Cheaters (like Ryan Braun)

Ryan Braun, MVP baseball player for the Milwaukee Brewers, is only the latest pro athlete to be suspended from his sport for using banned performance enhancing substances. Braun was caught two years ago in a related case but got off on a technicality - his "urine expediter" did not get his sample to the lab in a timely manner. Braun accused him of tainting his sample. The sample was positive for steroids but it was disregarded for human error. Not Braun's error but the poor guy whose job it was to get his sample to the lab in time. His career was toast while Braun was the toast of the town. He lived the lie for two years and the fans bought it. We want to believe these guys. We want to believe Lance and Barry and now Ryan. Even when they perform at performance enhanced levels that stretch our imaginations to the brink. These athletes were already good even great. Why the need to cheat to be even better? Is it a human blind spot? Cheating is defined as gaining an unfair advantage through illegal or deceptive methods. Cheating is faking it - making it look like you are who you are not. The classic illustration in the Bible is Jacob who disguised himself to cheat his older brother out of his father's blessing. He became someone he was not to gain an advantage over his brother. Cheating deceives: the fans, the spouse, the IRS, the investor, etc. For the sake of gaining an advantage. To do what we could not do. To achieve more than we are able. Even if we are already able to do a lot. Why do smart people cheat on tests? Why do rich people cheat on their taxes? Why do married people cheat on their spouses? Why do we cheat? What is it that tempts us to look for ways to gain an advantage?The baseball pitcher uses an illegal substance to gain advantage over the hitter. The batter corks his bat (remember George Brett). The infield crew waters down the field to slow the faster team. Why do we feel this need to gain advantage? To become more than we are. It's a desire as old as Adam and Eve who cheated to become gods. David, the man who had everything, who cheated one of his generals out of his wife and his life. Cheating is like the original sin. We all struggle with it, with the desire to want more than we are or have. Since we are not satisfied, we are tempted to cheat, to gain advantage. But, we discover there really is no advantage to cheating. For a time it seems to work. We may actually feel like most valuable persons (MVP's) for a time like Ryan Braun who got the award and the huge new contract after he cheated. It seemed like it paid off. He really could  be more than he was, have more than he deserved. Not for long though, for two years in Braun's case, each case is different. Now his reputation with the fans is in the tank and even his own teammates are fed up with his lies. Braun is only the latest reminder that cheating never pays. We don't have to be who we aren't. Of course, we can't be. There is no advantage to gaining advantage. Cheating is a no win situation. It makes no sense. Sin never does.

Race matters

This past weekend we drove to Birmingham, AL because one of our sons was in the city to take a course for work. We had a great time, ate some great BBQ, and attended a minor league baseball game at the new Birmingham Barons stadium. It was a great place to watch a game. We also visited the Civil Rights Institute downtown across from 16th St Baptist Church. That is the church where a bomb went off on a Sunday morning in 1963 and four young Black girls were killed. There is a plaque outside the church memorializing their lives. It was moving to stand in the city today and think about what it was like then. Inside the Institute we relived that history as we viewed many exhibits depicting the civil rights fight or the fight to keep Blacks from gaining their civil rights. As I toured the exhibits and watched the historic footage of Rosa Parks, the bus boycott in Birmingham, the sit-ins, and children's march that was brutally put down with fire hoses and attack dogs, I was deeply moved. I was a young child in New York when these events took place and unaffected by them. Since then I had studied them and listened to the speeches of Dr. King and other civil rights leaders. But, this past weekend I was standing on the spot, the epicenter of the some of the most climactic events of the civil rights movement. It is said that when tv broadcast video of Bull Connor and his officers turning the hoses and dogs on children, the battle for civil rights was as good as over. Now the nation could see the evil of segregation. As I toured the exhibits with a mixed crowd of white people and black people I wondered what others were thinking. What would it be like as a Black person today to watch those videos, to hear the hatefilled speeches and the just plain stupid racist propaganda that was used to support segregation and to witness again the violence directed at people because of something so basic as the color of one's skin. We have come a long way as a society since the 1960's but we still have a ways to go. The Sunday morning worship hour is still the most segregated hour of the week in most places. In Birmingham this past weekend I was very aware that Race Matters.

