(A reflection based on Acts 1:1-14)
On the fortieth day after Easter, according to Luke, Jesus ascended from the earth to assume the place he occupies still today: his place at the right hand of the Father. During those forty days Jesus had appeared several times to his disciples. What experiences those must have been! He came and went, so they were accustomed to having him with him and then not having him with them. This time was different, though. This time he was going away and he would not appear to them again until he returned in power at the close of the age.
Who can blame them, then, for standing there, their mouths open and their hearts broken, staring up into heaven?
Who can blame them for being amazed and confused and dumbfounded and for being whatever else they were at that moment?
How long would they have stood and stared had not the two angels interrupted their reverie?
Perhaps in their awe and fear they had momentarily forgotten what Jesus had just said to them: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (v. 8). He was telling them what he had told them before, which was that when he was gone the Holy Spirit would come and they would be empowered to continue his work in the world. Then he ascended, and they stood and stared until the angels broke it up: “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” (v. 11). “Then they returned to Jerusalem” (v. 12).
It was time for them to get their heads out of the clouds and put their feet back on the ground.
They had work to do.
They needed to do it.
They had to do it.
Herein lies a call and a challenge to us today.
There is much to be done.
There is much witness to be born.
We must do it.
It is what we are expected to do by our Lord.
The apostles could not stay on that mountain; they had to go back to Jerusalem because there was work to be done.
They had to be the body of Christ.
They had to be the church.
They had to be the work and witness of Jesus in the world.
We have that same job, and it is a very down-to-earth kind of thing.
I’ve been wondering why the angels addressed the apostles as “Men of Galilee.” There is the obvious truth that they were from the region of Israel known as Galilee. But the angels could have called them anything:
“Disciples of Jesus,”
“Friends of the Lord,”
“Scared and Amazed Ones,”
“Hardheaded and Forgiven Ones,”
and they would have all been accurate. Why did they use a term as mundane as “Men of Galilee”?
I wonder if it was because the group that stood there looking up into heaven as men of Galilee would come down off that mountain and go back to Jerusalem as people of the world. I wonder if the angels were implying that those disciples were going to have to break out of their limited selves in order to move out into the world. I know this: those men of Galilee ended up helping to take the gospel to the world.
In what ways are we “people of Galilee”?
In what ways are we defined by where we are from and by who we’ve always been culturally and socially?
In what ways do we need to break out of our box in order to do the work that we’ve been called to do?
Jesus said that the apostles would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Sometimes they were his witnesses in places they just happened to be.
Sometimes they were his witnesses in places they were forced to go by persecution.
Sometimes they were witnesses in places they chose and to which they planned to go.
But they couldn’t remain the men of Galilee and at the same time be the people who would turn the world upside down.
Let me ask you a question that I hope you will take seriously: where do you need to go to be faithful to the Lord’s calling in your life?
For you it may be a question of vocation. Have you examined your life lately to see if you are spending it the way the Lord really wants you to?
For you it may be a question of commitment. Have you examined your life lately to see if you really intend to life it in service to Christ?
For you it may be a question of ethics. Have you examined your life lately to see if there are places you are living in ways that run counter to your Christian faith and witness?
For you it may be a question of service. Have you examined your life lately to see if there are ways you need to be serving that you are not?
Sometimes I find myself thinking and saying that most of us need to do a much better job of doing the little things. But then I realize that they must really be big things if we have such a hard time getting them done. It is time for more of us to break out of our established ways of living and do some of those things, though. For example:
You may need to be inviting people to church.
You may need to be living a more Christ-like life in your workplace.
You may need to share your testimony with someone who needs to come to Christ.
You may need to work with children or preschoolers or youth.
You may need to sing in the choir.
I can’t be sure what your Galilee is, but I can be sure that many more of us need to get out of it and get on to somewhere else. There is work to be done, and we have to do it. We have to get our heads out of the clouds and our feet on the ground.
But let’s face it: if our hearts aren’t in the clouds, we don’t have a chance. Look at what the angels told the apostles after asking them why they were gazing into heaven: “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (v. 11). That’s the reality that they carried in their hearts with them back to Jerusalem.
The reality is that Jesus Christ has ascended to the right hand of God and from that place he reigns over all creation, over this world, and over our lives. The reality is that Jesus Christ will one day return in power to establish his reign completely and permanently; that is the blessed hope on which the apostles depended and on which we can count.
The apostles’ hearts were in the clouds and that’s where ours are, too: we love and depend on the only hope we have—the ascended and coming Lord.
The psalmist said, “I look unto the hills from which comes my help.” The apostles would have sung a variation on that theme: “I look to heaven from which comes my help.” For when the apostles went back to Jerusalem they went looking expectantly for the coming of the Holy Spirit. They went looking expectantly for the power of God to fall on them that would empower them for their work and for their mission. Their hearts were in the right place, for they were in an expectant place; they were expecting the power of God to come to them and enable them. So what did they do? They waited and they prayed (v. 14).
Sometimes we have to wait and pray. We must do what we must do, but we must do it only with the leadership and empowerment of God. We simply can never afford to forget from where our help comes, from where our power comes, from where our sustenance comes—it comes from heaven above where the Son is seated at the right hand of the Father and from where the Holy Spirit comes to us.
