Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Waiting On a Miracle

My grandmother, Martha Louise Hollingsworth Williams, passed away earlier tonight sometime around 6:45 p.m. at the ripe old age of 84. I wrote this some three weeks ago. It didn't seem appropriate to post at that time.

Sunday, November 4

I laid awake in bed for a long time last night, staring at the ceiling of a small bedroom with blue walls and red carpet. The room once belonged to my father during his adolescent days. Now the room receives as many visitors as my family receives visits from their eldest son to the chaotic, sprawling metropolis of Atlanta.

I'm in Georgia right now, having made a hurried decision Friday night to leave Saturday morning to visit some three hours away for an indefinite period of time. And being that the house that I grew up in has gotten no larger over time, and that the people it housed through my formative years have gotten larger, I made the short trip across the street to my grandmother's house to spend the night on a bed rather than a couch.

My grandmother's house is quite a contrast to my immediate family's home. She, an 84-year-old widow, is about as unorganized as a fishing tackle box. It seems that every little thing of her's has its own unique place, along with other related things. There are entire rooms that see little to no activity for extended periods of time. The notion even came to me last night that her floors are so clean that I could probably eat a meal off of the kitchen linoleum.

Now, it should be noted that there is a strong contrast also between an 85-year-old, petite woman living alone in a three-bedroom house and six people ages 12-55 living in a smaller three-bedroom house. Still, it makes for an odd transition at night. In some ways, I feel like I'm introducing calamity to a seas of tranquility just by pulling back the covers of the bed to lay down for the night.

But that's not what really kept me up last night. Though exhausted from the day, what denied me rest was the same thing that caused my impromptu 200-mile visit, my grandmother.

Since Oct. 13, she has not slept in this house, but instead has split time between a hospital and now a "rehabilitation center," which is really just a euphemism for what is truly a nursing home. What started as her not feeling well quickly escalated into a loss of most of her faculties, both physically and mentally. Doctors were optimistic when they gave the order to move her into this "rehabilitation center," but now it appears that those hopes were ill-conceived and really just efforts to delay the inevitable. Someone didn't want to be the bearer of bad news.

It's been a hard three weeks since then for my family, especially my father and my great aunt, my grandmother's only child and only sister. I know that it's also been difficult for the rest of the family (my mother and four siblings), but I suppose what I didn't anticipate was the struggles I would face through this turmoil. Because as I looked into her eyes yesterday afternoon for some two hours, listening to the ramblings of someone that is neither fully in the present nor in the past, I became troubled that our physical bodies break down in such heart-breaking fashion.

As I spoke to her and with her yesterday, it was very evident that the synapses in her brain were misfiring, though trying so hard to make sense of things. I heard about a lady named Venita, and an unnamed girl that was "so cute" but was "mad as all get-out at me and pulled my hair." I heard her tell the story of her seeing a man walk down a road and deciding to flirt with him, and about how her husband Clarence and son David were probably "off getting into trouble somewhere" because she hadn't seen them in a while. "Does anyone have a piece of chocolate candy?"

A mere 21 days earlier, she probably feared ending up in the situation that she is in now, I thought as I laid in bed last night. I now here she is, seemingly a prison to the combination of time, age and what is probably the "miracle" of modern medicine prolonging a life that is past due. She remains my paternal grandmother but yet is bereft of the pride she carried about for 85 years. Flashes of that soft-spoken pride flashed occasionally yesterday afternoon, but most of what I saw was a person returning to the state in which she entered the world and human life breaking down to make way for the life eternal to truly take hold.

What is most troublesome in watching this take place is new-found understanding and old ignorance. I now understand what it means to truly want God to bring someone Home. In this world of temptations and sin and ill-placed desires, it's so difficult to see that it is far better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. But I've never seen this contrast so clearly as I did yesterday. And I feel bad for saying that somehow..."are you really praying for someone to die?"

And then there's just my own ignorance. How does God receive glory from this, a person losing herself in the clutches of age, having to be cared for completely by both family and strangers? Is there dignity in dying this way? Why the pain? How does the duration of time please God? As David cried out, "How long, O Lord?"

And in the midst of two hours yesterday, I sensed a quiet fierceness and strength resonating within her that I can only guess is the true person, the soul just bursting at the seams, waiting to break forth into eternal glory from the broken-down temporal shell that is holding her captive.

"I'm so tired of this...I'm just waiting for a miracle," she said to me, gripping my hand. "I just want a miracle so I can feel normal..."

"Your miracle will come soon, Granny Lou. It will come soon," I answered.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Seeking Solitude

Through careful analytical self-examination, I've discovered that a true relaxing day can't really occur at home anymore...at least not during the school year. It's not that I don't enjoy people, because I sort of have to as part of my job, but there comes a point where I don't want, and sometimes can't, engage with people anymore.

Wednesday was Bryan's Day of Prayer, and having things to attend to on campus, the day featured very little prayer of any kind. I slowly began to feel myself close up inside and close off to the world around me. And I began to wonder if I'd lost focus on what I am doing and why I do it. There's a certain feeling I come across from time to time that can only weakly be described as a "lostness." So today I turned off my cell phone (true liberation) and set off to find a place where no one would find me.

I headed north on highway 27 and came to one of those gas station/Subway/another smaller food chain establishment that is really only inviting in the South. Grabbing a sandwich, I kept moving west of the town of Spring City, took a sharp left onto a rather ominous-sounding "Shut-In-Gap Road" and snaked my way up a dilapidated mountain road and into the strange and magical area known as "Luminary."

In truth, Luminary is only strange of its own accord and not really magical. The mysterious element comes purely from the storytelling its odd nature encourages. The area doesn't really have a town-center or even a "community" center, but is rather a collection of small dirt roads scurrying off into wooded darkness, rundown houses and trailers, junk heaps, farm animals and lots of untouched land. Somewhere along the way on this road is the Stinging Forks Pocket Wilderness, which features Stinging Fork Falls conveniently, one of the prettiest bits of nature I've ever seen.

Being that I had passed less than half a dozen cars since leaving Spring City, I ventured a guess that this might be an ideal place for solitude and silence, and my expectations were completely met. The small parking area was empty when I arrived, and pleasantly enough, I didn't see another soul the entire time (just because a parking lot is empty doesn't mean you should expect to not run into someone in Luminary).

Stinging Forks' waterflow wasn't the greatest, but its canyon-like location at the bottom of a sharp descent made for a quiet afternoon of reading Scripture, prayer, staring at a blue sky, reminiscing about good times and anticipating future ones. The cascading water over the exposed rock of the falls often called to mind Ephesians 2:10's words that the believer is God's workmanship, a work of art, a "poema", in progress that takes time to create. And it made me wonder what this area looked like over time as the water continually wore a path over the rock and eroded away earth to create beauty.

I suppose the Christian life is a constant state of erosion, where God is stripping away layers of selfishness, pride, lust, greed, anger, etc., in order to bring us closer to the image of Christ and redeem us from this fallen world. And though we could think that our glorified "poema" will only be viewed in Heaven, is it too much to think that maybe God is revealing some of the art today in this mortal world, through creation and through his own children? I couldn't help thinking so today, sitting on a weathered rock in Luminary.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Memory Lane

To the bottom left of this page is a section titled "Memories." I haven't the foggiest notion what a xanga "memory" is, but recently, my mind has been drawn to the subject of times past and my current recollections of those times.

Somehow or another, on two separate occasions last evening, the topic of my college days came up between myself and a pair of friends. And in the midst of discussing where I am now in contrast to where I was then, I became keenly aware of a couple of things.

A. I'm very happy as a 29-year-old that has left the high school and college days behind him and is slowly but steadily coming out of the quarter-life crisis era. And...

B. I think my memories of college and other times of life are far better than the actual events were that inspired those memories.

That probably sounds foolish and pseudo-intellectualized, but what I am trying to say is that the more I think back to those times, the fonder those memories become, to the point that they're almost fictionalized accounts of a smaller truth. I suppose it's similar to storytelling. Historically, storytelling has held a great place in the development of cultures and societies, yet the story doesn't quite stay the same but evolves over time into something, presumably, greater than the preceding version of the story.

I find the same true in my own life. Not that I grossly embellish the actual facts of a moment or scenario (at least not too much) but the life that I experience between the memory and the present seems to add its own flavor and perspective to the memory, making for something like fine wine that's had time to age and mature.

So when my friends asked me if I, working currently with college students presently, miss the college days, I had to say no, because at this point I'm not even sure what the true college days were like. The memories of those times seem so far away that I'm not even totally sure how accurate they are anymore.