Retirement unparadise

It rains as much in Jacksonville FL as it does in Kodiak AK. The difference is that it rains bucketfuls at a time here. Flooding roads and yards and filling creeks rapidly. There is a threat of thunderstorms most days in the summer with heavy downpours. The rain pours down without warning. The downpours are usually short but the past couple of days there has been constant rain. The rain is welcome as it means the heat drops about ten degrees - until the sun returns and it feels like you live in a steam bath. All this wet weather means frogs and there are all kinds of them here. Cute, little frogs come hopping out at night, sticking themselves to the sides of the house, and trying to jump in the house when you open a door. Then there are the big bullfrogs you hear barking in the creeks. Early every morning when I get up it's like a choral song service brought to you by the local frogs. One night when we were working on the house I thought a neighbor was blasting rap music from a boom box. When I went outside, I realized it was a concert of several frog rap groups. Not to put down rap at all; it was quite amazing and wonderful. The wet conditions bring out other marshy creatures, as well. Our neighbor, who is the local termite exterminator, set off some smoke bombs in the back yard yesterday. It was to ward off black snakes, he said. He had seen a couple when he was mowing. It won't kill them, he said, they keep the poisonous snake population under control. And he warned, watch out when you're mowing out back and keep your garage door closed because they tend to come in uninvited. I don't mind the snakes or frogs but there are other insects that bother me, like the flying cockroaches called Palmetto bugs which sounds exotic but they are still cockroaches, and they can get around fast with their wings. There are biting yellow flies and fire ants. Walmart sells shelves of an insecticide that is part of every homeowners insect fighting arsenal. You spray it regularly around the perimeter of the house, outside and inside, as an insect barrier. The ants are up to the challenge. Who ever said Florida was a retirement paradise was not familiar with Genesis 3 (spoiler alert: there is no paradise this side of heaven).

Visible Christianity

After 14 years in Alaska I feel like I have moved to a foreign country here in Northern Florida. It's not only the heat which is in the nineties every day. Sometimes I don't understand the local dialect. Yesterday in church we sang there is powa in the blood. Fortunately I was familiar with that hymn. "D"s slide off the ends of words. Jesus healed a cripple and disable man. I have to listen carefully. Local expressions strike me as unusual but they make the point. One of the tech guys for the local phone company told me he had a "herd of ten young uns". That would be quite a herd alright. There are churches all over here. The library even has a room dedicated to Christian fiction. It's right next to the romance novel room. I've noticed several homes even have the Ten Commandments posted in their front yards.  For some reason that is not inviting. This is revival season here; many churches have them scheduled. It's never been clear to me how you do that - put the Holy Spirit on your schedule. Christianity is very visible in this part of the country. But I'm going to look around for what  God is doing.

how to get cat pee out of a carpet

We left Kodiak twenty some days ago. They all run together now. I don't know what day or date it is. I know only what I have to do. For thirteen days it was to get up early at the hotel we stayed at the night before when we rolled into bed after a late night meal after driving all day and get up and do it all over again. That was thirteen days and some 6500 plus miles, across endless landscapes in Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, and so on until we got to Florida. When we planned this trip we had all sorts of ideas about what would be cool to see. Actually, we discovered we did not want to drive one extra mile out of our way. Then when we arrived at our son and daughter in law's home in Florida we found out there were some problems with the house we were going to rent. The renters did not want to leave and when they did leave they did not leave the home very clean. So we have been cleaning. We get up and clean all day and after a late meal we fall into bed which is on a mattress in our granddaughter's room which she graciously gave up for our use. She is sleeping on the floor in her parent's room. I have not read one book for almost a month. I have read the same few pages of the same book over every night before I fall asleep sometimes with glasses on and book open on my chest. I have not seen one tv show or movie. My reading has been articles such as how to get cat pee out of carpets, concrete, and such. I have become an expert on this. Got cat pee, call me. We  have spent a small fortune on cleaning products. I had no idea there were so many choices for scrubbing toilet bowls. Now that we live near a Walmart Super Center there are aisles of cleaning products to be experimented with.

