What I want my son to know about sports

Well, sometimes in life things don’t go the way you’d like. On Saturday, my older son, Chad, competed in the Virginia State Cross-Country Championship Meet. His team, Grassfield High School, was one of the best teams in the state this year, and at various times over the course of the season, they had been ranked first or second statewide.

Going into the meet, I was trying to be realistic about my expectations for the team. I fully believed (and still do) that if all of our runners ran their usual good race, we would place at least second or third in the state. If things really clicked, it was within the realm of possibility that we could win it all. The team had looked stellar the week before when they won the Virginia Eastern Regional Championship (the photo you see is Chad with the Regional Championship trophy). But there were two teams from northern Virginia that we knew were very strong and would be tough to beat.

But things did not go well for us. As a team, we did not have our best race. And unfortunately, one of our top runners passed out during the race and dropped out. This hurt our overall score considerably. As I stood in a crowd about twenty yards from the finish line, watching the runners cruise to the end of the race, it was immediately evident that we would not place as high as we wanted. Nevertheless, I felt a pride and satisfaction that is hard to describe when I saw my son cross the finish line in his last high school cross-country race.

The boys were understandably very upset. This meet was the culmination of a significant amount of hard work and dedication for them (and when I say significant, I mean it). And obviously they felt they had not put their best foot forward. Even so, when the final tally came in, Grassfield finished in sixth place in the state. This is higher than most teams from our region normally place, and is not too shabby given that Grassfield High School is only in its third year of existence.

On the three and a half hour ride home, I gave some thought to what had transpired. I hurt for the team, because I know how badly they wanted to win the state championship, or at least finish in the top two or three. I also hurt for them because they finished just one point behind the fifth place team—and the top five teams were recognized at the podium with medals and a trophy. One point shy. Sports can be very cruel sometimes.

I also got to thinking about what it all means in the big picture. I began to ponder what I had learned from playing sports in high school. And though it’s probably no consolation to him right now, I tried to articulate in my mind the things that I would want Chad to know.

First, sports are a gift from God. I know, I know, you can say that about anything in life. But it is also true about sports. God is good to us, and He is gracious. He didn’t have to create a world where we have an endless variety of food, thousands of hobbies and occupations to engage our minds, or sports. God didn’t have to create these things, or give man the capacity to think them up. But He did. Sports provide an avenue for healthy competition, the camaraderie of being on a team, the experience of pushing your body to its limits, the opportunity to deal with the empty feeling of defeat, and to feel the indescribable euphoria of victory. Competing in sports adds richness to life.

Second, sports prepare you for life. I can remember in my early twenties, as a young Naval officer, being in some pretty challenging and nerve-racking situations on the bridge of a U. S. Navy ship. It was during some of those harrowing situations that I remember telling myself, “Hey, you made it through all of those grueling wrestling practices, you made it through those cross-country races in complete agony . . . you can do this.” Cross-country and track have pushed Chad to a level of self-discipline, dedication, and mental toughness that I doubt he knew he had. I know that this will help him immensely in handling “life” and helping him to persevere when demanding situations arise.

Third, as with so many things in life, it is the relationships that count. He (and the team) may not realize it right now, but the bitterness of Saturday’s results will abate. Twenty years from now, he will think back and say, “That was really disappointing that we didn’t do better at states back in 2009.” But what he will remember more vividly are the fun bus rides to the meets, the pasta dinners the night before every race, and most importantly the lasting friendships that he made. One thing that impressed me more than anything else was the chemistry and close friendships on the Grassfield cross-country team over the past three years. This was a tight group. The kids really like each other. I know that all of those good friends, and good times, will be things that Chad treasures for a lifetime.

How many sportscasters does it take to change a light bulb?

Okay, at the risk of beating a dead horse . . . I’ll share this, and then I’ll shut up about the subject for a good while. I promise. I just thought this was funny.

Every year our Sunday School class does an outing to the local Cinema Café to watch Monday Night Football on the big screen. It’s a lot of fun to get together, eat some food that is not-so-good for you, socialize, and yell for whichever team you want. But you have to get there early—the theater fills up quickly.

Well, since we got there early, I saw (off and on) about forty-five minutes of ESPN’s “Monday Night Countdown” (it runs for an hour and a half in all). I typically don’t watch Monday Night Football anymore, let alone the pre-game coverage. After a bit, what really caught my attention was that every time I looked at the big screen of the theater, there seemed to be a different group of commentators breaking down the big game for us. So I decided to count them.