But I can say that I enjoy those recollections fondly. It was a good time of life that I was blessed to have. And if I'm enjoying this present life as much as I am know, then I can only wonder what distortions of this present age will present themselves into fond memories in the future.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Lessons From the Diamond

Tonight, I was given a reprieve from what has become my usual twice-a-week James 1:9 experience.

You see, sometime around the end of April, two of my fellow B.C. workers had the clever idea of fielding a Bryan College softball team to compete in a local league through May and June. By my experience, finding enough interested players to compete together as a team can be quite a task, but surprisingly some 15 players committed to playing every Monday and Thursday evenings for two months. So where does James 1:9 come into play, you may be asking. Well, a look at the reference reads like this:

"The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position."

See, Dayton has been known for years as a hotbed for softball, where disgruntled middle-age men that once had visions of making it out of Dayton and into the big leagues take out their frustrations on a bloated baseball that, contrary to its name, is anything but soft. But even I, as a former local sports writer, had no idea exactly how competitive the league would be.

I could tell early on in the season that this was not just your average social softball league but was more like playing paintball with guys holding real guns. Early in the first game, a baserunner from the other team narrowly missed colliding with our firstbaseman trying to beat out a throw. "What am I supposed to do, huh! Tell me what I am supposed to do when he's standing like that! What am I supposed to do, damnit!" the man yelled at the umpire, nearly breaking into tears. In fairness to him, the firstbaseman was a tad bit in his baseline path and even admitted to the umpire, but the umpire, probably peeved that a 35-year-old, beer-bellied father of three was crying like a baby in a recreational league softball game, called the runner out anyway.

Let me just say that the Bryan College softball team is just a tad bit behind in its group chemistry and passion compared to these other teams. We've yet to have an outburst like the aforementioned man, and some of the teams we've squared off with have played together as a team for five years or more. That's right...these guys keep their same teams each year. They probably hold practice and run windsprints, for crying out loud. They even wear baseball pants and chew tobacco!

Consequently, James 1:9 has come into play several times over the last few weeks for myself. Instead of taking pride in wins, we take pride in playing hard. Instead of 1-2-3 innings, we pat each other on the back when the other team only scores five runs in an inning. Instead of applauding diving catches on line drives, we applaud each other for getting out of the way of that hotshot that would have "totally taken your leg off, man!" Ah, life is all about perspective...and counting the cost.

So it was with some deal of relief when I heard that our game had been forfeited because our coach had mistakenly told us the wrong time for the game. But after deeper thought, I realized that our opponent was the team that we actually have a really good chance of beating (that's right, I haven't witnessed a win yet, though I hear the first game of the season we won when I was out of town), and our next opponent is none other than the team that left the biggest mark on us this season.

On that fateful night, the other team put up twenty, 2-0, one less than 21, runs against us before the end of the first inning! Everyone on the team batted around at least three times, with the exception of a hairy man with glasses that simply stood beside first base, laughing the entire time like a lunatic (I found out later on that he never plays but is more like the team's cheerleader or good luck charm or something). If we pulled the outfield in, the batter knocked the ball over the fielders and sometimes the fence. If we played deep, they'd hit it over the infield for hits. At one point, I, playing third base, somehow saved my manhood while simultaneously gloving a hard hit ball that felt like stopping a cannonball, but by the time I had cocked my arm back to throw the runner out at first, he had safely reached base, almost as if he had a teleporter that took him directly from the batter's box to the bag. The game ended after three innings, since one team (I'll let you guess which one) trailed by more than 20 runs.

Later that night, I leaned against my truck, took a deep breath and stared up into the sky, replaying the short, yet oh-so-lengthy massacre that had just taken place. "What are you doing," Kati asked me, doing her best to hide a smile that had been breaking across her face throughout the whole ordeal. "Oh, I'm just letting this all sink in," I replied. "You know, it's sort of cathartic."

"The sting of defeat," I thought to myself, "is sort of like a really hard massage that hurts like heck when it's going on, but soon afterwards, that slow burn sets in and the muscles begin to lounge about in a drunken state of euphoria. Yes, this will be used for good. It's not a bad thing to lose like this once in a while to humble me.............what the heck am I talking about? This is awful."

If you want to learn about gravity, go jump off a building, if you want to understand shoes, find some broken glass and walk on it wearing nothing more than socks and if you want to learn humility, play recreational league softball in East Tennessee.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Swashbuckled in Dunlap

Monday night featured a trip for Kati and I to one of the few remaining drive-in theatres, located in Dunlap, Tennessee, a small mountainous town 45 minutes southwest of Dayton. For quite a while, we'd wanted to experience the America of yesteryear by viewing a show outside on the big screen under the stars. It seemed every time we had the desire to make the drive though, the theatre would be featuring award-winners like National Lampoon's Van Wilder and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. This week's feature was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and given that we had recently survived the lengthy sequel to the original Pirates of the Caribbean, we thought it appropriate to take advantage of the opportunity before Not Another Teen Movie made its way back to Dunlap for an encore performance. Here's a link to the theatre in case you want to make your own trip.

We found the nature surroundings of Dunlap to be seemingly untouched, captivatingly lush over rough terrain, as the truck pulled its way up a series of inclines on TN-111. Eventually, the Ranger crested at a sign noting that there would be a 6% grade over the next four miles, and soon thereafter the view opened up to reveal a host of lights decorating the town. Inside Dunlap's downtown, it was clear to both of us that the small community deserved a day trip of exploration. We were especially interested by a sign pointing to the Historic Dunlap Coke Oven Park, a 62-acre reserve protecting a large quantity of coke ovens, once used in the early 20th century to convert coal into industrial coke. Next weekend the park is scheduled to host its annual Coke Ovens Bluegrass Festival, which I imagine is a big a deal to Dunlap as the Strawberry Festival is to Dayton, which basically is comparable to me looking forward to the second weekend in March for the ACC Conference Tournament or my dad getting excited about a 24-hour Walton's marathon. It's all about perspective.

I suppose that I expected to find a drive-in theatre somewhere far away from lights and traffic, but the Dunlap Drive-in was so close to the town that I probably would have driven all the way to Whitwell (pronounced "Whu-wu" by residents) had Kati not spotted the small turnoff. (In truth, her initial thought was "well, if we can't find the drive-in we can come back and watch the movie at this theatre that's playing it.) At the drive-thru window where movie-goes pay admission, we found a man in his 60s that could best be described as "a nice old man." He smiled at us, mentioned something about us "getting there just in time" for the 9:25 showing, something else about how hazy it was tonight but how "he" (I'm not sure who "he" was) has decided to go ahead and start the picture and something more that I really couldn't understand more than to know that I should just smile and ease off the break.

Somewhere along the way in my thinking I imagined the theatre would be like a big open field with cars parked about haphazardly, but there were actual parking spots on gravel roads, situated in between poles that I presumed once served as mounts for car speakers back in the day. Now, the sound comes through FM frequency. I backed the truck into a space, put down the tailgate, laid out a sleeping bag over the twin bed mattress that fit perfectly into the truck bed and sat back against the cab, relishing the purchase of my truck some four years ago. Anyone that owns a truck needs to take it to a drive-in theatre.

We were pleasantly surprised by everything the place offered and for the price. The sound quality coming through the truck's speakers was good, tickets were $5 each and a large drink and popcorn could be purchased for another $5. The theatre has been operated since 1950, and by the same man since 1963 (who I guess could be "he" now that I think about it.).

Unfortunately, I can't be as positive about the movie at hand. Pirates 3 is about as clever and entertaining as Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy....but twice as long. For most of the movie, I kept asking myself questions like "Now what are they going after?" "Who's on who's side?" "Why did they have to do that?" and "Did I really just subject myself to a wedding that literally happened in the midst of an epic battle scene?" The Elizabeth Swann character climbed her way a notch or two higher on the annoying meter, Orlando Bloom did an amazing job doing little other than pouting throughout the film and even Johnny Depp's portrayal of the endearing Jack Sparrow seemed lost. Clocking in at nearly 15 minutes shy of three hours long, this film could have been decent at two hours. As it is though, I can't even call it that.

The night was saved though by Dunlap's charm and mystery, something that will undoubtedly lead to a return trip in this summer of possibilities.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Ubatuba

It's funny what gets me excited the older I get. Just 10 years ago it was a trip to Six Flags or Whitewater or some other theme park that included nausea or ecoli. Nowadays it's home renovation projects.

Last week I had cabinets and countertops installed in my kitchen. If you read that closely you'll notice that I didn't say "new cabinets and countertops installed." The reason is that before last week, my kitchen had neither...an odd fact since the apartment is around 40 years old. When the building was made, the apartment was fitted with a kitchenette that had a bout 40 sq. ft. of usable space and the remainder of what is now the kitchen was used as a living room. Some time later a living room was added to the apartment and the old living room was left to fill in as the occupant saw fit.

