Being Home

When Tennessee hired Pat Summitt, basketball was nothing, and Tennessee was a football school.  Summit could have done a few years there, had enough success, and then moved on to some "Big Time" sports place.  But Pat was a Tennessee gal.  If you are from Tennessee, you know what that means.  If not, you probably never will.  To her, Tennessee was not a "fly over" state that it is for most Yankees and people who live on one coast or another.  Tennessee was home for Pat, and she was going to make her teams the best.  Knoxville was not a stepping stone for her to some other job in some other state with more money or fame.  So ask yourself, do see your present situation as temporary, until something better comes along?  Is this your resume add-on job?  Is this your temporary home?  If yes to the above questions, then you won't be happy where you are and you won't see the potential in you or where your location.  Low expectations breed low results.  I went to Knoxville from San Francisco.  In the morning, San Francisco.  In the afternoon, Knoxville.  No one was impressed that I was there as the new pastor, but I was not deterred.  I poured myself into being in East Tennessee and UT, with appropriate bright orange to go with it.  I discovered Dollywood and the Magnolia Festival and a whole lot more. Over my eight wonderful years there, two or three students actually thought I did a good job, and when I left the people gave a big party.  Now it may be because they were glad I was leaving, but nonetheless, I had a positive attitude and did not see East Tennessee as a "stop-over" to better things.  It was the better thing.  Plus, I hired Barbara Lockett.  East Tennessee gals can always see the light.

Pat Summitt

Probably the most famous person I have ever met up to now is Pat Summitt, who died yesterday at the age of 64.  She was the head of the University of Tennessee Women's Basketball team for many years.  She was only 64.  Now a lot of you write off sports as a waste of time, a diversion, unimportant, to be ignored.  But I think Pat Summitt showed that sports are anything but irrelevant.  She was a pioneer who made women's college basketball what it is today.  When she started out as a 22 year old college coach, women's basketball and women's sports in general, were nothing of much importance to college or media.  Summitt changed all that.  She made it big time.  She convinced girls that they could play sports too if they wanted, that the gym and playground courts did not belong just to the boys.  She gave lots of young ladies a chance to have a college education.  A lot of minority women benefitted from all this.  Everyone of her players graduated.  Can't say that about big time college football!  Pat did not care just about winning, though she did that, but cared about her young players very much, and they knew it.  She could be demanding, but loving.  She gave this Catholic pastor an interview one time when I called her office.  She asked me questions.  She did not appear to be in a hurry.  At that time she was in her 40s and winning often with championship trophies to show for it.  But it was never about Pat Summitt.  I miss her.

The Gun

Continuing with thoughts from yesterday's blog, God created the shoulder to approve the lot of homo Erectus and down the line, the fully human person.  We could throw stones at animals.  We could also throw stones at one another.  Stoning someone to death became capital punishment for some offenses.  Religion sanctioned it.  Throwing stones could hunt an animal or kill a human person.  It came from the creation of the shoulder.  Then humans created the gun.  Actually, I believe the Chinese figured out gunpowder but it took Western European stock, to actually invent the gun.  The gun can hunt animals, or kill a person.  I suspect the percentage of total population killed by stoning is far less than the percentage of the total population killed by guns.  One thing they do have in common.  Anyone can find a stone to throw, and it seems anyone can find a gun to shoot.  Freedom, and the right to self-protect for the guns.  Stones won't do much self-protection.  But then comes Orlando, a far cry and a long distance from the evolution of the shoulder.  Assault rifles in night clubs?  If this is all part of the evolution of homo Erectus, we are going down a dark road.

