The Burst of Bloom

The Burst of Bloom (Part III)

[Paris]

“Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.” (John Dewey)

Without being an adept guitarist, still I joyfully practiced chords and songs in my Paris flat. With a cool breeze coming through the window, the street noise soothed my anxiety about learning. For hours we’d try songs we both knew; singing and reminiscing about each one’s importance; forging the kind of connection that led to a greater one, later. Music’s power moved us to experience different feelings, its primitive elements combined to reflect our own artistic predilections. These times playing guitar together fostered concord in our relationship, although we were hardly aware of it.

We also read together and discussed the state of our interests. By the hidden interface of fellowship through art’s revelation, we shared our personality struggles and became closer to each other’s quest for a new kind of beauty. 

Eventually it became possible to articulate how and where each of us sought validation. My gut told me that God sanctified mathematics through Gabriel, using his imagination as a soul-force. He would humbly remind me that a poem is not a legal argument, and that I could grow beyond my American biases and idols.

Once I read a passage that struck for us a note of truth: 

“Art celebrates with peculiar intensity the moments in which the past reinforces the present, and in which the future is a quickening of what now is;” Dewey continued, calling art’s qualities: “commemorative, expectant, insinuating, and premonitory.” 

This resonated between us, with a fervently mutual hope that the art would be such things, as our intensity grew. 

Poll Shows Popularity Of Pro Football Continues Growing While Baseball Slides - SportsBusiness Daily | SportsBusiness Journal

Poll Shows Popularity Of Pro Football Continues Growing While Baseball Slides - SportsBusiness Daily | SportsBusiness Journal:

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Much has been written about baseball, the national pastime, although it almost defies description. Resembling chess with finely shaded details and subtle strategies; it is as common as many things in our history, each player standing around in familiar positions. Its languid pace, long season, saturation of coverage through the large network of minor leagues, huge field of play, and history dating back to the late 1800s make it a unique part of American culture.

Some like baseball for its cleanliness, the stark white home uniforms and exact chalk baselines. It is a game in which numbers tell a story: baseball fans recall vital statistics better than football fans. Author George F. Will believes overall its fans are smarter than their gridiron counterparts. Nevertheless, as Sports Business Daily reported (see link above) Jan. 26, 2011, Harris-interactive poll shows those adults surveyed favored professional football over baseball by a wide margin. As an example, television ratings for any big NFL game amount to a 20 share compared to a 10 share for baseball. Football involves careful pacing, repetition, and the short attention span of the male observer; men huddle, agree to a plan, line up, hit each other, run around like crazy, call time, rest, regroup, and then try again. Over and over this goes up and down like the returns on a stock. It is violent, yet stylized warfare, where combatants can get a bonus for damaging another man's body. Baseball is intricate, comfortable, and convivial, like a picnic game only with occasional crowd noise.

Like our country’s history, baseball’s place in my own story is significant. I played the game every year from grade school on, although not well; attending games through high school, college, and law school. I’ve been to Wrigley, Fenway, Comiskey, and Yankee Stadium; Fulton County for a World Series and Omaha for a College World Series. My first summer of college, UT won the NCAA national championship, and at the old Arlington Stadium I saw Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter. It weaves in and out of my life like a tapestry, its timelessness sealed within memories. I courted my wife at the Ballpark and watched the strangest World Series (game 6) ever last October with my parents. Many of baseball’s great moments are “mano-a-mano” showdowns similar to a duel in the streets, lived out in slow motion; one punch at a time. It seems more like art than sport, a reflection of culture, as well as an integral part of it.

Maybe because of its history, baseball is a frequent canvass on which is depicted modern culture: George Will’s Men at Work, Movie: The Natural, Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, John Feinstein’s Play Ball, Movie: A League of Their Own, Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, Movies: Moneyball, Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, the road trip saga by David Lamb, called A Stolen Season, Don DeLillo’s Underworld about the shot heard round the world, or Chad Harbach's debut novel, The Art of Fielding, is as much about literary fiction as it is about baseball. These few examples come to mind, but it is a sport which for decades has been discussed voluminously in all kinds of media. Authors love to write about this sport.