What finally transformed those disciples from men of Galilee into those people who turned the world upside down? It was their obedience to do the work, to be sure, but it was also their expectant waiting for the power that inevitably came. Their feet were on the ground but their hearts were in the clouds. May it ever be so for us.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Reprint at www.ethicsdaily.com
The article "Strong to the 'Finich,'" which appeared here on January 25, has been published today at www.ethicsdaily.com. Click over and give it and the other articles there a look. It's a daily read for me.
Textile Mills Have Been Very, Very Good to Me
Debra and I were in Cabo San Lucas for a wedding a few years ago. We were out doing the tourist thing. My failure to take a cap on the trip combined with the very bright sun was wreaking havoc on my considerable forehead, the product of an ever receding hairline, which in turn is the product of rubbing my head too much when our children were teenagers. So, I ducked into a shop in search of a cap. I bought a nice golf cap that had “Cabo San Lucas” stitched on the front. As I was putting it on, I noticed the tag. I laughed. That cap and its tag have become for me a symbol of this brave new world in which we live. The cap was sold in Mexico. The tag bore a picture of an American flag. Underneath the flag were the words “Made in Vietnam.”
I thought about that cap yesterday when I read a story in my hometown newspaper, The Barnesville (GA) Herald Gazette (I actually read it on their website, www.barnesville.com), about the old William Carter Company complex in Barnesville being bought by some developers. The article said that in its heyday that textile mill had employed some 1500 people. My mother was one of them. I don’t know what she did for most of her career there, but toward the end of her life she worked in the lab. Carter’s made clothes for babies and children and so flammability and other tests were very important. My father worked in the nearby town of Thomaston for Thomaston Mills. He was working there when he entered the Navy around the time that World War II started; he served his five or so years in the military and then went back to work at Thomaston Mills. He was there one nice May afternoon in 1979 when he suffered the heart attack that would cause him to die three days later.
I was very proud of my father; he had risen to the position of Manager of the Bleach Division which was, I suppose, as high as he could go with his high school education. When he had his heart attack and was in ICU at the Upson County Hospital, a couple of young men wearing nice suits came to see him. They were visibly upset. I had never seen them before so I asked someone who they were. He said, “Oh, those are the Georgia Tech graduates who don’t know how they’re going to run that place if your daddy doesn’t make it.” He didn’t make it. By 2001 Thomaston Mills had ceased operations in Thomaston. I like to think that it was because they couldn’t run it without Daddy. But 2001 was also the year that Carter’s mill in Barnesville went out of business, except for a distribution center that still employs a couple of hundred people. It would be an even bigger stretch to think that Daddy’s demise had anything to do with that. And as valuable an employee as I’m sure my mother was, she wasn’t in management, not even the blue collar type.
The causes of the closing of those mills are of course much more complicated than the deaths of a couple of good employees, even if they were my parents. I don’t know enough about economics to say too much about it, but obviously the textile industry has moved a lot of its manufacturing operations overseas. There just aren’t that many textile mills left here in the South and I imagine that it’s that way across the country. Another large outfit, Graniteville Mills, just across the river from my home in Augusta, Georgia, closed just a few months ago, causing the loss of 1900 manufacturing jobs. And so it goes.
It’s a funny thing, but I remember being inside either of the mills in which my parents worked exactly one time. When I was a child my parents took me with them to some kind of open house at Thomaston Mills; I suppose there must have been a recent remodeling. I never set foot inside Carter’s Mill. Not once. Perhaps those good parents of mine, neither of whom went to college but both of whom caused me to believe that I had no choice but to go, also went out of their way to make sure that I felt no real attachment to the mills that had been the source of their livelihood. Maybe they wanted to make sure that I went in a different direction. Maybe they knew what was coming.
Maybe. But today I want to say that I am grateful for Carter’s Mill in Barnesville, Georgia and for Thomaston Mills in Thomaston, Georgia. When I was in school and I had to fill out some form or another and I had to write my parents’ occupation, I would ask one of them what I should write and they would tell me, “Textile.” I didn’t really know what that meant. This much I do know, though: “textile” put a roof over our heads and food on our table and clothes on our backs; “textile” sent me to college.
So here’s a word of praise for what the textile industry once was and for what it once did for so many of us. I never worked in them, but those mills were very, very good to me.
I thought about that cap yesterday when I read a story in my hometown newspaper, The Barnesville (GA) Herald Gazette (I actually read it on their website, www.barnesville.com), about the old William Carter Company complex in Barnesville being bought by some developers. The article said that in its heyday that textile mill had employed some 1500 people. My mother was one of them. I don’t know what she did for most of her career there, but toward the end of her life she worked in the lab. Carter’s made clothes for babies and children and so flammability and other tests were very important. My father worked in the nearby town of Thomaston for Thomaston Mills. He was working there when he entered the Navy around the time that World War II started; he served his five or so years in the military and then went back to work at Thomaston Mills. He was there one nice May afternoon in 1979 when he suffered the heart attack that would cause him to die three days later.
