind shall be about a million different places. I don't plan to give it up any more than I plan to give up any classes or indeed anything about this whole fool's errand. And at some point the things that strike me on the way may shift in a different direction. 'Til then, sports may continue to come up more often than one might expect, as long as people continue to behave bizarrely where they are concerned, and music less than one might expect, as long as it remains too definite for words.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
On being a human tetherball
A bland day. Literally, as I am on a clear-liquid diet before a couple of medical tests tomorrow, and figuratively, as being confined to home for the, ah, preparation for those tests cuts me off from the world and from my still-unsettled routine of classes and other activities. One can only read so much heavy Old Testament scholarship at a time, much to my consternation.
One of the disconcerting things about this health situation is, as any number of people who've been through it will tell you, the waiting. I'm still miffed about missing that trip to Kansas, but now it's as much about wanting to get on with whatever course of treatment is going to be necessary. Getting to that point, though, has involved a bit of pinballing.
One goes through a number of different doctors in this process, apparently. In my case, my primary care physician found anemia in the results from blood work and referred me to a gastrointestinal specialist for that colonoscopy, which revealed the cancer. That resulted in referral to an oncologist and a surgeon, which also necessitated a radiation oncologist, as well as a different gastrointestinal specialist (one with more experience with cancer) to perform tomorrow's endoscopic ultrasound. (Also tomorrow is the consultation with that radiation oncologist and a CT-PET scan ordered by the primary oncologist. I may sleep the rest of the weekend.)
That's a lot of doctors, and the interesting part is that it is awfully difficult to coordinate all of this. Trying to get three appointments scheduled tomorrow was a rather stressful business, what with the apparent need to register separately for all three, despite all three being in the same specialized facility within the same hospital. While I try to be a level-headed sort, I don't think I'm the person to be all cool and collected while trying to reconcile an unreconcilable schedule of medical events. I had to get a little hysterical to get things done, which I don't enjoy so much.
Getting tetherballed around like this pushes me towards being skeptical, to be mild, about people and their reactions in time of need. Any tendency in that direction, however, is quickly countered by how many people have stepped in to help and support us since this diagnosis. I've heard from many churches across the scattered trail of our lives pledging our prayers and support. I've had nothing but support and pledges of cooperation from my professors, and multiple classmates getting class notes for me on those days (like this one) when I have to miss class. One wonders about the difference between people in relationships and people in systems. Systems don't humanize.
In the meantime, today is a day for, ahem, staying home. Tomorrow will be bizarre. Once these tests are done, hopefully the surgeon and oncologist can get things together enough to decide and put together a course of treatment. As physically difficult as that is likely to be, it will be mentally some measure of relief. At least I'll be doing something, instead of waiting.
One of the disconcerting things about this health situation is, as any number of people who've been through it will tell you, the waiting. I'm still miffed about missing that trip to Kansas, but now it's as much about wanting to get on with whatever course of treatment is going to be necessary. Getting to that point, though, has involved a bit of pinballing.
One goes through a number of different doctors in this process, apparently. In my case, my primary care physician found anemia in the results from blood work and referred me to a gastrointestinal specialist for that colonoscopy, which revealed the cancer. That resulted in referral to an oncologist and a surgeon, which also necessitated a radiation oncologist, as well as a different gastrointestinal specialist (one with more experience with cancer) to perform tomorrow's endoscopic ultrasound. (Also tomorrow is the consultation with that radiation oncologist and a CT-PET scan ordered by the primary oncologist. I may sleep the rest of the weekend.)
That's a lot of doctors, and the interesting part is that it is awfully difficult to coordinate all of this. Trying to get three appointments scheduled tomorrow was a rather stressful business, what with the apparent need to register separately for all three, despite all three being in the same specialized facility within the same hospital. While I try to be a level-headed sort, I don't think I'm the person to be all cool and collected while trying to reconcile an unreconcilable schedule of medical events. I had to get a little hysterical to get things done, which I don't enjoy so much.
Getting tetherballed around like this pushes me towards being skeptical, to be mild, about people and their reactions in time of need. Any tendency in that direction, however, is quickly countered by how many people have stepped in to help and support us since this diagnosis. I've heard from many churches across the scattered trail of our lives pledging our prayers and support. I've had nothing but support and pledges of cooperation from my professors, and multiple classmates getting class notes for me on those days (like this one) when I have to miss class. One wonders about the difference between people in relationships and people in systems. Systems don't humanize.
In the meantime, today is a day for, ahem, staying home. Tomorrow will be bizarre. Once these tests are done, hopefully the surgeon and oncologist can get things together enough to decide and put together a course of treatment. As physically difficult as that is likely to be, it will be mentally some measure of relief. At least I'll be doing something, instead of waiting.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Sluggish days
A rainy Sunday afternoon brings a weekend to a close. I wish it could be described as a profitable one, or exciting, or even mildly interesting, but no, not really.
It was a dry time. One of those times where you pull out your projects, be they written or whatever, and stare at them fruitlessly, occasionally blithering out something that you quickly delete in embarrassment. Reading proved equally fruitless; it devolved quickly into staring blankly at a page with no recollection of having read the page before it. Some paperwork I need to accomplish might as well have been in Sanskrit, for all the sense it made to me.
A bookshelf did get built, or put together to be more precise. It now holds the two commentary sets I own, plus a heap of last year's textbook and a few other items. Nothing particularly thrilling about it. And I have listened to a great deal of radio-broadcast baseball online, which is not bad.
All in all, the time might be best summarized with the world "blah."
