The season started out very, very well. The over-40 crowd was representing, bit time. Curt Schilling, Tom Glavine, Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, Jamie Moyer and John Smoltz all looked great early on. There were lots of comments from adoring announcers and analysts about the turning back of the clock, the defeat of Father Time and so forth. All that, and the Rocket was on the way!
Now, we're edging toward the half-way mark of the season. Smoltz may be headed to the DL with shoulder trouble. Glavine and Schilling are suddenly looking like they are very, very tired. Curt has been particularly bad in the starts since he carried the no-hitter into the 9th, giving up 5 earned in 5 innings and 6 earned in 4. Maybe pitchers in their 40's need to be six inning pitchers, period. Moyer's team is so bad you can't tell if it's him or them. Bonds' knees remembered how fragile they really are. Clemens' return was delayed by a barking groin, the same issue that has plagued him for the last two seasons.
April was a blast, but June is getting hot and humid and hard. And Dan Haren (26), Josh Beckett (27), Mark Buehrle (28) and Carlos Zambrano (26) are looking a whole lot better than the old guys. And Prince Fielder (23) is pointing the way, not Bonds. Experience matters. They have to learn how to play. But baseball, like much of life, is a young man's game.
Hang in there, my 40-plus brothers! The rest of us need you to tell us we're still young (enough), too.
And God Bless Julio Franco!
Monday, June 18, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
Tired of Fighting
I was once, briefly, that neither-fish-nor-fowl creature known as an Associate Pastor. I wouldn't wish that curse upon anyone, but this week a statement from that year kept coming to mind. The church in question is one of those that has spent most of its life at war with itself. My authority is a now deceased colleague who sought to comfort me during that time with the assurance that it wasn't me, it was them. "I was their pastor during World War II," he said in the late 1980's, "and they were doing the same thing then." The reason for the conversation was that when the rabid of the congregation failed to muster the required vote to dump the Senior Pastor, they decided to punish him by getting me. That worked. And he was sad. But I was crushed.
Shortly after the committee vote, one of the very fine members of that church came by my office and apologized. "I'm sorry, but we're just tired of fighting," he told me with tears in his eyes, explaining why the good folks let the thing happen. Then, at 28, I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. I probably felt worse about him in that moment than I did about the lout that had pushed the whole thing.
Now, at 46, I already understand. And I'm nowhere near the 74 years of age that the tired old man was when he came to speak with me.
Annual Conference makes me tired. It is migraine week, every year. I don't want to spend hours at a time arguing about which motion has to be made first to suspend a Standing Rule that should only be suspended in moments of genuine import, not whenever one of our Permanent Dopes has a "Gee, I haven't been to the microphone yet" moment, and wants to reinvent the cross. I'm fed up with those who try, every year, to find some point over which to attack our Treasurer, or one of the Superintendents, or the Bishop. In spite of my perpetual frustrations with many of those people, trying to embarass them on the floor of Annual Conference is just rude, and it always has the impact that a divorced mom or dad has when badmouthing the other parent to the kids: it just makes the talker look awful.
And I'm tired of people who either don't have a clue what they are talking about, or are pandering to the base. Case in point: our debate on Global Warming. The guy who brought the motion is one of those important people who thinks that we can't vote on anything without everyone knowing how he feels about it. (I don't speak on the floor of Conference, ever, period!) For once, however, he had something right. There is, or course, Global Warming. We are, of course, aggravating the condition terribly. We must, of course, stop it. That's pretty much all the darned motion said. A colleague who I've always considered a bright guy jumped up and proposed castrating the already impotent motion because "there is debate over the science."
There is also debate over the relationship of smoking to lung cancer. Among the "scientists" bought and paid for by the Tobacco Institute. And debate rages over the presence of WMDs and pre-9/11 al Qaeda in Iraq. Between Cheney and the rest of the world. And in the year when even the Kansas legislature sobered up and stopped their creationism over evolution hysteria, the question is heavily debated, between the real world and the goof in Kentucky who has opened a (I kid you not) Museum of Creationism.
I don't know if our guy is serious (scary) or just pandering to where he thinks his bread is buttered (disgusting). He is a ladder-climber, always dressed and coiffed like a preacher, and wearing the bemused face of the televangelist. Another colleague was once asked, in my presence, where he was going to lead the congregation he was about to be appointed to serve. "Where ever they want to go" was the sickening answer. The statement might be the motto of this week's amender.