I was very proud of my father; he had risen to the position of Manager of the Bleach Division which was, I suppose, as high as he could go with his high school education. When he had his heart attack and was in ICU at the Upson County Hospital, a couple of young men wearing nice suits came to see him. They were visibly upset. I had never seen them before so I asked someone who they were. He said, “Oh, those are the Georgia Tech graduates who don’t know how they’re going to run that place if your daddy doesn’t make it.” He didn’t make it. By 2001 Thomaston Mills had ceased operations in Thomaston. I like to think that it was because they couldn’t run it without Daddy. But 2001 was also the year that Carter’s mill in Barnesville went out of business, except for a distribution center that still employs a couple of hundred people. It would be an even bigger stretch to think that Daddy’s demise had anything to do with that. And as valuable an employee as I’m sure my mother was, she wasn’t in management, not even the blue collar type.
The causes of the closing of those mills are of course much more complicated than the deaths of a couple of good employees, even if they were my parents. I don’t know enough about economics to say too much about it, but obviously the textile industry has moved a lot of its manufacturing operations overseas. There just aren’t that many textile mills left here in the South and I imagine that it’s that way across the country. Another large outfit, Graniteville Mills, just across the river from my home in Augusta, Georgia, closed just a few months ago, causing the loss of 1900 manufacturing jobs. And so it goes.
It’s a funny thing, but I remember being inside either of the mills in which my parents worked exactly one time. When I was a child my parents took me with them to some kind of open house at Thomaston Mills; I suppose there must have been a recent remodeling. I never set foot inside Carter’s Mill. Not once. Perhaps those good parents of mine, neither of whom went to college but both of whom caused me to believe that I had no choice but to go, also went out of their way to make sure that I felt no real attachment to the mills that had been the source of their livelihood. Maybe they wanted to make sure that I went in a different direction. Maybe they knew what was coming.
Maybe. But today I want to say that I am grateful for Carter’s Mill in Barnesville, Georgia and for Thomaston Mills in Thomaston, Georgia. When I was in school and I had to fill out some form or another and I had to write my parents’ occupation, I would ask one of them what I should write and they would tell me, “Textile.” I didn’t really know what that meant. This much I do know, though: “textile” put a roof over our heads and food on our table and clothes on our backs; “textile” sent me to college.
So here’s a word of praise for what the textile industry once was and for what it once did for so many of us. I never worked in them, but those mills were very, very good to me.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Easy
(A Reflection based on Psalm 71:1-6)
I don’t know where it started. Maybe it was one of those lazy summer days of my childhood when I was lying in the cool clover in the shade beside our house thinking of nothing. Maybe it was one of those Sunday mornings of my youth when I thought I heard the preacher say that if you were bad you’d get bad and that if you were good you’d get good. Maybe it was during those dark days of my sixteenth year when, in a period of two and a half weeks, my mother and her father both died and something in me concluded that such things really ought not to be and that such pain was almost too much to bear. I don’t know where it started. But somewhere along the way I think that I began to believe that easier was better. Maybe I started believing, at least partly, that good things ought to happen to good people.
I was wrong. Oh, don’t misunderstand. Leisure has its place and it’s a good place. Having a time that is worry-free and pain-free and doubt-free is wonderful and I’ll take it when I can get it. I’d still rather not grieve than grieve. My favorite sensation is still the one that could be called “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.”
But we live in the real world where real life has to be lived and where real problems emerge and where real doubts appear. The real world calls for real faith, and real faith struggles with what is happening; real faith does not stick its head in the sand and hope it will all go away. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. God certainly never promised that. What God has promised is that he will be faithful to his children and that he will never forsake them and that he will be there to help them.
If we will pay attention, experience will teach us that God is with us through all the trials of life. So the psalmist says, “Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb” (v. 6). Experience teaches us that God is dependable in all the circumstances of our lives. Hopefully we can trust in that truth and depend on it as we go along. We certainly can see it as we look back over our lives.
The prophet Jeremiah didn’t have it easy. He was called by God to be his prophet while only a youth. And he was told right up front how hard it would be:
But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them. And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you. (Jeremiah 1:17-19)
There we see two great truths of the life of faith: (1) “They will fight against you”; and (2) “But they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you.”
Jeremiah surely remembered. He surely remembered when his enemies were plotting against his life (18:18). He surely remembered when he was arrested, beaten, and placed in stocks (20:1-2). He surely remembered when he dictated a scroll only to have the king cut it up and burn it as it was read (36:20ff). He surely remembered when he was thrown into a muddy cistern (38:1-6). Jeremiah knew what it was to face the hard times; he knew that his hardest times were coming exactly because he was a person of faith. Did it all bother him? Of course it did. When God called Jeremiah he said to him, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (1:5). But listen to what Jeremiah says later in the midst of opposition and struggle: “Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying, ‘A child is born to you, a son,’ making him very glad” (20:14-15). But this same struggling prophet said, “Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit” (17:7-8).