This is not the retirement we had envisioned. Strangely, it has been good though. Neither my wife or I have been so physically drained in a long time. We work mostly with our minds, teaching and pastoring. Now our work is all physical. It is refreshing in a hard to understand way. It feels good to be so tired you can't move and you are asleep in seconds and you sleep soundly all night. It feels good to clean up messes, too. As a pastor, I knew the messes we get into in our lives do not clean up easily or nicely. Relationships are messy and work with people is never done. Cat pee is not easy but at least  you have a plan, a solution, and you can see (and smell) progress being made. Life is not so easy! I didn't have such a sense of accomplishment in ministry. There was no way to measure whether the sermon did what I wanted it to do or not. I just got up the next Sunday and did it all over again without knowing whether it was really doing any good or not. Who could say? I just trusted in God's word.

This cleaning has been personal, as well. I was angry at the people who left this home the way they did. I was unforgiving. Why did I have to clean up after them? It was not my job. It was not the way I wanted to spend my first days of retirement in Florida. Commenting on Jesus' clearing the moneychangers out of the Temple, Eugene Peterson said that most churches could use a good cleaning. Little did I know I needed a good cleaning - a good house to clean and a good spiritual cleaning. Why shouldn't I clean up someone elses mess? Isn't that what Christ does for us? 

Leaving Kodiak

We will be leaving Kodiak in a few days. This time it is not a vacation. We are moving offisland as people say here. Traveling by ferry to Homer, a thirteen hour trip, and then driving the Alaska Highway. The ALCAN is a mostly two lane road that stretches from Alaska and through Canada. It is a long, slow trip that takes several days even if you drive 12 hours a day. There are few passing lanes which you are aware of when you are following a house size motor home for miles and miles. There is abundant wildlife and numerous frost heaves. As I said, it is a long, slow trip but not one without it's pleasures. There is the wildlife: bear, moose, elk, caribou, bison, and fox, perhaps even a dall sheep, if you are lucky. Then there is the scenery that makes you think you are driving through a national park: mountains, glaciers, crystal clear lakes and eccentric road houses and peculiar small towns of only a few people to several hundred. It is a trip of a lifetime that we have been fortunate to drive three times. The first time was our trip to Kodiak from New York State in 1999. I was coming to be the pastor of a church on the island. We had no idea what we were in for; we were looking for adventure. We found much more than we had imagined. Kodiak Island is well off the grid even for Alaska. There is that long ferry ride or a much shorter plane trip. But, if you are bringing your stuff there is only the ferry. On the ferry you meet people who will be taking up residence on the island, too. You meet other Alaskans who travel by ferry often, so much so, it is referred to as the Alaska Marine Highway. It is essential transport out here. Kodiak is called the Emerald Isle and pretty soon it comes into view. In the short summer it is a lush green. It is well stocked with berries, salmon and bear who feast on both and grow large. The bear are always in the back of your mind, when you are on a bike ride or a hike. They are close by and stories of bear sightings in town are a staple of coffee shop talk. Bears are not the only thing Kodiakans have in common; there is the weather which often is dramatic, volcanoes spouting, earthquakes and other natural phenomena. All these things bring people together as does tragedy like fishing vessels going down. People prop each other up in times of storms, death, and days upon days of fog and drizzle. They support one another in other ways to make a life here on this island that one of our friends described as a "place of severe beauty". It fits. And the often inhospitable elements of life here have shaped a most hospitable people who have learned to share their lives in special ways. I will miss the community most, the people. Kodiak is a unique blend of many ethnic groups with surprisingly rich harmonies. I will miss the diversity of Kodiak. One learns that Kodiak is not an easy place to live. Some people don't make it long here. There is little shopping, and mostly you make your own entertainment. People get together for meals and games. A hike with a cookout on the beach is planned. Whatever you want to do: fish, hike, take a bike ride, or hunt is literally right out your back door. Kodiak does not offer you everything you want but it does give you what you need, even if you didn't know you needed it when you arrived. It teaches you some good life lessons, too. You learn patience as you wait for the weather to clear so your plane can get in. You learn flexibility as you know your plans depend on the unstable weather, and transport off an island which you do not control. You learn that life is much richer when sources of artificial entertainment are fewer. Life is fuller when choices are more basic. You talk to people; you read books; you take walks. It turns out to be a life you may not have chosen; how could you have known you would like it so much, but you're glad it chose you.

