Accidental Dinner Theater

After church Sunday my wife, son and I went to one of those cool pizza cafes where all the employees are young, hairy, and slovenly dressed and were treated to a comical drama about a poorly run restaurant. Thankfully, all of us had that wonderful patience working that comes from having no particular place to go or thing to do, so we sat patiently in our booth watching the dinner theater of an obviously shorthanded staff crippled by quiet but persistent incompetence.  

The show started downstage left with the table of older ladies next to us who apparently had all their checks mixed up with some other table’s checks. As the ladies chirped and quibbled over their bills, my wife noticed at center stage right the only two waitresses in the rapidly filling restaurant rifling through a stack of previously impaled checks, quietly but desperately trying to sort the mess out. And, up stage the hairy male minions unhurriedly went about their business of pizza making.

Shortly the waitress returned to the pleasant old ladies with many an “I’m sorry” falling from her lips. A quiet frustration rested on her dewy brow and her dewy upper lip and her dewy makeup coated cheeks as she took our drink order. Already alerted by our general observations that the service might be impaired, we ordered our meal with the drinks. Our drinks arrived promptly, and we sat back to watch the show.

Several minor players paraded past our booth, plates and platters in hand, presumably to deliver meals, but stopping at table after table unable to pawn off the proffered dishes to anyone. For all the world, they looked like they were offering hors d' oeuvres at a party with no takers.

One of these players, a male I think, could have passed for a hipster version of Gollum although his carriage was erect and his gait had a light spring on the upswing. His newsboy cap settled at his eyebrows and though he carried his hors d' oeuvres for multiple laps would hardly make eye contact to confirm the correct destination.

Another of the hors d' oeuvre toters, rocked the unwashed hippie with an Aunt Jemima do-rag look. He had a gauge in his ear big enough for a circus poodle to jump through. His anemic blue cords dragged the ground behind his dirty hemp shoes as he shuffled about delivering the wrong dish to yet another table.  

One of the players cast in the role of waitress, the one waiting on us, appeared from the rear to be too much flat bottomed waitress poured into too little denim, giving the impression of a woman wedged in a funnel. Everything about her seemed slightly distressed and in a mild disarray, her hair, her sweaty makeup, her fist full of meal checks. And there were the glances over her shoulder and away from those she waited on, as if some emergency compelled her attention elsewhere.

Her counterpart, dressed in a sheer blouse that seemed meant to suggest the airiness of a fairy, floated through the air from the waist up, but the skinny little legs protruding from the itty bitty pink shorts worked like pistons when the gaps in tables exposed their mechanics. Her hair too, looked disheveled along with the rest of the company, but that seemed to be in dress code. 

We ate our food (when it finally arrived… in stages), watched the growing number of diners slowly swamp the unkempt pizza drones, and vowed never to return to the accidental dinner theater.  

Winning Forever

This is an article I wrote for an ECS publication called Flight that came out this month. 

Our former Headmaster Mr. Steve Collums for as long as I can remember referred to athletics at Evangelical Christian School as “co-curricular.” I always had the picture in my head that he meant for athletics at ECS to “run along side” of academics in an effort to aid, enhance, and complete its mission beyond the classroom setting. Never in all my years at this school did it occur to me that winning should trump the lessons and relationships that come through the daily strivings of practice. Winning alone, even winning them all, cannot be co-curricular.

In 1999 as the last seconds rolled off the clock securing a 13-0 state championship season, I stepped across the white sideline and onto a field of wild, jubilant, mayhem. Players, coaches, and fans swarmed the field high -fiving, hugging, shouting, cheering, crying …displaying every possible emotion in the immediate aftermath of that victory. That kind of scene floats in the dreams of every high school player. It had floated in mine as a coach. We all came to know it as the “The Dream Season”. And that day, dreams became reality on the turf of Vanderbilt Stadium.

