2023-08-08T17:13:20+00:00

Reminders

August 8, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site prompt is to find an “entirely uninteresting story,” and consider how it relates to your life. I don’t understand it at all. There is almost nothing that is entirely uninteresting, and as everything is connected, considering doesn’t take much time or effort. Maybe finding uninteresting things requires being uninteresting ourselves, and we are lots of things, but uninteresting is not one of them. If anyone told you otherwise, they lied to you.

I watched 2 movies – fiction, not documentaries, as is my usual practice. Both were excellent. Well, maybe they weren’t excellent, but I sure loved them. I would, because they were pretty sweet and very hopeful. I shed buckets of tears at both, which felt like a beautiful soul-cleansing rather than the anguished expulsion of the broken-hearted.

The first excellent movie was Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. I was surprised, too. Dreamworks isn’t Pixar, after all. There aren’t any Up’s or Inside Out’s to be found on their slate, and with few exceptions (the How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda trilogies), they’re all sort of average. Shrek is mostly ok, but the sequels bring the property values waaay down. I wouldn’t say I wanted to watch The Last Wish, but my son suggested it, and I like him a lot, so much so that it would more than make up for an hour and a half of garbage. But it was great, the feel good hit of the summer, as they say. I don’t know or care about any of the characters, but mortality, family, the battle between selfishness & selflessness, and love transcend studios or personalities. Everything negative said about it is true, it was predictable and broad. But we like what we like, and there doesn’t have to be a good critical reason. Some Britney Spears songs are terrific.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was the other. Finding original material instead of sequels/prequels/re-makes/re-imaginings is apparently quite difficult. The MCU has been on a losing streak lately, scattered and sophomoric, and this affected my expectations for GotG3, which I chose not to spend the million dollars to see in the theater. And maybe there are mountains of negative press for this, too, and probably they’re accurate, too.

I watched it twice in 2 days. The second viewing was better than the first. I have a bit of anxiety when I watch a new movie, ignoring (or trying to ignore the) questions: What’s going to happen? Will these characters live or die? And then, I don’t want them to die, I want them to live happily ever after. I like when the good guys win, evil is vanquished, the one ring is destroyed, and the emperor dies. So I can’t relax while I focus on plot and consequence. Afterwards, I can think about writing and performance, cgi and music. I can finally see the film.

Anyway, if you didn’t like it (and some in this house didn’t), that doesn’t matter to me. I wish you would have, obviously, but that’s because I want you to have a great life and enjoy the things you eat/see/hear/read/experience. I want you to feel the significance & delight in his/her lips when you kiss them. I want you to dance wildly and sing out loud. You deserve wonderful things.

Anyway (again!!), it doesn’t matter because I did. I don’t need you to, I don’t even really need it to be great high art. Like The Last Wish, it’s mortality, pain, meaning, selfishness v selflessness, identity, family, and most of all, love. I love it even more as I’m thinking about it now.

I guess that’s the point that young me so often missed, it doesn’t have to be “great” to be awesome. Kid A is a masterpiece and clearly a superior work than The Bends. But The Bends is perfect, something we all can listen to forever, and Kid A is horrible.

The things that matter touch us in ways we can’t always explain, but they leave us transformed. I might not be able to articulate why I love Local Natives cover of “Right Down The Line,” (which you should listen to as soon as you can), I don’t know the chords or the time signatures, but I do know it makes me get so lost in the Angel that the 2 become inextricably linked. It’s not Dylan, but baby, it’s .

The Last Wish and Guardians 3 are not Taxi Driver or Pulp Fiction, but not everything has to be. We just have to feel them. They remind us we’re alive, and what better compliment could there ever be??

The Machines

July 24, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The prompt today is asking me what I listen to when I work. Well, I am listening to “Dancing in the Courthouse,” by Dominic Fike. Well, I was. Now I’m listening to “Sail Away,” by lovelytheband. It’s not that those are my favorite songs, they just happen to be on the “Songs For You” suggested playlist on my Amazon Music app.

I sometimes wonder why our undergarments are so twisted up about AI (Artificial Intelligence). This algorithm knows me better than any human on earth. The Angel and I have trouble agreeing on shirt patterns in stores, but I always agree with the You Might Like section of My Amazon. The Machines know exactly what I like, and what I will like. All I have to do is casually mention at the dinner table that my feet hurt or that I could use a new pair of sneakers, and I’ll get an avalanche of advertisements for precisely what I need. It’s a modern miracle. We’re living in the golden age.