The Impossible

The 2004 Christmas time tsunami that struck the coast of Thailand without warning is realistically recreated in the film The Impossible out on DVD. It stars Naomi Watts who had some Academy Award interest for her role as a mother caught up in trying to survive the tsunami's devastation. Ewen McGregor plays her husband.  They are British parents of three boys who are on vacation at the Orchid Resort. The story is based on a real Spanish family who experienced the full trauma of the tsunami and survived. Over 200,000 people did not. Over 1,000 children were orphaned. Although this family was separated for a time they were able to find one another and receive the medical care they needed. The devastation of the tsunami was total. While the film zooms out to capture a sense of the widespread destruction and the chaos that ensued as so many people sought help, the story of the film is about the personal experience of this one family. Ms Watts spent weeks in a water tank made to simulate what it was like to be caught in the powerful force of a tsunami. Her character in the film sustains major injuries and nearly dies. It is clear to see how so many people never had a chance of surviving. Although the film shows how a few did. They did only through the help of others. One small boy was caught in a debris pile and was softly crying. No one was around until mother and son in the film came close enough to hear his voice. Mom wanted to find where the crying was coming from. Her 16 year old son who knew how badly his mother was hurt just wanted to find help. She prevailed and they found the boy who surely would have died had they not discovered and kept him with them until they found a hospital. Later on he was reunited with his own father. The emotional center of the film are a number of these vignettes which show how small caring acts for one another were actually matters of life and death. While there were a few people who couldn't be bothered to extend themselves for someone else in need, most did. Maybe it was a villager who drove some survivors to the nearest hospital, or the local doctors who worked tirelessly to help the injured, or the people who shared their cell phones when their batteries were nearly depleted and there was no way to recharge them, or an outstretched hand to another stranger who was overcome with emotion, or someone of another nationality joining in a search for the lost family members he had never met. In some ways it was like scenes from the bombing at the Boston Marathon where many people ran into the blast zone so they could help.

At times the camera would pan the sky as if to ask if there were any answers to the tragedy unfolding below to be found there. Other times, the camera panned an ocean, calm and serene now, as if to suggest you never know when it will turn destructive again. The uncertainty of life. What is more sure is a steely will to live and a genuine concern for others, too. Even at the extremes, especially at the extremes, life is precious, too precious not to share.

The film does not delve into the question of Why? But, the title is a reference to it. The title screen, The Impossible, comes at the end reflecting that the hardest part of the tragedy was still to come. How to come to terms with the "survivor guilt". Why, me? Why did I survive when so many did not? Is the film saying it is an impossible question to answer or is it an impossible situation to deal with? Perhaps both. Christians are often quick to label surviving a tragedy where many others died a miracle. But, what about the others whose miracle did not come that day. Why not? We cannot so glibly assign motives to God. We don't know. One wise pastor said once we can't confuse God with Life. Life is not random but sometimes it looks that way. Maybe the best we can do is to live our stories within God's and trust the outcome to him.