Yet, twenty minutes into the celebration, I distinctly remember asking myself, “Is this it?” The power of the moment had fled almost as rapidly as it had burst out at the expiration of the clock. Glory proved fleeting and it would only pause for a very short while before it dashed on leaving behind the sobering recognition that we would have to do it all again the next year if we wanted this feeling.

Fast forward to 2013. Once again I found myself treading the turf of Vanderbilt Stadium, only this time our team wouldn’t be playing there for a championship. We were walking through … practicing. We were on our way to another stadium and yet another state championship game.

 The tunnel, the turf, the stadium ambushed me. I found myself walking alone on the same sideline I had walked 14 years earlier but now with tears streaming down my face. I sat on a bench and wept. I wept because the game of football had revealed the character of those young men to me and I missed them. I loved them. I loved the process of coaching those boys and watching them grow into men.

Frankly, that’s what we do in athletics at Evangelical Christian School. We love the process. Winning just doesn’t last long enough. Winning is just window dressing for the process called coaching. Our Athletic Director Geoff Walters seems cagey to some people when they ask him about the prospects of our teams and he replies, “I’ll tell ya in about 15 years.” What he means is that the success of our athletic program has nothing to do with wins and losses but has everything to do with the process of helping young people live lives of integrity and influence for Christ.

A recent conversation with Bill Edwards (’00), member of that 1999 Dream Season, confirmed yet again the long lasting power of an athletic program committed to the process of growing young men and women of integrity. “We had a group of godly men who invested in us not only as athletes but in life!  The coaches at ECS spoke truth into our lives and modeled for us what it means to be a godly man, husband, father, etc..”  Bill went on to say  “The influence that the coaches had in my life and many others is absolutely priceless, and I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to be a part of that community.  You just don't find that same commitment at the next levels.” Having played D-1 college baseball and spent a good deal of time in the minor leagues, he’s encountered plenty of coaches.

Kelsey Huggins (‘11) explains that the chief lesson of her ECS athletic career centered on grace. “The most valuable lesson I learned was one about grace. Our coaches not only taught us the skills and strategies to succeed on the field, but they showed us how to play with humility and walk away from a game with dignity.  Looking back, I don't remember the games we lost or the good plays I made.  Instead, when I look back on my recent days as an ECS athlete, I remember the grace and love my coaches and teammates showed me.” Kelsey has gone on to share those lessons of grace while working in Africa and Guatemala over the past year.

Early in May, Palmer Albertine (’00) delivered the chapel message centered on his relationship with his best friend and teammate from that 1999 team. Palmer’s passionate retelling of Brandon Fitzhugh’s (’00) tragic death was a powerful example of the same grace that Kelsey mentioned. His love for Brandon, whose life was spiraling out of control, was forged on the athletic fields of ECS and in an environment where Palmer was certain that “…their (coaches) real concern wasn’t about winning games, but about winning the eternal game.” That eternal perspective finds Palmer as an elementary PE teacher and coach at Presbyterian Day School where he is now investing himself in the lives of young boys and keeping the process that began at ECS going.

Countless other examples of the impact of the ECS athletic program live on in the likes of Barrett Jones and Morgan Cox, but theirs is a big stage. However, many more former ECS athletes play on smaller stages all over the world. Some of them are PE teachers, restaurateurs, preachers, missionaries, soldiers, cadets, moms and dads. Some sell stocks and bonds and some of them raise chickens in Africa. What they do doesn’t matter so much as why they do. And the why comes from an understanding that all of life is practice for eternal life. And practice matters.

I think the tears that clouded my vision last fall at Vanderbilt served as a fitting prism to see clearly once again that we are about something infinitely more important than a winning season. We are about winning people. Forever.  

Doubts of Confirmation

I don’t know why we are always so surprised and disappointed in our doubts. We are in good company. John the Baptist needed reassurance, Doubting Thomas, James the brother of Jesus, all of Christ’s followers for that matter wallowed in doubts and fears after the crucifixion. Then the physical presence of Jesus or in John’s case a direct word from the physical Jesus reassures. I suspect the desire for physical evidence springs from our origin as a people made for and satisfied by God’s presence. Our roots in the physical should give way to the winds of the Spirit more readily, but they don’t. We incline to the material world. But, once upon a time we thought more highly of Spiritual things.