This is of course my time between classes. And of course, a little more than a week ago I was diagnosed with rectal cancer. Still, I don't want to think that I wasted my break, and it's far too early to start blaming down time on an illness I don't even really know that much about yet. I finally have some further tests and consultations scheduled, after waiting several days. A CT scan comes up on Tuesday; I get run through a doughnut hole and the doctor takes a peek at what's inside. Consulting with oncologist and surgeon so far seems impossible to schedule without interfering with classes. Grr.
I'm sure part of the funk was that until that colonoscopy and the accompanying news I had been looking forward to a brief return to Lawrence. I was able to do my consultation with the presbytery CPM via Skype, all to the good. I know I'll need to return to Kansas this spring to be considered for candidate status, probably in April when the PNK meets in Manhattan. It will have to be a shorter trip, since I'll technically be in class at that point, but so far Skyping candidate consultations is beyond the pale, as it probably should be. But I was looking forward to that trip. Partly the change of scenery, partly the fact that I really enjoy Lawrence and would truly have liked to catch up with some of the folks back there. All in all, a fairly severe bummer to miss out on it.
But the advent of a new term actually holds some hope of engagement. Going forward I know that the more engaged I am intellectually, the better for me all around. And if that engagement needs to be forced upon me for the time being, so be it.
I remember enough of my time in academia to know that dry spells happen, even in good days. It's not permanent and in a few weeks I might well look back to the relative laziness of the last few days wistfully, longing for such leisure time. But I look forward to finding some way to get the circuits re-engaged. There are a couple of hymns half-complete, as if in suspended animiation; a goodly pile of books awaiting my engagement (note: this is a perpetual condition); a lot of things to see in this area, which fairly crawls with sites from almost every part of U.S. history; and more that isn't coming to mind at the moment.
So, in short, I need my wake-up. I have no doubt it is about to come. And I may be reminding myself, as I start wading through Old Testament, Preaching and Worship, Introduction to Pastoral Care, and Teaching Ministry of the Church, that I should be careful what I wish for, as the saying goes.
It was a dry time. One of those times where you pull out your projects, be they written or whatever, and stare at them fruitlessly, occasionally blithering out something that you quickly delete in embarrassment. Reading proved equally fruitless; it devolved quickly into staring blankly at a page with no recollection of having read the page before it. Some paperwork I need to accomplish might as well have been in Sanskrit, for all the sense it made to me.
A bookshelf did get built, or put together to be more precise. It now holds the two commentary sets I own, plus a heap of last year's textbook and a few other items. Nothing particularly thrilling about it. And I have listened to a great deal of radio-broadcast baseball online, which is not bad.
All in all, the time might be best summarized with the world "blah."
This is of course my time between classes. And of course, a little more than a week ago I was diagnosed with rectal cancer. Still, I don't want to think that I wasted my break, and it's far too early to start blaming down time on an illness I don't even really know that much about yet. I finally have some further tests and consultations scheduled, after waiting several days. A CT scan comes up on Tuesday; I get run through a doughnut hole and the doctor takes a peek at what's inside. Consulting with oncologist and surgeon so far seems impossible to schedule without interfering with classes. Grr.
I'm sure part of the funk was that until that colonoscopy and the accompanying news I had been looking forward to a brief return to Lawrence. I was able to do my consultation with the presbytery CPM via Skype, all to the good. I know I'll need to return to Kansas this spring to be considered for candidate status, probably in April when the PNK meets in Manhattan. It will have to be a shorter trip, since I'll technically be in class at that point, but so far Skyping candidate consultations is beyond the pale, as it probably should be. But I was looking forward to that trip. Partly the change of scenery, partly the fact that I really enjoy Lawrence and would truly have liked to catch up with some of the folks back there. All in all, a fairly severe bummer to miss out on it.
But the advent of a new term actually holds some hope of engagement. Going forward I know that the more engaged I am intellectually, the better for me all around. And if that engagement needs to be forced upon me for the time being, so be it.
I remember enough of my time in academia to know that dry spells happen, even in good days. It's not permanent and in a few weeks I might well look back to the relative laziness of the last few days wistfully, longing for such leisure time. But I look forward to finding some way to get the circuits re-engaged. There are a couple of hymns half-complete, as if in suspended animiation; a goodly pile of books awaiting my engagement (note: this is a perpetual condition); a lot of things to see in this area, which fairly crawls with sites from almost every part of U.S. history; and more that isn't coming to mind at the moment.
So, in short, I need my wake-up. I have no doubt it is about to come. And I may be reminding myself, as I start wading through Old Testament, Preaching and Worship, Introduction to Pastoral Care, and Teaching Ministry of the Church, that I should be careful what I wish for, as the saying goes.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
A follow-up: the Red Sox, the church, and "first principles"
No, this isn't a follow-up to my rotten health report. I don't know any more about that today than I did yesterday.
Rather, I'm already compelled to look back to this post, reflecting on the church's or a church's knowing when it's time to walk away from the usual way of doing things. In that post I referred to my odd little pastime of running a simulated baseball team, and the unpleasant decision that the team as constructed had run its course and it was time for a rebuild from the bottom up.
Oddly enough, a real live major-league baseball team came to something like the same decision this week. Those who follow baseball closely can hardly avoid being aware that the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers pulled off a historic trade this weekend, made monumental in baseball terms by the sheer monetary value of contracts changing hands. Two of the players headed from Boston to Los Angeles, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, have contracts extending over multiple years to come that will bring them in excess of $100,000,000 (it just looks more impressive in numbers, doesn't it?) over the life of the contract. To put that in perspective: only one such player (Alex Rodriguez, the infamous "A-Rod" now of the New York Yankees) had ever been traded in the history of baseball before Saturday's blockbuster. A third player in the deal, Josh Beckett, is still owed a little over $30,000,000 on his contract for 2013 and '14. The fourth player headed to Los Angeles is a utility infielder, which means his contract for next year is only about $1,500,000 or so. In return, Boston is receiving five players, only one of whom is a major-league regular; the others are currently in the minor leagues, and only one or two of those have any major-league experience at all. Ironically, the only big-leaguer in the deal, James Loney, is the least-regarded player in the package, having proven to be a disappointment over the course of his time in L.A. and making Adrian Gonzalez a particularly appealing acquisition for the Dodgers to play first base, which had been Loney's position.
