lenten journal: opening day

Ginger, Rachel, and I got up early to catch a flight from Love Field in Dallas back to Durham. The flight was fine, though the route required of us to stop in Austin and Nashville on the way. And all we did was stop. We never got off the plane. By the time we got to the house, it was around four o’clock and I had time to turn on the Opening Day game between the Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers. I started watching in the top of the ninth as the Sox came back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the game and raise my hopes. They went on to lose it in the bottom of the inning. I went on upstairs to change clothes and get ready for our Maundy Thursday service at church.

The Lenten road to Easter and Opening Day are intertwined rites of spring for baseball fans. Some years ago when I was serving as Associate Pastor of First Congregational Church of Hanover, Massachusetts we were beginning our morning worship on a Sunday that happened to mark the Red Sox opener when one of the men stood up with the hymnal open and said, “Here are the words we need for today” –

time like an ever rolling stream
bears all its sons away
they fly forgotten as a dream
dies at the opening day

As one who finds deep meaning in the ritual of Communion as well as the game of baseball, I was grateful to also find a poem (poetry being the third member of my personal trinity, I suppose) that resonated.

Baseball
by Gail Mazur

(for John Limon)

The game of baseball is not a metaphor
and I know it’s not really life.
The chalky green diamond, the lovely
dusty brown lanes I see from airplanes
multiplying around the cities
are only neat playing fields.
Their structure is not the frame
of history carved out of forest,
that is not what I see on my ascent.

And down in the stadium,
the veteran catcher guiding the young
pitcher through the innings, the line
of concentration between them,
that delicate filament is not
like the way you are helping me,
only it reminds me when I strain
for analogies, the way a rookie strains
for perfection, and the veteran,
in his wisdom, seems to promise it,
it glows from his upheld glove,

and the man in front of me
in the grandstand, drinking banana
daiquiris from a thermos,
continuing through a whole dinner
to the aromatic cigar even as our team
is shut out, nearly hitless, he is
not like the farmer that Auden speaks
of in Breughel’s Icarus,
or the four inevitable woman-hating
drunkards, yelling, hugging
each other and moving up and down
continuously for more beer

and the young wife trying to understand
what a full count could be
to please her husband happy in
his old dreams, or the little boy
in the Yankees cap already nodding
off to sleep against his father,
program and popcorn memories
sliding into the future,
and the old woman from Lincoln, Maine,
screaming at the Yankee slugger
with wounded knees to break his leg

this is not a microcosm,
not even a slice of life

and the terrible slumps,
when the greatest hitter mysteriously
goes hitless for weeks, or
the pitcher’s stuff is all junk
who threw like a magician all last month,
or the days when our guys look
like Sennett cops, slipping, bumping
each other, then suddenly, the play
that wasn’t humanly possible, the Kid
we know isn’t ready for the big leagues,
leaps into the air to catch a ball
that should have gone downtown,
and coming off the field is hugged
and bottom-slapped by the sudden
sorcerers, the winning team

the question of what makes a man
slump when his form, his eye,
his power aren’t to blame, this isn’t
like the bad luck that hounds us,
and his frustration in the games
not like our deep rage
for disappointing ourselves

the ball park is an artifact,
manicured, safe, “scene in an Easter egg”,
and the order of the ball game,
the firm structure with the mystery
of accidents always contained,
not the wild field we wander in,
where I’m trying to recite the rules,
to repeat the statistics of the game,
and the wind keeps carrying my words away

One thing can be said of both baseball and faith: if you make an error you can still come home.

Play ball. Amen.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: true colors

The whole scene arrived in the middle of a week when the story of the Prodigal Son is the lectionary passage, about as gift wrapped as a sermon illustration could be. Nomar Garciaparra, longtime and well-loved shortstop for the Boston Red Sox who was traded away, came home day before last, to retire. Though the terms under which he left in the summer of 1974 were not good at all, and it was the October that followed – and perhaps, in part, because of the trade – that the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in eighty-six years.

He has traveled to California and Chicago and back to California, trying to find his place. I must also say, for the record, that the Sox haven’t had a steady shortstop since. Every time Nomar came back to Boston, regardless of the colors he was wearing, the Fenway Faithful gave him a long standing ovation. We loved Nomar, even from afar. Besides, he was the only player we ever had whose name rhymed with homer, as in, “Come in Nomar, hit a homer.” (It has to be done in a heavy Boston accent – “Come on, Nomah, hit a homah” – and it rhymes the same way country singers think rain rhymes with string.)

Nomar knew it was time to retire and he also wished he could retire in his Red Sox uniform. Spring training is in full swing, and he is not playing for anyone. So the Sox offered him a contract: a one day, minor league contract that allowed him to become a part of the organization once again, and then he retired, at home. He’s happy and all those folks (like Ginger) who still have their Garciaparra t-shirts can wear them again. Nomar belongs to us. Period.

"The dream to play baseball in the big leagues started here," he said at his news conference held at City of Palms Park before the Red Sox played a spring training game. "I really wanted to have that be the last uniform I ever put on.”