My in-laws and I often talk about being ‘tracked’ in a newer, scarier minority report, and all I can think about is how often I forget my size or how big my living room is, and how cool it would be if The Machines could remind me.

“Dial Drunk,” by Noah Kahan, is on now. Do you know who Noah Kahan is? How would I have heard this song 35 years ago, when I was deciding that a music guy is what kind of person I was going to be? Maybe MTV, but Music television doesn’t play music anymore, there’s only regrettable shows about people with abs, who drink more alcohol than most sports teams, living near the beach, and a new show about infidelity.

Why would I want to watch a show about infidelity? I don’t, and the algorithm knows it. Why would anyone? I know reality tv isn’t reality, but it’s marketed as such, so we suspend disbelief and pretend it’s authentic. So, again, why would I want to see a person get their heart broken because their loved one doesn’t love them? Why would I want to see somebody cry rivers of tears because they’ve been lied to? I see enough tears in actual real life, I don’t need more in “real life” on tv.

But The Machines know this, too. The suggested follows I get on Instagram are beavers, capybaras, bunnies, kids falling, fantastic artwork, and acoustic versions of 90’s songs They know I love. Not betrayal or ads for beers.

I guess I could’ve heard “Dial Drunk,” on cassettes my sister used to send me from KROQ in California. She’d just pop in a tape and press record until Side A’s 45 minutes were up. And speaking of those tapes, they’re still the best, I have the local commercials sandwiched between Goo Goo Dolls’ (pre-“Iris,” when they were interesting) “We Are The Normal,” and 10,000 Maniacs’ “Like The Weather.” Good times.

But The Machines presumably know about those cassettes, too. They surely know about my sister.

Of course, my in-laws are right, it is awfully scary. Maybe They shouldn’t know my shoe size or where I live. Maybe They shouldn’t be quite so much in charge. (Maybe it’s too late.) But honestly, sadly, we haven’t exactly done a great job with all of this, either. What if, in a supreme irony, The Machines (without the weight of our selfishness) are more careful with us, kinder, gentler, more loving, more beautifully human, than we ever were?

Who knows? But until we find out, I’ll be listening to the AWESOME “Letter To Myself,” by the Lottery Winners (featuring Frank Turner).

Bones Brigade

June 14, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’m at the beach right now – well, not at the beach right now – I’m at the hotel in a Delaware beach town. While the rest of my family sleeps, I am in the common area writing. This weekend is Father’s Day, it’s my second favorite Sunday of the year to give a talk, so I’m working.

But while we’re here, I watched a documentary on Amazon called Bones Brigade: An Autobiography, about a revolutionary skateboarding ‘team’ (probably more accurately called a skateboarding family.) I grew up with the VHS tapes and Thrasher magazine, so I am very familiar with skateboarders like Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Mike McGill, and the Bones Brigade.

Of course I knew the skating, the tricks, the video games, the impact and artwork, but as usual, that is only a small part of the story. In fact, they’re the least compelling part of the story. Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen (the ones I didn’t know as well) were insecure and damaged, and the damage didn’t make them any less beautiful. What this film accomplished extraordinarily well, was to detail this time for these people – the highs & lows, the glory AND the heartbreak, the 1st place finishes as well as the times each quit and returned home. The depth and texture of reality made them even more beautiful, if that’s possible.

I think that’s what makes a person like ex-President Trump so difficult to embrace. He curates an image without pain, self-doubt, or flaws. He is only bombastic confidence and success, and that makes him appear like a caricature, like he’s attending a masquerade party where this is what a “man” says and does. I don’t know Donald Trump, and I know to mention his name in any context invites rage. But yesterday, he was in a courtroom to plead ‘not guilty’ to 37 counts and was described as humble and downcast, eyes down and hands folded in his lap. This snapshot of brokenness did what nothing else has, ever: humanized him. (Now, last night he was back to the character, so who knows?) He was far more relatable in the courtroom than he has ever been on a stage or television screen.

Maybe what made the Bones Brigade so honest and open with their fragilities and imperfections was the love they had for each other. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe they loved each other into vulnerability and authenticity, or maybe their vulnerability and authenticity opened the door into this deep love. It’s hard to imagine a football or baseball team that would have held Rodney Mullen with such kindness, grace and respect, or that would have been a family to him, where he was, who he was, regardless of his place in today’s competition. All of the members spoke with protective reverence of both he and Hawk as they both made the decision to not win as much, or at least not make winning the only goal.