First, there was the team at the ESPN studios in Connecticut. They gave us that perfect blend of technical minutiae and mindless trivia, from how Denver uses the split-nickel-blitz-zone-double-deep pass coverage, to how Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger chose his uniform number. They are:

1. Chris Berman
2. Tom Jackson
3. Mike Ditka
4. Keyshawn Johnson
5. Cris Carter (yes, he spells it “Cris”)

Then, coverage was handed off to another team, seated at a carefully constructed broadcast area somewhere on the floor of Invesco Field in Denver. I’m not sure how their purpose was any different from the guys in the studio. They are:

6. Stuart Scott
7. Matt Millen
8. Steve Young

From there, we were sent up to the broadcast booth for a few words of greeting, stage-setting, and brief analysis from the play-by-play announcers:

9. Mike Tirico
10. Ron Jaworski
11. Jon Gruden

Then it was back to the ESPN studios for more banter. Staying in the studio, Berman kicked us over to a pair of analysts. I couldn’t really tell, but it seemed they were either providing some further vital information that we all needed to know, or a human interest vignette.

12. Chris Mortensen
13. Some other guy

Then it was getting close to kick-off. So, it was only natural to check in with our beautiful sideline reporters for the game (one for each team), because, really, who wants to just look at a bunch of unattractive, hulky ex-football player dudes all night:

14. Suzy Kolber
15. Michelle Tafoya

Then finally back to the play-by-play guys for the kick-off.

That’s fifteen, count ‘em, fifteen people preparing us for a Monday Night Football game! That’s a lot more people than many of our presidents have hired to write their speeches—you know, those inconsequential orations like the State of the Union, executive orders, proclamations, and the like. That’s way more people than it took to get the first airplane to fly. That’s the same number as the seats on the United Nations Security Council.

Fifteen people are there to make sure I know that if Pittsburgh’s offense keeps driving the ball down the field and scoring like this, and if their defense keeps stopping Denver, then they stand a good chance of winning the game.

Stupid Song Lyrics

Well, it’s the second Wednesday of the month, so, time for another installment of “Stupid Song Lyrics.”

Today’s entry comes from one of the paragons of the rock era, the one, the only, Sir Elton John. Elton, incidentally, is currently recovering from a case of the flu and E. coli, for which he was hospitalized. He had to cancel several concert dates. So, here’s wishing Elton a speedy recovery.

Today’s stupid lyrics come to us from one of his earliest hits, “Rocket Man”:

“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one there to raise them, if you did.”

All right, let’s break this down into smaller chunks.

“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.” No duh. As far as I have been able to discern from my research, Mars has no ipods, i-tunes, i-phones, cell phones, blackberries, Facebook, X-Box, Playstation, Guitar Hero, Sour candy, SUVs, minivans, amusement parks, Quizno’s, Tropical Smoothies, swimming pools, laptops, Lil Wayne videos, flip-flops, ESPN, cable TV, or that annoying spray paint that is used to write cute messages on your car windows the day before the big football game. There’s just no way you could possibly raise a kid on Mars.

“In fact, it’s cold as hell.” Now, I have no quibble with the fact that it is cold on Mars. We all know that Mars is further away from the Sun than Earth, and Mars lacks a thick atmospheric layer that can help contain heat. The air temperature there apparently rarely gets over freezing, and at the poles it averages -200 F. But “cold as hell?” What does that mean? Not only in the Bible, but in the traditional, popular conception, hell is a place of fiery torment, indescribably hot. Now if he had said, “Mercury ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s hot as hell”—well, that would be different. The only possible explanation I can think of is, maybe he is getting at, like, when something is so cold that it is actually hot. Like on a winter day when you eat a snowball and it is so cold that it actually burns your tongue. Then maybe something could be “cold as hell,” so to speak. But I don’t really think that’s what he means.

“And there’s no one there to raise them, if you did.” If you did what? Take your kids to Mars? But if you did that, then you would be there too, so you could just raise them yourself. Unless, of course, he is trying to say that you would somehow send your kids off to Mars by themselves unaccompanied by any adult, which is absurd. I’m sorry, but unless there was some miraculous way to get your kids off to Mars absolutely by themselves, then there would have to be someone there to raise them . . . if you did.

These lyrics have perplexed me for at least twenty-five years. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever understand them. I might eventually, but believe me, I think it’s gonna be a long long time.

Thousand meetings . . . post-script

First of all, allenq wins the prize for the word frightened. I had already thought of feedback. For what it's worth, delightful and prerequisite also qualify. Of course there are probably more, but I suspect not that many. When you look at the alphabet, there are only a few realistic strings of letters in which to find such words. For instance, I doubt there are any English words that contain u, v, w, x, y, and z. I usually get to a point of diminishing returns and decide to move on to new game.