During the 2009 season, despite the nation’s worst economic downturn in 80 years, 30 Major League Baseball clubs drew 73,418,479 fans during the season, producing the fifth largest total attendance in MLB history. New stadiums, often financed by public funds, have been built in place of almost all the monolithic old concrete wonders of the 1970s. Youth leagues produce local product woven into the fabric of small-town America, culminating each year with the Little League World Series, a spectacle not unlike the World Cup in its international coverage. Baseball is still popular even though the research shows that football is the preferred national sport in the new century.

Popularity over Preference

Football is more technological, with slow-motion TV replay an integral part of officiating. It is like the modern mechanized corporate world in which we live, often called the ultimate team sport. When cultures change so do their games; baseball harkens back to more serene, agricultural economy which works with no deadlines, only outcomes. Until you get 27 outs the game is uncertain. Football has a time clock, used almost like a factory laborer punches out, ending the work day.

Quoting George Carlin, “football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.” Carlin concludes, “Baseball’s object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!”

Demographics is Destiny

Another relevant question is whether baseball has been eclipsed by other sports within the growing minority cultures of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans?

In traditional Hispanic markets the World Cup draws much higher interest than baseball and in poor African-American high schools, the chances of earning college scholarships are much better in football than baseball. "A Division 1 football program can give out 85 scholarships, and baseball teams only 11.7," said Jimmie Lee Solomon, and EVP of MLB. "If you're an African American kid and you need help to go to school, do the math."

A regular fan of the sporting life enjoys many different games, the balls and rules representing all the facets of the athletic pop-culture. Baseball will have to live with a smaller market share and aging fan base, as it plays with a smaller ball; like the paradigm shift brought on my Billy Beane in Moneyball, focusing on base-runners getting across home plate. Baseball continues to drive fans to big stadiums, reaching mostly the 40+ age group with family friendly daytime experiences in beautiful pastoral settings. Conversely, live professional football and basketball venues resemble a gentlemen’s club, or worse a strip joint. Super Bowl halftime shows don't fit within the confines of the modern ballpark.

Baseball is still an innocent game, despite the recent PED scandals, and congressional hearings. Since the Black Sox threw the World Series in 1919, scandal revisits periodically and baseball proves resilient. Symmetrical stitches endlessly wrap around the baseball, just as hope renews with training camp every year in warm destinations as the first bright days of spring burst into blue skies. The season ends in the cold chill of approaching winter. Cyclical like the laces of the ball itself, there is never a greater hope for fans as there is in spring training, the whole season in the future. As fans do every year in the dry Arizona heat, or looking at prospects in the Florida sun, let us join in the wonder: could this be their season?

©Mark H. Pillsbury
(composed 03/07/2012, pictures for personal use and historical reference)

What does Christmas mean?

Photo credit: ACTA

What does Christmas mean?

In a world where weakness is pitied, morality is what works, materialism grabs our attention, and the motive power for many is gaining just enough happiness to feel good; the story of Jesus Christ astounds with unlikely messages. For believers, it turns “strength” upside down, and causes assessment of modern thinking.

God himself steps off the multi-universe throne to inhabit a virgin’s womb, borne in a middle-eastern cow stall, with only a few witnesses; quickly travelling a great distance with his poor parents to avoid doom? The eternal Son of God took on humanity — two natures, one person; such an outrageous tale seems poorly written if it were merely a story.

The Lord Jesus Christ appears as a helpless baby; his final destination is destruction on a cross? Not a powerful metaphor for a coming King, but essential in the context and purpose of his life. He lived a perfect life of obedience because we cannot; he died as a ransom for our sins. I know it is presumptuous of me to characterize the Christmas story this way, but in the minds of many this season, passing by without concern, there is no need of absolution. The national Christmas tree at the Capitol has no ornaments about Jesus or Christmas; in some circles, He is not relevant.