All of these dumb cult documentaries I watch always leave us with a question: How does this happen? How do people get caught up in this insanity? And the answer is always the same, we’re all looking for community and relationship, and when we find it, (hopefully it’s a ground-breaking skateboarding family and not some crazy religious leader who only wants to sleep with the young girls in the group), we lean in. I’m pretty sure former President Trump doesn’t have a circle like that, who will accept him unconditionally, protect and walk with him – politics might not be the best place to find it. But these boys/men sure did, and they changed so many of us by simply building a home and letting us watch.

Last Times

June 5, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So I had this pet rabbit (I can’t even tell you how depressing it was to change the word “have” to “had”) for over 9 years. Her name was HoneyBunny. The Angel named her, and I loved it because Tim Roth’s character in Pulp Fiction called his special lady (Amanda Plummer) Honey Bunny, and I can always hear him say, “I love you, Honey Bunny,” in my head. Bunnies live 5-7 years, it says on cards at pet stores. They live much fewer in the wild, but in houses, there are far fewer predators. Ours live forever, in rabbit years.

Smoothie lived to be over 11. We asked the vet if he looked good for 11, and he answered, incredulously, “I don’t know.” He had never seen one that old, which made him in GREAT shape.

I work from home, so I was the primary caregiver for HoneyBunny. Every day for over 9 years, I let her out of her cage, feed & water her, change her litter box, and love her. Thursday was the last day I did any of those things. I let her out and she went under the ottoman, as was her recent practice. I gave her lettuce and treats on a plate under there. Then, around 4, she had an ‘episode’ that I can’t accurately describe. I held her tightly while my boys called local-ish veterinarians. We finally found one to see her by the time the Angel came home, and went there immediately.

She fell asleep in my hands, with the Angel stroking her ears and back. Of course it was horrible, but way too many pass alone, I’m grateful she had 4 hands on her with care and love. She deserved at least that much.

At home, I dug a hole to place her in and watered it with my tears.

Now, why I tell you all of this is because of Thursday morning, when I let her out and gave her the last treat I’d ever give. Sometimes we know when the last times are…

Friday morning Samuel went to the Annville-Cleona high school as a student for the last time. Last night he and his friends said goodbye to a young man who came as a foreign exchange student and was leaving as a close friend.

And others we don’t. How often do I reference Genesis 28:16, “Surely the Lord was in this place and I was unaware?” It’s a serious danger to live these beautiful lives of ours asleep, walking through the days & moments in a daze, oblivious to the fact that the ground on which we’re walking and the people we walk alongside, is all holy. I’d like to think I spoke to her with kindness and intention many many many many more times than I was absent or in a hurry or treating her like she was a nuisance, under my feet or chewing cords, boxes, and furniture. I’d like to hope I was as good to her as she was to me.

The message is always the same – God has so graciously given these blessings to us, we need to stay alert, keep showing up expecting wonder and beauty, keep our eyes open to/for this extraordinary grace.

Yes, she was just a rabbit, but if only you knew her, you’d know there was nothing “just” about her. And now the cage she slept in is empty and I miss her. This is the deal – to love something or someone means, at some point, it’ll hurt, it’ll break our heart into a bazillion pieces. Those pieces are a wonderful gift. She’s gone, but I had her for a long time, forever it rabbit years. My heart is broken but it grew 9 sizes while she was here. I’m really thankful.

I loved that HoneyBunny, and I love her still.

Round Here

May 30, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

The site prompt today is asking if I remember life before the internet. Yes, I do. For some reason, I’m often very nostalgic lately, so at those times that life B.I. seems preferable. Whether the time actually was more simple, or I was, doesn’t really matter in my head.

I like to put together jigsaw puzzles. Don’t ask me if I do that on an app – you already know the answer. I still read physical books, still turn pages. Now that I think of it, it’s mostly for the same reason. When life gets noisy and heavy, finding pieces that fit perfectly (or opening a book and turning pages) turns that volume down. These small acts reduce the complexity of everything that surrounds me. It’s a little like that aphorism: a journey of a million miles begins with a single step. We can’t finish a puzzle now, we can only give our time and focus to finding the next piece.