So nobody said that it was going to be easy. And the testimony offered by the lives of the faithful ones in the Bible is that the most faithful ones might just have it the roughest. I have used Jeremiah as an example, but we could trace the reality all the way through the book, even and especially into the life of our Savior. So what do we do with the hard times and the difficult days and the harsh realities?
First, we can hope and pray and trust and, if possible, work that things might get better. The psalmists and Jeremiah did not hesitate to ask God to get them out of what they were going through and even to make it clear to the world that they were not in the wrong. Such a prayer is absolutely appropriate and absolutely proper. And if we’re in a fix that we can do something about ourselves then we should do it. One of God’s greatest and most underutilized gifts to humanity is common sense. It is an unbalanced person who wants to suffer or who wants to remain in a state of suffering. Asking God to take it away is all right; it is not weakness to ask. Even Jesus prayed, “Father, if it be thy will, take this cup from me.”
Second, we can experience the Lord’s strength in the midst of our weakness. As Paul said,
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)
The experience of God’s strength in our lives is for our benefit. He loves us and he wants to help and strengthen us. But the exercising of God’s strength in our lives is also for his glory. As God works in our lives and his strength is made obvious in our weakness we bear witness to the truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We die with him and he died for us. He rose from the dead and that resurrection power is present in our lives. He overcame and now he overcomes through us. You know, sometimes we wonder about how something looks to people. We’d be better served if we wonder how God can be seen in what’s happening to us and in how we’re dealing with it.
Third, we can know the redemption of our situation. Some cups will pass from us but not all of them. Then what do we do? Do we abandon faith? Or do we keep on trusting and looking for the ways in which God can work through what is happening in our lives? Alice Flaherty is a neurologist who published a book called The Midnight Disease in which she examines an obsessive behavior known as hypergraphia, which is an overwhelming desire to write. She knows of it from firsthand experience. Not long after she finished her residency she delivered twins prematurely and both of them died. As she dealt with her grief she had a strange thing happen. One night she woke up with a tremendous sense of clarity and an equally tremendous urge to write. She would write two or three word sentences on those small post-it notes and stick them on her wall. It was a real problem and a serious obsession. Eventually, with the help of the right medications, Flaherty harnessed her obsession and channeled it positively so that she got a good book out of it. She also later gave birth to a set of healthy twins. She says that people will ask, “What’s it like now that you’re cured?” Her reaction is, “I certainly am better controlled but what I’m hoping is that I’ll never actually be cured.” [This information came from Renee Montagne’s interview with Flaherty on NPR’s Morning Edition on January 29, 2004. The book is Alice Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: the Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).]
Nobody said it was going to be easy. So what do we do? Just live with it? No, more than that. We live in it. We live through it. We live in God’s grace and with God’s help. We find God in it. Such is the life of faith.
I don’t know where it started. Maybe it was one of those lazy summer days of my childhood when I was lying in the cool clover in the shade beside our house thinking of nothing. Maybe it was one of those Sunday mornings of my youth when I thought I heard the preacher say that if you were bad you’d get bad and that if you were good you’d get good. Maybe it was during those dark days of my sixteenth year when, in a period of two and a half weeks, my mother and her father both died and something in me concluded that such things really ought not to be and that such pain was almost too much to bear. I don’t know where it started. But somewhere along the way I think that I began to believe that easier was better. Maybe I started believing, at least partly, that good things ought to happen to good people.
I was wrong. Oh, don’t misunderstand. Leisure has its place and it’s a good place. Having a time that is worry-free and pain-free and doubt-free is wonderful and I’ll take it when I can get it. I’d still rather not grieve than grieve. My favorite sensation is still the one that could be called “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.”
But we live in the real world where real life has to be lived and where real problems emerge and where real doubts appear. The real world calls for real faith, and real faith struggles with what is happening; real faith does not stick its head in the sand and hope it will all go away. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. God certainly never promised that. What God has promised is that he will be faithful to his children and that he will never forsake them and that he will be there to help them.
If we will pay attention, experience will teach us that God is with us through all the trials of life. So the psalmist says, “Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb” (v. 6). Experience teaches us that God is dependable in all the circumstances of our lives. Hopefully we can trust in that truth and depend on it as we go along. We certainly can see it as we look back over our lives.
The prophet Jeremiah didn’t have it easy. He was called by God to be his prophet while only a youth. And he was told right up front how hard it would be:
But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them. And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you. (Jeremiah 1:17-19)
There we see two great truths of the life of faith: (1) “They will fight against you”; and (2) “But they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you.”
Jeremiah surely remembered. He surely remembered when his enemies were plotting against his life (18:18). He surely remembered when he was arrested, beaten, and placed in stocks (20:1-2). He surely remembered when he dictated a scroll only to have the king cut it up and burn it as it was read (36:20ff). He surely remembered when he was thrown into a muddy cistern (38:1-6). Jeremiah knew what it was to face the hard times; he knew that his hardest times were coming exactly because he was a person of faith. Did it all bother him? Of course it did. When God called Jeremiah he said to him, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (1:5). But listen to what Jeremiah says later in the midst of opposition and struggle: “Cursed be the day on which I was born! The day when my mother bore me, let it not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying, ‘A child is born to you, a son,’ making him very glad” (20:14-15). But this same struggling prophet said, “Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit” (17:7-8).