Nevertheless, the baby’s birth in the tiny city of Bethlehem changed the course of world history. His life of service, humility, and righteousness was a glorious example of sacrificial love. Dismissing it as myth or impossible, is to lack the fidelity to Jesus necessary for belief in the whole Bible. Christians must face the fact that a denial of the virgin birth is a denial of Jesus as the Christ.

John Sartelle says, “In the incarnation, the creating Son came to redeem and restore His creation. His miracles were designed to prove His divine identity. With each miracle He was declaring, “So that you may know I am the eternal Son.” He made the blind to see, the paralyzed to walk, and the dead to live. His miracles also demonstrated His purpose to redeem and restore His creation. Everywhere the creator Son saw the effects of the fall on His creation, and He repaired the wounds and injuries, and pushed back the darkness.”

His entry is unconventional? His life not regal? Death at the hands of Romans tragic and untimely? Jesus came as the pure Lamb of God in order to be the sacrifice prophesied in the Old Testament, in a blatantly supernatural way. Indeed, the Christmas story is at the beginning of a long theological journey through the New Testament, leading to the passion of the cross. As unlikely as it seems, what starts on Christmas leads to Easter!

Immanuel, meaning God is one of us, was the real son of a real mother. The virgin birth is the starting point of the gospel. During this time of year, when so much of Christmas is shiny, glossy, new, liberal and modern; why not take some time to look back to historic Bethlehem, to an obscure little family ordered to return home for the census?

Incarnation is a big word, but it means that God decided to become one of his enemies, salvation coming through menial condescension; in other words, God decided to lower himself and enter into the lives of sinners, posers, liars, and the fallen human race. It seems bizarre?!

A little baby, born to walk a life of obedience toward the calling set out before him; agreeing with his Father that amazing grace would take an astounding work on the cross. Christmas is the beginning. It ends on hill with a crucifixion. That is the real meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown.

As with every birth, every gift of life, there is hope! We don’t have to rely on our own works; Jesus did the work required to stand in our place. Why must a perfect man be convicted of sin he did not commit? Why Jesus makes the exchange for our sin, becoming man in an act of love and understanding? These are mysteries as perplexing as the virgin birth in Bethlehem. These are things to ponder as you look out into the dark winter sky.

©Mark H. Pillsbury

Timothy Anderson | Man Knocked to Ground at CTA Station After Giving Panhandler Money

Timothy Anderson | Man Knocked to Ground at CTA Station After Giving Panhandler Money:

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Acts 3: 1-10

Translated into the modern version of the Message (©NavPress Publishing Group):

Scene: Just a regular day as if we were at a traffic light waiting for it to change:

Vv. 1-5 three o'clock one afternoon, Peter and John were on their way into the Temple for a prayer meeting. At the same time there was a man crippled from birth being carried up to the gate, for this was his regular place to beg (panhandler).

Every day he was set down at the Temple gate, the one named Beautiful, to beg from those going into the Temple. When he saw Peter and John about to enter the Temple, he asked for a handout. Peter, with John at his side, looked him straight in the eye and said, "Look here." He looked up, expecting to get something from them.”

Vv. 6-8 Peter said, "I don't have a nickel to my name, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!" He grabbed him by the right hand and pulled him up. In an instant his feet and ankles became firm. He jumped to his feet and walked. Wow.

Vv. 8-10 The man went into the Temple with them, walking back and forth, dancing and praising God.

(Everybody there saw him walking around and praising God). They recognized him as the one who sat begging at the Temple's Gate called Beautiful, and rubbed their eyes, astonished, scarcely believing what they were seeing! This was a miracle, and it was done in the name of Jesus. This miracle occurred naturally as an expression of unmerited love in the name of Jesus, and Jesus received the glory.