I'm afraid that we just like our semi-Middle Class lives a little too much these days. Hey, boys and girls, I've been moved at a salary loss in each of my last three moves, a total loss of over $30,000. It hasn't been fun, economically. But I haven't had to go searching for my lost integrity, not even once. And when I have had trouble sleeping at night, it hasn't once been because I was afraid I had sold out to get ahead.
We are called to be faithful. Sometimes that means prophetic. And by definition, that means we are going to get into trouble with some people. I'll let you in on a little secret: you want to be in trouble with those who will be angry with you for being faithful. Once while on the staff of our retirement homes, I was with one of our site managers while she counseled a resident about his racial abuse of some of our staff. My friend, one of the great people I've ever known, was about 50, and a beautiful African-American woman. She was patient and thorough with the man. He waited until she was finished, looked the two of us over, and told us that he could straighten out all of this "race business" if we would just let him bring his nephew up from Alabama to talk to us. Seems his nephew was the Grand Dragon of the Klan in good ol' Bama. She didn't blink, didn't take the bait, so he turned to me. "So you're just a n-lover" he accused in one of the South's nasty little endearments. My always gracious response: "You just violated the rules as they have been shared with you, sir, so as far as I'm concerned, you are evicted!" At that point, he took a step toward me, as menacingly as an 82 year old man can muster. In that moment, I genuinely wished that he had hit me. In a moment of a complete lack of Christian charity, I told him to go ahead, but his first punch better be a good one. I was sick of listening to him call my staff people every vulgar name in the book, hit them with his cane, accuse them of stealing from him when he was just too old to remember where he had put anything. "You ain't much preacher" he told me. I thanked him. He said it wasn't a compliment. I told him it was. He asked how. I explained that as far as I was concerned, what I would have to be to be a good preacher in his eyes made it a compliment for him to acknowledge that I wasn't that. He never did get it.
Neither do far too many of my clergy brothers. (Yes, brothers; overwhelmingly, my clergy sisters do get it) Either they have never allowed the gospel to change them, or they have, but don't want to rattle the cages of those loud ones who may try to move them for a prophetic witness. To those brothers: come on, boys, grow a set. It just isn't worth keeping any particular pulpit to sell Jesus Christ and his gospel down the river.
Wow. Maybe I'm not as tired of fighting as I thought I was.
Shortly after the committee vote, one of the very fine members of that church came by my office and apologized. "I'm sorry, but we're just tired of fighting," he told me with tears in his eyes, explaining why the good folks let the thing happen. Then, at 28, I couldn't imagine what he was talking about. I probably felt worse about him in that moment than I did about the lout that had pushed the whole thing.
Now, at 46, I already understand. And I'm nowhere near the 74 years of age that the tired old man was when he came to speak with me.
Annual Conference makes me tired. It is migraine week, every year. I don't want to spend hours at a time arguing about which motion has to be made first to suspend a Standing Rule that should only be suspended in moments of genuine import, not whenever one of our Permanent Dopes has a "Gee, I haven't been to the microphone yet" moment, and wants to reinvent the cross. I'm fed up with those who try, every year, to find some point over which to attack our Treasurer, or one of the Superintendents, or the Bishop. In spite of my perpetual frustrations with many of those people, trying to embarass them on the floor of Annual Conference is just rude, and it always has the impact that a divorced mom or dad has when badmouthing the other parent to the kids: it just makes the talker look awful.
And I'm tired of people who either don't have a clue what they are talking about, or are pandering to the base. Case in point: our debate on Global Warming. The guy who brought the motion is one of those important people who thinks that we can't vote on anything without everyone knowing how he feels about it. (I don't speak on the floor of Conference, ever, period!) For once, however, he had something right. There is, or course, Global Warming. We are, of course, aggravating the condition terribly. We must, of course, stop it. That's pretty much all the darned motion said. A colleague who I've always considered a bright guy jumped up and proposed castrating the already impotent motion because "there is debate over the science."
