iMonk Classic: A Note to Weed-Eaters

Our school has a student work program, and one of the most popular jobs is working on the yard crew. Our boys love to work with the tractors, mowers and weed-eaters.

Especially weed-eaters. It’s a certain sign of spring when I hear the yard crew outside the window of my house, and I can hear the sound of 4 or 5 weed-eater motors revving up like NASCAR racers waiting the start of the race.

There’s nothing quite as empowering to a middle school boy as to be given a weed-eater of his very own. Armed with the machine, safety glasses and an orientation, they come marching across the campus taking on weeds and untrimmed grass like Sherman’s march to the sea.

If there was ever any tentativeness in these weed-eating workers, it all vanishes when they get their first taste of the power of the weed-eater. With a squeeze of the trigger, the power to eliminate weeds replaces the fear of what might happen in using such a dangerous device. Lazy middle school boys are transformed into the scourge of weeds and untidy lawns everywhere.

There is, unfortunately, a not so charming side effect of this transformation. In the ensuing attack on weeds and sidewalk scruffiness of all kinds, most of the other flora and fauna of the campus is put at some risk from overenthusiastic weed warriors.

So in addition to a tidy campus and well attended faculty and staff lawns, there are frequent attacks on flower beds, gardens and much loved decorative hedges and bushes. Small fences are no obstacle to a boy convinced that some stray sprig of wayward grass is attempting to survive the Day of the Weed-eater.

Flowers and other decorative plants are at real risk when the power of a gang of boys go out into the neighborhood to do good. They are armed and dangerous. The neighborhood will be improved.

With time and guidance, these eager young naturalists will learn to wield the power of the weed-eater with more patient and judgement. They will become dependable servants of the cause of an attractive campus. But there will be those first few forays into battle, and the results are predictably predictable.

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Back to School “Time”?

One of my friends, a school administrator, says it’s an adult decision, and that there is no empirical evidence that it actually helps students. What’s that? Going back to school earlier and getting on a “balanced” schedule (some call it “year-round” school). That’s what the school systems are going to where I live. It means K-12 students start “fall” semester around August 1. Summer vacation is shorter, but there are two-week breaks in the fall and the spring, and a longer break at Christmas.

Not having children in the local school system any more, it doesn’t affect us nearly as much, so I don’t get too worked up about it. However, considering changes like this just gives me another chance to think about such ordinary matters as school schedules and how they have affected my life over the years.

I’m from the “Memorial Day to Labor Day” summer vacation generation. That’s when we were out of school. That’s when we played baseball. That’s when the public pools were open. That’s when we drove our parents crazy.

Spring, summer, fall, and winter were well-defined seasons in the Midwest. We went to school in the fall, survived the winters, rejoiced in the coming of spring, and played outside all summer. I also thought of the seasons in terms of sports: spring and summer was all about baseball, fall was football, and it was basketball all winter. No matter what the calendar said, the year began at the outset of autumn, when the sun hung a little lower in the sky, we got some new clothes and shoes, relished the smell of new books and fresh paper, and the sound of new teachers’ voices gave us new hope.

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A Few Baseball Laughs

Since baseball has come up in our conversations the past couple of days, I thought maybe we could lighten things up a little this afternoon with a few of my favorite baseball anecdotes and quotes.

I’ll start with a personal favorite. When I was a young adult living in New England, Jon Miller became the play-by-play voice of the Red Sox. I still remember him telling this story on the radio and in our family we repeat it and laugh about it to this day:

* * *

In 1974, the A’s promoted a nineteen-year-old outfielder to the big leagues from Birmingham, the A’s class-AA farm team. His name was Claudell Washington.

Claudell wasn’t a talkative person. Upon his arrival from the minors, I interviewed him and found most of his answers were “Yes” and “No.”

Trying to sound impressive, I said, “Claudell, you’re not only making the jump all the way from double-A to the major leagues,  but the jump to the world champions of baseball. Any trepidation about the move?”

“I had the flu in spring training,” Claudell shrugged. “But I’m fine now.”

– Jon Miller, Confessions of a Baseball Purist

* * *

An interviewer started to ask Yogi Berra about his two hits from the previous night when Berra corrected him and said he had three hits.

The interviewer apologized. “I checked the paper and the boxscore said you had two hits. The third must have been a typographical error.”

“Hell, no,” Berra replied. “It was clean single to left.”

–  Baseball Almanac

* * *

Phil Masi was catching one day when Al Javery faced the Giants. The first three hitters all ripped hits on Javery’s first pitch. Casey Stengel popped out of the dugout for a conference on the mound.