Thankfully, funding was approved to make some renovations to the apartment two weeks ago. I had been told that things would get done as early as last summer, but somewhere along the way the prospect of having work done grew bleak, which was quite a discouragement to me. Some friends from Westminster prayed about the situation for me two weeks ago at bible study, and the next morning I had a knock on my door informing me that the funding had been approved and that work would start the next Monday. It's nice every now and then to have a lightning bolt from heaven like that.

Within five days time, I had a new tiled floor, fresh oak cabinets, a pretty cool greenish color for the countertops called "ubatuba granite" (pronounced "yooooouuuuuubatuba.' Go ahead and say it.) and a new range. The renovation plans called for a relocation of my kitchen sink area, leaving a new small cove for a washer/dryer combo, so yesterday I made an hour-long journey to the edge of the Smokey Mountains in Etowah, Tennessee (Everyone should visit Etowah at some point in life. I'll try to jot down some thoughts at another time.) to an appliance store and purchased a brand-spanking new Frigidaire laundry center for $700, around $400 less than retail. It was discounted because it was a "scratch and dent" sale, but it took me several minutes to find where it had been dented. By the evening I had already washed a load of clothes and was struck by the sudden power I had acquired. I could wash one sock at a time if I really wanted to do so...not that I would, but the point of the matter is that God is good, and I haven't been able to easily overlook that recently.

I'm taking my summer day by day, enjoying the nuisances of each day, the freedom to come and go as I like and the beauty of Appalachia. My original plans for beginning a graduate program at Geneva never materialized, because I never really received an understanding that I was supposed to pursue it at this time. I've also come to the understanding that, though I love student ministry and cherish the work that was done this last year, I need some time away from student work, meaning I don't see working with Summit Ministries or any other student ministry this summer. I want to be refreshed in August. This leaves me in a bit of a predicament, because I've always been the type of person that enjoys knowing that I will be doing this or that for this or that amount of time. But I'm beginning to believe that, given the right circumstances, there may be times when God wants us to simply live with him for a time, listening in the silence to learn about himself, ourselves, love, sin, life, etc. That's where I am right now.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

A bandage or an antidote?

"The task of future Christian leaders is not to make a little contribution to the solution of the pains and tribulations of their time, but to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God's people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom."

~ Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Let Go Of Your Spoons. They Hold No Power.

A two-month disappearance from the world of blogging deserves a message of hope and liberation to the masses. Thus, have I a true word for all.

Do not feel that you must set out spoons at your dinner table if your meal only requires the use of a fork. Why do we torture ourselves so? We make needless work for ourselves by putting out the unnecessary silverware for the sake of having a complete place setting. Tell me why, outside of eating soup or small, round vegetables, must we have spoons at our dinnertables? It's a senseless tradition that needs reform. But for those that cannot release this ball and chain, I offer this note. If you must have your complete place setting, let go of the burden that you must wash your unused utencils following the meal. If spoons have not been put to use, then they hold no power. That is the rule of thumb.

Okay, this is all went through my mind today during lunch. Somewhere along the way, a small thought turned into a revolution.

Kati and I braved the elements last night and drove to Knoxville to see Switchfoot in concert. The venue was a really nice old theatre named "the Bijou." It was similar to the Tivoli, only smaller and older. Built in 1817, it's the fourth oldest building in Knoxville and is supposedly haunted. I guess some Civil War soldiers died there or something. I found this site that "documents" a ghost in the women's restroom on the second floor and how sometimes people get stuck in the middle stall or something like that. I can't remember all the facts, but I half-expected Kati to come back from the restroom talking about being stuck in the stall.

Back to the concert though...I've fully graduated to being an old rocker, because I was happily surprised to find that there were front row seats in the balcony available 15 minutes before the show. How does this graduate me to my new status? Well, I was happy because it meant that I could enjoy watching the entire show without standing if I preferred. And I did prefer, sat the entire time and pretended that my favorite band was playing for me in my living room. The idea worked pretty well until Jon Foreman started climbing a speaker and into the mezzanine level and then onto a ledge some 25 feet above the floor while singing. I think everyone was a little on edge for a second, but I'm sure it looked pretty cool from the floor.

Unfortunately, Foreman wasn't playing any impromptu coffee shops after the concert, as is often his custom, so I was home before 1 am. But I did pick up a bootleg cd with good sound quality documenting the first 10 songs of the concert for $5.

Three weeks left before the semester ends. Right now I've got grad school, job and traveling possibilities all demanding decisions for the summer.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Oh, Danielson

I laid in bed last night for the better part of an hour listening to this guy's new album. Just when I thought he couldn't get any stranger he goes and proves me wrong again. But at the same time the music seems to get better the stranger it gets. I'm teetering dangerously close to labeling him a genius. I swing back and forth between smiling uncontrollably and experiencing that weird feeling you get watching a clown skipping down a sidewalk holding a bunch of balloons . There's something so creepy about the music, but so pleasing at the same time. Yes, this is experimental.

And all because I happened to pick up a $1.00 clearance cd at a now-defunct Christian bookstore in Hixson the night Julie Barfield made me drive 35 minutes to the nearest one-hour photo. Thank you Julie.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

I don't give a Rip for being Van Winkle.

Long pauses deserve deep thoughts, but I have none, save for this meager offering: you can never truly do something well without being passionate about that thing.

That's what I've told at least three people in the last few days. And if you want proof, just take a look at my incredibly talented, yet painfully struggling Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets basketball team. Not one player on the team looked like he wanted to take a shot down the stretch in a meeting with wimpy Wake Forest earlier tonight, leading to the team's fourth straight defeat. The moral to the story: talent will get you nowhere by itself and you don't just stumble into victory. Make a plan and take the steps.

So I took a long winter's nap from blogging and I might head back to my perverbial writer's bed to take another sooner rather than later. To borrow from Bobby Brown, it's my prerogative. In battle with a lack of motivation to blog on one front and preoccupied with a perpetual cold that borders on the verge of pnuemonia on another. Sometime in late November my throat started growing a nasty gallery of ulcers and soon thereafter the illness (I suppose it was strep throat. If you don't know why your throat hurts just call it "strep throat" and you're likely to be right.) made a southward turn down the bronchials and took up residence until sometime around Christmas.

I discovered Mucinex just before the yuletide season and with its help figured I had sent my foe in a full retreat. I hiked like a mad mountain goat and spent a good deal of time becoming a torrid powerwalker. I slept right. I even ate right. Well, let's say better than normal. And as I was on a walk one day last week, I made the stunning discovery that I had not been sick in some four weeks. Of course, the next morning I set a new world record for sneezing (both in number and long-distance spraying). Thankfully, I think the sequel to the initial sickness will prove far less lengthy and less dramatic, though my less than concise (wordy perhaps?) description of the episode might suggest otherwise. Mucinex and Airborne are waging war on my puny immune system as I type.

I'm continually amazed at what little I know about most of my friends' lives the older I get. My friend Shad....wait a minute. Are people still friends when one friend has a kid and the other friend doesn't even know that there's a kid on the way until after the birth? Anyway, Shad and his wife Melissa apparently are proud parents to a boy named Jacob. I think that's the name. Perhaps if I were a better friend I would remember the name too, hmm? Dave, you went to French Guyana or something like that? Is that right. Matty, oh yeah, you still live in China with your wife and child that speaks Chinese (???). Jason, have you and Amanda moved back to Dayton without telling me or is that still the long-range goal? It's not that I don't care, it's just that somehow life seems a lot faster than it used to.

To close I've got two strong suggestions:

1. Check out Switchfoot's Oh! Gravity. I've listened to little else since picking it out of the mailbox a few days before Christmas. I was impressed with the band's live show in Nashville (which coincided with round one of the illness), but this cd pretty much makes them my favorite musical choice. It's hard to rank the songs, but Awakening, Circles and Dirty Second Hands never get old for me.

2. Facebook.com is good, so much better than the Sodom and Gomorrah Myspace.com. Not only are there no nasty ads asking you if you're "naughty or nice" on the log-in screen, but it's much easier to keep up with friends. It seems many Facebook users get hung up in how many "friends" each other has, but if you can sidestep this pit (which anyone with any measure of maturity should be able to) it's a really good thing. And if you can get over the "I-don't-want-to-do-it-because-everyone-else-is-doing-it" silliness, you might just like it.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Per Request

The idea was birthed sometime in August. The product came last Wednesday.