The puzzle on the dining room table is one called Rock ‘n’ Roll, and is made up of artists, album covers, ticket stubs, and instruments. It’s pretty good puzzle artwork, the overwhelming sadness in Kurt Cobain’s eyes is obvious and as heartbreaking on my table as it was in real life. There is Ray Charles, The Beatles & The Stones, Joan Jett, and Kiss to name only a few. There is also the album cover from the 2nd best album ever recorded: August & Everything After, by Counting Crows. (The best is, of course, The Queen Is Dead.)

So now I’m listening to the live version of August & Everything After. It’s the whole thing, in order, and it’s unusual in that Counting Crows live versions are mostly unrecognizable from the studio album tracks. You have to know the lyrics to know Mr. Jones at a concert to realize it’s Mr. Jones, but you still can’t sing along. This particular release, though, sounds like the original, but…extra. They’re a terrific band, even as they sort of under-achieved, never building on the perfection of this debut. But how could they, honestly? I am sometimes angry at the Goo Goo Dolls. I want them to make an entire great full-length album, and they don’t, they won’t. It’s like an act of rebellion. But Counting Crows made this 100% A+ masterpiece, and they deserve a pass forever.

Round Here is the first track and makes me cry every time I hear it (with both hands, it’s so sad and so beautiful. Like the great philosopher Rob Base once said, “joy and pain.”)

My wedding Anniversary was Saturday, and my son graduates high school on Friday. Those are the bookends to a week marked with the challenge of holding 2 life-changing events carefully and joyfully. I married the Angel 22 years ago, and the term soul mate is casually tossed around but rarely appropriate. She is easily mine and I hope I’ve risen to even 3% of what she deserves. My son is 18 and steps into an adult life that I get to watch from a front row seat, the best one in the world. He is everything I dreamed he’d be and more.

This week will have baseball games and work and blog posts about music puzzles and phone calls and workouts, but the majority of the week in my heart will be a staggering gratitude. I began this by talking about nostalgia, and I sort of miss Swatch watches and Atari 2600’s and getting up to change between 3 TV channels, but preferable? Baby, I wouldn’t change one thing about this amazing, messy, wonderful life that I have been given, and I wouldn’t miss these people and this week for anything.

The Shar Pei

May 10, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I’ve gained an impossible amount of weight. For you to truly gain 1 pound of weight in a day, you would have to eat 3,500 MORE calories than your targeted intake. So in my case, I would have had to consume 5,700 calories yesterday to be 1 pound heavier. For the last 4 consecutive days, I’ve been 1 pound heavier each day. This is physically impossible, and I’m certain that it’ll ebb to a more reasonable number soon, but still… I wonder why. Did I have too much sodium or carbonation, am I the victim of a voodoo situation, a curse, it could be anything.

For a man who has struggled with weight and what we’d probably call body dysmorphia, this phenomenon is jarring, no matter if it’s impossible or not. I’m pretty sure I’m the only human exception to science.

I’m growing at such an alarming rate. I told the Angel this morning it’s a matter of time until she no longer fits in our queen bed.

My beard has been annexed by gray hairs, instead of the cool (or at least what I tell myself is the cool) dark stubble I usually wear. There are so many wrinkles on my face, I appear to be more shar pei than man. I can’t sleep through the night without getting up to pee, and then when I do get up, everything creaks and cracks. I wear readers and don’t even try to read the ridiculous restaurant menus anymore, I simply guess and hope they offer what I want. 2 people in this house have iPhones with fonts sized so small, it’s as if they’re both taunting me. This is 47.

Oh, and I have a son who will graduate next month. Last night was his high school baseball senior night, and the Angel and I cried on the field as they took our pictures. He turned 18 last week. I have this peculiar adult that has taken the place of my baby boy.

What else I want to tell you about 47 is that every word of this post is true, and that I don’t mind any of it. Not even a little. (Maybe the number on the scale a tiny bit, but that’ll come down. I guess aging can bring a gentle, kind level of perspective, where there is more than only right now and maybe overreacting hasn’t served me well before and wouldn’t now. I don’t have to skip breakfast.) If the Angel doesn’t fit in our queen, we’ll get a king. I have the greatest woman who still wants to sleep like spoons with me, and not much can be better than that.

