Randy Greenwald

I sat recently for a brief conversation with a man who had retired after having taught at Manatee High School for 34 years. One of the things that he felt constrained to mention was what to him was the deterioration in the ability of kids to speak. As if to illustrate this a young ball player was interviewed prior to a recent Rays game who filled up every pause with ‘you know’. I was, you know, embarrassed, you know, for, you know, him. I think the man would have had a lot of value to say, but it was very hard to listen.

All of that leads me to quote, one last time, from David McCullough’s commencement address to the students at Boston University. His comments are, like, awesome, dude.

“And please, please, do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among your generation. I’m talking about the relentless, wearisome use of the words, ‘like,’ and ‘you know,’ and ‘awesome,’ and ‘actually.’ Listen to yourselves as you speak.

”Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, ‘Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.’“

Technorati Tags: Speaking

Filling baseball stadiums and filling sanctuaries share a lot more in common than we might imagine.

I used to think that he Tampa Bay Devil Rays were no more than an out of place minor league dumping ground. I attended a few games, mostly through the gifts of others, but often found the experience frustrated by poor facilities, bad parking, and high food prices.

Then, late last summer, the team began to win ball games. After adding some veteran players in the off-season (and exorcising the ‘Devil’ from their name) pundits began to predict that the newly christened Rays might actually finish the season at .500 for the first time in history.

Now, they are within 28 games of the end of the season, have one of the best records in all of baseball, and are on track to make the playoffs. It is crazy around here – so crazy that my son Seth, who on most days would not care what ANY sports team was doing, came over Sunday night to watch the game on TV with me.

As thrilling as this is for us locally, the story that is now dominating national and local media is the supposed poor attendance at the games. A Sportscenter anchor snipped, for example, that all 14 fans at the park for one of the games cheered.

All who live here are being SCOLDED for not coming out to support their team. It is the scolding that interests me, but first the facts:

On Saturday I looked at the stats. The Rays through 69 home games were drawing an average of 21,106 at each game. That puts them near the bottom of major league cities in attendance. However, what no one seems to notice is that this is an increase of nearly 30% over the same number of games last year. So, no, they are not packing the place like the Chicago or New York teams, but the fan base is growing, a fan base that for 8 or 9 years was severely alienated by ownership.

Would that Hope Presbyterian Church had seen a 30% increase in the past year!

So, we are scolded. We are told repeatedly that we ought to be ashamed. That we need to get out and support our team. That the empty seats have a depressive impact upon the players. That we are the laughing stock of the major league. And so on.

How effective, really, is it to ‘guilt’ people into an entertainment activity? Have the extra 5000 people per game come because they have ‘felt bad’? Will 10,000 more come because they feel they must? Did I attend last night’s game because I felt guilty? Hardly.

But when we see empty seats in church, how do we respond? Do we look to see if we have done something to alienate people? Often, I fear, we are tempted to scold. We tell people they must come. We pester them. We can so easily fall into the pattern of attempting to shame and guilt people into active participation in the life of the church. (Or Bible study, fellowship activity, small group, or whatever.)

Guilt and shame is not going to have any more lasting impact in the church than it does with the fans of a major league ball team. Those who come will come when coming is a delight. and coming will be a delight when they fall in love with Jesus and discover that he is met in worshiping with and gathering with his people.

If we who are in the church seek that delight, and find it, and celebrate it others will come. And we won’t have to shame them or guilt them, or even have a winning record.

Technorati Tags: Baseball, Church

On September 19, a group at Hope Church is organizing a trip to Tropicana Field to watch the Rays play. Desiring to go, but concerned about her physical ability to get to the ball park, a member of the congregation asked

“Is there handicapped parking close by? Once inside would there be a long, long walk and many stairs to climb?”

This person is concerned that if the walk is too long, the climb too steep, the obstacles too great, that she would not be able to go, though she would love to do so.

What are elders to do? In order to scope out the situation for this dear saint, two of us are heading up to the ball park tonight to measure the distances, count the steps, and generally assess the situation for this member. And, of course, while we are there, we might as well stay for the game.

Is that love, or what?

Look for us on ESPN. We’ll be the ones revealing the pains of sacrifice on our faces.

Technorati Tags: Baseball, For fun

I don’t know how long this will be accessible on line, but it is not only a clear assessment of the place of homosexuality in the pantheon of sin and a model for how to express such convictions in a public forum. Here is a portion.

“Unknown to most people, God really does care about those who struggle with being gay. To God, it’s not the unpardonable or worse thing. It’s simply one way people try to deal with the internal pain and chaos of the heart. It organizes our experience and feelings into a framework that makes sense to us. This is true for those who are Christians and those who aren’t.

”The good news is that God can handle it. No issue of the human heart is off limits or too taboo for him to understand or take on. He came to take upon himself those events and things that cause us the greatest pain and shame. However he won’t just take away bad and uncomfortable feelings. If he did, he would really be short-changing us.

“Although he always accepts us in whatever state we come to him, his love for us is such that he will never leave us where he finds us. God often intervenes with a dangerous and disruptive kind of love. It tends to topple the castles we’ve built.”

John Freeman is a compassionate and bold man who directs Harvest USA. We are nurturing a hope that he will be able to speak at HPC sometime this winter. Read the whole article. It is not long.

Note: Here is another helpful approach to this public debate.

Technorati Tags: Homsexuality

We had a great weekend of movie watching last week. A rare ‘dud-free’ experience.