“What kind of pitches has he been throwing?” Stengel asked Masi.

“I dunno,” Masi said. “I haven’t caught one yet.”

– Baseball Almanac

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Psunday Psalms: Psalms 1-2 Together

King David, Chagall

Psunday Psalms
Devotional Thoughts on the Psalms

* * *

Psalm 2
“But I have installed My king
on Zion, my holy mountain!”

…Happy are all who take refuge in Him.

– Psalm 2:6-9, 12, Tanakh (JPS)

* * *

Psalms 1-2 go together, and serve to introduce the Book of Psalms. The simplest way of seeing this is to look at the first verse of Psalm 1 and the last verse of Psalm 2. These psalms are “framed” by blessings:

  • 1:1 — Happy is the man who…the teaching of the LORD is his delight…
  • 2:12 — Happy are all who take refuge in Him.

In addition, we may note that neither psalm has a heading, and that both psalms share a common vocabulary. The Tanakh translation renders some of these words differently in English, but those in the table below in quotation marks are cognate Hebrew words.

PSALM ONE PSALM TWO
Heading: None Heading: None
1:1 — “Happy” is the man 2:12 — “Happy” are all
1:1 — “Counsel” of the wicked 2:2 — Regents “intrigue” together
1:1 — “Joined the company” of the indolent 2:2 — Kings…”take their stand”
1:1 — Taken the “path” of sinners 2:12 — Your “way” be doomed
1:2 — Company of the “indolent” 2:4 — The Lord “mocks” at them
1:2 — He “studies” the teaching 2:1 — Peoples “plot” vain things
1:6 — Way of the wicked is “doomed” 2:12 — Your way be “doomed”

 

As we saw last Sunday, Psalm 1 presents this collection of songs and poems as a book of torah, upon which we should meditate day and night. Psalm 2 goes further and summarizes the main content of the book.

PSALM ONE instructs as to how this book is to be read:

  • Accept it as God’s Torah
  • Delight in it and meditate upon it always
 PSALM TWO sets forth the main content of
the book that we should know:

  • The Lord reigns (despite all appearances)
  • The Lord will triumph through his chosen Messiah
Those who do will know God’s blessing from the Tree of Life in the good land.
(see Joshua 1:8)		 Those who take refuge in him will experience God’s blessing.
Those who don’t will perish from the good land.
(see Deut. 30:15-20)		 Those who refuse to submit to him will perish in their rebellious ways.

 

The Book of Psalms is God’s instruction, designed to teach us about God’s King.

Originally, these psalms were words God’s people spoke to him in worship. Now, by being edited and put together in this book, they function as God’s Word to us, to be studied and digested that we might live in God’s blessing in this life and forever.

Don’t miss that this blessing does not come from merely engaging a book, but by letting this book lead us to take refuge in God’s King.

iMonk Classic: All to no end…save beauty, the eternal

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them,

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius,

all to no end save beauty
the eternal –

-William Carlos Williams, “The Crowd At The Baseball Game”

* * *

Monday morning, as we finished preparing for our district tournament game and prepared to load our equipment on the bus, I had several of the boys take the pitching machine out of the batting cage, and take it upstairs to winter storage. Every spring, bringing the pitching machine out of storage and into the cage marks the beginning of baseball season. As they took it up the stairs, they were quiet, pallbearers taking this symbol of our spring and our baseball season into the tomb for months of slumber, awaiting the resurrection on another day.

When I was a child, I played baseball in a field across the street from our house. The tiny white house is still there, but the field has long since become a parking lot. The tree that marked second base, and the alley that marked center field, are all gone. Only dim memories remain of the rituals of being chosen by the “big boys,” the terror of a real baseball coming toward you out of the sky, to be caught or dropped, and the first stirrings of understanding how this game allowed boys in a dreary neighborhood to touch greatness, and step into their dreams.

A few blocks away was a city park, and a little league diamond. The sign said “Eastern Little League.” There I would sit in the bleachers and watch boys my age in clean, white uniforms play the sandlot game, but now with white lines and real bases creating a place of beauty on the ground. A game where umpires and coaches transformed the child’s sandlot game into something that mattered in the real world.

Parents were cheering for their boys to hit the ball, to run home and score. My parents, however, were not there, and I would never play in Little League. My father was beginning the long path of mental illness that dominated my life, and no matter how much I asked and begged, he would not take me to join Little League. There were no reasons given. I just “didn’t need to do it.” Before long, I gave the diamond no more than a sideways glance when I walked home from school. I was not to play. For whatever reasons, God had decided I wouldn’t stand at the plate or take the field.