Gonzalez did not disappoint in his first game in Los Angeles, homering on the second pitch thrown to him in his first at-bat Saturday. Beckett is scheduled to make his Dodgers debut Monday night. Crawford is currently injured, and will not be back before some time in 2013. Nonetheless, the Dodgers can look for instant returns on their rather substantial investment as they attempt to push their way into baseball's postseason. The Red Sox, on the other hand, are extremely unlikely to see any return on their investment this season at all. Loney will probably finish out the season there, but is a free agent after this year and there's no guarantee the Sox will choose to keep him around. The other players might filter onto the Red Sox roster starting next season, or maybe even not until 2014.
So what are the Red Sox thinking?
(A quick historical primer follows for the two or three readers of this blog who don't follow baseball at all. If you are a baseball fan, you'll probably know all this stuff, so you might choose to skip ahead a bit if you wish.)
The Red Sox have had a checkered past, capturing attention as much for their failures (an eighty-six-year stretch of failure to win a World Series in particular) as for any successes. Beginning in the 2000s a new management regime made the decision to turn away from trying to compete dollar-for-dollar with high-spending franchises such as the New York Yankees, instead focusing on developing young talent through their minor-league system and supplementing that talent with judicious spending on free agents and trade acquisitions. In particular, the Red Sox also emphasized the development and acquisition of pitching talent, on the principle of scarcity; it was then harder to find good pitching than good hitting.
After some notable heart-breaking setbacks (the 2003 playoffs in particular), this new regime was rewarded in 2004. The Red Sox avenged their loss to the Yankees in the 2003 playoffs with an unprecedented comeback in the American League Championship Series, winning four straight potential elimination games to get to the World Series, where they swept the St. Louis Cardinals to break that long championship drought. Three years later, they pushed through to win a second World Series title against the Colorado Rockies.
Even by 2007, though, things were starting to change, just a little bit. The emphasis on pitching and developing from within remained in place, but here and there an exception to their core principles happened. A long-term and relatively expensive contract for outfielder J.D. Drew, which could at best be said to have given mediocre returns, provided a measure of vexation for Sox followers. After 2007, though, for whatever reason (pressure to keep winning, pressure to keep up with the free-spending Yankees, pressure to keep the manic Boston sports media at bay, pressure, pressure, pressure), developing young talent and fostering pitching (and foregoing those crazy long expensive contracts) fell by the wayside. Beckett, a trade acquisition, was handed a multi-million dollar extension after playing a big role in that 2007 championship. Pitcher John Lackey was signed to a big contract mostly on the strength of his role in the Angels' championship in 2002. Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matzusaka was acquired in one of those complex international transactions in which the Sox first had to pay over $50,000,000 just for the right to negotiate with Matzusaka, who they then signed to a multi-year, multi-millions deal. Crawford, formerly of my Tampa Bay Rays, was signed to a crazy contract upon his free agent departure from St. Petersburg, and Gonzalez got a big contract extension after being acquired in a trade with the San Diego Padres, one in which the Sox gave up three major young prospects.
Individually, aside from possibly the Lackey and Matzusaka deals, it's hard to say any of them were completely wrong-headed. Beckett, hero of the Florida Marlins 2003 World Series win, had been the major force in Boston's 2007 championship. Crawford was easily regarded as the most talented player in his free-agent class, and nobody doubted Gonzalez's ability when he was acquired. The trouble is, when you sink that much money into a player and for some reason that player doesn't live up to the contract, your options for remedying the situation are severely limited. Lackey pitched rather poorly with the Sox, and his attitude went south, and finally he was injured to the point of missing this whole season. Matzusaka, despite some successes, never completely adjusted to the differences between pro ball here and Japan, and was eventually injured himself. Beckett has been inconsistent since his new deal, alternating good and bad years. Crawford, sadly, got off to a poor start in 2011, lost his nerve (it's a very different thing playing in unhealthily obsessed Boston vs. Tampa-St. Pete, where barely anyone knows they have a team) and pressured himself into a deeper hole, and finally ended up injured as well.
Meanwhile, instead of fostering young talent, the Sox gave it away, and some of it is flourishing elsewhere. Anthony Rizzo is establishing himself with the Chicago Cubs (who picked him up in a prospect trade with San Diego), and Josh Reddick, traded to the Oakland Athletics for a relief pitcher, is having a breakout year, for just two examples. Suddenly the Red Sox, far from being the pitching-youth-payroll flexibility franchise their core principles had espoused (and that had developed and prudently spent their way to two World Series wins), were increasingly old, broken-down, and dysfunctional. A collapse for the ages last September has been followed with a broken season in 2012, leading to this weekend's epic tradeoff of talent.
Put bluntly, if you can't find some parallels here for American Protestantism, I'm not sure you're paying attention. Churches nowadays find themselves shrinking both in numbers and influence. Now I've railed against numbers as a measuring stick for the church in too many blog entries to link, and I've argued that the church's cultural influence in this country came at a cost we haven't fully reckoned. What I find increasingly evident is that the church is in many cases guilty of reacting rather like the post-2007 Sox; throw money at the problem (fancy new buildings, sophisticated media facilities, professionalized musical outfits -- be they slick praise bands or virtually professional choirs, superstar preachers?), try desperately to keep up with the Yankees (the culture against which we often see ourselves as being in competition) on their terms (accumulating wealth or "star power," gathering and wielding political influence -- rather like a club, all too often -- or making worship virtually indistinguishable from entertainment?), and losing sight of our core principles.