What has always intrigued me over the course of these "thousand meetings" is that, without fail, there are some attendees who are wholeheartedly not bored. I look at such people and marvel how they can be so passionate about something, when I am often bored to tears about the same thing.

To me, this highlights a very important idea. That is, the opposite of boredom is passion. Passion is doing something that you don't want to stop doing--kind of like when you are reading a real "page turner" of a book and can't put it down, even to eat or sleep. Doing something that is your passion gives a sense of exhilaration and satisfaction that you don't find in other endeavors in life. I have a great deal of respect for those who are passionate about what they do, even if it is in an area that I do not find particularly interesting.

This is also why I am so thankful that God has given me a passion in life. As my profile states, I have a passion for studying and teaching the Bible. And when I say "passion," I mean exactly that. It is the first thing in my life that I have ever done that is akin to that "page turner" of a book. I want to keep studying and teaching the Bible all the time, and it never, ever gets boring. To me, this is just one indicator that I am "doing the right thing" by pursuing a seminary degree and a career in teaching theological studies. I may not get there until I am fifty (or older), but it is my passion.

A thousand boring meetings

I was in a meeting this week at work, and to be frank, it was kind of boring. As my mind wandered, I mused that I must have sat through a thousand boring meetings in my life. But then I started to give this idea some more thought.

First of all, I go to a lot of meetings. Seems I always have. It would not be a stretch for me to say that, on average, I attend at least one boring meeting a week (maybe I get bored too easily?). And if I attend one boring meeting per week, that would equate to about fifty boring meetings a year. Therefore, in the past twenty years (the bulk of my adult life), without too much exaggeration, I think I can say that I have indeed been in a thousand boring meetings.

My cardinal rule for boring meetings is this: Do not fall asleep! It’s just a conviction I have, and I really do everything in my power not to doze off in meetings. It could lead to any number of embarrassing situations, not to mention it is not courteous to the speaker. So on the bright side, I rarely snooze through meetings. However, the bad news is that I often find myself playing all sorts of mental games to keep my mind occupied and awake—and unfortunately I end up not paying attention.

In particular, over the years I have concocted many mental games or puzzles, normally based on letters of the alphabet, words, or patterns of words on the overhead powerpoint slides typically presented at meetings. Here is an example of a game that I am currently working.

Simply stated, the “game” is to answer this question: What (English) word can you find that contains the highest number of consecutive letters in it? I mean “consecutive” in an alphabetical sense, i.e. l, m, n, o, p.

For example, the word “like” has two consecutive letters in it: k and l. The word “mopping” has four: m, n, o, and p. To date, I have found two words that contain six consecutive letters (I’m not going to tell you what they are right now).

So, for a prize, can you be the first to come up with a word with six (or more) consecutive letters that is different from the two that I have in my head right now? [You have my pledge of honesty in the disclosure of my answers.]

The only caveat I have is that basic Scrabble rules apply. It has to be a real, normal English word that you can find in the dictionary. No “forced” words are permitted. For instance, if something is sort of outstanding, one might say it is “outstandingish.” I would not consider that a word.

Bible names turned into adjectives

When I started to take seminary classes a few years ago, I figured I would pretty much understand the lingo. I had gone to church since I was a child and I had taught Sunday School for a while, so I thought I’d be okay. Well, in some ways yes, and in some ways no. One thing I observed was, as in any other field or profession, theologians have their own vocabulary, so to speak.

One example of this that caught my ear early on was that many professors have a penchant for turning Bible names into adjectives. Now, if you attend church at least semi-regularly, you’ve heard some examples of this. Perhaps you recall a preacher making reference to the Mosaic Law (i.e. of Moses), the Davidic covenant (of David, of course), or the Pauline epistles (the New Testament books written by the apostle Paul). Okay, fine. But I was recently reading a “scholarly article” that described a priesthood as “Melchizedekian” (Melchizedek was a character who visited Abraham in the book of Genesis). Call me a cynic, but the only reason I can think of as to why you would need to use the word “Melchizedekian” is if you wanted everyone to know how smart you are (or, in other words, to make an ostentatious show of your erudition).

But “Melchizedekian” isn’t the only example (maybe just the worst). Some sound a little funny—like Adamic (pronounced uh-DAM-ik), as in, “we all inherit Adamic guilt.” When I first heard an instructor say this, I did a double-take because I thought he was cursing. Then there is Aaronic, like the Aaronic priesthood of Moses’ brother, Aaron (isn’t it Aaronic, now don’t you think?). The list goes on: Petrine (Peter), Johannine (John), Solomonic, etc. Some even take it beyond Bible characters. In a church history class I got kind of lost as the professor kept referring to “Thomistic” thought, the word appearing on the overhead slide. I briefly panicked, because the only “Thom” I could think of was Thom McAn, and I was sure he wasn’t referring to him. The subject of this adjective was of course the great Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas (how could I have been so silly?).