Motivation—There is nothing wrong with asking for something from God, because his plan is sovereign; if God wants to bless you with a miracle, he fully has the power make it happen. We are weak vessels, and often the motivation for change is nothing more than “pain.” If we understand the mystical, meta-physical world of God around us, nothing is as it appears to be. Spiritual warfare exists all-around but we are unaware. We are the consistent, cynical, hardened beggar illustrated in Acts 3: 1-5. But we must look to God expectantly, as did the beggar.

Miracles are strictly a blessing from God, totally outside human power. The part we play is to ask in faith and believe in Jesus, allowing him to work through us. We must know as an article of faith that miracles are possible, and this requires that we rationally become a student of history.

Optimism—why should anyone be astonished by what God can do? Is he not powerful enough? Is there any order of difficulty for the God of the universe to ordain a miracle? Is it that we just don’t typically see miracles enough to be comfortable with them? Or is God just too stingy to give us any miracles? Faith is inextricably tied to optimism, because it is the assurance of things hoped for, and sometimes it includes asking in faith for miracles. If you have never experienced or refuse to believe in miracles, it is hard to escape the pessimism or cynicism which creeps in like smoke.

Attitude—Gandhi said that the force of spiritual truth is greater than any army, weapons of destruction, or political authority; and Butterfield wrote that prayer is a “subversive activity.” It involves “more or less an open act of defiance against any claim of ultimacy by the current regime. Concealed egotism is perhaps a greater cause of conflict, a greater source of political problems, than anything else on this globe.” He wrote. Prayer drags egotism out into the open, and begins to do something about it. Our holiness is both the opposite of and the antidote to the ego, according to Marianne Williamson. God rules, not the government. The attitude we have toward power structures and evildoers can be weak, compliant, and submissive; conversely, we can have the attitude that we will not be overcome and resistance is paramount. Prayer is a means by which this attitude of faith can work itself out in practice. Prayer is a force of spiritual truth.

Aptitude—Some organizations with which I have worked either for short or long times over the past 20 years. Living examples, as organizations, of assemblies blessed by God to be “miracle” groups whose growth and impact on the world are significant and unlikely in a short period of time (in no order):

Park Cities Presbyterian Church –large church in Dallas that set a goal to plant 100 churches and over a twenty year history surpassed their goals beyond their biggest plans. Also planted RUF college ministries, overseas missions, and a seminary. www.pcpc.org

Liberty Institute—legal defender for religious liberty fighting in courts all over the US, this small institute has been a part of dozens of landmark first amendment and religious liberty cases since 1997 when its director Kelly Shackelford started filing cases and drawing in volunteer lawyers for the cause of Christ, as Christians came under attack. Often outnumbered and outgunned, Kelly and his volunteers battle to protect freedoms and strengthen families all over the US. They win cases that no legal experts predict them to win!
www.freemarket.org

Houston Christian High School—in just 14 years it has become a preeminent college preparatory high school, a pacesetter in Christian education, and a growing destination for parents in Houston who want rigorous academics, leadership training, and a Christian environment. Growing from 200 students in 2000, to approximately 500 students today, HC was recently accredited by ISAS and invited to join the SPC for athletics. www.houstonchristian.org

HOPE International—HOPE was founded in 1997 with its President Peter Greer taking leadership in 2004 concentrating on its own distinctive poverty alleviation: microfinance provides small loans to poor people, it provides an intentional witness for Christ, a commitment to stewardship, helping alleviate poverty, and has shown a dedication to the hard places around the world. HOPE International believes that church-based programs are most effective when they simultaneously meet both spiritual and physical needs in a culturally appropriate manner. www.hopeinternational.org

©Mark H. Pillsbury

Herman Cain steps up attacks on Occupy Wall Street protests - latimes.com

quoted from the article: Nancy Pelosi and I agree on something:

Herman Cain steps up attacks on Occupy Wall Street protests - latimes.com: (Nancy Pelosi)"“I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen,” she said “We cannot continue in a way that does not — that is not relevant to their lives. People are angry.”"