I found it interesting that one of the first analyses of the Red Sox trade referred to the franchise's "first principles" in arguing that the deal marks a return to those core tenets of youth-pitching-flexibility. That phrase "first principles" is an interesting one itself, finding currency from mathematics to philosophy to economics to politics to a whole lot of other fields of endeavor, apparently even running a baseball team.
When, at last, we find ourselves aging, dysfunctional (I need only look at my own denomination for this, whether past or present), and sliding into cultural irrelevance despite our best efforts, maybe we finally start looking around for our core, our "first principles" as a means of pulling ourselves together. Only, we are forced to wonder, what are our first principles? What is our core? What is the point of the church's existence? Your church might have a mission statement, but does that church's statement really reflect what it believes is the core of its existence? Or does its organization, its activity, or its basic behavior betray that its true core lies elsewhere?
On one level, it had better be easy to identify what -- or perhaps Who -- represents the church's first principles. If at some point the church cannot break down its basic identity, its rationale, its very reason for existence to Jesus Christ, we've severely lost our way. Trouble is, though, Christ is awfully easy to reinvent for our modern purposes. Jesus as CEO? Done. Jesus as guru provokes too many possibilities to link. Jesus as warrior? Go poke around Revelation (and maybe Paul or pseudo-Paul) and ignore those pesky gospels and you're home free. Jesus Christ Superstar? Sorry, couldn't resist. Jesus as Republican (or Democrat)? Easy pickings. It's a sad game with a long history in the church: emphasize this scripture passage here, ignore that one over there, read this one a particular way, and voila! Jesus as, basically, you writ large. Here's a helpful hint: if your concept of Jesus doesn't include at least one thing that offends you or ticks you off, you're probably missing something.
So this is what a church faces, when there's finally nothing left to do but go back to the basics. What is our core, our reason for existing, our sine qua non? What, or Who? And how do we as a church live that out? And how much are we willing to give up to recover that? If the answer to that last question is not "everything," then ... what are we doing?
Rather, I'm already compelled to look back to this post, reflecting on the church's or a church's knowing when it's time to walk away from the usual way of doing things. In that post I referred to my odd little pastime of running a simulated baseball team, and the unpleasant decision that the team as constructed had run its course and it was time for a rebuild from the bottom up.
Oddly enough, a real live major-league baseball team came to something like the same decision this week. Those who follow baseball closely can hardly avoid being aware that the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers pulled off a historic trade this weekend, made monumental in baseball terms by the sheer monetary value of contracts changing hands. Two of the players headed from Boston to Los Angeles, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, have contracts extending over multiple years to come that will bring them in excess of $100,000,000 (it just looks more impressive in numbers, doesn't it?) over the life of the contract. To put that in perspective: only one such player (Alex Rodriguez, the infamous "A-Rod" now of the New York Yankees) had ever been traded in the history of baseball before Saturday's blockbuster. A third player in the deal, Josh Beckett, is still owed a little over $30,000,000 on his contract for 2013 and '14. The fourth player headed to Los Angeles is a utility infielder, which means his contract for next year is only about $1,500,000 or so. In return, Boston is receiving five players, only one of whom is a major-league regular; the others are currently in the minor leagues, and only one or two of those have any major-league experience at all. Ironically, the only big-leaguer in the deal, James Loney, is the least-regarded player in the package, having proven to be a disappointment over the course of his time in L.A. and making Adrian Gonzalez a particularly appealing acquisition for the Dodgers to play first base, which had been Loney's position.
Gonzalez did not disappoint in his first game in Los Angeles, homering on the second pitch thrown to him in his first at-bat Saturday. Beckett is scheduled to make his Dodgers debut Monday night. Crawford is currently injured, and will not be back before some time in 2013. Nonetheless, the Dodgers can look for instant returns on their rather substantial investment as they attempt to push their way into baseball's postseason. The Red Sox, on the other hand, are extremely unlikely to see any return on their investment this season at all. Loney will probably finish out the season there, but is a free agent after this year and there's no guarantee the Sox will choose to keep him around. The other players might filter onto the Red Sox roster starting next season, or maybe even not until 2014.
So what are the Red Sox thinking?
(A quick historical primer follows for the two or three readers of this blog who don't follow baseball at all. If you are a baseball fan, you'll probably know all this stuff, so you might choose to skip ahead a bit if you wish.)
The Red Sox have had a checkered past, capturing attention as much for their failures (an eighty-six-year stretch of failure to win a World Series in particular) as for any successes. Beginning in the 2000s a new management regime made the decision to turn away from trying to compete dollar-for-dollar with high-spending franchises such as the New York Yankees, instead focusing on developing young talent through their minor-league system and supplementing that talent with judicious spending on free agents and trade acquisitions. In particular, the Red Sox also emphasized the development and acquisition of pitching talent, on the principle of scarcity; it was then harder to find good pitching than good hitting.
After some notable heart-breaking setbacks (the 2003 playoffs in particular), this new regime was rewarded in 2004. The Red Sox avenged their loss to the Yankees in the 2003 playoffs with an unprecedented comeback in the American League Championship Series, winning four straight potential elimination games to get to the World Series, where they swept the St. Louis Cardinals to break that long championship drought. Three years later, they pushed through to win a second World Series title against the Colorado Rockies.