Much of this life for a Christian strikes me as a walk on the road to Emmaus. We walk along with Jesus at our sides and don’t even know he’s Jesus. This of course has nothing at all to do with the fact that he is still Jesus. Then we find something of the familiar in his words or deeds and are elated at the revelation that he has been with us all along.

Doubting is far from uncommon and seems to me a confirmation that we were made for God’s presence where no dark glass obscures our vision. We will have that someday, when Faith and Hope are no longer needed because we are finally in the presence of the One who satisfies completely. 

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Parting is such sweet sorrow … but only for the Christian. For, it is only the Christian who has certitude that his partings with his brothers and sisters are only temporary.  No divide can be contrived that can keep them forever apart. Miles don’t matter. They represent a geographic inconvenience. Time doesn’t matter; it will one day be rolled up like a carpet.

Parting ultimately doesn’t exist for Believers. We are one body, and the body is never parted from itself short of great violence, but there is no violence that can tear one from the body of Christ. So it would seem that parting is a kind of failing of eyesight more than a statement of truth or possibility. We just can’t see far enough. Parting for a Believer is a dirty trick of the material world, but a Christian is spirit too and bound to all other Christians of the Body in that spirit.

I will soon be parted from two beloved friends. Chicago is a long way but I must remind myself that they’ve not left me, they’ve just run off over the hill a piece and out of view and will be back in sight soon enough.  That at least makes the parting sweet. We have not been sundered from each other in reality. We are still bound to the Body. We are still whole.

But I am in sorrow. I will miss them dreadfully. I suppose that really I mean that my eyes will miss them and my ears. I will miss their bright young faces and the lilt of their voices. I will miss the strong handshakes and the affectionate hugs. But I do not grieve like those who have no hope. My friends and I are bound by nothing less than Jesus Christ, our righteousness and that defies space and time. We will be together again…but not yet. 

Ambition Should be Made of Sterner Stuff

No one is likely to stab me for being ambitious. Sometimes I wish someone might see the flame of self-promotion in me and seek to snuff it out with his steely blade that I might not interfere with his rise to the top of whatever it is that we’re duty bound to rise to the top of.

I’m just not a riser anymore. But, I can’t work up any shame in the fact. Once upon a time I was. I wanted to achieve lofty goals; I wanted to be the best at everything I set my hand to--- in that competitive ME way. I wanted the trappings of the best, recognition and stuff. But then my son’s battle with cancer stripped the ambition away.

When he got sick, I didn’t want to be the best anything but a Dad.  I had always wanted that, but the battle with cancer whipped that desire into overdrive. The nagging feeling that time as Jacob’s Dad would very likely be short pressed in from all sides, but intuitively I knew that the only way to be the kind of Dad I needed to be meant teaching and treating Jacob like he would live to be 80. Yet, an 80 year old man wouldn’t be enough. Really, I wanted to build a man suitable for eternity.

Cancer invests fathering with a sense of urgency. For the longest I couldn’t decide if my urgency was a lack of faith that Jacob would be healed or simply the recognition that fathering requires urgency at all times because death keeps no clocks and runs on no schedules. I had every confidence that the Lord could heal Jacob but no assurance that he would. No assurance that His will would bend to mine and my son would live a long long time.

It wasn’t so much that I crammed stuff in, but the battle afforded uncounted opportunities to teach. Every difficulty proved to be a teachable moment. Every difficulty required that I father and that I be Fathered. Every difficulty required the mustering of courage, the mustering of faith, the mustering of perseverance. And even still the doubt would creep in, the feeling that God and Scripture could not be trusted. I taught Jacob what Scripture said anyway. Feelings are liars. I know that now.