As I was walking home tonight from the restaurant, I found myself humming a soundtrack to my thoughts about Nomar’s last homestand:

and I see your true colors shining through
I see your true colors and that’s why I love you
so don’t be afraid to let them show
you true colors true colors
are beautiful like the rainbow

In the King James version of the story in Luke, it says the prodigal son “came to himself” as he was feeding the pigs and realized it was time to go home for good. He realized he was prodigal, as in wastefully extravagant, and he had used himself all up, along with his possessions. The dictionary offers a second definition for prodigal: “giving in abundance; lavish or profuse.” We might also use the same adjective for the father, who welcomed his son home with extravagant forgiveness and a barbeque to boot. They shared a propensity for extravagance; the father, however, knew how to spend himself in love. Such were his true colors.

Yes, I’m a Sox fan and I know I might be stretching the story a bit here, still I’m willing to stretch because one of ours that got lost has come home. He was humble enough to ask and the Red Sox ownership were generous enough to find a way to make it work. What it means for Red Sox Nation is, when we tell our stories (and we do tell stories), we can say he is one of us. Whatever happened between 2004 and now is what happened, but the real story is he came home. And my guess is it was no different at the Prodigal Household in the parable. As they bit into the brisket, they told stories, too, of how the boy had run away, and how the father had pined at the front door day after day. “And then you came home,” someone said. And they laughed and cried and told the story again, talking, I’m sure, with their mouths full.

We are at our best with our arms wide open. It’s true for both Bible and baseball.

Peace,
Milton

joy in mudville

Today is the day, baseball fans, when we hear the words we want to hear:

"Pitchers and catchers, report."

And if you want to know one of the reasons I'm a Red Sox fan, I give you Kevin Youkilis, who just signed a multi-year deal and still showed up early to spring training.

Go Sox.

Peace,
Milton

never never never give up

Peace,
Milton

the cost of togetherness

I had just settled in at my table at Mad Hatter’s Bake Shop when Ginger and the news that Manny Ramirez had been traded by the Red Sox to the Dodgers (Manny’s playing for Joe Torre!) arrived at the same time. Over the past few days, Manny has made it clear he wanted out of Boston – more emphatically than his past yearly outbursts – and he got his wish. As he prepared to fly from coast to coast, Ginger was driving a homeless family from the day shelter to the church where they will eat dinner and sleep. On cots. Until someone comes back to drive them to the day shelter again in the morning.

The family was made up of a single mother, who is expecting, and her two-year-old daughter, whom Ginger wanted to bring home. Together, they live a life over which they have little control. The woman said the folks at the shelter offered to give her a weekend pass and she answered, “Where would I go?” She has no means of transportation, nowhere to stay, very little money, and a two year old. The life she’s living may offer her a way out of homelessness eventually, but right now it’s a hard and lonely road.

Part of the reason Manny wanted to be traded was he thought he could make more money as a free agent next year rather than letting the Red Sox pick up the option to extend his contract for two more years. For twenty million dollars. A year.

Ginger and I are both unabashed Manny fans. We’re sad to see him go. I love watching him play because he truly loves playing the game. And he plays hard, even including the “Manny being Manny” moments. Who else will ever climb the outfield wall, catch the fly ball, high five the fan on the front row of the bleachers, come down grinning, and throw the runner out at second to make the double play?

When it comes to the money, Ginger says she cuts him some slack because he grew up in poverty in the Dominican Republic and then joined his parents in New York City (still in poverty, I presume) until he was drafted out of high school by the Cleveland Indians. According to the biography on his website, all Manny ever wanted to do was play baseball. His dad used to take his dinner to the ballpark to make sure he ate. His talent and tenacity offered him a way out of poverty. Even though he has made almost $150 million cumulatively in his career, it appears he isn’t sure it’s enough at some level.

I suppose the obvious connection to make is Manny could build a lot of homes for people like the woman in the shelter, but that ought to be a conclusion Manny comes to on his own, not one I offer here. If all I did with my blog was to tell other folks how to live their lives better, I would change the name to something like “Sit Up Straight and Finish Your Spinach,” rather than “Don’t Eat Alone.”

The connection, for me, is about community. For those of us who consider themselves citizens of Red Sox Nation, Manny was one of the ties that bound us. His enthusiasm for the game gave us reason to cheer. The way he dropped his bat and followed the ball when he hit a home run had less to do with being cocky than it did with his love of the game. You could see it in his eyes: a child like sense of wonder. He had fun playing ball and we had fun watching him. The reality of the business side of baseball, which hits home in the terse transition of his departure, makes that sense of togetherness very tenuous.

And togetherness is tenuous, whatever the game.

As many people as it takes to provide the day shelter and the transportation and the meals and the place to sleep, the woman Ginger drove tonight feels alone. When offered the chance to get away for the weekend, she didn’t say, “Great. I can go stay with my friend.” She doesn’t get to feel together; she is only reminded that life is out to get her.

Strange how a couple of spaces can change what the letters can mean.

Manny’s gone because of money. The woman Ginger met is sleeping on a cot in a church parish hall because of money, or lack of it. When Manny’s contract expires, one of the questions that will show up on the sports shows will be, “Is Manny worth $20 million?”

