The Game Ball

 

The Game Ball

Our first game is rapidly approaching! The following, from November 29, 2005, is about another of my teams and my assistant coach at the time, April Cusic, now McGee. She was a kindergarten teacher and my assistant coach at WCS for two years: she was terrific in both roles. But, her heart was in missions and she left to prepare to tell the people of Brazil about the love of Jesus with her  husband. I/we still miss her.

We had a trophy presentation today in middle school chapel. My 7th-8th grade girls' basketball team won the consolation round of the St. Marks Episcopal tournament right before Thanksgiving and this was our first assembly since. I am proud of these kids. 'Overachieving' is an overused word in sports but it applies to what these kids have done. The Lady Wildcats have won four times when I, their coach, thought we would be lucky to win a game. So much for adult faith! We do many trophy presentations at Westbury Christian School. We have two assemblies per week and we like to give honor when it is due. A third place piece of hardware might not seem like much to those accustomed to the million dollar spectacles played out on the NBA/NFL/Major League Baseball stage but it is huge to 12 and 13 year old girls. Surrounded by our team, I presented the trophy to Greg Glenn, our WCS athletic director. But that wasn't the end of the ceremony. I missed the last game of the tournament because of a conflict with holiday airline schedules. My assistant coach, April Cusic, coached the girls in my absence. It was her first time coaching by herself and she led the girls to a victory over John Cooper, a school which beat us twice last year. April is one of our wonderful kindergarten teachers and tremendous with the young ladies in our program. To show our gratitude, we autographed a basketball and presented it to her. At our team meeting , five girls said they wanted to say something in the presentation but when the microphone was staring them in the face, they froze. Maybe next time- public speaking is a challenge for any of us. It was a great moment for April and the kids. They need her and today, they let her know that they do.

Someone once said, "All you need to know about awards is that Mozart never won one." There is some validity in that statement. I let my players vote for all the awards we give at our athletic banquets and the truth is, I don't always agree with the selections. At times, the obvious choice to me is not who the kids pick. They have a different angle of vision than I do. My vantage point is court side while theirs is on the playing surface and in the locker room. Jesus singled out people for special recognition who his followers would have overlooked or disputed their worthiness. A Roman centurion was said to have greater faith than any Israelite-you know that had to please the disciples who were fiercely proud of their heritage. The Master praised the offering of a woman who gave a minuscule amount but percentage-wise put all of us to shame. He called the tax collector Zacchaeus a 'son of Abraham' after the huge crowd lashed out at Jesus for inviting himself to dine with perhaps the most hated man in Jericho. That's the kind of recognition I love- the unexpected, off the cuff praise. The term in the modern vernacular is a "SHOUT OUT." Jesus was the king of the shout outs. He praised those who never got the pat on the back or what my Dad calls The Blessing. We all have the ability to bestow The Blessing on those in the orbit of our lives. You know someone who, like April, deserves a game ball. You have it in your power. You don't need a NIKE ball (although they are nice) or a Sharpie to attach your signature to a round piece of leather. Be creative: a little praise has the ability to change a life. Just ask Zacchaeus when you arrive in heaven!

Applicable quote of the day:
"Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust."
Jesse Owens

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Holidazed

Holidazed

We are entering into the holiday portion of the year with three major celebrations coming in the next seventy-five days. Not all holidays are created equally!  What good is a holiday if nobody knows? The following thoughts are from October 8, 2006. 

Tomorrow is Columbus Day. We have no school so I am excited. My list of tasks requiring attention is rather long so it will be a catch-up day. I am going to get a haircut. There are in excess of one hundred Bible exams, almost seventy of them essay tests, for me to grade. My brother is coming in two weeks to do a tennis clinic for us at Westbury Christian School: the cleanup push in my apartment is ON. So, I am grateful for the day out of school but to be honest, the holiday is meaningless to me. I doubt many of my students know why we will have only four days of school next week but I heard no complaints. Columbus Day has been a federal holiday since 1971, set aside on the calendar to commemorate the explorer's journey to the New World. I know that several cities have parades in honor of the event but any significance of the day is lost to me. Every other holiday I can think of evokes some sort of emotional response except this one. Maybe the meaning has simply lessened over the decades. But, once you celebrate a holiday, you would have a difficult time removing it from the calendar. Try taking a vacation day from a mail carrier, a bank teller, or heaven forbid, a school teacher!