So nobody said that it was going to be easy. And the testimony offered by the lives of the faithful ones in the Bible is that the most faithful ones might just have it the roughest. I have used Jeremiah as an example, but we could trace the reality all the way through the book, even and especially into the life of our Savior. So what do we do with the hard times and the difficult days and the harsh realities?
First, we can hope and pray and trust and, if possible, work that things might get better. The psalmists and Jeremiah did not hesitate to ask God to get them out of what they were going through and even to make it clear to the world that they were not in the wrong. Such a prayer is absolutely appropriate and absolutely proper. And if we’re in a fix that we can do something about ourselves then we should do it. One of God’s greatest and most underutilized gifts to humanity is common sense. It is an unbalanced person who wants to suffer or who wants to remain in a state of suffering. Asking God to take it away is all right; it is not weakness to ask. Even Jesus prayed, “Father, if it be thy will, take this cup from me.”
Second, we can experience the Lord’s strength in the midst of our weakness. As Paul said,
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)
The experience of God’s strength in our lives is for our benefit. He loves us and he wants to help and strengthen us. But the exercising of God’s strength in our lives is also for his glory. As God works in our lives and his strength is made obvious in our weakness we bear witness to the truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We die with him and he died for us. He rose from the dead and that resurrection power is present in our lives. He overcame and now he overcomes through us. You know, sometimes we wonder about how something looks to people. We’d be better served if we wonder how God can be seen in what’s happening to us and in how we’re dealing with it.
Third, we can know the redemption of our situation. Some cups will pass from us but not all of them. Then what do we do? Do we abandon faith? Or do we keep on trusting and looking for the ways in which God can work through what is happening in our lives? Alice Flaherty is a neurologist who published a book called The Midnight Disease in which she examines an obsessive behavior known as hypergraphia, which is an overwhelming desire to write. She knows of it from firsthand experience. Not long after she finished her residency she delivered twins prematurely and both of them died. As she dealt with her grief she had a strange thing happen. One night she woke up with a tremendous sense of clarity and an equally tremendous urge to write. She would write two or three word sentences on those small post-it notes and stick them on her wall. It was a real problem and a serious obsession. Eventually, with the help of the right medications, Flaherty harnessed her obsession and channeled it positively so that she got a good book out of it. She also later gave birth to a set of healthy twins. She says that people will ask, “What’s it like now that you’re cured?” Her reaction is, “I certainly am better controlled but what I’m hoping is that I’ll never actually be cured.” [This information came from Renee Montagne’s interview with Flaherty on NPR’s Morning Edition on January 29, 2004. The book is Alice Flaherty, The Midnight Disease: the Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).]
Nobody said it was going to be easy. So what do we do? Just live with it? No, more than that. We live in it. We live through it. We live in God’s grace and with God’s help. We find God in it. Such is the life of faith.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Baseball Eschatology (Part Two)
(Note: On Sundays I am posting a Sabbath blog, my logic being that the Sabbath is a good day to post about things that I enjoy. Fun writing is recreational writing, I figure. So, here is Sabbath post #4.)
There is an eschatological dimension to the game of baseball.
Last Sunday, in part one of this essay, I said that in baseball there is a realized and an unrealized eschatology. Baseball’s realized eschatology is seen in at least three ways. First, Baseball fans have such intense experiences as we get caught up in the games that it is hard for us to imagine that things could ever get any better. Second, the lives of baseball fans are changed by the experience of baseball and that change is almost always for the better. Third, we are drawn into a community of the faithful in which we share in our common experience.
Baseball’s unrealized eschatology is seen in the fact that there is always a longing for something more. That something more may be one more hit, one more run, one more strikeout, or one more victory. Ultimately, that something more is a World Series championship, something that the fans of many teams have experienced but something for which the fans of many teams are fervently longing, either because their team has never won a World Championship or because it has been a very long time.
Today in part two I want to point out how the eschatology of baseball has some elements in common with the biblical concept of the Day of the Lord. As you may know, the prophets of the Hebrew Bible looked forward to the Day of the Lord. They envisioned a time when the Lord would make all things as they should be, when rights would be wronged, when God’s people would be vindicated and their enemies vanquished, and when there would be peace. Sometimes such a day was actually experienced in the history of Israel, but when it came, it came in a limited way. That is, while there had been some righting of wrongs and some vindication of the people and some vanquishing of enemies and some increased level of peace, none of those were complete and final. Sometime soon—maybe the next day, the next month, the next year, or the next decade—there would be a new crisis, a new challenge, or a revitalized or new enemy.
Really, then, the prophets thought in terms of more than one Day of the Lord. While they envisioned one future great and glorious Day of the Lord after which things would always be as they should be, in the meantime they worked with the concept of “little” days of the Lord in which glimpses of the final fulfillment were seen.