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Hope and change must be relevant to the voter's life. 7 out of 10 Americans believe that the President has not handled the economy correctly and now Nancy Pelosi says that change "has to happen." I agree with her. The next general election is a great place to start.

Part VI (fiction ripped from the headlines) The storm-chasers saga...

Thwap

At last, turning onto this back road only made matters worse. The anxiety felt when you miss an important exit, or stall behind a wall of traffic, knowing you will not make the meeting just touches the desperation beginning to set in, even for optimistic Clay.

Thick, smoky air swirled like a heavy dark curtain rolling down over the last night of a performance; the fuel-rich heat seared the moisture out of their eyes as they all reconvened for the last time. Coughing, crying, panicked Jessica held onto Rick’s sleeve as they discussed options. He loved her just then, she rarely showed weakness during their adventures. Rick thought it showed a true care had burrowed into his aching heart, despondent as it was that he could not give her comfort.

“We are so lost, Clay! What good is this doing?!” Rick pleaded. “I got no connections over any of my devices, no GPS, no clue where this wildfire will turn!” He continued, “I got nothing, man, how boutchu?”

Clay shrugged. “What the hell do you do when you get trapped by a twister?”

“We don’t!” Rick barked. “We usually run a lot faster the opposite direction! There’s a way to know which way to run--it’s called radar?!” He was frustrated by the helplessness. Just then they heard a tall pine crack and crash to the ground. It was an ominous punctuating scream from the forest’s death throes. The hot shear blew at them like an oven opened, but as if they were sticking their heads inside.

Feeling that reversing their path would only complicate their position, for just a moment they stood together as they would at the tee box of a round of golf looking down the verdant first fairway full of hope. Instead, they contemplated their dangerous location in the middle of this hot cauldron of fire. No one admitted it, but this was the point where these friends reached the end of themselves.

Clay did nothing more than drop his head. He silently prayed that his Lord would deliver him from this fiery trap, and that he would be given the ability to persevere and not give up hope; he even gave thanks that his hope was not in this world but it resided in heaven. Clay kept faith that this was not the end, although he was out of ideas for rescue.

photo credit: Chris Carlson, NCDFR

Thwap, thwap, thwap. They lifted their heads to the heavens and saw a beacon of hope. Thwap, thwap, thwap beat rhythmically over the horizon as the Sikorsky helicopter flew closer to the worst portion of the fire wall. The pilot watched his instrument panel, but the storm-chasers looked up with amazement.

“Lord have mercy,” Clay exclaimed with a chuckle. With a mind cleared by hope, Rick leaped to the back of the Tahoe, where he dug into the wheel-well. He remembered that he picked up once a complimentary flare-pack at an extreme weather convention. Finding it immediately dusty and dirty from neglect along with the spare tire, he ripped the pair open eagerly while trying to read the symbol directives for operation. “Maybe someone will know we are down here!” Jessica gasped.

photo credit: Red Cross

At a nearby fenceline, the raging inferno came out from behind the trees like a robber, finally playing his hand. It was as if all societal boundaries had been breached and the devil was welcoming them to his party. They felt so exposed, insecure, helpless, even weak like children, facing this wall of flames; Jessica fell in behind Rick and wrapped her arms tight around his torso, peaking out around his wide shoulders.

Unfortunately, road flares only sparkle on the ground, not able to shoot directly at the helicopter. After its first pass the huge ship flew out of sight and no longer cut the air with such whipping force. Clay thought of the old saying in Ecclesiastes, “there is a time to live, and there is a time to die.” They did not know which one it would be.

photo credit: WSPA

(...to be continued in Part VII)

©Mark H. Pillsbury (17 July 2011)

[this is a work of fiction, any similarities to other works of fiction, TV, or film, are purely coincidental]