I think there is a measure of Columbus Day mentality in the way we view our religion. We do something simply because we have done it that way repeatedly in the past. Times of community worship or Bible study become an obligation instead of the joy they were intended. Individual reflection and prayer becomes rote, lacking any real celebration of the Creator who gave us the intellect to praise and meditate. The Fourth Of July and Veterans' Day spark feelings of gratitude in my heart while this second Monday of October will just prolong the weekend for me. I know Christopher Columbus left a profound footprint on the history of this hemisphere and the ripple effect has washed every other continent in the intervening five hundred years. It's just easier to blow it off than to pay any attention to this holiday. Forgive me, Lord, if I treat your sacred days in the same manner.

Applicable quote of the day:
"If Columbus had an advisory committee, he would probably still be at the dock."
Arthur Goldberg

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Time And Condensation

 

Time And Condensation

This devotional from October 23, 2018 is about a trip back to my home town.
The past weekend a whirlwind for me. I flew out of Houston Thursday after my last class and was picked up by Dave in Wichita. At 6 AM Friday, Dave, Sally, Scott, and me drove from Kansas to York, Nebraska for Dave's induction into the York College Hall Of Fame. It was a wonderful affair followed by golf, a York High football game, family gatherings, etc. in the thirty hours in our hometown. We drove around to see our schools and the houses we lived in and the places we played ball. We drove through the cemetery where some of my childhood friends are buried and reminisced about what happened here and there. And then we drove back to Kansas and I flew back to Houston.... and I seamlessly moved into the routine I've followed for decades.

I'm not positive but I think this was only my fifth time in York since 1977. Our folks moved to Texas in 1976 and we had no relatives left behind. I returned to coach  American Legion baseball one more summer after they relocated but then I drifted away as I began my teaching and coaching career. As  I walked through the crowd at the ball game, I searched for familiar faces but came up empty. (We were asked to sign a petition to recall the mayor!) A few were vaguely familiar but not close enough to risk embarrassment should I be wrong. Dave and I commented that except for some new bleachers and scoreboards, the scene as York thumped Crete had not changed any since we were boys running around those same Friday night contests. What I did find disconcerting was how time had shrunk the places etched in my memories. Maybe it's because I've lived for two decades in one of the biggest US cities or maybe it's just the way I want to remember. I walked into the gym in the York Community Center where I probably played more indoors than in any other facility. I asked Dave, at least semi-seriously, if they had moved the walls in. It was so small stacked up next to my mental picture. It was almost as if time had played a trick on me. Maybe I just played a trick on myself.

Time to me is incomprehensible. I just don't get it but maybe I'm not really supposed to. We can't see it but we can see what it does. It ages us and the things we build although nature seems immune. I was pleasantly surprised that all the many trees that line the streets of York seem to have grown and provide much more shade than I remember! Moses in Psalm 90:4 writes that time and God have a relationship we can never quite wrap our collective heads around. 
A thousand years in your sight
  are like a day that has just gone by,
  or like a watch in the night.
It's like our Father blinked and decades have passed. The reality is that I blinked and blinked and blinked and have distorted what I once knew first hand. It's been said that truth and memory are related but not identical. Thomas Wolfe famously authored You Can't Go Home Again about a man and his hometown's reaction when he wrote about it. I disagree; I believe you can go home again and should go home again. You just have take into account the millions of blinks since childhood. And that I have changed. Thank goodness for the dreams awakened in a little boy's heart on the plains of the Cornhusker State. Those can survive the visual blurring of inanimate objects and the romanticizing of youth. I can live with that.


Applicable quote of the day:
As time passes, the actual complexity of our history - even of our own personal experience - gets buried under the weight of the ideal image. 
Stephanie Coontz

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Table For Thirty

 

Table For Thirty

 

The holiday season is coming at us at breakneck speed! Dave married into one of the most unique families I know and they make a big deal of these occasions.  The following is from thirteen years ago, December 29, 2009 and it illustrates the coordination of living arrangements with family!

During this holiday season in Kansas, I'm shuttling back and forth between Dave and Sally's house and Scott and Karen's home. I started at Dave's, moved to Scott's, transferred back to Dave's, and tomorrow will make the final venture back to Scott's. It's a simple journey, only a drive of several minutes, with the loading and unloading of a suitcase and a backpack. My itinerary has, for the most part, been centered on my brothers' traveling to see their wives' families. And tomorrow, Sally's clan is making to the pilgrimage to Wichita. It's a big deal. In spite of Meagan, Betsy, and Courtney doing the Lord's work as we speak in Africa and not being included in the final head count, there will be thirty relatives staying with Sally and Dave. Thirty, as in two-and-a-half dozen, for several days. I am in awe. I have a difficult time planning supper for myself, let alone twenty-nine additional mouths to feed. I sat with Sally and her son/my nephew, Ben, yesterday as they charted sleeping arrangements. It was as incomprehensible to me as my feeble attempts at learning to speak Mandarin. But, they have it all calculated and everyone will have comfortable quarters. Today, Susan, Sally's sister who lives forty-five minutes away, came over and the siblings cooked and shopped and cooked some more. Let me go back to my previous statement of incredulity. I have no idea how to plan menus for that many, let alone actually carrying out the cooking and cleaning up. No caterers- they are handling it all by themselves. There may be a glitch here and there but I'm sure they will pull it off. Sally and company are masters of entertaining.