We can examine the baseball parallels to those experiences by moving from the greater to the lesser. Let’s say that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays win the 2007 World Series (hey, if we’re thinking in terms of the Day of the Lord, we can reasonably expect divine intervention!). It’s October 2007, the Rays have just won game seven over the Washington Nationals, the champagne has been sprayed all over the locker room and the Commissioner’s Trophy has been awarded. It’s the day of the Rays; their enemies have been swept aside, they have been anointed as the top nation in the baseball world, and they can rest in the joy and peace that is rightfully theirs.
For about twelve hours, that is. That’s about how long it will take management, players, fans, and media to start wondering about and asking about next year. Everybody will already be anticipating what teams will offer the greatest challenge in the Rays’ defense of their title and what other obstacles they will face in trying to win two championships in a row. As soon as the day of victory and vindication has passed, attention will turn to the next potential day of victory and vindication. Therefore, what we baseball fans think of as the “big” day of vindication is in fact only one of a series of “little” days of vindication.
We can see this reality in other ways as we move from the greater to the lesser. On their way to their World Series championship, the Devil Rays will have to win the American League pennant. The team will jump up and down on the pitcher’s mound, holler and scream, and, of course, spray champagne all over the place and pour it on everybody. But before the players, the management, and fans, and the reporters go to bed sometime the next day, they will already be thinking about what they will have to do to win the next World Series. It’s a big day, but there is another day to come.
On the way to winning their American League pennant and their World Series championship, the Devil Rays will have to win the American League Eastern Division championship. Again, jumping. Again, shouting. Again, spraying and pouring. They’ll even put on t-shirts and caps that proclaim “Tampa Bay Devil Rays 2007 American League Eastern Division Champions.” They will proudly don them hoping that in a few weeks they will be reduced to car washing implements because they will be so far superseded by World Series Championship t-shirts. One great day gives way to another, greater day.
In baseball, such experiences actually permeate the season. Time and space will not permit me to offer all the possible examples, so a couple will suffice. The single that keeps the inning going gives way to the walk-off home run that wins the game. The victory today is tempered by the loss tomorrow and that is more than offset by the four-game winning streak that follows. And always, always, there is hope, because there is the chance for a great victory tomorrow. Nevertheless, once that victory is accomplished, the team has to start working immediately toward the next possible victory.
As I said earlier, biblical theology does look forward to the great and final Day of the Lord after which everything will be forever as it is supposed to be. I do not know what parallel there may be in baseball to that experience, unless it is the experience that will be had by the team that wins the last World Series before the Lord returns.
Speaking of that—the Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series and the Chicago White Sox won the 2005 Series. Had the Chicago Cubs won the 2006 Series, I would have been fairly well convinced that the triumvirate of events that would most likely signal the impending Apocalypse had occurred.
But, it was the St. Louis Cardinals who took it.
Definitely another little day.
There is an eschatological dimension to the game of baseball.
Last Sunday, in part one of this essay, I said that in baseball there is a realized and an unrealized eschatology. Baseball’s realized eschatology is seen in at least three ways. First, Baseball fans have such intense experiences as we get caught up in the games that it is hard for us to imagine that things could ever get any better. Second, the lives of baseball fans are changed by the experience of baseball and that change is almost always for the better. Third, we are drawn into a community of the faithful in which we share in our common experience.
Baseball’s unrealized eschatology is seen in the fact that there is always a longing for something more. That something more may be one more hit, one more run, one more strikeout, or one more victory. Ultimately, that something more is a World Series championship, something that the fans of many teams have experienced but something for which the fans of many teams are fervently longing, either because their team has never won a World Championship or because it has been a very long time.
Today in part two I want to point out how the eschatology of baseball has some elements in common with the biblical concept of the Day of the Lord. As you may know, the prophets of the Hebrew Bible looked forward to the Day of the Lord. They envisioned a time when the Lord would make all things as they should be, when rights would be wronged, when God’s people would be vindicated and their enemies vanquished, and when there would be peace. Sometimes such a day was actually experienced in the history of Israel, but when it came, it came in a limited way. That is, while there had been some righting of wrongs and some vindication of the people and some vanquishing of enemies and some increased level of peace, none of those were complete and final. Sometime soon—maybe the next day, the next month, the next year, or the next decade—there would be a new crisis, a new challenge, or a revitalized or new enemy.
Really, then, the prophets thought in terms of more than one Day of the Lord. While they envisioned one future great and glorious Day of the Lord after which things would always be as they should be, in the meantime they worked with the concept of “little” days of the Lord in which glimpses of the final fulfillment were seen.
We can examine the baseball parallels to those experiences by moving from the greater to the lesser. Let’s say that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays win the 2007 World Series (hey, if we’re thinking in terms of the Day of the Lord, we can reasonably expect divine intervention!). It’s October 2007, the Rays have just won game seven over the Washington Nationals, the champagne has been sprayed all over the locker room and the Commissioner’s Trophy has been awarded. It’s the day of the Rays; their enemies have been swept aside, they have been anointed as the top nation in the baseball world, and they can rest in the joy and peace that is rightfully theirs.