A few years later- long after I’d given up the sandlot game as well as any dream of sports- my father became interested in baseball. Not in me playing the game, but in watching others play. The American Legion sponsored a league for local high schoolers, and my father began going to the games. It was at the largest baseball diamond in town, Chatauqua Park. I began going with him, and for the first time, felt the stir of beauty looking out at a perfect diamond, perfect grass, lights at dusk all bounded by a deep green fence. I remember looking at someone named Jeff Carpenter, a revered pitcher, and realizing I was looking at something great on the earth. It was not just a boy with a ball, but it was something of perfection. Something of beauty. Almost a man, playing the boy’s game.

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Saturday Ramblings 8.18.12

Welcome to the very tired edition of Saturday Ramblings, the time of week when we sweep up after ourselves here at the iMonastery. Why am I so tired? Well, I’ve been working a new job, one that doesn’t see me to my humble abode until after ten each night. But more than that, this has been a trying and disconcerting week for your Rambler to gather relevant stories. First was the David Barton story, one that was difficult in ways to write because I have friends who work with Barton or have worked with Barton, friends I really respect. And then there is a story that could prove to be very harmful for some well-respected leaders of the church in the United States. Yes, I know I didn’t cause these people to do such things, but still, at times it ain’t all that fun to even report their craziness. So, with that said, shall we ramble?

According to Technorati, a service that ranks web sites and blogs, iMonk was ranked number 691 out of more than 1.3 million blogs this week. You’d think someone with a background in broadcasting, publishing, and marketing would be able to find a way to fund this site so that I could pay Chaplain Mike and the other great writers who keep us smiling each day, wouldn’t you? But I am very, very reluctant to add just any ads to the site, and I will never allow paid blogging to appear here. So for now, our one source of income is from you, our generous fellow iMonks. Should you want to make a one time contribution, or support us on a more regular basis, you can use the donate button to the right. And thanks to each of you who have already done so!

The big story of the week, and it will only get bigger, comes from Christianity Today. Ted Olsen and Ken Smith take an in-depth look at David Jang, a South Korean entrepreneur who has headed a university, a discipleship program in Asia, and numerous online companies. Oh, and there are reports that Jang’s followers see him at the “Second Coming Jesus.” This one, iMonks, is a very dangerous and scary story. Jang’s fingerprints are one Olivet University, which is trying to buy Glorietta Conference Center near Santa Fe, New Mexico, a facility owned by the Southern Baptist Convention. The president of Olivet (not to be confused with Olivet Nazareth University in Illinois) is William Wagner, who pastored four different SBC churches and served as the second vice president for the SBC. Wagner also serves as the chairman of the board for the Christian Post web site. If you look over the electronic masthead on CP’s site, you’ll see the executive editor is none other than another Baptist, Richard Land. Oh, and scroll down a bit further and you’ll see one of the contributing authors is Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. The CP ran a long rebuttal of CT’s story yesterday, which, as far as I can read, is a non-denial denial. This story has just begun, folks. It is going to get nastier and more complicated as it unfolds. Jang seems to have his hand in so much of American Christianity, from the World Evangelical Alliance to the Evangelical Assembly of Presbyterian Churches in America. I’m not going to go into a lot detail here—you can readily find this information in a cursory web search—but I will say this concerns me greatly. How can erstwhile solid Christians such as Mohler, et al, be so susceptible to deception, if indeed they are? Your thoughts on this story?

In related (?) news, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was hospitalized in critical condition with pneumonia. Who is his successor as the “Second Coming Jesus”? See why I say the story above is scary?

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I Believe in the Death Penalty (in Baseball)

Warning: this post is devoid of grace.

If I were Major League Baseball’s commissioner, anyone caught using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) would be banned from the game for life. Period.

Last week, Melky Cabrera, the San Francisco Giants’ left fielder (the position formerly played by Barry Bonds, king of the Steroids Era), was given a fifty game suspension. He had been having the best year of his career, batting .346 with 11 home runs and 60 RBIs. He was the MVP of the All Star Game.

His punishment was not enough.

After all the negative publicity and shame Major League Baseball endured for the “Steroids Era,” which hit its peak in the 1990s, you would think MLB leaders might recognize and take the severest action regarding the grave danger any continued drug use has for the well being and future of the sport. I’ve heard people say that the penalty handed out to Cabrera was harsh, and will cause him even more problems because his contract is up at the end of the year and it is possible that he will not be able to cash in as a free agent on the big year he is having.