Even by 2007, though, things were starting to change, just a little bit. The emphasis on pitching and developing from within remained in place, but here and there an exception to their core principles happened. A long-term and relatively expensive contract for outfielder J.D. Drew, which could at best be said to have given mediocre returns, provided a measure of vexation for Sox followers. After 2007, though, for whatever reason (pressure to keep winning, pressure to keep up with the free-spending Yankees, pressure to keep the manic Boston sports media at bay, pressure, pressure, pressure), developing young talent and fostering pitching (and foregoing those crazy long expensive contracts) fell by the wayside. Beckett, a trade acquisition, was handed a multi-million dollar extension after playing a big role in that 2007 championship. Pitcher John Lackey was signed to a big contract mostly on the strength of his role in the Angels' championship in 2002. Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matzusaka was acquired in one of those complex international transactions in which the Sox first had to pay over $50,000,000 just for the right to negotiate with Matzusaka, who they then signed to a multi-year, multi-millions deal. Crawford, formerly of my Tampa Bay Rays, was signed to a crazy contract upon his free agent departure from St. Petersburg, and Gonzalez got a big contract extension after being acquired in a trade with the San Diego Padres, one in which the Sox gave up three major young prospects.
Individually, aside from possibly the Lackey and Matzusaka deals, it's hard to say any of them were completely wrong-headed. Beckett, hero of the Florida Marlins 2003 World Series win, had been the major force in Boston's 2007 championship. Crawford was easily regarded as the most talented player in his free-agent class, and nobody doubted Gonzalez's ability when he was acquired. The trouble is, when you sink that much money into a player and for some reason that player doesn't live up to the contract, your options for remedying the situation are severely limited. Lackey pitched rather poorly with the Sox, and his attitude went south, and finally he was injured to the point of missing this whole season. Matzusaka, despite some successes, never completely adjusted to the differences between pro ball here and Japan, and was eventually injured himself. Beckett has been inconsistent since his new deal, alternating good and bad years. Crawford, sadly, got off to a poor start in 2011, lost his nerve (it's a very different thing playing in unhealthily obsessed Boston vs. Tampa-St. Pete, where barely anyone knows they have a team) and pressured himself into a deeper hole, and finally ended up injured as well.
Meanwhile, instead of fostering young talent, the Sox gave it away, and some of it is flourishing elsewhere. Anthony Rizzo is establishing himself with the Chicago Cubs (who picked him up in a prospect trade with San Diego), and Josh Reddick, traded to the Oakland Athletics for a relief pitcher, is having a breakout year, for just two examples. Suddenly the Red Sox, far from being the pitching-youth-payroll flexibility franchise their core principles had espoused (and that had developed and prudently spent their way to two World Series wins), were increasingly old, broken-down, and dysfunctional. A collapse for the ages last September has been followed with a broken season in 2012, leading to this weekend's epic tradeoff of talent.
Put bluntly, if you can't find some parallels here for American Protestantism, I'm not sure you're paying attention. Churches nowadays find themselves shrinking both in numbers and influence. Now I've railed against numbers as a measuring stick for the church in too many blog entries to link, and I've argued that the church's cultural influence in this country came at a cost we haven't fully reckoned. What I find increasingly evident is that the church is in many cases guilty of reacting rather like the post-2007 Sox; throw money at the problem (fancy new buildings, sophisticated media facilities, professionalized musical outfits -- be they slick praise bands or virtually professional choirs, superstar preachers?), try desperately to keep up with the Yankees (the culture against which we often see ourselves as being in competition) on their terms (accumulating wealth or "star power," gathering and wielding political influence -- rather like a club, all too often -- or making worship virtually indistinguishable from entertainment?), and losing sight of our core principles.
I found it interesting that one of the first analyses of the Red Sox trade referred to the franchise's "first principles" in arguing that the deal marks a return to those core tenets of youth-pitching-flexibility. That phrase "first principles" is an interesting one itself, finding currency from mathematics to philosophy to economics to politics to a whole lot of other fields of endeavor, apparently even running a baseball team.
When, at last, we find ourselves aging, dysfunctional (I need only look at my own denomination for this, whether past or present), and sliding into cultural irrelevance despite our best efforts, maybe we finally start looking around for our core, our "first principles" as a means of pulling ourselves together. Only, we are forced to wonder, what are our first principles? What is our core? What is the point of the church's existence? Your church might have a mission statement, but does that church's statement really reflect what it believes is the core of its existence? Or does its organization, its activity, or its basic behavior betray that its true core lies elsewhere?
On one level, it had better be easy to identify what -- or perhaps Who -- represents the church's first principles. If at some point the church cannot break down its basic identity, its rationale, its very reason for existence to Jesus Christ, we've severely lost our way. Trouble is, though, Christ is awfully easy to reinvent for our modern purposes. Jesus as CEO? Done. Jesus as guru provokes too many possibilities to link. Jesus as warrior? Go poke around Revelation (and maybe Paul or pseudo-Paul) and ignore those pesky gospels and you're home free. Jesus Christ Superstar? Sorry, couldn't resist. Jesus as Republican (or Democrat)? Easy pickings. It's a sad game with a long history in the church: emphasize this scripture passage here, ignore that one over there, read this one a particular way, and voila! Jesus as, basically, you writ large. Here's a helpful hint: if your concept of Jesus doesn't include at least one thing that offends you or ticks you off, you're probably missing something.
So this is what a church faces, when there's finally nothing left to do but go back to the basics. What is our core, our reason for existing, our sine qua non? What, or Who? And how do we as a church live that out? And how much are we willing to give up to recover that? If the answer to that last question is not "everything," then ... what are we doing?