There is also debate over the relationship of smoking to lung cancer. Among the "scientists" bought and paid for by the Tobacco Institute. And debate rages over the presence of WMDs and pre-9/11 al Qaeda in Iraq. Between Cheney and the rest of the world. And in the year when even the Kansas legislature sobered up and stopped their creationism over evolution hysteria, the question is heavily debated, between the real world and the goof in Kentucky who has opened a (I kid you not) Museum of Creationism.
I don't know if our guy is serious (scary) or just pandering to where he thinks his bread is buttered (disgusting). He is a ladder-climber, always dressed and coiffed like a preacher, and wearing the bemused face of the televangelist. Another colleague was once asked, in my presence, where he was going to lead the congregation he was about to be appointed to serve. "Where ever they want to go" was the sickening answer. The statement might be the motto of this week's amender.
I'm afraid that we just like our semi-Middle Class lives a little too much these days. Hey, boys and girls, I've been moved at a salary loss in each of my last three moves, a total loss of over $30,000. It hasn't been fun, economically. But I haven't had to go searching for my lost integrity, not even once. And when I have had trouble sleeping at night, it hasn't once been because I was afraid I had sold out to get ahead.
We are called to be faithful. Sometimes that means prophetic. And by definition, that means we are going to get into trouble with some people. I'll let you in on a little secret: you want to be in trouble with those who will be angry with you for being faithful. Once while on the staff of our retirement homes, I was with one of our site managers while she counseled a resident about his racial abuse of some of our staff. My friend, one of the great people I've ever known, was about 50, and a beautiful African-American woman. She was patient and thorough with the man. He waited until she was finished, looked the two of us over, and told us that he could straighten out all of this "race business" if we would just let him bring his nephew up from Alabama to talk to us. Seems his nephew was the Grand Dragon of the Klan in good ol' Bama. She didn't blink, didn't take the bait, so he turned to me. "So you're just a n-lover" he accused in one of the South's nasty little endearments. My always gracious response: "You just violated the rules as they have been shared with you, sir, so as far as I'm concerned, you are evicted!" At that point, he took a step toward me, as menacingly as an 82 year old man can muster. In that moment, I genuinely wished that he had hit me. In a moment of a complete lack of Christian charity, I told him to go ahead, but his first punch better be a good one. I was sick of listening to him call my staff people every vulgar name in the book, hit them with his cane, accuse them of stealing from him when he was just too old to remember where he had put anything. "You ain't much preacher" he told me. I thanked him. He said it wasn't a compliment. I told him it was. He asked how. I explained that as far as I was concerned, what I would have to be to be a good preacher in his eyes made it a compliment for him to acknowledge that I wasn't that. He never did get it.
Neither do far too many of my clergy brothers. (Yes, brothers; overwhelmingly, my clergy sisters do get it) Either they have never allowed the gospel to change them, or they have, but don't want to rattle the cages of those loud ones who may try to move them for a prophetic witness. To those brothers: come on, boys, grow a set. It just isn't worth keeping any particular pulpit to sell Jesus Christ and his gospel down the river.
Wow. Maybe I'm not as tired of fighting as I thought I was.
Monday, June 04, 2007
God Told Me
I frequently feel that I'm a man without a country. I'm a Red Sox fan in Cardinals' territory. I'm a profoundly Blue State person in an incredibly Red Community and State. And I'm a suspicious Christian or a Christian skeptic, whichever you prefer.
I'm not proud of this last. I have, throughout the adult portion of my life (which really did begin sometime before noon today) struggled with the problem of being a connectional Christian who thinks for himself. There is, deep in my bones, a sense of "ought to" when it comes to trusting my superiors. I just can't bring myself to do it. Another argument jumped atop my woodpile yesterday.
My cousin is one of a handful of brilliant, genuinely brilliant, minds in our Conference. She is an effective preacher. She is a dedicated and thorough pastor. She is precisely the kind of person you want right there if your kid just had a car crash, your spouse just bailed on you, or a doctor had bad news about that lump you found in the shower this morning. She is one year into a pastorate where the congregation has accepted her (no small issue for a woman pastor in a southern state), and she loves them.
In his infinite wisdom, our leader is moving her. He needs a place for a goober who can't get along with anyone, can't preach a lick, doesn't particularly want to work and doesn't have a clue why that's a problem. My cousin, meanwhile, is being sent to the most intolerant county in our Conference, a place where blacks, hispanics and Jews are not welcome, Catholics are barely tolerated, and women pastors are automatically stigmatized.