For about twelve hours, that is. That’s about how long it will take management, players, fans, and media to start wondering about and asking about next year. Everybody will already be anticipating what teams will offer the greatest challenge in the Rays’ defense of their title and what other obstacles they will face in trying to win two championships in a row. As soon as the day of victory and vindication has passed, attention will turn to the next potential day of victory and vindication. Therefore, what we baseball fans think of as the “big” day of vindication is in fact only one of a series of “little” days of vindication.
We can see this reality in other ways as we move from the greater to the lesser. On their way to their World Series championship, the Devil Rays will have to win the American League pennant. The team will jump up and down on the pitcher’s mound, holler and scream, and, of course, spray champagne all over the place and pour it on everybody. But before the players, the management, and fans, and the reporters go to bed sometime the next day, they will already be thinking about what they will have to do to win the next World Series. It’s a big day, but there is another day to come.
On the way to winning their American League pennant and their World Series championship, the Devil Rays will have to win the American League Eastern Division championship. Again, jumping. Again, shouting. Again, spraying and pouring. They’ll even put on t-shirts and caps that proclaim “Tampa Bay Devil Rays 2007 American League Eastern Division Champions.” They will proudly don them hoping that in a few weeks they will be reduced to car washing implements because they will be so far superseded by World Series Championship t-shirts. One great day gives way to another, greater day.
In baseball, such experiences actually permeate the season. Time and space will not permit me to offer all the possible examples, so a couple will suffice. The single that keeps the inning going gives way to the walk-off home run that wins the game. The victory today is tempered by the loss tomorrow and that is more than offset by the four-game winning streak that follows. And always, always, there is hope, because there is the chance for a great victory tomorrow. Nevertheless, once that victory is accomplished, the team has to start working immediately toward the next possible victory.
As I said earlier, biblical theology does look forward to the great and final Day of the Lord after which everything will be forever as it is supposed to be. I do not know what parallel there may be in baseball to that experience, unless it is the experience that will be had by the team that wins the last World Series before the Lord returns.
Speaking of that—the Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series and the Chicago White Sox won the 2005 Series. Had the Chicago Cubs won the 2006 Series, I would have been fairly well convinced that the triumvirate of events that would most likely signal the impending Apocalypse had occurred.
But, it was the St. Louis Cardinals who took it.
Definitely another little day.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Buried Stuff
On June 15, 2007, a gold and white 1957 Plymouth Belvedere will be dug up from the lawn of the Tulsa County Courthouse. The car, which was brand new when it was buried in 1957 as a part of Oklahoma’s Golden Jubilee celebration, will be unearthed during the commemoration of the state’s centennial. The car is supposed to be awarded to the person who made the most accurate guess in 1957 of what Tulsa’s population would be in 2007. The guesses were recorded on microfilm that was sealed in a container inside the car. If the person who offered the most accurate estimate is deceased, the car is to be awarded to his or her heirs. Here’s hoping that the best guesser is still alive. That would be cool.
I buried a time capsule of sorts once myself, back when I was a boy of about eleven. I made a list of some great truths that were very important to me. They were so important that I wanted to preserve them in some dramatic fashion. So, I wrote them, in ink, on a piece of wide-ruled notebook paper. Then I carefully folded the paper and placed it inside a Mason jar, which I closed as tightly as I could. I dug a shallow hole out back of my father’ utility house, placed the jar in it, and covered it with dirt. I don’t remember if I had a specific date on which I intended to unearth it; perhaps I planned to dig it up to commemorate some special day such as my birthday or the last day of school or the end of the Little League baseball season.
What I do remember is that within a few days I had forgotten all about the jar and the deep secrets that were sealed within it. I don’t recall how long it was before I thought about the jar again. One day I did, though, many, many months later. I was messing around in the back yard when I walked over the spot where I had buried the jar. I remembered. I grabbed a shovel and excitedly dug in the spot where I had hidden the jar. Finding it, I tried to remove the lid, but I couldn’t. It was rusted shut. So, I broke the jar. Excited now, I slowly unfolded the paper, only sort of noticing that it was damp.
The ink had run. The writing was indecipherable. The secrets that were so important, that I had gone to so much trouble to hide away until I was ready for them again, were gone. After I thought about it, I wasn’t too bugged by the situation; I reasoned that if I couldn’t remember one thing that I had written on the paper, which I couldn’t, nothing there must have been too important to me.
To this day, though, I still wonder what I wrote on the piece of paper that I put in the jar that I buried in the back yard behind the utility house. I still wonder if what I had written would have helped me in any way when I dug it up, had I been able to read it. Or, might what I had written there have embarrassed or befuddled or shamed me?
People, I think, do the same sort of thing all the time. We all have stuff from back there somewhere that we did and that we didn’t do, that we said and that we didn’t say, and that we tried and that we didn’t try. It’s stuff that we buried. Some of it we buried on purpose and some of it just kind of got buried without our doing too much about it. But we do go back and dig it up. Or sometimes it just gets uncovered, like ancient burial ground that gets unearthed during a modern construction project. Whether we dig it up on purpose or whether it just turns up, we have to decide what to do with it, because the past is a funny thing. Sometimes we treat something from back there as if it was the worst thing that anybody ever did. Sometimes we treat something from back there as if it was so good that nothing else will ever compare with it.