Saturday, August 25, 2012
A bit more of a challenge than I really need...
No point in beating around the bush. That colonoscopy yesterday led to a diagnosis of cancer of the rectum.
More tests are going to be necessary before I know much else. For the moment it seems to be confined to that one region (rectum, not colon, for example), but they're going to have to look around more to know that for sure. And until that kind of thing is clarified, it's impossible to say what kind of treatment is required. So, I can't really guess at much else.
I certainly was not expecting this. Trouble with bowel movements doesn't typically scream to me "hmm, wonder if I have cancer?" This was not at all something I could predict based on anything going on inside of me.
I am shocked to say the least. My wife is equally so, though (bless her soul) she won't show it easily. I don't have any interest in panicking at this point. Find out what needs to be done, and get on with it. As far as I can see that's all I can do.
I certainly don't plan to give up the fool's errand. Depending on what treatment is required there might be some adjustments of schedule, but I'll still be at Union unless I can't get out of bed.
On the other hand, might there be more urgency about some things? Sure. More time writing, for one thing. More time being in the church. One doesn't want to take chances and miss out on things.
And no, I don't necessarily plan on this turning into a cancer blog. I am sure it will necessarily come up, since it's going to impact my life at least for a while, but that's not all I want to talk about. I still want to be able to go on about baseball when the mood strikes me, not to mention the whole fool's errand that gave this blog its birth. But I'm not Lance Armstrong (come to think of it, I'm probably glad of that today) or some other famous cancer patient, and I won't pretend to have the pull to start a foundation or set off some inspirational movement. I'm just a guy who will have to deal with whatever treatment is going to be required. So be it.
I will no doubt be relying on the kindness of friends, strangers, and a whole lot of other folks. It is presumably still possible that I get somewhat worse news about it, which I will deal with if it happens. I'm not naive; cancer is cancer. But I don't plan to panic until there's nothing else to do. (And I believe there's always something else to do.)
So that's what's going on now. Sorry to drop this bombshell on you on a Saturday afternoon, those who read this via my Facebook link...but this is what is going on now.
P.S. Those of you who see me around, be prepared for the fact that I deal with shocking news mostly by means of really corny jokes and one-liners. If you want to help me feel better, laugh at the jokes.
More tests are going to be necessary before I know much else. For the moment it seems to be confined to that one region (rectum, not colon, for example), but they're going to have to look around more to know that for sure. And until that kind of thing is clarified, it's impossible to say what kind of treatment is required. So, I can't really guess at much else.
I certainly was not expecting this. Trouble with bowel movements doesn't typically scream to me "hmm, wonder if I have cancer?" This was not at all something I could predict based on anything going on inside of me.
I am shocked to say the least. My wife is equally so, though (bless her soul) she won't show it easily. I don't have any interest in panicking at this point. Find out what needs to be done, and get on with it. As far as I can see that's all I can do.
I certainly don't plan to give up the fool's errand. Depending on what treatment is required there might be some adjustments of schedule, but I'll still be at Union unless I can't get out of bed.
On the other hand, might there be more urgency about some things? Sure. More time writing, for one thing. More time being in the church. One doesn't want to take chances and miss out on things.
And no, I don't necessarily plan on this turning into a cancer blog. I am sure it will necessarily come up, since it's going to impact my life at least for a while, but that's not all I want to talk about. I still want to be able to go on about baseball when the mood strikes me, not to mention the whole fool's errand that gave this blog its birth. But I'm not Lance Armstrong (come to think of it, I'm probably glad of that today) or some other famous cancer patient, and I won't pretend to have the pull to start a foundation or set off some inspirational movement. I'm just a guy who will have to deal with whatever treatment is going to be required. So be it.
I will no doubt be relying on the kindness of friends, strangers, and a whole lot of other folks. It is presumably still possible that I get somewhat worse news about it, which I will deal with if it happens. I'm not naive; cancer is cancer. But I don't plan to panic until there's nothing else to do. (And I believe there's always something else to do.)
So that's what's going on now. Sorry to drop this bombshell on you on a Saturday afternoon, those who read this via my Facebook link...but this is what is going on now.
P.S. Those of you who see me around, be prepared for the fact that I deal with shocking news mostly by means of really corny jokes and one-liners. If you want to help me feel better, laugh at the jokes.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
In between
So Hebrew has been survived (I wouldn't be so arrogant as to say "conquered," not by a long shot, but the overall grade was way better than I expected), and next week is my first trip back to Kansas for my post-inquirer, pre-candidate consultation with the CPM of PNK (that acronym soup refers to the Committee on Preparation for Ministry of the Presbytery of Northern Kansas). Today and tomorrow are devoted to investigating a pesky health issue in a particularly uncomfortable way; a colonoscopy. Woo. Hoo. (Rather than attempt any comment on that, I refer you to what is apparently the leading pop-culture comment on that phenomenon.)
Appropriately my thoughts are a bit betwixt and between today. Looking ahead, I may yet be doing a bit of church work in the fall, supplying a bit of substitution in a local church with some temporary pastoral staff shortfall. I'm excited about the opportunity, and the interim nature of the opportunity is fine at this point. Any experience is a good thing at this point, and I have nothing but everything to learn.
It will be a bit challenging since I've signed myself up for an overload this fall, at least at the moment. Besides the natural Old Testament follow-up to Hebrew, I'm signed on for Preaching and Worship, Teaching Ministry of the Church, and Introduction to Pastoral Care. Something may yet have to go, but for now that's all on my plate.