When my classes cover Jesus dining at the home of Martha as reported in Luke 10, we talk about the most common treatment of the story, which is Martha's anger at her sister, Mary. Many scholars assume that Martha was the older of the two, based on this incident and the particulars of the death/raising of their brother, Lazarus. In our discussions, many of my female students, especially those with younger sisters, admit they would have reacted in the same manner as Martha faced with her circumstances. Now, factor that even with the apostles tagging along as they surely did, Martha was faced with thirteen guests for one dinner versus the triple that number that Sally is expecting over the course of days. Some of my students will tell you that any such gathering in their families is an invitation to a emotional bloodbath. Not my sister-in-law's family. Jesus gently chided Martha with the admonition that Mary, who was soaking in the teachings of the Master, was better serving the Lord than by setting the table. Sally's family has that part covered, too. All, excepting the little children, are Christians and most of the young people have served overseas in mission fields. If it's possible to have your cake and eat it, too, Sally's brothers and sisters will pull it off. And I am left with one conclusion, both religious and practical in nature; Dave married into a wonderful family.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.''
Jane Howard

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Prize

 

The Prize

"Where our treasure is, our heart is." What was that guy's name who said that? Starts with a J, I think! This is from June 26, 2014.

We ended camp last week at WCS for 2014. I always count down the ninety hours of the three weeks in my head- it can get repetitive- but I miss the kids when it's over. I've seen several of my campers this week in other camps our school offers and I'm always happy when they are excited to see me. There is something about being around little children that makes you feel young even when you aren't any more.

Several years ago, we started having a Team Of The Week contest in our younger kids' sessions which are in the morning. The teams are divided usually by gender and always by age and they choose their own names, often in a category like zoo animals. (My A.M. squads this summer were the Cheetahs, the Panthers, and the Monkeys.) The morning campers range from about five to entering fourth grade and compete for WOW Points, which are awarded for winning Musical Triple Threat or Coach Says or which team mimics best in a shooting game or which group cheers the loudest. To be honest, it's easier for girls to win because they tend to be better at these things than elementary age boys. The totals are kept on a chart on the wall and are the topic of much discussion when updated. One of my campers, Catherine, mentally kept track of the score and was astonishingly accurate! Trey Austin, as did previous camp director Russell Carr, tells the kids that the members of the winning team will get a prize but never reveals what it actually is. Well, this past week, my team won and as I recall, it was a landslide. Like I said, girls have a distinct advantage when it come to WOW Points.

We always end morning camps on Friday with two traditions, Slip And Slide and Roasted Watermelon imported from Nicaragua. (The Roasted Watermelon tastes suspiciously like the regular variety in case you were wondering!) Right before we all went outside, Trey awarded the Monkeys their prize for capturing the Team Of The Week contest. The hardware? Each girl received one of the blue and gold plastic WCS commemorative basketballs shown at the top of the page, the kind cheerleaders often toss into the stands during high school games. (I was playing with my picture filter and that's why the ball is black and white- artistic license.) Other years, the prize has been a WCS basketball wrist bracelet or a WCS water bottle, nothing expensive but definitely filled with school spirit. I was intrigued with the response of one of the young ladies on my team after she had taken possession of her trophy, and I quote:
Is this all it is?  
She appeared very disappointed but I can guess why. She has been a student at WCS since kindergarten and has seen these prize basketballs constantly, perhaps even owning one herself. She wasn't ungrateful, just let down. To her, it simply was common and nothing to celebrate. I let it go- she's really a wonderful little girl.

As we went outside and were eating our watermelon, a young man saw me holding my prize- coaches get one, too- and exclaimed to no one in particular, 
"Man, I would give anything to have one of those basketballs!"
You see, this camper, who is about third grade age, doesn't go to our school and had never seen one of these balls before. I could actually detect an ache in his voice. Part of me wanted to give him the ball but that would go against what we told the kids plus I'd have to give one to every other child. Truthfully, the ball means little to me as well; I think I'll give mine to Dat in Vietnam if I can fit it into my luggage.