So, in the spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” I am starting my own list of adjectives (and maybe a noun here or there) derived from biblical names. Hey, maybe I will keep a running list and update you from time to time. Maybe I’ll even try a few out in public conversation, just to see what the reaction is. Then again, maybe I won’t.

1. If you are describing an exceedingly attractive woman, you could say that her beauty is Estheric, after the beautiful Queen Esther. Or, you could simply say, “She’s Estherical!”

2. Older people who are still living a Godly life after all these years are “Enochers” (I’ll let you look up Genesis 5:21-24).

3. You remember the book of Job, where Job’s three friends visited him and went to great lengths to try to convince Job of his supposed sin. That said, guess the vocabulary word in this sentence: “His lengthy, critical harangue was Bildadic in scope.”

4. If the things of Paul are Pauline, then I think it’s only fair to say that things pertaining to Joseph are “Josephine.” Actually, this one may already be in use.

5. The shortest book in the New Testament is Philemon. Thus, a very short letter to someone could be described as “Philemonic.” I would pronounce it as fill-uh-MON-ik, as in, “Parliament’s curt denunciation of the Prime Minister’s economic policy came to be known as the ‘London Philemonic.’” (Sorry.)

6. And lastly (for now): That bullfrog was Jeremiahic (jeh-ruh-MY-ick).

Cream and sugar, bread and wine

I visited a church on a recent Sunday morning, and the first thing I noticed when I walked in was a big coffee bar right in front of me in the foyer. I know that many churches these days are serving up cappuccino and coffee on Sunday mornings, but I had never seen it firsthand. My home church does not have a coffee stand, and to my knowledge it has never been considered.

When I saw what was going on with the “coffee fellowship,” I had a strange sensation. I found myself struck almost simultaneously by positive and negative reactions, which stayed with me for a little while that morning.

First, my immediate reaction was one of excitement. I saw about seventy-five people who were alive, awake, talking, and enjoying one another’s company—at 8:15 in the morning! I thought that was kind of cool. A church is a body of Christians who share their lives together, and that seemed to be what was going on.

But I confess that at almost the same moment a twinge of disapproval came to my mind. Why? Was there something wrong with what they were doing? I forced myself (mentally) to articulate to myself why I felt this disapproval. And I guess my answer was two-fold: (1) It was something I wasn’t used to, and therefore it seemed abnormal—i.e. “that’s just not the way church is done”; and (2) somehow it seemed inappropriate and irreverent to be having a cappuccino party in the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day. I quickly resolved that as for reason (1), I needed to just get over it, and for (2), maybe I was being too harsh. After all, in a few minutes everyone would proceed inside the sanctuary to worship God corporately.

As I sat down for the worship service, I began to notice others shuffling in and finding their seats, coffee in hand. As the congregation sang, then sat for a brief time of welcome and announcements, I observed several people get up, go out to the foyer for a refill, and return. And this is where my negative feelings started to flare up again. This is God’s house. We are here to worship the eternal, holy Creator and Savior of the universe. It just seems a bit casual to be doing so while sippin’ a cup of Joe the whole time. It is my opinion that there is a qualitative difference between what we do in a worship service and, say, listening to a lecture at the local college, watching a movie, or quietly reading a book at Barnes and Noble. Worship service at church should be as reverent, respectful to God, and spiritually meaningful as possible.

Now, before any of you jump all over me for being overly critical, let me say that I had another change of heart and I left that morning with very positive feelings about that church as well as my worship experience there. Despite my above-mentioned concern, there were many laudable aspects. The congregation did seem to have a sense of community and togetherness. And hey, the coffee seemed to help—I didn’t see anybody falling asleep. You can’t say that about all churches. To top it all off, the sermon was excellent. The church observed communion that Sunday, and the sermon was on the subject of communion. I found it to be very meaningful. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard a sermon on the subject. The congregants were instructed as to the meaning and significance of communion, and how each must prepare his or her heart beforehand so as not to participate in an unworthy manner. Then we proceeded to take time for introspection, and took the bread and the cup together. The richness of the sermon led to a rich communion experience. So despite my mental calisthenics over the “doctrine of cappuccino,” I truly feel that God was honored in the way communion was taught and observed that morning.

And as I left church that morning, I found myself thinking less about the coffee, and more about the significance of communion. I was truly struck thinking about what Christ did for me, and how I will spend eternity with Him.