This is the reward for being an effective servant of the gospel? This is the return for a good year's work in a difficult church? Some will answer, well there is that "take up your cross" thing. But there is also an issue of justice. And an issue of trauma to a church that has had a tough history. And a family that just moved a year ago.
Of course, life is complicated. Our Supreme Leader likes to appoint women to "historic" work. Oddly, it seems to be physically attractive, petite-sized women that this 60-ish fellow likes to put in "historic" work. My cousin, like me and much of our family, isn't small, nor is she a cute girly-type woman who knows (or cares) how to make middle-aged men feel good about themselves. So she is jerked out of a church that wants to keep her--again, after one year--serving under this bishop who has proclaimed that he is appointing us for five year terms, barring something catastrophic. Like needing a place for the goober described above, I guess.
The man's explanation for everything he does, and he has done a lot and some of it much worse than my particular family issue with him, is that God tells him what to do. We are of a tradition that believes in conferencing together, and, as the family of God, discerning together. This is why our bishops have cabinets to help them make our appointments. Because we believe that multiple minds, always and inevitably, are better than one.
"God told me" is a shield that says, "You can't question me," "I can't be wrong because it's God's instruction," and "Do you really want to challenge God?" In other words, it's a load of crap.
People in leadership positions who refuse to own their decisions and instead hide behind God's coattails are beneath contempt. They should not be trusted. They cannot be trusted. They are not faithful to our identity. They should be removed from positions of authority. And when he talks about the problems in our Conference and morale problems among the clergy, he really should realize that he is the cause of a great many of them.
I'm not proud of this last. I have, throughout the adult portion of my life (which really did begin sometime before noon today) struggled with the problem of being a connectional Christian who thinks for himself. There is, deep in my bones, a sense of "ought to" when it comes to trusting my superiors. I just can't bring myself to do it. Another argument jumped atop my woodpile yesterday.
My cousin is one of a handful of brilliant, genuinely brilliant, minds in our Conference. She is an effective preacher. She is a dedicated and thorough pastor. She is precisely the kind of person you want right there if your kid just had a car crash, your spouse just bailed on you, or a doctor had bad news about that lump you found in the shower this morning. She is one year into a pastorate where the congregation has accepted her (no small issue for a woman pastor in a southern state), and she loves them.
In his infinite wisdom, our leader is moving her. He needs a place for a goober who can't get along with anyone, can't preach a lick, doesn't particularly want to work and doesn't have a clue why that's a problem. My cousin, meanwhile, is being sent to the most intolerant county in our Conference, a place where blacks, hispanics and Jews are not welcome, Catholics are barely tolerated, and women pastors are automatically stigmatized.
This is the reward for being an effective servant of the gospel? This is the return for a good year's work in a difficult church? Some will answer, well there is that "take up your cross" thing. But there is also an issue of justice. And an issue of trauma to a church that has had a tough history. And a family that just moved a year ago.
Of course, life is complicated. Our Supreme Leader likes to appoint women to "historic" work. Oddly, it seems to be physically attractive, petite-sized women that this 60-ish fellow likes to put in "historic" work. My cousin, like me and much of our family, isn't small, nor is she a cute girly-type woman who knows (or cares) how to make middle-aged men feel good about themselves. So she is jerked out of a church that wants to keep her--again, after one year--serving under this bishop who has proclaimed that he is appointing us for five year terms, barring something catastrophic. Like needing a place for the goober described above, I guess.
The man's explanation for everything he does, and he has done a lot and some of it much worse than my particular family issue with him, is that God tells him what to do. We are of a tradition that believes in conferencing together, and, as the family of God, discerning together. This is why our bishops have cabinets to help them make our appointments. Because we believe that multiple minds, always and inevitably, are better than one.
"God told me" is a shield that says, "You can't question me," "I can't be wrong because it's God's instruction," and "Do you really want to challenge God?" In other words, it's a load of crap.
People in leadership positions who refuse to own their decisions and instead hide behind God's coattails are beneath contempt. They should not be trusted. They cannot be trusted. They are not faithful to our identity. They should be removed from positions of authority. And when he talks about the problems in our Conference and morale problems among the clergy, he really should realize that he is the cause of a great many of them.
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