For a little over three years, we fought on, Jacob, Heather and I. I fathered she mothered Jacob grew into a man. He died a man at the age of nine, the best man I have ever known.

After he died ambition lay moldering in the ash heap, without the power of a phoenix. It will certainly never rise again in its former iteration. I’ve learned to love different things now.  It’s just that none of them are things. 

Listening to Myself Talk

A power beyond reckoning lies in telling our own story. I had the strange sensation today of actually being able to listen to myself as I recounted an abbreviated version of my life story to someone. I had started my tale the day before in my classroom as part of an interview for some school publication but had to continue it today in the office of my interrogator. I had come to the part of my life where my son Jacob had been diagnosed with cancer when I began to hear myself.

Most of the time I ignore me when I talk; it’s just noise to me, but today the words found traction in my ears as I shared Jacob’s fight with cancer. It crashed in on my thick noggin that his story, my story were compelling testimonies of the grace of God. I listened to me tell about his resilient faith in Christ despite the terrible disappointment we all had when he first relapsed. I heard about the gracious kindness and patience he showed in the midst of difficulty and inconvenience. I heard me once again tell about his last words to me and his mother. He told us to “Be Strong”. Then he went to be with Jesus.

I wasn’t the only one listening today though. Another overheard the recounting of my story, his story. She was moved to tears and even moved to a sense of awe that I could even share so difficult a story. Then it occurred to me yet again that not only can I tell the story I must.

I have always known the story of my son Jacob had power for other people, but today I realized the power it has for me. That story is mine and no one can tell it like I can. No one can convey the joy and no one can convey the pain like I can. And no one can convey the grace that Christ poured out on me like I can.

My wife Heather has a different story. Many of the events are the same, but the telling must necessarily be different. That is her story and the power is great indeed. It is the power of a mother telling what a mother knows and feels. It is the story of the grace of Christ poured out on her and no one can tell it like she can.

We all have a story. And the story of all Christians is one of power. The power of grace poured out, running over us and spilling out into the lives around us. May we be faithful to tell our story. 

Stout Fences

“They were testing the fences for weaknesses systematically.” --- Robert Muldoon, Jurassic Park

I cannot help but think that there is something savage and carnivorous in us all that requires us to be hemmed in by stout fences. It doesn’t require much introspection to imagine the possible destruction I could bring on myself and others if my baser inclinations were allowed to run free. But even now the use of free in this instance is a lie. The phrase should run more like if my baser inclinations were set loose…sounds more like the releasing of an animal and would be more accurate.

We live in a culture that cries freedom but has only really cried let us be animals. Ours is a degenerate, base freedom that has grown only to mean lack of restraint. Our culture has tested the fences for weaknesses systematically and has breached the barrier that long held us back from the destruction that must come when men become beasts.

The beasts ripped a gaping hole in the fence of Marriage. Men and women in search of freedom dashed to pieces the idea that sacred vows are just that, sacred and inviolable bonds that can only safely be severed by death. For the freedom of sex with anyone and everyone, they dashed to pieces the idea that being constant and true are of greater worth than the treacherous pleasure of adultery. Destroy this fence and be free…. to wreck and maim countless lives, especially those of your children.

Having started down that road and destroyed the image of the sacred, absurdity and rabid insanity rush to pull up the posts and throw down the rails still standing. The sacred image and symbol of marriage that adultery defiles would be corrupted utterly through the ultimate perversion of same sex “marriage”. The fence once breached is the more easily destroyed in the name of freedom… the freedom to be absurdly less than even animals and defy the very nature of anatomy. And lives are destroyed and lies masquerade as truth.

We are so free now that we can destroy with impunity the weak and the helpless who prove to be inconvenient impediments to our freedoms. We are now so free that for years without interruption a man in Philadelphia can slaughter children by the thousands, get rich doing it and the silence is deafening. Animals have been known to eat their own young.

In so many places the fences lie in ruin and the velociraptors are free. Cultural destruction at the hands of free animals is inevitable… unless the men who are left hem us in again with stout fences.