H.D. Long Hall, my home, was originally built as a men's dormitory and opened its doors as Bryan College's first permanent residence hall in January of 1964. With growing enrollment and changes in the school's men-women ratio, Long was changed into a women's residence hall in the fall of 1984. Back-to-back bumper crops of incoming students over the last few years necessitated Long's switch back to men this year, allowing myself to drop my pen and sports camera duties in favor of something I really wanted to do.

So it was sometime in August that I and my resident assistants were talking over ideas of how to establish a new identity for Long after having been a women's dorm for some 22 years, when Paul came up with the idea of using "Creation, Fall, Redemption" to describe our home. It was originally intended to be a guys dorm but was then changed for the opposite of what it was intended for. And now the return of men to the halls had somehow "redeemed" it. Sure it sounds like a "no girls allowed" club...that's the point.

So I took to designing a hoodie on www.customink.com (check it out. it's a cool site), came up with a sweet look and then got roughly 2/3 of the dorm on board for shirts at $20 a pop. The colors changed a bit (yellow for "Creation-1964", red for "Fall-1984, and white for "Redemption-2006") but the basic design stayed the same. I had a few nightmares the night before the big shipment arrived (buying $1300 worth of merchandise with other people's money has a way of doing that), but was pleased overall with the finished product. And seeing a sea of black hoodies walk around campus on the first day back from fall break was quite worth it. I'm not sure we'll be able to top this design next year. Sorry about the poor resolution in the pic.

In other news, my thoughts have recently turned toward my lack of motivation in writing. In some ways, I'd say that I'm less introspective that I once was, and that bothers me a bit. Am I becoming boring? Lackadaisical? Vanilla flavored? Whatever the case, there's been a definite lack of interest in jotting down the thoughts that roll between these ears than through most of my life.

Fall break came at a really good time, though I don't feel like I totally took advantage of the nine-day period. I started the vacation with good intentions of redeeming the time, even making a list of "to do's" but then pretty much scrapped it once Monday rolled around. I spent a good three days lounging around doing as little as possible, due in part to lousy head and body aches, and then rainy weather four out of the five weekdays made for less than optimum conditions for being productive. Trips to see Justin in Asheville and Brent in Rock Island, Tennessee never materialized, and anticipated meetings with other friends never happened either, but I am happy to say that I took three nice hikes in Creation.

On the first Saturday, I became tired of not visiting my beloved Buzzard's Point looking down into Dayton and decided to extend a hand of friendship to anyone that would allow me access to their land that would give easy access to Buzzard's from the top of the mountain. Surprisingly, pleasantly so, I made three new friends simply by calling them over the phone, introducing myself and explaining what my request was, and each gave hearty approval to my pursuit. So Kati and I made the 45-minute hike to the cliffs on Saturday, along with a beautiful collie named Mabel and an irish setter named Buddy, spent about 2 hours there, visited Snow Falls and then ventured to Wooden's Apple House for a round-trip of around six hours. So much of my free time in college was spent bounding through the Bowater forest, so the return trip was memorable.

Friday morning, the skies parted for the first time in five days, and a solo trip deep into the Pocket Wilderness seemed best. I targeted Laurel Falls, an 80-foot plunge 2.5 miles back, as my destination, and once there, decided to climb the rim of the mountain and hike above the falls. The new rainfall burst over Laurel with amazing power and beauty, and a small creek of run-off water some 200 feet further down the wall created another small waterfall that, though less powerful, was equally awe-inspiring. The temps hovered around 50 degrees all day, making for a nippy adventure with a brisk breeze blowing off the falls, and three hours after I began I landed with a thud in my truck, having covered six miles or so.

Then on Sunday, Ritterbush and his lady friend Brooke coaxed me and Kati (Kati needed the coaxing more than myself) back out to Buzzard's. This time we were forced to wade across the creeks that had been marginally dry just a week earlier, and the color change in the trees was an even more incredible transformation. There's something very special about sharing God's creation with others, especially this time of the year.

A final random note before signing off: I think the Mac-PC commercials are some of the most entertaining on television, which for me to mention is really saying something. I don't really think that Macs are all that cool. In fact, most of you that swear by them are nerds and need support groups, but the idea behind the message is top-notch funniness. But for just all-out weirdness/funniness, Domino's Pizza takes the top prize with its commercials for its oreo pizza. "Right on, Kevin. Right on."

Thursday, October 05, 2006

The Brevity Of It All

When I was younger, I only wanted to be older. When I experienced unpleasant times, I only wanted to get to the good times. And when I lived in the inbetween times, when life wasn't great but life wasn't bad either, I envisioned how life could be better.

Now, oddly, a feeling of sadness has overtaken me today as I understand that even those less than stellar times will never come again. I will never be able to really know what it is like to live in those moments, and even the shadowing memories of those times are fleeting into the darkness of past. My life is great, to put aside notions of my demise or inner turmoil. Working student life is better than I imagined it could be, I don't miss working two jobs, I enjoy sharing my "home" with 94 other young men. I'm just struck by the vapor of life. The brevity of it all.

My friend Charlie called me yesterday to ask if he could spend the night in my apartment tomorrow. Charlie and I went to school together for two years and served as RAs during my junior year. Later than year I stood as a groomsman in his wedding on top of Dayton Mountain, looking out over the valley on a warm May afternoon. Now he lives in Michigan with his wife and three children. The nature of his business tomorrow is an interview for a youth pastorship at a local church, the possibilities which have me greatly excited.

Charlie is a good friend. I know this because I've only spent considerable time with him twice since he graduated in the spring of 2000, yet whenever we talk the conversation picks up where it left off. I once was in the habit of only calling Charlie whenever I was out of state or out of the country. Kansas. Mexico. Minnesota. Canada. It gave him a nice thrill each time he heard my voice, not knowing where I was on each occasion ("Where are ya now, Matty?"), and it was a good excuse for me to talk to a distant friend.

While talking to him yesterday, I recalled a moment in the years past when Charlie was supposed to stop in for a visit for the night while on a trip. "Did that visit ever happen?" I asked myself. A hazy recollection of Charlie standing in my old red brick duplex flashed through my mind before dispersing in the understanding that the moment never actually happened. Something else had come up, necessitating a quick return trip home for Charlie, and I suppose my anticipation of seeing an old friend during a lonely time had actually pieced together a moment that never existed.

These thoughts drew me back to the two-year period of living life on my own, very much like a hermit or a monk, that now seems so very long ago, though it only ended two years ago. At times there was extreme loneliness and occasionally periods of depression, but there were also very good times of solitude and quiet. I have little of either now, not that that's a bad thing, but a small part of me mourns the fact that I will never experience the coldness of walking through a front door into an empty home, filling an entire week's worth of evenings by myself, checking out VHS from the library because I don't have cable and seeing how cold it can get in the apartment at night without heat in an effort to conserve energy.

Life truly is precious, and I am ashamed of my own selfishness and lack of vision. Lord, teach me to number my days.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Freederekwebb.com

I usually don't find myself pushing a product, but this is too good not to mention.

Derek Webb has long been one of my favorite songwriters and musicians, not just for his music but for what he stands for. Music to him is a means to fulfilling a life-calling, not a means to fame and riches. His last album, Mockingbird, came out sometime last year I believe. It's quietly become one of my favorites, for its soothing melodies, but moreso for its challenging topics. If your faith needs stretching (and I'd say that most people's do), you need to listen to this album.

Your in luck, because on September 1, Webb will be releasing his album for free downloads on www.derekwebb.com. I'm not sure how long he plans on doing this. It could just be for the day or it could be permantly, but Webb is doing this because "I heard a story once about Keith Green caring so much that people were able to hear and engage with his music that he gave it away for free, which was a very difficult and expensive thing to do at that time. It's actually never been as simple as it is today to connect music with music fans. And I want people to have a chance to listen to Mockingbird and engage in the conversation."

People say no one ever gave away anything worth keeping, but I think you'll find this to be an exception to the rule. Check it out.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Jazz Session

Jazz Session...the simple term causes a strange calmness to fall over me.

A few years ago, when I was a senior at BC, me and my good buddy Matt Snead would venture off the hill on Sunday mornings to attend First Christian Community Church, a small black church on the other side of the tracks. It was literally on the other side of the tracks, which also just happened to be the rougher side of Dayton. Of course, saying "the other side of Dayton" is sort of like talking about getting to the other side of your living room. It's not very far away.

First Christian was a tiny congregation that was always a very welcoming body to spend the 90 minutes between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. with each week, and the pastor commonly came up with some memorable lines for each week's sermon that stuck in our heads like peanut butter to the roof of a dog's mouth. "God don't bless no mess!" and "Loose lips sink ships" stand out in my mind. He wasn't the greatest orator, and the sermons rarely delved into any real tough areas of doctrine and whatnot, but somehow I appreciate these things about First Christian after a week of heavy thinking in classes. There was a simplicity of faith in these people rarely seen and a genuineness that was contagious. The music was never boring. An older woman wailed away on an old organ from a selection of black gospel songs each Sunday, the pastor held his own on the bass guitar, the pastor's daughter took the piano and occassionally someone would show up to play drums. It wasn't just church; it was an experience.