Creation At Work

Watch a person pitch a baseball overhand.  You are watching someone who is working against creation.  That is why so many pitchers get injured.  Monkeys cannot throw much of anything with any speed or accuracy.  But about two million years ago, give or take, Homo Erectus developed a shoulder that was different than a monkeys.  Up to then, travel was minimal.  You had to go where food grew, which means you did not travel over more arid places to discover new lands.  With the shoulder mutation, you could.  Why?  Erectus could now throw rocks, and then developed spears.  They could hunt animals for food.  So now they could travel and see the world.  At that time you did not throw a lot, just enough to get the food you needed.  Eventually, technology caught up with the need for this shoulder.  We developed bow and arrow, and then the gun.  Shoulder not needed with this new technology.  Then sports came along and humans began to throw a lot of things, such as javelins, and baseballs.  The shoulder was meant to hunt a little for today's meal, not do all this contortions in sports.  So people get injured and need surgery or end up having to quit the sport, and suffer a lot of pain for which they might take pain pills.  I think of God as creator who gave us the human shoulder, and we took it into a place it might not belong, throwing baseballs.  Whenever my body says, "Don't do that," I think it is a God message.  I ignore it at my peril.  Gotta' go for my run!

Text Talking

Silence is counter cultural to technology.  When you are alone with your computer, you are not silent, as in being open to an interior insight.  Texting is talking to yourself about what you want type or send to someone else.  You are editing the text in your mind, though you are not making any sounds.  Silence is not the absence of sound.  Silence is a quality of being with yourself that is the doorway to solitude.  It is the way to an inner world, your inner world.  But for many people this kind of silence would give a feeling of loneliness, disconnection with the outside world of "Happening events."  Boredom might be felt.  Boredom, loneliness, disconnection are seen as things to be avoided, like a plague.  I see them as simply small obstacles on the spiritual journey.  They are feelings and judgments that pass as you go down the road.  Even if someone has no belief in a particular deity, the person still has an interior life.  It is how we are put together.  If we ignore it, then I think we end up with true loneliness, boredom and disconnection, not with the outside world, but with our own self.

Wild Child

Today is my sister Elizabeth's birthday.  You did not know that I had two younger sisters?  Well, I do. I was only four when she came along.  It meant one more kid in the apartment that my big sister Maureen had to watch at times.  What useless siblings we were.  Anyway, Maureen turned out to be pretty much like our Mom.  She had four kids and was the Mom.  Elizabeth became the wild child.  I was a wild child but that was when I really was pathetically old for being such.  Elizabeth was more the wild child at the appropriate age.  Now she goes to church and is a responsible grandma.  She lives a quiet life of healthy adult activities in Florida.  So, if you have a wild child, it might only be a chapter in their and your life.  In time, good things can happen.  I have found that out in my own life, one day at a time.

Heaven

One summer day when I was a little boy I was sitting in our apartment with my big sister, Maureen.  I asked her, "Maureen, where is heaven?"  "Why do you ask?" she queried.  "You are not going there anyway."  Ignoring this cold response, I continued, "Mommy says that heaven is where God lives."  "Yes, this is true.  God lives in heaven with all the people who were good little boys and girls."  "I'm good, aren't I?" I questioned.  "NO, you are not good.  That is why you will have to go to purgatory and be punished."  "What is purgatory?" I asked.  "It is where you go when you die for not picking up your toys when I tell you."  "I pick them up!" I countered.  "Yes, but only after I ask you and then ask again, and then threaten to punish you."  But she wasn't finished.  "This is why I will go right to heaven when I die.  My purgatory is here on earth taking care of you instead of being with my girlfriends."  I pondered that for a moment.  Then the thought came to me, "So, I am helping you get to heaven by being bad, right?"  "Hmm," was my speechless sister's response.  For her to be speechless was a miracle.  So maybe being bad is not all that bad if it helps other people to do their suffering here on earth.  If you have someone who exasperates you, makes you crazy at times, does not obey, they may be a gift in your life too.  They are getting you off some purgatory time.  Jesus traveled around and taught people like that.  We Christians are supposed to follow Jesus.  So we all need some people who make us crazy at times.  You might even have married one, or birthed one, or work with one.  Being bad is not all bad.  Since Maureen is in purgatory, I guess I was not bad enough!