When July 15 rolls around and the folks in Tulsa dig up that 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, they’re not quite sure what they’re going to find. If they’re able to find the person who should get possession of it or that person’s heirs, they don’t really know what the condition of the prize will be. It’s possible that the car will be in pristine condition, in which case it will be quite valuable. But, because it’s not known how much moisture got into the vault, it’s also possible that the car will be ruined by rust.
Here’s what I hope: I hope that the car is in pretty good shape but that it has some fairly significant rust damage. Then, it will be an appropriate symbol of the past. What we dig up from back there that we remember as perfect and shiny and wonderful probably isn’t. What we dig up from back there that we remember as a big pile of rust probably isn’t. The truth is that the past is like the present. It’s a mixture of good and bad, happy and sad, helpful and hurtful, and successful and unsuccessful. It’s in pretty good shape but it has some rust on it.
Sometimes the buried stuff should just be left alone. But when it can’t be, it can be seen as a significant part of who we are and where we’ve been. The worst thing we could do, though, is to let it take our attention from who and where we are right now. The buried stuff is all right if we keep our heads about us when we’re around it.
I buried a time capsule of sorts once myself, back when I was a boy of about eleven. I made a list of some great truths that were very important to me. They were so important that I wanted to preserve them in some dramatic fashion. So, I wrote them, in ink, on a piece of wide-ruled notebook paper. Then I carefully folded the paper and placed it inside a Mason jar, which I closed as tightly as I could. I dug a shallow hole out back of my father’ utility house, placed the jar in it, and covered it with dirt. I don’t remember if I had a specific date on which I intended to unearth it; perhaps I planned to dig it up to commemorate some special day such as my birthday or the last day of school or the end of the Little League baseball season.
What I do remember is that within a few days I had forgotten all about the jar and the deep secrets that were sealed within it. I don’t recall how long it was before I thought about the jar again. One day I did, though, many, many months later. I was messing around in the back yard when I walked over the spot where I had buried the jar. I remembered. I grabbed a shovel and excitedly dug in the spot where I had hidden the jar. Finding it, I tried to remove the lid, but I couldn’t. It was rusted shut. So, I broke the jar. Excited now, I slowly unfolded the paper, only sort of noticing that it was damp.
The ink had run. The writing was indecipherable. The secrets that were so important, that I had gone to so much trouble to hide away until I was ready for them again, were gone. After I thought about it, I wasn’t too bugged by the situation; I reasoned that if I couldn’t remember one thing that I had written on the paper, which I couldn’t, nothing there must have been too important to me.
To this day, though, I still wonder what I wrote on the piece of paper that I put in the jar that I buried in the back yard behind the utility house. I still wonder if what I had written would have helped me in any way when I dug it up, had I been able to read it. Or, might what I had written there have embarrassed or befuddled or shamed me?
People, I think, do the same sort of thing all the time. We all have stuff from back there somewhere that we did and that we didn’t do, that we said and that we didn’t say, and that we tried and that we didn’t try. It’s stuff that we buried. Some of it we buried on purpose and some of it just kind of got buried without our doing too much about it. But we do go back and dig it up. Or sometimes it just gets uncovered, like ancient burial ground that gets unearthed during a modern construction project. Whether we dig it up on purpose or whether it just turns up, we have to decide what to do with it, because the past is a funny thing. Sometimes we treat something from back there as if it was the worst thing that anybody ever did. Sometimes we treat something from back there as if it was so good that nothing else will ever compare with it.
When July 15 rolls around and the folks in Tulsa dig up that 1957 Plymouth Belvedere, they’re not quite sure what they’re going to find. If they’re able to find the person who should get possession of it or that person’s heirs, they don’t really know what the condition of the prize will be. It’s possible that the car will be in pristine condition, in which case it will be quite valuable. But, because it’s not known how much moisture got into the vault, it’s also possible that the car will be ruined by rust.
Here’s what I hope: I hope that the car is in pretty good shape but that it has some fairly significant rust damage. Then, it will be an appropriate symbol of the past. What we dig up from back there that we remember as perfect and shiny and wonderful probably isn’t. What we dig up from back there that we remember as a big pile of rust probably isn’t. The truth is that the past is like the present. It’s a mixture of good and bad, happy and sad, helpful and hurtful, and successful and unsuccessful. It’s in pretty good shape but it has some rust on it.
Sometimes the buried stuff should just be left alone. But when it can’t be, it can be seen as a significant part of who we are and where we’ve been. The worst thing we could do, though, is to let it take our attention from who and where we are right now. The buried stuff is all right if we keep our heads about us when we’re around it.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
CD Reviews by Josh Ruffin On-Line
Josh Ruffin has published reviews of two CDs on the Web site of the Metro Spirit, an independent weekly newspaper in Augusta, GA. If you are into new music and/or you enjoy good writing, head on over to www.metrospirit.com, click on "Music" and then on "CD Reviews."
Full disclosure: Josh Ruffin, a recent graduate of LaGrange College with a degree in Literary Theory, is our son.
Full disclosure: Josh Ruffin, a recent graduate of LaGrange College with a degree in Literary Theory, is our son.
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