Funny how one man's trash is another's treasure, or at least that's what they say. I would guess the girl, who is generous, would have given her basketball to the boy if she had only known he wanted it. Abundance seems to breed indifference. I read a book this week about Christians in China desperately wanting a Bible and sometimes facing torture for their hunger. (On my first trip to China, I gave my Bible to an army officer.) In our society, we leave Bibles laying around like they have little value; after all, many American Christians probably have five or six scattered around their houses. My only dilemma is figuring out which translation to read from today or if I feel like logging onto my laptop and taking advantage of www.biblegateway.com. The Word of God is precious and powerful and in our culture, abundantly available. In other lands, the Scriptures have been smuggled in and treated as precious as jewels. Here, even in the Bible Belt, we take it for granted. This prize should never be taken for granted especially by those of us who should realize its eternal worth. Lives are on the line in this contest.


Applicable quote of the day:
Friendships born on the field of athletic strife are the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.

Jesse Owens

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Ain't Misbehavin'

 

Ain't Misbehavin'

I have many ties! Ella,  my teacher's aide, selects what I wear each day to make sure I look appropriate for a teacher. Sometimes as adults, we struggle with appropriateness in our career decisions as well. This is from February 7, 2006.

I'm wearing a Christmas tie today. It is six weeks past the holiday but there is a reason. I've worn a tie each day since the beginning of school and have yet to repeat my choice of neck wear. Several days ago, I discovered a tie with a holiday scene which I had overlooked. To extend my streak for another day, Santa and his reindeer complemented my outfit, although not well. The point is this: my tie is not appropriate for February. I get by with it because I am a guy with no fashion sense. I wish life was always that tolerant! Last week, a high school Spanish teacher in Lexington, Kentucky lost his job after showing an inappropriate movie in class. The film, The 40 Year Old Virgin, has an R rating and no connection to lesson plans. The teacher at Tates Creek High School was quoted as saying he used the video when a student brought it and told him it was funny. Based on that recommendation, the movie was viewed, the teacher was suspended, and the teacher resigned. We all make mistakes in the classroom; I have made more than my share. But when a teacher's activity in a classroom makes national news, it usually is for the wrong reasons.

We learn appropriate behavior as we mature. There are markers which indicate to doctors if a child is progressing at a normal rate of development. We learn there are certain things we do not say in public. We understand that we do not go outside without clothes. We find out what is acceptable in society and what is not tolerated. We become aware of the way to behave in worship services, at funerals and weddings, and in school. There is right and wrong. There is APPROPRIATE and INAPPROPRIATE. Part of our learning comes from training, part from observation. If our standard is simply what we witness in the world, maybe what that teacher did was not out of the ordinary and maybe excusable. But, if we use the higher standards set forth in the scriptures, those kind of lapses in judgement are far less likely to occur. Appropriate is only found twice in the Bible. In Genesis 49, Jacob gives a blessing to each of his twelve sons that was individually appropriate. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2 that good deeds are appropriate for women who declare their allegiance to the Lord. Reasonable adults understand that actions should fit situations and when ours do not, it is evident. It is evident even to a child.

Applicable quote of the day:
"What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?"
Leonard Cohen

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

The Legacy

 

The Legacy

This is about one of my very favorite youngsters. It's from May 9, 2011.

Alyssa came to see me this afternoon. She popped into my eighth grade Bible class to turn in her Honduras bank bottle filled with change just as she did when she was a student in my classes. Almost a senior in college, she could only stay for a minute as she had just finished a final and I believe her significant other was waiting in the car. None of my middle schoolers know her but their classroom experience has been partly shaped by Alyssa who was one of the artists who painted our Life Of Christ mural on the wall. While she was standing there, I told a little story about something she once told me about boys which I have found to be true, at least from a girl's perspective. But the main thing I wanted my eighth graders to know about Alyssa was really about her family. Her parents are from the Philippines and I don't believe they are extremely wealthy. And yet, during Alyssa's first year at Westbury Christian, look at where their money was going: Alyssa was a WCS freshman, her brother Abner was a WCS sophomore, her brother Aldrin was a WCS junior, and her brother Alvin was a WCS senior. On top of that, her sister Astrid was in medical school. You don't need a calculator to know their tuition bills were steep. But their investments have paid off- five great, educated kids with morals and a relationship with God. (I'm going on reputation with Astrid who I've never met but judging from her siblings, she's in the same league.) We show what we value by the spending of our money and the spending of our time. Without a doubt, this is one family that values its children. It's an investment that is already paying dividends in world class offspring.

Applicable quote of the day:
"We all grow up with the weight of history on us.  Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies." 
Shirley Abbott

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1