My gray beard is awesome, I’m thinking of really letting it grow out. The creaks and cracks are from years and years of competition and it was totally worth it. There are still books worth reading, I don’t care what’s on their phones, and I have always asked the servers what I should be ordering anyway (who else knows better than them?).

As for that peculiar adult. I am the dad of one of the finest people I’ve ever met. With each year, he shows more and more – we’re all lucky he’s in the world. And as heartbreaking as it is that he doesn’t sleep on my chest on my sofa in my home anymore, now he can change your lives by being in them instead of just ours. To reference a very famous quotation, “This is my son, whom I love. In him I am well pleased.” I get to look him in the eyes as a man, and that is nothing to be overlooked or undervalued.

Yes, I look like a shar pei, but each of those wrinkles have stories. Every one of the crow’s feet on my eyes were etched with a billion smiles, laughs, and tears. I said tons of Hello’s and Goodbye’s. I suppose I could eliminate the lines with several hundred injections, but why would I want to? This is my life, and it’s wonderful. I did my best to be fully present and aware, to not miss a moment. I am one who has been blessed beyond reason or anything I could ever deserve.

I am a very grateful shar pei.

Something I’ll Never Understand

May 4, 2023May 4, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

We all know several things about me, if you’ve ever read anything in this space. 1a. I live with the idea that we are all loved & accepted, and deserve to feel that way. 1b. Today is not simply an extension of yesterday, it isn’t just “what it is,” we aren’t just “who we are,” and our relationships aren’t just “the way they are.” And given 1a and 1b, We can do better starting right now. 2. The Angel is my special lady, and I’m very much in love with her and the still shocking idea that I get to be married to her. 3. I can’t seem to get enough of documentaries, the People’s Court, and Catfish. And 4. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is my favorite song.

Because I hold all of those things closely to my heart, it pierces my heart to see people hurting and in pain, living lives as if we aren’t the treasures we so clearly are, making decisions that dismantle us, always settling for less.

The way this is manifesting in me right now is in regards to the way we relate to supposed catfishes. Sometimes, the Catfished discover they have not been lied to, that the person is exactly the name and face of who they thought it was. The “Catfish” just can’t meet, video chat, or commit, they have hidden separate profiles, collected money, acted as if they are single, and in some extreme cases, had fiancés or spouses. And the Catfished has a decision to make, a decision I absolutely cannot fathom.

I think of it in much the same way as I do affairs with married people. A person carries on with someone who is married, with what in mind? That they’ll leave their husband/wife and they can be together? But whyyyyyyy?

The personal ad/dating profile would read: Looking for an emotionally unavailable, selfish, manipulative, sickeningly passive, disrespectful, dishonest boy/girl who will treat me like a prostitute.

Why would anybody want someone like that? Why would we consider the opportunity to wait for someone with such little regard for their marriage, spouse, family, and us as a lucky one? Why would we so easily forget that Fernando is a boy who stood us up MORE THAN 20 TIMES, then did it on tv, after taking upwards of $4,000 from us, and hopefully give him another ‘second’ chance that we will live happily ever after?? If I would treat the Angel like nothing more than something I stepped in, what makes either of us dream that you would be different?

[I understand mistakes. I understand we all do things we don’t want to define us. And you know I understand transformation. But I also understand the difference between mistakes and patterns, between falling in a hole and living there. I’m talking about an affair, not an accident. 7 years of deceit, not the quick knee-jerk lie of a 6 year-old to avoid punishment.]

Would this even be a thing if we all really knew how much we are worth, how valuable we are? Would we allow ourselves to be fed table scraps? Would we feed table scraps to a queen? Would we lie so much if we believed we were enough and not as inadequate as we do? Would we buy those lies if we weren’t so insecure and afraid?

The thing is, in relationships like this, no one is operating under a framework of abundance, beauty and love. We have believed people are things to be used to prove ourselves. We all need a major perspective shift, and that begins here, now, with you and me. I don’t care who we were or what we’ve done yesterday or one hour ago, I care about what we do today and tomorrow. What could we build if we stopped seeing each other as lowest common denominator, if we stop settling for so much less? I bet it would be amazing.

Dreams

April 18, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I just finished reading My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, by Fredrik Backman. This isn’t my first time reading it and I cried just like I did each of the others. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s inspiring and hopeful, and reminds us all why we don’t just give up when the news gets so bad and the searing pain of engagement gets so intense.