After church we'd make it back for the later part of lunch at school, traditionally either roast beef or ham and mashed potatoes followed by a home-made banana milkshake, and then back to our suite for the jazz session.

The sessions were discovered early during our senior year. I was an RA, so I had a room to myself. On the window side, a soft, worn blue couch rested under the windows with an old ottoman seated at its feet, and most every Sunday for at least an hour, Matt and I, and whoever else wanted, would put on the Dave Brubeck cd, crank the air conditioning to a sub-arctic level and take up residence on the blue couch, each bringing his own blanket. The sessions would start with a kicking rendition of "Take Five," mellow with a slightly slower tune next and then just simmer until eyelids eventually caved in to the moody melodies of a tenor saxophone and Dave on the piano.

I miss those times, so today, as I prepared for my meeting with my RAs tonight, I threw on the old disc and found myself swimming in a euphoric feeling of Sunday afternoon memories with an old friend and an old couch. Thanks be to God for these mementos.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Ten Years Ago

On watching some 50 freshmen move into my dorm last Saturday, I was taken back to my last days leading up to college life. Wide eyes and uncertain handshakes. Overly concerned mothers followed by armies of homeschoolers. Then I became keenly aware that those days were now a decade ago, and I felt very old. I still feel old, seeing as I yawn heavily around 11 p.m. and have to hold back laughs when people ask me to go to Wal-Mart or watch a movie with them when it's technically the wee hours of the next day (which is going on in my living room right now).

But back to being ten years removed from high school. It was the summer of 1996, arguably the best days of my life (at least that's the thought that was in my head at the time. Now I scoff at my own melodrama). Me and five or six of my best friends were moving off in different directions, yet we clung to the last days of the summer like...well...like kids clinging to the last days of summer. Soon enough, we'd all started attending different schools, and two of the friends that had been dating broke up. A few months later down the road the other couple called it quits, then my girlfriend started seeing someone else... and then broke up with me two weeks later, and all the while I struggled with the oddity known as community college, where still pimply-faced 18 year-olds and 50 year-old mothers of three go to school together. I also misread "the freshman 15" memo and took it as "the freshman 50" instead. Well maybe not exactly, but you get the point. It was sort of like a second puberty. Yikes.

The good memories I have of that summer were related to music. Back in those days, I'd go to at least one concert every two weeks it seemed, and then there was the five-day stretch where Atlantafest, the biggest Christian music festival in the Southeast, made its way to Six Flags over Georgia. I saw Michael W. do his headtoss-legkick thing, Steven Curtis do silly "dance moves" and the Newsboys guy wear his silver suit. So, for a 10-year tribute, here's my top five albums that I was listening to in the summer of 1996.

1. Jars of Clay, Jars of Clay-The bad thing about this album is that everyone knew there was no way they could top it. I've always admired the group for not trying to duplicate what was on this album, but it's just too bad they haven't made another album up to par.

2. DCtalk, Jesus Freak- Hmmmmm, the freak show. This album made me realize that Christian can make music that's cool and glorifying. Again, too bad the group never came out with another great cd.

3. 4HIM, The Message- Bring on the harmony. These guys were so squeaky clean that I stopped taking showers in the summer of 96. Okay, so that's a lie.

4. The WorldWide Message Tribe, We Don't Get What We Deserve- I don't think I ever heard anything about these guys ever again. They were a weird British techno, dance band that easily won me over with their high-energy shows. They had two black ladies that wailed away on the mic, a spazzy white dancer boy that flew around the stage like a three-year old on Kool-aid and another bald white guy named "The Heavyfoot" who would growl out raps that were really hard to understand. I saw them in concert early one day at Atlantafest. They played in the evening set later that day and then played again at the late-night stage in the wee hours of the night. It's really weird stuff.

5. PFR, Them- This was a sad cd, because it came out just around the end of summer and was marketed as PFR's last album. Five years later, the band reunited for another album, which proved that sometimes people should stick with their retirements. Them had a way harder sound than anything I'd ever listening to before, so I flipper back and forth between a feeling of guilt and exhilaration. I shrugged the guilt eventually. The first track, "Pour Me Out," still has one of the greatest tempo changes that I've heard in a song.

Other notables include MWS I'll Lead You Home (I still get pleasure of singing "I'll leave you home..."), Geoff Moore and the Distance's Homerun (the epitome of cheese), and the Newsboys Take Me to Your Leader (probably the band's last top-notch album, though the disco disc still gets my groove going).

Ironically, two of my high school friends recently contacted me about the possibilty of a 10-year reunion in October. Honestly, I have to say that the thought was slightly disturbing to me, not so much because I don't want to see old classmates (at least not all of them), but because I can now be classified as one of those people that has a 10-year reunion that they could choose to avoid. On the bright side of things, I graduated in 1996 instead of 1986, which means I don't have to worry about people bringing up my mullet, tight designer blue jeans or super sexy Magnum P.I. mustache.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Pitfalls of Thriftiness

Somewhere between amused and disturbed...that's how I feel right now. It's been a long time since a substantial update. A lot has happened and changed, and yet the only reason I'm writing anything right now is due to a purchase I made today at a local thrift store. So how should I feel?

Thrift stores have long been a guilty pleasure of mine, one that has caused me to purposely avoid going to them. One man's junk is another man's treasure, so they say, and I've often found it to be true in my own life. But one day I looked around my house and realized that I was surrounded by, not "one man's treasure," but several people's junk that they'd dropped off over the years. And I'd been smart enough to fork out some money to buy what had already been discarded by someone else. This is the path that leads to life in a trailer.

So it was with some amount of intrepidation that I walked through the familiar doors, listened to the sound of chimes bouncing off the glass and took in the smell of mothballs and old ladies wafting through the air. Still, I surmised I was strong enough to hold out. That is, until I noticed a small box with a scene of a 1970s style family having fun together. It was Pit...the Parker Brothers frenzied trading game of cornering the market, of trading stocks and bonds back and forth on Wall Street like a daytrader and hours of endless fun yelling around a table with up to six other people ages 6 and up. Complete with all the cards, the instructions and the classic orange bell, it was a mere 75 cents, and I quickly came to the conclusion that I would have to end my thrift store holdout.

Practicality drove me into making the purchase, knowing that I would certainly play the game, but then I ran across a complete travel version of Outburst for ore dollar and another classic game for another dollar. Soon thereafter I found an authentic old army helmet, an intriguing painting, a flask, a Bryan College ashtray-like looking thing, a leopard-skin like lightswitch cover....but then I got a hold of myself, paid for the three games and left without further damage. So I think I'm more amused than disturbed. You might the opposite, I understand.

As for life, it's been something new every day and I'm loving it. I started student life meetings on August 1 and students (RAs, athletes, etc.) started rolling in around last Tuesday. We left for a three-day retreat on the mountain with the RAs on Friday, and since then preparation for Saturday's arrival of incoming students has taken up most of life. The retreat was a lot of fun, as always, but I was more than ready to sleep in my own bed again. Sleeping on a floor (because the bunks were way too short for me) after helping polish off 300 wings at BWW with 14 other guys doesn't make for the most ideal rest.

So tomorrow night I should sleep a lot better in my own bed after I partake in the ceremonial slaying of chicken legs, ripping meat from bone, with the guy RAs at BWW for a second time in less than a week.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

How did Sid do it?

I just watched a replay of the Atlanta Braves beating the Pittsburg Pirates in the 1992 NLCS...and I'm getting chills.

The scene: the Braves are down by two runs in the bottom of the ninth inning of game 7, the bases are loaded, there are two outs and little-used Francisco Cabrera is up at the plate with the weight of an entire season on his shoulders. This isn't the Yankees or the Red Sox we're talking about. These are the Braves, the perennially laughing stock of baseball on the cusp of making back-to-back World Series. And this isn't Hank Aaron or Dale Murphy or even Deion Sanders at the plate. This is Cabrera, the permed-mullet latino catcher that probably never played again that season or ever again.

The action: Cabrera slaps a line-drive single into left field so hard that the left fielder, maybe Barry Bonds (I can't remember), gloves the ball before the Braves' slow-footed first baseman Sid Bream, running from second base, rounds third base on his way home. Somehow, Bream scores, slipping inches past the throw home, which was off target a few feet toward first base. Bream looks up at the home plate umpire, who is signaling Bream safe, with a look that says "You've got to be kidding me." David Justice jumps on top of Bream, and pandimonium ensues. Two things strike me in watching this moment, now 14 years later.