The answer is, “No.” No one is worth twenty million dollars, whatever they do.

The question, slightly altered, that needs to be asked as we gather in our communities of faith, or wherever we meaningfully come together is: what are the people around us worth?

Let me ask it this way: aren’t they worth more than cots and soup kitchen lines and food stamps and humiliating anonymity? Aren’t they worth our figuring out how to pay whatever bills need to be paid to let them be a part of our togetherness?

The questions sound rhetorical until I look at the way our lives get lived out. As I listened to Ginger talk about her conversation with the woman this afternoon, I realized much of what I do, when it comes to reaching out to those folks who are being trampled by life for any number of reasons is because I want to help, but I don’t necessarily do what I do in a way that lets them know I want to include them. When Ginger finished her conversation, the woman said, “I think I would like to come to your church,” and Ginger offered to help her figure out transportation.

Togetherness is not a myth, nor is it a given. In Jesus’ parable of the Great Banquet (one of my personal favorites), the king tells the servants to go out and compel people to come in until the hall was filled. When the disciples questioned if the five loaves and two fishes would be enough to feed everyone, Jesus told them to just start feeding people and trust they would have enough. The way I’ve always imagined the scene is, as the boy’s lunch was passed and the unabashed sharing became obvious, others who had food of their own thought, “Well, I could share my lunch,” and the next thing they knew they had leftovers. When I watch how inclined we are to hang on to what’s ours, I have no doubt that meal was a miracle.

The stories I’ve heard today have reminded me of the value of togetherness.

And the cost, which is whatever we have to share – which is everything.

Peace,
Milton

what april means

A poem is like a ball park
(or is the park like a poem?):
some precise measurements –
the height of the mound,
the length of the base paths,
the size of the ball –
yet each park is its own,
each outfield shaped by
Green Monsters and short
porches; the rules apply and
no two are exactly the same.

The batter who can hit one
out of every three balls is a
success; true, also, of the poet:
one out of three ain’t bad.
And, every so often, the
right words come, lining up
the way Manny locks in
on a high fast one and swings
for the fences, dropping
his bat and watching in
wonder before he runs home.
Pure poetry.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- There are new recipes here and here.

painting the town red sox

Here are the pictures of the Red Sox celebration in Boston today. I only had my camera phone, so the quality isn't great and I didn't get some shots, but here is our day in images (and a few words).




We rode in on the train, along with every high school kid skipping school . . .











our two favorite brands: Red Sox and Dunkin Donuts . . .











this woman, in her mid-sixties, did what she could to see the parade . . .












if you own the team, you get to ride in the front car . . .










some of our favorite pitchers . . .













they even let Gagne ride along . . .












Pedroia and Youuuuuuuuk . . .










Papelbon and the Dropkick Murphys . . .











Ginger and I celebrating our champions.








Peace,
Milton

love that dirty water

Some time this summer, as it became apparent that the Red Sox had an amazing team, I said to Ginger, “Wouldn’t it be great if the Sox won the World Series as we were leaving New England.” Last night, as you may have heard, they obliged. For the second time in four years, our boys are the champions.

Jonathan Papelbon, our amazing closer, has become somewhat famous for his dancing after clinching the American League East and then winning the ALCS. Last night, he seemed humbled in his post game interview. He didn’t show the bravado and the Bull-Durham-we’ve-just-
got-to-take-it-one-day-at-a-time mentality that makes for most of what passes as interviews on ESPN. The weight of winning seemed to settle him down. He didn’t gloat or brag; he just said thank you.

Most of the teams I’ve cheered for in my life have been of the close-but-no-cigar variety. I am a graduate of Baylor University, better known of late as the whipping boy of the Big Twelve. My freshman year at Baylor, our football team won the Southwest Conference for the first time in fifty years. Ginger and I were here in New England in 2004 when the Sox reversed the Curse that had kept them from winning a championship for eighty-six years. Tonight, I turned on the TV to watch the news and a commercial said,

The last time the Red Sox won the World Series,
gas cost over two dollars a gallon,
George W. Bush was president,
and the Patriots were the best team in football.

We’ve waited a long time for this.
Thanks to the Red Sox for winning the Series again.

This is the first time in my life I’ve rooted for the best team in baseball. We weren’t the come from behind kids this year. We led our division all year, tied for the best record in baseball, and won the championship decidedly. Yes, we have the second biggest payroll and we got to see the kids we’ve raised in our farm system – Papelbon, Youkilis, Ellsbury, Pedroia, Lester – come into their own. One local commentator said, “We watched our veterans play with a kid’s enthusiasm and our kids play like veterans. In 2004, the victory was a relief; this year we get to relish it. What an amazing gift. We won the Series in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1918, 2004, and 2007. I don’t expect to win every year, or even every four years. Hey – we won this year.

Tomorrow Ginger and I are going into Boston with a couple of million of our closest friends for the “Rolling Rally” of celebration, in what will likely be our last trip into the city before we head to Carolina. I’m sure the loudspeakers will be blaring the song that plays at the end of every Sox victory at home and, for the last time, we will get to sing

I love that Dirty Water
Oh – Boston – you’re my home.

Peace,
Milton