I turn down corners of pages that contain words, sentences, and/or passages that move me. When I re-read books, I look forward to those pages and sometimes I read the page several times and have no idea why I turned down that particular corner. Others, I know immediately. One of those turned down corners held this peach: “Because not all monsters were monsters in the beginning. Some are monsters born of sorrow.”

I’m thinking about the things we like and why we like the things we like. Maybe we choose the books/songs/movies, for whatever reasons (we like the cover art or it’s cheap or our friend gives us a gift). Or maybe those books/songs/films choose us (and we’d find them in our path somehow, over and over, until we finally pick it up when we’re exactly ready and explode). Do we like those things because we’re a certain way, or are we a certain way because we like them? Or a wonderful dance between the two? Maybe we are predisposed, open to the impact of a book about an 8 year-old girl, her grandmother, wurses, and monsters born of sorrow, and when we find each other, we join this dance.

On another page: “And probably a lot of people think Maud and Lennart shouldn’t do that, and that types of people like Sam shoudln’t even be allowed to live, let alone eat cookies. And those people are probably right. And they’re probably wrong too. But Maud says she’s firstly a grandmother and secondly a mother-in-law and thirdly a mother, and this is what grandmothers and mothers-in-law and mothers do. They fight for the good. And Lennart drinks coffee and agrees. And Maud bakes cookies, because when the darkness is too heavy to bear and too many things have been broken in too many ways to ever be fixed again, Maud doesn’t know what weapon to use if one can’t use dreams.”

I hope we’re all fighting for the good. In fact, I believe we’re all fighting for the good, in the way we fight for the good. (Well, mostly all – some people are selfish psychos who want to cause damage, but there are so few of them… Well, it’s like this. Bad pizza exists, but pizza is so rarely bad that it’s hardly worth ordering our lives around. Most bad pizzas aren’t psychos, they’re bad pizzas born of sorrow and loneliness and despair, and that sort of pizza doesn’t want to be awful at all.) So we’re fighting for the good, trying to find what weapons are ours to use.

Dreams are a Swedish cookie, that’s what Backman and Maud and Lennart are referring to. But when the darkness is too heavy to bear and too many things have been frozen in too many ways, maybe the other kind of dream is necessary, as well. (Actually, Maud and Lennart are the only ones referring to the cookie. Backman is obviously referring to both.) We get our imaginations drummed out of us very early, until we believe this is simply “how it is,” that people are untrustworthy, and all pizza is inherently bad. Reclaiming the truth requires, first, a dream. A dream that things can be better than they are, that we are worth fighting for, and that holding hands is still the best way to remember that all isn’t lost, that we are alive and that we are together.

Maybe amazing art like this is what made me so naive and awesome. Or maybe these books affirm my naïveté. It’s fun to think about but, in the end, who really cares? We have dreams to bake, people to love, and fighting to do.

Am I The Villain?

April 12, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I ripped this title from a song called Beach Zombies by Skye, with the lyric, “ooh, I’m tryna be a f***ing villain.” The Beautiful South is a great band who writes songs that are sometimes very, very dark but always sound like angels (Woman In The Wall, for example.) Beach Zombies sounds like a sweet love song, except for the lyrics. I’m not tryna be a villain, but I’ve at least got to consider the possibility that I am. Do villains usually know they’re the villains, or is good and bad a matter of the perspective of the one with the pen (or keyboard or Twitter or TikTok account)?

As you already know, I have a complicated relationship with youth sports. There are 2 ways to look at a successful coach. A wrong way, measured solely in wins and losses. And a right way, where the athletes are mentored in a sport by well-meaning people with character and integrity. They are taught sport and competition, but they are also shown the connection between this specific sport and a beautiful life off the field/court/pitch/etc. We have not had awesome luck with either. And I drift in and out of that dad in the stands, complaining and pointing out the obvious deficiencies.

I also coach baseball and I do not win games too often, but I bet you’d like to trust me with your kids for an overwhelming amount of time in season. And once, last year, a previous coach walked up and down the line of parents/fans loudly detailing my every flaw (through his eyes). It was disappointing and embarrassing, until he spent a whole inning informing MY WIFE, the Angel, of my ‘mistakes,’ at which point it became hilarious. A, it’s my wife and that seems like some kind of societal code violation. And B, if you want to talk about my flaws and mistakes, the Angel is already very well aware.