1. Why the heck did Bream run home? Obviously the third-base coach sent him around third base, but it doesn't really make much sense. Bream was arguably the slowest runner on the team. The guy basically had a wooden leg, as one of his knees was surgically repaired just enough for him to trot home. It pained anyone to watch Bream run.

2. How the heck did Bream score? As said before, Bream was the slowest guy on the team. The Braves' 70-year-plus manager Bobby Cox may even be able to beat the Bream of 14 years ago today and it takes Cox at least 45 seconds to make his way from the dugout to the mound. That's how slow Bream was. Even a decent runner would have been gunned down at the plate by the throw that Bream beat, so the only explanation I can offer is that there was a supernatural intervention of incredible proportions. I distinctly remember my eyes bugging out of my head as I watched the scene live in 1992 and I still can't figure it out. I've watched the clip over and over again, and it just doesn't make sense. It's beautiful.

The Braves are currently 49-56, in fourth place in the NL East division and a full 14 games behind the hated Mets. Braves fans, we must cling to these sort of memories in times like these.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

I Would Do Anything For Love...But I Won't Do That

Last Friday concluded the end of Westminster's VBS, and along with it my tenure as "Captain Ramjet," leader of Space Camp and all-around goofy character in the cast of Genesis Space Probe, the daily skits. This dream obviously is a byproduct of several weeks of practicing and performing the skits in the church sanctuary.

I'm sitting in church, realizing that I am about to perform something of some sort for a full congregation. Soon I understand that this is it...the performance that we've been diligently practicing weeks for, but strangely enough I don't know the act, my words or the storyline. Nothing. All I know is that I have a part coming up soon and if I don't remember it I will certainly let everyone down and lose some serious face in front of the congregation (as if wearing a space costume in church isn't enough already).

Then, suddenly, the words start coming to me, but it's like I'm trying to stop a rollercoaster that's just started to move. I have no idea where the words are coming from but they're coming faster with each moment. Every word that leaves my lips is a surprise to me, both because I wasn't thinking the word before I spoke it and because the words make sense with the other members of the cast that I am dialoguing with. Being out of control slowly becomes natural for me, because everything I say flows into the character I am portraying.

But then it happens...that feeling. The one that tells you this isn't just a simple play or skit. No, this is far more complex and soulful. A feeling slowly starts to climb from the inner recesses of my mind to reveal that, yes, what we have here is a musical and I have a solo emerging. Not only is this a musical where I have a solo, but for the first time in the dream I recognize one of my cues. My stomach sinks as I make out the first notes to Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything for Love...But I Won't Do That," and before I can attempt to run from the sanctuary I've burst into song with a full "Bat Out of Hell" gripping vocal. And oddly, no one seems uncomfortable by the performace.

The words keep coming, flying from my mouth like water from an open fire hydrant. I am on full auto-pilot and there's nothing I can do about it. As I walk about the sancutary gesticulating like a Tourette's sufferer, I think ahead and am terrified to discover what next I will sing...

"Sometimes I just pray to the God of sex and drums and rock 'n' roll..."

The elders will come remove me, I'm sure of it, but I belt out the lyrics and everyone just stares back at me with thoughtful looks that hint of wheels turning in their heads about important matters. Perhaps they realize that I'm only playing a character, someone that the unbeliever can relate to or one that gives a short glimpse of what their lives were like before coming to Christ? Yes, that is it. I'll be free in mere moments and hop off this rollercoaster ride.

But wait. There's more. You haven't finished the song, the tempo is slowing down considerably and that must mean....no, please, no...I still have to sing...

"But I'll never forgive myself if we don't go all the way, tonight..."

The show must go on, so I keep the musical circus rolling through multiple "I would do anything for love"s with my eyes closed, mostly because I fear the looks of those watching, but I also think that this will help lend to the idea that I'm in character and not really meaning what I'm singing. But the music slows and begins to fade into darkness, and I begin to hear murmurings. Opening my eyes I see several people standing about the sanctuary with hands lifted into the air uttering phrases like "Praise you, Jesus" and "Yes, Lord" and "Glory." An old man I've never seen before rises from the back and lets out a bellowing "Amen!" and kicks off a standing ovation for my performance.

But the applause doesn't go to me, I quickly realize...it goes to God, so like a good believer I join in the clapping with my hands over my head and point my face to the sky.

Monday, July 10, 2006

The Sun (Also) Rises

Feeling like I was wasting my summer, due largely in part to the 10-month breakneck speed pace of life that came to a screeching halt and left me feeling like a used up Kleenex that couldn't find its way to the trash can, I decided to adopt a new routine recently. The main change involves getting up daily at 6 a.m. to take a good, long walk and early devotions. The change was easy at first because everything was fresh and new, sort of like people making home videos of themselves with their new camcorder just so they can watch them five minutes later. Sure enough, I crashed the next week, bored with the novelty and taken by the notion of more time in bed. Several mornings I've found myself dialoguing with myself about what a stupid decision it was to make such a dramatic switch in lifestyles but what a stupid decision it is to continue sleeping when the world around is waking.

I was delightfully happy in my naivety of the pre-8 a.m. world. As a walked the first day, I marvelled noticing that the sky in the east looked almost exactly the same at 6:30 a.m. as it did in the west the night before at sunset! Could it be that I could essentially watch two sunsets each day if I awoke early enough? Seconds later I realized what I was viewing is what is technically called "dawn."

"Amazing!" I thought, "this pre-8 a.m. world."

I also enjoyed the feeling of being up when I was still supposed to be in bed. It's the same feeling I had on Saturday mornings in the 1980s. Back then I would sneak out of bed at 5 a.m., turn on the black and white television in my room and watch "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair, Ricky "the Dragon" Steamboat, the Road Warriors and "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes duke it out on NWA Wrestling on TBS. The volume would be turned down low enough not to interrupt my brother's snoring or wake my parents to realize what I was watching, giving the moment an added thrill. "What a way to start the weekend," I remember thinking at the time. "Risk and reward on the screen and in real life all at once. How much do you want it? Let me hear you! (hand held out cupping ear) Oh yeah, snap into it! Woo! To be the man, you gotta beat the man! I'm stylin' and profilin'! Don't sing it, just bring it!"

Wrestling doesn't do it for me now. Now I get excited about walking out my door and into a multitude of conversations being carried on by birds, happening upon a playful pair of foxes up to no good, feeling a slight chill from the still cool night air and listening to and talking with the Lord amidst relative silence. This pre-8 a.m. world is like another dimension! I have found the wormhole that leads to Warp Zone 5!

The struggle is that student life people are not supposed to be made for this type of thing, and it's hard getting out of a 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. sleep pattern, even when students haven't been around for two months.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

• My New Hydrokryptonitonic Optical Assistant

  Getting new glasses is like any other kind of shopping for me. I adopt the mindset of "get in, get (insert product name here), get out." You'd think it would be different considering that these glasses will be seen by all people that I come in contact with for the next five years, but it's not. I realized this last Thursday at the Lenscrafters at Northgate Mall. With time running out on my time at the Herald, I figured it was probably time to take advantage of my meager vision benefits. I last bought new frames six years ago, meaning that my current frames were bend beyond help and scratched up, so I took the plunge and set up an appointment with the Lenscrafter optometrist guy.

  My first pair of glasses came circa 1988. I didn't want them, even though I couldn't see that trees had leaves or people had eyes, but all that changed when I realized one thing. I could have eyeglasses specifically designed by the Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio. The Karate Kid was the first "big kid" movie my parents ever let me watch and it quickly became a regular part of my daily activities. Part of this was a byproduct of owning our first VCR, which was about eight feel long and weighed approximately 47 pounds. It was a beast, but that didn't matter because we could "watch tv whenever we want!" And we did.

  My love for the Karate Kid also stemmed from the pure drama of the flick. Misunderstood poor New Jersey teen moves to California and goes to school with the uppity snobbish valley kids. Gets picked on and beat up, but learns karate, kicks some tail and gets the girl in the end. For a fifth-grader teetering dangerously on the verge of puberty, this was the stuff that dreams were made of. So you can imagine how much my hesitancy about getting glasses was diminished when I discovered that good ole Daniel Larusso was on my side. Unfortunately, I never looked like Ralph, staring piercingly at you with just a hint of innocence to the right.