In the meantime, my mind is slowly waking from the fog an intensive-format class inevitably imposes upon me, the one in which it's hard to see the forest because your face is constantly smashing into one tree after another. An entire tropical storm came and went without my noticing -- Helene, we hardly knew ye. That never happens, folks, except obviously it did. We now know who's running for vice president. We now know that some people believe a woman can somehow prevent herself from getting pregnant by rape, and that some of these people are in Congress. A lot happened while I was buried in Hebrew.
On a personal level, one decidedly minor thing did happen, one which is meaningless in the grand scale of things and yet has what I might call "parable value." I had to give up on my simulated baseball team.
Some clarification: this is not a "fantasy" or "rotisserie" team in the sense of one that makes use of the statistics of real major-league players. (I have one of those too, which is currently losing in its playoffs, but I digress.) A sim league generates the players by the kind of sophisticated computer program that is beyond my comprehension. The player's job is to assemble the team--via draft, via trade, via waiver wire--so that, given time, one has a lineup, rotation, and bullpen that can win. One gets young players into your minor leagues, has to decide when to promote them, when to start them, when to replace them due to age or ineffectiveness, and generally runs the team over as many seasons as one can stand. Since this particular league "plays" three games a day, a typical season, postseason, and offseason takes about two months in real time.
With much trial and error (emphasis on "error") I put my team together over many seasons (I acquired my team in that program's 1983 season; currently my league is in its 2003 season). There were some really awful players playing a lot for those early teams, and some bad season records, including some 100-loss seasons. Still, I was getting some sim-players with sim-talent with those high draft picks, letting them develop in the minors, plugging them in as appropriate. In time, losing seasons became winning seasons became playoff seasons. The team even made a few World Series appearances (though no wins, which will irk me for a very long time).
But sadly, the cycle has started to reverse. The team has still been winning, but not as much, not making the playoffs. Because the draft picks haven't been as high, the talent coming in hasn't been quite so good. And those players whom I drafted and nurtured into All-Stars and league leaders are getting "old" in baseball terms, and their performance has started the inevitable decline that indicates. Sentiment aside (as much sentiment as one can generate over bits and bytes), it was time to start over.
In the major leagues it gets called a "fire sale," sometimes. But I'm not sure that's the point. That was a good team, but its time had passed. I'm guessing I don't have to suggest a whole lot of possible real-life applications.
Churches in particular get caught up in sentimental attachments. The infamous "seven last words of a church" ("we've never done it that way before") are a basic reflection of that attachment to the way things were done at the church when my parents or grandparents or whosoever were around, and preachers knew how to preach and were always at the hospital and so on and so on... . It's always a challenge, to know what to stick with and what to let go.
Of course there's an opposite extreme; to change merely for the sake of change. In letting go of my beloved simulated baseball players, the point was not merely to go "out with the old"; the point was to get back players who will, in some hopefully not-too-far-off season, be hitting lots of home runs and getting to the playoffs and finally winning a World Series. Is it guaranteed that all of them will develop? No, not any more than it is in real baseball. But there has to be some possibility, or there's no point in picking up the new player.
The church in general has a history of some very well-intentioned changes that have, it seems to me, not always been terribly successful and have even been detrimental to the core health of the church. Seeing too many empty seats and too many people passing by without stopping to look, churches came up with ways to attract eyeballs and put butts in seats. In doing so, however, in way too many cases something more vital, more essential to the core of what a church is and means was traded away along with the old, non-working ways of doing things. Substance was forfeited; identity was forgotten; meaning got lost.
Many of you assume I'm talking about worship styles, and certainly that's one area that could be up for discussion, but it's hardly the only one. Something very essential about what the church was meant to be and to do in the world was lost, maybe decades or even centuries ago. I get baffled, for instance, by how many folk come out of churches -- good, servant-minded churches that preach and live the gospel with integrity, mind you -- knowing virtually nothing about the Bible. Make of its more troublesome passages what you will, but at least know them, for pete's sake. And you might actually read Paul before you decide what he is or is not. Sheesh.
Knowing what to let go, and when; and knowing what to trade it for. Just another challenge on this fool's errand.
Appropriately my thoughts are a bit betwixt and between today. Looking ahead, I may yet be doing a bit of church work in the fall, supplying a bit of substitution in a local church with some temporary pastoral staff shortfall. I'm excited about the opportunity, and the interim nature of the opportunity is fine at this point. Any experience is a good thing at this point, and I have nothing but everything to learn.
It will be a bit challenging since I've signed myself up for an overload this fall, at least at the moment. Besides the natural Old Testament follow-up to Hebrew, I'm signed on for Preaching and Worship, Teaching Ministry of the Church, and Introduction to Pastoral Care. Something may yet have to go, but for now that's all on my plate.
In the meantime, my mind is slowly waking from the fog an intensive-format class inevitably imposes upon me, the one in which it's hard to see the forest because your face is constantly smashing into one tree after another. An entire tropical storm came and went without my noticing -- Helene, we hardly knew ye. That never happens, folks, except obviously it did. We now know who's running for vice president. We now know that some people believe a woman can somehow prevent herself from getting pregnant by rape, and that some of these people are in Congress. A lot happened while I was buried in Hebrew.
On a personal level, one decidedly minor thing did happen, one which is meaningless in the grand scale of things and yet has what I might call "parable value." I had to give up on my simulated baseball team.
Some clarification: this is not a "fantasy" or "rotisserie" team in the sense of one that makes use of the statistics of real major-league players. (I have one of those too, which is currently losing in its playoffs, but I digress.) A sim league generates the players by the kind of sophisticated computer program that is beyond my comprehension. The player's job is to assemble the team--via draft, via trade, via waiver wire--so that, given time, one has a lineup, rotation, and bullpen that can win. One gets young players into your minor leagues, has to decide when to promote them, when to start them, when to replace them due to age or ineffectiveness, and generally runs the team over as many seasons as one can stand. Since this particular league "plays" three games a day, a typical season, postseason, and offseason takes about two months in real time.