The first was a movie with a troubling and depressive title, God Grew Tired of Us. It is yet another movie spawned by the ongoing genocide in southern Sudan. But this one focuses not on Sudan itself, but on the experiences of three young Sudanese men, driven as boys from their homeland, who after years in an Kenyan refugee camp, the only world they really knew, were received into the United States. To hear their perceptions of US culture and to watch their introduction to this strange way of life is poignant and fascinating. What is humbling is the sense of family ties and of generosity these men demonstrate. We think the world owes us so much; they work with great diligence to give what they can to those they hardly know. Quite a story.

Secondly we watched Whisper of the Heart, a G-rated animated Japanese romance. Is that enough to attract you? It was written by the Japanese animated master Hayao Miyazaki (writer and director of Oscar winner Spirited Away). Barb thought it was a little slow, though I didn’t. I found the story to be arresting, the characters intriguing and believable (teenagers in Japan and the US must not be that much different), and the hand-drawn animation absolutely stunning. It is worth watching.

Finally, we watched the recent release Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day with Frances McDormand (a favorite of mine) and Amy Adams (a favorite of everyone). There is a lot of innuendo in this film, but nothing really offensive. It is a quick moving, well written story which kept us engaged dramatically and with laughter for its entire 90 minutes. It was a satisfying bit of fun.

Technorati Tags: Movies

If you actually come to the blog page (as opposed to simply reading the posts through an RSS feed) you will notice a new gadget on the left hand side of the screen. If this works, it will calculate and keep updated the current ‘Magic Number’ for the Tampa Bay Rays. What this number represents is the necessary Rays wins and/or second place team’s losses for the Rays to clinch their division title.

I have watched magic numbers before. I grew up in Cincinnati watching the Big Red Machine, and lived in St. Louis during the heyday of Whiteyball. It is a happy diversion.

I wonder what playoff tickets cost?

Technorati Tags: Baseball

Friday night is our date night. Standard operating procedure is for us to watch a movie at home, run to Starbucks for a drink and some conversation, and then return home for another movie. (We tend to be exhausted by Friday, and this is an inexpensive way for us to relax together doing things we both enjoy.)

The problem is that Friday nights will normally feature the Rays playing ball on TV. On most days, I set the DVR to record the game, and I watch it when (and if) I can that same night. (By the time I discover the score in the newspaper the next day, I’m no longer interested in watching.) But I studiously resist recording the Friday game, for obvious reasons.

So, on the way to Starbucks, we listened to a bit of Friday’s game, and we listened to it a bit more on the way home. We had a stop to make on the way home, and when we climbed back into the car and turned it on, the announcer was beside himself: “That’s Ben Zobrist’s first career grand slam home run.”

For a Rays fan, this is good news, and both Barb and I were pumped to hear it. So, this is how the conversation went from that point on.

Randy: And we could have been there. (I had earlier in the week suggested that we break tradition and go to a game, but we chose not to. This comment was dangerously close to an “I told you we should have gone”, which would have earned substantial ‘Bad Husband Points’.)

Barb: I know. Did you record it?

Randy: No. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to record and watch a game on our date night! (Note the stab at earning ‘Good Husband Points’.)

Barb: Well, at least we could have watched the grand slam.

Doesn’t the book of Proverbs say something like this: “A wife who wants to watch baseball, who can find. She is far more precious than jewels.”

Well, that’s close, anyway.

Technorati Tags: Baseball, Marriage

Our daughter Hannah and our friend Gus (short for Gustavo) share the same birthday, although something like sixty years apart. Now it appears they are causing trouble together as Tropical Storm Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna. (We can’t help it if the weather people can’t spell.)

Way to go, guys.

Technorati Tags: Weather

The simplest explanation for the lost passion for reading is to blame the television. My favorite presentation of this charge comes from Willie Wonka’s Oompa Loompas as they sing regarding the demise of poor Mike Teevee. This is especially fun to read to children. But there are plenty of us adults who might need to pay attention to it as well.

Enjoy!

The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set —
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don’t climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink —
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK — HE ONLY SEES!
‘All right!’ you’ll cry. ‘All right!’ you’ll say,
‘But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!’
We’ll answer this by asking you,
‘What used the darling ones to do?
‘How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY… USED… TO… READ! They’d READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching ’round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There’s Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start — oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen
They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

(With gratitude to Roald Dahl!)

Technorati Tags: Books

The commencement address of Pulitzer prize winning author David McCullough includes this passionately expressed exhortation:

“Make the love of learning central to your life…. You have had the great privilege of attending one of the finest colleges in the nation…. If what you have learned here makes you want to learn more, well that’s the point. Read. Read, read!”

One of the things that strikes me about this is that he made these comments to the graduates of, what he calls, “ONE of the FINEST colleges in the nation.” (The other is, of course, Michigan State University.) These graduates are the recipients of a top notch liberal arts education, and he is fearful that they will stop reading. That is amazing to me.

What, then, kills the love of reading? Or how have we failed to spark it?

I understand the typical explanations – television, video games, and the like. But there has to be something more basic. The child of mine who loves to read as much if not more as any of my children was the one who played the MOST video games and watched the MOST TV growing up. Something else is at work here.

The obituary for philosopher Mortimer Adler points out that he dropped out of school at age 15. Two years later, after reading Plato, he decided to become a philosopher. So, what was he doing after he dropped out of school? Reading Plato, apparently. What would have happened had he stayed in school?

Winston Churchill did not have grades good enough to enter Oxford or Cambridge, so he went to a military school and became an officer in the British army with a boring deployment to India. What did he do there? Began to read voraciously. The rest is, literally, history. But his passion to learn did not come in school.

For those of you reading this, please help me out: what was it that instilled a love for learning and for reading in you? Or, what killed it? I’d really like to know.

Technorati Tags: Books