  Somewhere around seven hours after entering the store, I settled on one of the many pairs of Daniel Larusso glasses available. It never occurred to me though that the Karate Kid never wore glasses in the movie until the drive home as I was marveling at the new, sharp world around me. I guess I might have caught a glimpse of myself in one of our van's mirrors, gawking about at the newness of life with my Karate Kid specs on, and then realized that I had been suckered in. The glasses were awful, a grayish color with thick boxy frames and a double bar between the two sides. Even the "designed by Ralph Macchio, the Karate Kid" insignia on the earpiece couldn't cover up the disastrous nature of my decision. I had been fully inducted into nerd status and didn't have a clue until it was too late. Add these specs to my ensemble of two-toned shorts (imagine the shorts divided down the crotch with one side a solid electric yellow color and the other side a maze of lines the same color yellow, blazing red and neon green), a red mesh muscle shirt, double-striped tube socks pulled near my knees and my red Converse hi-tops ripoffs that boasted palm trees, bananas and oranges, and I was a walking "Slow Kids at Play" sign.

  I learned to love the Karate Kid glasses through the next two years, mostly because I loved seeing baseballs thrown my way before they hit me in the face, but by 1990 I was getting a nice upperlip mustache thing and squeaky voice, and it was time to evolve into something different. I was in the youth group at church, the youngest age group, and I needed "cool" help in the worst way. I noticed a black guy named Gideon, who was at least three years older than me and hailed from somewhere in Africa, sported a pair of specs that not only looked good but oozed coolness. The eyepieces were completely circular, in direct contrast to my "hip to be a square" glasses, and were a shiny gold color.

  After much pleading with my parents, I made the quick decision to get a pair of Gideon glasses. These specs weren't anywhere as bad as the Karate Kid era, which I happily donated to a vision drive years later, and I kept the same style for many years, though eventually it came to my attention that the lens were so big that my eyebrows could probably see fine if they had eyes too. In addition, as a general rule shiny gold looks good on black guys. Shiny gold looks ghetto on white guys. Check out the second pic on this link for an idea of what these glasses looked like.

  In my early college years, I discovered a look that I liked, smaller lenses, darker frames, lighter weight, and decided to stick with it. I replaced the lens once, keeping the old frames, until Thursday when wear and tear demanded a retirement of the frames. It took my roughly 10 minutes to find the frames I liked this time. These babies have just about everything. The frames are bendable ("but not unbreakable" as my "vision advisor" warned. "Don't sit on them or anything"), made of polycarbosomething (big words must mean it's valuable), lighter than a feather, scotch-guarded, scratch resistant, anti-glare and reflection, double as a tire gauge, can be used as a survival tool, pick up radio stations from Malaysia and have a secret microphone/listening device implanted inside the left earpiece. All this for the small price of around $500.

  I just stared at my V.A. (that's vision advisor for those not in the know) for a second before cooly picking my bottom jaw up from the floor and wiping away the spittle that had begun to pool at my feet. I had had my first "that's 1/6 of the price I paid for my first car" moment. I took comfort knowing that these glasses should last me through the next six years at least, plus insurance and my triple A discount would knock another $250 off my cost. But I think the real selling point came when I thought back to the days of the Ralph Macchio specs, and how there was probably some kid in a third-world country at that moment running away from bullies that were picking on him for wearing those same glasses.

  I determined my new hydrokryptonitonic optical assistant was a wise investment.

Friday, June 30, 2006

So Long, Farewell

Here it is, my last official story written as the Herald-News Sports Editor. Lacking motivation in the worst way, I didn't want to write it, but my boss kept pushing me and I'm glad he did. It's a happy-feel-good, tale just the type he says should win a Tennessee Press Association award next summer. I guess they can mail it to me.

Determination on the Diamond

Dayton 9-year-old learns to compete with disability on the field and in the game of life

By Matt Williams, Herald-News Sports Editor

It’s a scenario every baseball player dreams about being in. Last at-bat. Down by two runs. Two outs with the bases loaded. But for Dayton’s 9-year-old Ty Jones, the story had another twist last month during the Dizzy Dean nine-year-old league regular season championship game.

Ty was swinging the bat with just one arm.

“That’s my favorite memory from this past season...hitting the triple to win the game in the regular season league championship game,” Ty explains with all the excitement of a television color commentator. “We were down 7-6 in the top of the sixth, and I was hitting with two outs and the bases loaded. I hit it over shortstop. It bounced once and hit the wall and drove in all three runs for the lead. Then, we shut them out in their last at-bat to win the game. It was a good feeling.”

Jones, a rising fifth-grader at Frazier Elementary School, was born on Aug. 20, 1996, with several disabilities to his right arm. He had no elbow, and while he was born with a right hand, he was missing three fingers on it. Only his thumb and index finger were developed.

“The doctors didn’t let us know how major a situation it was at first after delivery,” said Debbie Jones, Ty’s mother. “We went all around the world to the best doctors, trying to do the best thing for him. He had options to have surgery and get prosthesis, but the doctors said there was a chance the surgery would have killed the nerves in his arm. We waited until he was older, and he said he didn’t want to have it done.

“Doctors have told us that people that are born without digits usually have their middle, fourth and pinky fingers. Ty got his thumb and index, so he can do a lot more than most people [with the disability]. He can do an awful lot.”

A standout pitcher, first baseman and center fielder for the Dayton Dodgers and now for the Dayton 9-year-old All-Star team, Jones comes by his athletic ability naturally. His mother Debbie played softball and basketball at the collegiate level, while his father Ray, a native of Dublin, Ireland, is a runner and ran track at East Tennessee State University on scholarship. In addition, Ty’s older brother Josh Jenkins is a former Rhea County High School basketball standout and his uncles Brien and Steve Crowder have both played basketball and coached several sports both in Rhea County and across the country.

“Brien and Steve have been a big inspiration to him, and he’s real close to his big brother Josh,” said Debbie. “He’s had a lot of encouragement from his family.”

While athletic ability came naturally for Ty, hard work and determination are character traits he has developed over time. Ty got his start in sports by playing soccer at the age of 5, making up for what he couldn’t do with his arm by using his quick feet and speed on the field.

“His feet could just fly,” said Debbie. “They wanted to bump him up an age group to play on a traveling AAU team, but then he decided he wanted to play baseball. He likes challenges— he’s a determined little guy.”

It wasn’t hard for Ty to put down his soccer cleats and fall in love with America’s pastime.

“My favorite players are Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield and Ken Griffey Jr. I don’t know why, but I really like the Yankees. Derek Jeter plays really hard, and Sheffield can just kill the ball, and Ken Griffey Jr. is a great center fielder. I guess I really like the Reds too…” Ty rambles on when asked about his favorite sport and players.

Learning to compete on the diamond, like anything involving the use of his limbs, proved to be a more formidable task for Ty. Batting, catching and throwing are hard enough for youngsters with two arms, but Ty quickly developed his own techniques.

His left arm being nearly twice as long as his right arm, Ty had to tweak the traditional player’s approach at the plate. When he steps to the plate to bat, he is essentially swinging with just one arm, but despite the limitation Ty has developed his own batting technique that allows him to swing partially with the use of the two fingers on his right hand. His follow-through swing becomes a one-armed offering, but his approach at the plate has resulted in a remarkable consistency making contact with the ball.

In the field, Ty catches and throws with his left hand using a right-hander’s glove. After fielding the ball, he fluidly tucks the glove and ball under his right arm before retrieving the ball with his left hand.

“I like playing center field because I love to catch balls. It feels just like anyone else playing ball,” said Ty concerning playing ball with his arm. “Everyone else thinks it’s hard, but it’s easy for me. I like having my arm. I know people love to watch me play because they want to see if I can hit the ball, so I’m glad that I can do that and show them that they can do it too.”

“He’s definitely one of our main players,” said Ty’s Dizzy Dean coach Allen Smith. “He’s one of the anchors of our team. We were playing in [the Middle Valley Invitational tournament] a few weeks ago and were down two runs with runners on first and third. Ty came up with a hit to right field and sent the game into extra innings. We didn’t win the game, but we wouldn’t have had a chance without that hit.

“One thing I admire about Ty is that he is a competitor. He plays to win and gives 100 percent every time. He’s what we call a clutch player. I don’t look at him as someone with a disability...I look at him as a baseball player.”

In addition to baseball, Ty also considers himself “a good basketball player” and hopes to continue playing in basketball leagues in the future. Debbie says doctors have said Ty is in the 98^th height percentile for kids his age.

“He’s definitely surpassed the expectations I had for him when he was younger. We’ve told him that he can do anything he wants to do if he puts his mind to it. It is harder for him, but he’s determined. Sometimes I think he’s too serious about baseball for a kid his age, but he’s just really focused,” said Debbie.

Debbie and Ty each credit the testimony of Jim Abbott as being instrumental in Ty flourishing in his condition.