Am I that guy, embarrassing myself as I loudly expose my insecurities???? Am I the villain in this story??

Yes, of course these coaches aren’t doing any mentoring (well, not any particularly good mentoring – they are certainly showing a kind of example), and aren’t winning. They are obviously, publicly, having a very rough time navigating the tremendous responsibility and wonderful honor of the position.

Do you know what the main feeling I had for that guy, walking up the sidelines trashing me? Yes, of course, I felt anger, indignation, embarrassment, shame, and the need to fight in relatively small amounts, but the biggest portion by a long shot was sadness. I wanted him to be ok with himself, to not have his inadequacy the keys to his behavior. I was sad that he looked so foolish. I wanted to hug him and tell him he was enough, and that I liked him.

Why don’t I feel sad for these coaches? I know it’s because the sideline guy was attacking me, these guys are hurting my son.

But as much as we can learn from a positive sports experience, we can learn an equal amount from the inverse. How do we respond to adversity, to unfairness, to frustration, rage, and broken hearts? Can we still relate with class and dignity in our pain? How do we lose well?

We’ve been discussing these questions and ideas in my house, I’m trying to guide him on this treacherous path. But then I am sitting in the stands with my big mouth and open wounds. I think I probably am a villain, but I think we probably are all villains at some points, in some spaces.

Today is a new day. There’s a game in a few hours and it’ll drive me crazy, but it is a new opportunity to answer for myself the same questions my boy is facing. How will I respond? It’s only youth sports, but it’s an awful lot more. It’s always, always, a variation of “Who am I?” Sure, sometimes we forget, but the truth remains, and every circumstance is another chance to affirm the beauty of that answer,

Eyes To See

March 22, 2023/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I go to a local store for something called creamed pearl tapioca pudding on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday. And then I drop it off with the Angel at her office, along with a fountain soda as thanks. What I tell her is that it needs to be refrigerated and I’m unable to access our fridge. I don’t need to take it to her. I take it all through the winter, when my car is colder than any available appliance, mostly so I can see her for those 30 seconds.

Yesterday was Tuesday, and while I was there, I was overwhelmed, speechless and in awe of this woman. I sent her a text from the parking lot that read, “No kidding, I can not believe I get to be married to you. You are a KNOCKOUT,” and then I added 2 emoji faces with hearts for eyes. We’ll only talk about how she looks today, but as you probably already know, the beauty on the outside isn’t close to how lovely she is on the inside. She’s pretty far out of my league, but that’s her problem, not mine.

The point is that sometimes we can be so familiar with something that we take it for granted, easily and often. I live with this Angel, see her everyday, in pajamas and in heels, I know she’s gorgeous. I know her smile in my sleep, the way her eyes shine, how her laugh sounds, her skin feels. I know all of this, but there are surely lots of moments where I don’t truly appreciate all of this.

And there are so many things just like her (well, not just like her), but equally overlooked, or dismissed as common when they are anything but.

Pizza, Lord of the Rings, vinyl, this blanket, Catfish, creamed pearl tapioca. There are things we couldn’t wait to get, absolutely had to have, and changed our lives, that we don’t even give a second thought today. I’m not sure we need a change of scenery nearly as much as we need to open our eyes to the current scenery, because at some point that new scenery is going to be the current scenery we are looking to change.

I haven’t listened to The Queen Is Dead in months, and the last time I did, I skipped some tracks. It’s a perfect album, and I treat it so cavalierly that I skip tracks. We eat in front of the tv or in the car, concentrating and appreciating nothing. We see sunrises and sunsets everyday more perfect than the finest art. The Angel is so stunning she could stop clocks.

How and when did we get so distracted and jaded that we miss all of this splendor? Somewhere we were sold the lie that there was anything in this fantastic world that is “ordinary.” Ordinary is for the blind and imagination-less. In the Bible, scales fall from the apostle Paul’s eyes and he can finally see things as they are, see reality as it is. Maybe our scales need to fall, as well. I don’t really want to take anything for granted anymore, and I certainly don’t want to take people for granted ever again. I don’t want to become so familiar with laying like spoons with the Angel that it loses it’s tender warmth and simply becomes something we do. It IS something we do, but it’s not simple at all, it’s also significant and perfect.

I wonder how many other things in our everyday lives are significant and perfect, if we only had eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel them.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: beauty