With much trial and error (emphasis on "error") I put my team together over many seasons (I acquired my team in that program's 1983 season; currently my league is in its 2003 season). There were some really awful players playing a lot for those early teams, and some bad season records, including some 100-loss seasons. Still, I was getting some sim-players with sim-talent with those high draft picks, letting them develop in the minors, plugging them in as appropriate. In time, losing seasons became winning seasons became playoff seasons. The team even made a few World Series appearances (though no wins, which will irk me for a very long time).
But sadly, the cycle has started to reverse. The team has still been winning, but not as much, not making the playoffs. Because the draft picks haven't been as high, the talent coming in hasn't been quite so good. And those players whom I drafted and nurtured into All-Stars and league leaders are getting "old" in baseball terms, and their performance has started the inevitable decline that indicates. Sentiment aside (as much sentiment as one can generate over bits and bytes), it was time to start over.
In the major leagues it gets called a "fire sale," sometimes. But I'm not sure that's the point. That was a good team, but its time had passed. I'm guessing I don't have to suggest a whole lot of possible real-life applications.
Churches in particular get caught up in sentimental attachments. The infamous "seven last words of a church" ("we've never done it that way before") are a basic reflection of that attachment to the way things were done at the church when my parents or grandparents or whosoever were around, and preachers knew how to preach and were always at the hospital and so on and so on... . It's always a challenge, to know what to stick with and what to let go.
Of course there's an opposite extreme; to change merely for the sake of change. In letting go of my beloved simulated baseball players, the point was not merely to go "out with the old"; the point was to get back players who will, in some hopefully not-too-far-off season, be hitting lots of home runs and getting to the playoffs and finally winning a World Series. Is it guaranteed that all of them will develop? No, not any more than it is in real baseball. But there has to be some possibility, or there's no point in picking up the new player.
The church in general has a history of some very well-intentioned changes that have, it seems to me, not always been terribly successful and have even been detrimental to the core health of the church. Seeing too many empty seats and too many people passing by without stopping to look, churches came up with ways to attract eyeballs and put butts in seats. In doing so, however, in way too many cases something more vital, more essential to the core of what a church is and means was traded away along with the old, non-working ways of doing things. Substance was forfeited; identity was forgotten; meaning got lost.
Many of you assume I'm talking about worship styles, and certainly that's one area that could be up for discussion, but it's hardly the only one. Something very essential about what the church was meant to be and to do in the world was lost, maybe decades or even centuries ago. I get baffled, for instance, by how many folk come out of churches -- good, servant-minded churches that preach and live the gospel with integrity, mind you -- knowing virtually nothing about the Bible. Make of its more troublesome passages what you will, but at least know them, for pete's sake. And you might actually read Paul before you decide what he is or is not. Sheesh.
Knowing what to let go, and when; and knowing what to trade it for. Just another challenge on this fool's errand.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Things I (think I might have) learned (maybe) in summer Hebrew
Perhaps this is a little premature; the exam isn't until Wednesday. But the next two days after that will not be conducive to writing, and the following week will involve travel...so I'm just getting this out of my brain now so I can get back to studying.
First, things I did not learn well enough:
1. Hebrew verb roots.
2. Hebrew nouns.
3. Hebrew adjectives.
4. Etc.
5. You get the idea.
Things I learned (or confirmed):
1. I don't memorize well. (See above.) If I could memorize I'd probably have spent my life doing something else.
2. Familiarity with the biblical language and its nuances makes a world of difference in reading scripture.
3. The fourth chapter of Jonah may well be the most horrifying bit of scripture in the whole of Judeo-Christian tradition, whatever testament you may prefer.
4. That chapter also feels far too contemporary in some ways.
5. The Joseph narrative in Genesis has its moments as well.
6. As much as I know intellectually that, as one friend put it, no one will ever ask in a church what grade I made in Hebrew...I don't enjoy getting humbled, let's put it that way.
7. The OT is going to be tough to preach.
8. That doesn't mean it should not be preached.
9. I'm clearly crazy to be going through this whole endeavor. But then, the title of this blog has been insisting that all along.
There are some things in this life you experience as triumph, as joy, as epiphany, as revelation. There are some things you count yourself lucky to survive, and then simply move on from there. This has, for me, been one of the latter.
Now back to those pestilent verb roots.
First, things I did not learn well enough:
1. Hebrew verb roots.
2. Hebrew nouns.
3. Hebrew adjectives.
4. Etc.
5. You get the idea.
Things I learned (or confirmed):
1. I don't memorize well. (See above.) If I could memorize I'd probably have spent my life doing something else.
2. Familiarity with the biblical language and its nuances makes a world of difference in reading scripture.
3. The fourth chapter of Jonah may well be the most horrifying bit of scripture in the whole of Judeo-Christian tradition, whatever testament you may prefer.
4. That chapter also feels far too contemporary in some ways.
5. The Joseph narrative in Genesis has its moments as well.
6. As much as I know intellectually that, as one friend put it, no one will ever ask in a church what grade I made in Hebrew...I don't enjoy getting humbled, let's put it that way.
7. The OT is going to be tough to preach.
8. That doesn't mean it should not be preached.
9. I'm clearly crazy to be going through this whole endeavor. But then, the title of this blog has been insisting that all along.
There are some things in this life you experience as triumph, as joy, as epiphany, as revelation. There are some things you count yourself lucky to survive, and then simply move on from there. This has, for me, been one of the latter.
Now back to those pestilent verb roots.
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