“We started showing [Ty] videos of Jim Abbott when he was really little to show him that he could do whatever he wanted to do,” said Debbie.

Abbott was born without a right hand but went on to a successful 10-year career as a major league baseball pitcher for the California Angels, New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers. He was only the 15^th player in MLB history to make his professional debut in the major leagues, was a member of the United States’ gold medal-winning Olympic team in 1988, pitched a no-hitter for the Yankees on Sept. 4, 1993 and is currently a pitching instructor for the Los Angeles Angels organization and a motivational speaker aimed specifically at helping children born with disabilities.

“When I saw that Jim Abbot could do it, I knew that I could do it too,” said Ty.

Off the field, Debbie says Ty is still special but is also just your average 9-year-old boy.

“He’s not so ‘special’ when it comes to school work. He’s your typical 9-year-old. He’s like most boys his age, he’d rather be playing ball. He doesn’t like school so much.”

She says there have been plenty of times when Ty hasn’t been happy about his challenges. Several times Ty has come home from school upset because someone had made fun of his disability.

“He has had hard times where people have picked on him for being different, but we’ve told him that God sent him as a special person and gave him a special arm,” said Debbie. “His daddy always says ‘how many seven-fingered kids do you see out there playing ball?’”

Most of the time, Ty handles the pressure of being different like a pro, often using his unique sense of humor to disperse the tension of stares and questions. Debbie relayed one of her favorite stories of Ty: “We were at the beach one time and two boys came up to Ty and asked him what happened to his arm. He just looked at them and said ‘What? You guys didn’t hear about the shark attack?”

Ty has big plans to continue his baseball and basketball careers in the future, hopefully at the professional level one day, but for now he seems very content collecting favorite memories on the diamond like they’re baseball cards of his favorite players. And he’s happy to tell the stories.

“In the regular season first half, I pitched the last inning against the Braves and shut them out for the win,” said Ty. “We hadn’t beaten the Braves yet in the season, so when I shut them out in the last inning we were all jumping around and going crazy. Everyone went crazy. It was great.”

Matt Williams can be reached at mattwilliams@xtn.net

Dear John/A Beautiful Sound

Disclaimer: John, if you're reading this, you can punch me Sunday morning.

My friend John cannot sing. Seriously, he cannot sing.

John is probably in his mid-fifties, a transplanted northerner with an obviously northern accent, the kind you'd hear at a Yankees game or something, and I often sit with him on Sunday mornings in the back of church. His wife comes with him sometimes, but a lot of the time I find John sitting on my left side. He's a friendly guy and a good friend. He owns and operates an electronic repair store in town. His shop sort of reminds me of my grandfather's old "shop" in his basement. When you walk through the main door to the building, televisions sets of all shapes and sizes (most are black, so I left out color) are scattered and stacked about like kids' building blocks with little apparent organization to them. John knows them by heart, of course. People that work in clutter generally don't think of their surroundings as clutter. If you ever need a good quality television and don't mind the fact that it's been used, broken and now fixed, then John is your man. I bought a nice Philips Magnovox from him three years ago, of the 27-inch variety, for a mere $90 and I've yet to have a problem with it. I think some of the tools on the remote, like "previous channel" and "repeat", don't really work, but as a guy I enjoy the fine art of flipping. I guess it's one unusual instance where I don't take joy in practicality. It doesn't really matter since this post is about how John can't sing worth a lick.

Shortly after I met John, I became keenly aware of his, shall we say, musically-challenged ear. It should be noted first that John knows the words to the songs. He's not one of those people that unintentionally replaces "sought me and bought me" with "fought me and wrought me" in "Victory in Jesus" because they learned it wrong a long time ago and now prefers to sing from memory rather than from the hymnal. He's a straight-lacer. John, also knows beat and rhythm. He's never off a step, lagging behind or sprinting to reach the finish before the rest of the congregation. He's steady.

But John can't sing. The words come out but there are no notes, no range, not even a hint of deviation in his voice. I even hesitate to say he's monotone, because it's like he's talking the words, like a chant or incantation. Occassionaly at a time when the song changes tempo or hits a climax, John's voice raises to a lounder pitch, but that's about it. He's not charismatic, since we're Presbyterians. He stands alert, back straight and head up like a serviceman, belting out the traditional old-school hits and the new choruses that all the kids love. And the truth is, that I love every moment of it.

When I first became aware of John's powers, I couldn't help but smile through each and every song, simply because he was sooo off but didn't seem to notice, or if he did notice he didn't seem to care. I guess part of me felt bad too, because I know some people would be really perturbed by such a bellowing voice droning on in their ear and "ruining" the song. Eventually though, I came to appreciate John's singing voice, not because it belonged out front on stage with the London Symphony Orchestra playing in the background, but because it was honest, raw and vulnerable. Maybe he thinks he's Lucianno Pavarotti and maybe he thinks he sounds more like a National Weather Service alert? It doesn't really matter, because the passion with which John offers his worship on Sunday is awesome and inspiring to me. He brings what he has to offer, gives it up and doesn't leave anything in reserve. He doesn't hold back to save face in front of others. It's him and God. And some Sundays I can't help but think that that's a more "pleasing aroma" to God that our four-part harmonies that soar over moving musical scores sung by army-like choirs garbed in flowing robes.

I wonder if God hears our finest musical offerings the way most people hear John's singing. "Wow, you're really off, but you're beautiful to me for giving what you have."

I look for John every Sunday to see if there's an open seat next to him, and usually there is. I guess not many people have trained their ear enough to sit next to him. That's okay by me because I feel like I've found buried treasure right in front of everyone's noses. I often will still catch a broad smile cracking across my face some Sundays, but it's not out of embarrassment or because I feel bad for him. It's because he reminds me that worship is all about the heart. Not about the sound.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

A Blue Sky

I came to the sad realization the other day that I hadn't see a blue sky in a really long time. In fact, I noted to my father

recently that the sky over Dayton seemed to be a hazy gray whenever I looked up these days. With the town being sandwiched between the mountains and the Tennessee River, I assumed that High Humidity and Summertime Heat must have formed a formidable alliance against the tagteam of White Puffy Clouds and Deep Blue.

The notion was a depressing one, being that I remembered days when I was a child where the sky seemed so blue that I could possibly go swimming in it. Our family didn't have a house with central air conditioning until I was at least 12 years old, and since there was nothing tempting me to stay indoors I spent most of my summer days galavanting (such a great action verb, too bad I can't honestly use it to describe myself more often) in the abundance of the great outdoors and under what seemed like a never-ending blue blanket. At times the memories are triggered by a smell or a taste and come flooding back: the smell of kudzu by the creek early in the morning, the treat of playing with the waterhose with my siblings, running around in a downpour from the first rainfall in weeks, squinting to play catch into the last moments of light in the evening.

But then too many things got in the way. School, relationships, career, bills and other distractions, and now it's a lot harder to find a blue sky anymore. Actually, I've often wondered if a true blue sky does in fact still exist. Thankfully, I was reminded today that they do.

As I was walking out of the office this afternoon I was persuaded by a group of wildflowers to stop and take their portrait near the parking lot. Squatting to try and get an upward angle of my subject, I was confronted by the one of the bluest skies I've seen in quite some time floating in the background (to the right). One might say it was my lucky day, but it occurred to me that the sky probably wasn't making a special appearance for me, I was just willing to look up. I've often been told that I stare at the ground and things below too much, and here I was focusing again on what was easiest and closest to me. It wasn't a special appearance, it was a change in my perspective that allowed me to see what was staring down at me and that's changed my attitude and belief in blue skies.

This ramble is therapeutic for me, but it's more than that. I've several friends from both my childhood and college years, friends who were growing Christians, that are currently in the midst of crises of faith and have been heavy on my heart lately. It seems that the joy they once had in life, reaped from burgeoning spiritual growth, has been replaced by cynicism and mistrust, doubting and questioning spirits. Life gets complicated; I understand. We grow up and have more responsibilities, more worries and concerns. We learn more about ourselves and the world around us and the paradoxes and seeming contradictions therein, for every answer we find we often times find two more questions, we have hurts, but does that really mean that God isn't good? Is he not allowed to be mysterious in His workings and ways? And isn't faith believing the mysteries? How can faith work in us if we demand signs and wonders and a picture perfect logical step-by-step manual for how it works? Isn't that the antithesis of faith?

To those friends who are struggling, whether you've let it be known or not, I pray that the Lord would sneak up on you, change your perspective and show you Himself. That he would move your focus from the things that are below and lift it to the things that are above, that He would reawaken your wonder to the world around, His goodness and His love for you and show you an amazing blue sky.