Poppycock. This is not about Melky Cabrera and punishing him. This is about protecting and saving the game of baseball. And the only way players will get the message that using PEDs is absolutely unacceptable is by elevating the penalty for their use to the same level as gambling, which is the one vice baseball will not tolerate in any way, shape, or form.

In an interview with USA Today, Victor Conte of BALCO, who has been at the center of the steroids scandal in sports and has spent time in prison for distributing steroids, claims that as many as 50% of MLB players use synthetic testosterone, the substance Cabrera used. Conte may be a slimeball, but if he is even half right it is devastating for the sport.

I love baseball about as much as I love anything in this life. It’s a wonderful game and has provided me and millions of others with countless hours of pleasure.

The use of performing enhancing drugs has the capacity to destroy the game I love.

Major League Baseball has been negligent, almost criminally so, in the way they have dealt with this grave threat over the past generation. Now, after all this time, it is still a big problem and yet here’s another slap on the wrist that does nothing to truly protect the game.

Mr. Selig, wake up.

Any player caught using PEDs should be banned from baseball immediately and permanently.

* * *

UPDATE: Good quote from Lincoln Mitchell:

“An industry that makes billions of dollars by exploiting irrational attachments between adults and their teams, as well as the journalists, bloggers and others who benefit from the profits generated by that sentimental relationship, should understand that faith and belief in the honest good intentions of the players is at the heart of the game’s economic model.”

http://www.thefastertimes.com/baseballbythenumbers/2012/08/17/melky-cabrera-and-baseballs-new-steroid-problems/

All Spirituality Is Local

Reading Romans (2)
All Spirituality Is Local

“I’m longing to see you! I want to share with you some spiritual blessing to give you strength; that is, I want to encourage you, and be encouraged by you, in the faith you and I share.”

– Romans 1:11-12, Kingdom NT

* * *

For years, I never thought of Romans as a letter.

Oh, I knew in my mind that Paul had written it as an epistle to the church in Rome, but every time I read it or heard a sermon or study on it, I could have sworn Romans was a theological tome written by a teacher to instruct Christians in systematic theology. That’s how it was presented to me, and I came to think of it pretty much exclusively in those terms.

It wasn’t until I was in seminary and heard some teaching on Romans 16 that I began to appreciate the personal side of Romans. As I was exposed to more extensive teaching on the background and life setting of the New Testament and learned about the real life issues that were being addressed in the faith communities to which the apostles wrote, I realized that letters like Romans weren’t about “doctrine,” they were about how the story of Jesus is meant to transform the story of our lives as God’s people together.

The arguments Paul makes in Romans are not meant to fill books for the library shelves in a seminary, to be studied and debated in academic forums or encapsulated in doctrinal statements. They were written to shopkeepers, tradespeople, slaves, farmers, and all manner of men, women, and children in house congregations in and around Rome to help them know and love God and their neighbors better.

It’s important that, all the way through, we hold in our minds a historical picture of the Romans’ church and its questions, rather than imagining that it was a church just like one of ours.

– Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part One

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IM Review: The Voice

In my fair city, Tulsa, Oklahoma, we see two types of buildings pop up with regularity: banks and churches. With each announcement of a new bank or a new church, we ask ourselves, “Do we really need another bank/church in Tulsa?” Yet it seems we do, for new ones are announced almost weekly.

And so I ask a similar question here today. Do we really need another English Bible translation? The answer is “Apparently so,” for publishers keep releasing them. Last year we saw the Common English Bible (rather bland) and NT Wright’s The Kingdom New Testament (too similar to other translations to make it stand out). So when I heard that 2012 would see the release of yet another new translation, let’s just say I was less than excited. Until I bought a copy of The Voice.

Now I am excited.

I’m not a biblical scholar, a Greek scholar, or really any scholar. If you want to know what manuscripts The Voice relied on most, or want to debate dynamic vs. formal equivalence, feel free to delve into those topics on your own. I’m not saying they are not important to discuss, I’m just saying that is not how I want to talk about this Bible.

We in America approach the Bible differently than just about any other nation. We can buy just about any translation or paraphrase of Scripture at both Christian and general market stores (like Barnes and Noble or Books A Million). If we don’t want to venture out of the house, we have an even larger selection available to us with the click of a mouse button. The average number of Bibles owned by those who call themselves “Bible readers” is just shy of four. And yet Bible readership has fallen every decade since the 1980s. Obviously, Bible ownership does not equal Bible readership.

Continue reading “IM Review: The Voice”