Of This & That

It has been a while since I have posted anything here. It is not for lack of ideas or issues to write and comment on. That said, it must be confessed there has been a certain lack of energy or enthusiasm to rush to print my pontifications on the latest cascading waves of news that have swept through the Evangelical church as well as the world at large. In an age of 30 second sound bites, news is here today and gone tomorrow.

Part of the ennui also has to do with the deja vu nature of the news cycle. How many fallen mega-church pastors have we heard about over the last umpteen years or more? How much political BS keeps repeating and repeating and repeating? What can you say that has not been said before, or at the issue in hand, others have already written about? Lord forgive me and deliver me from cynicism. With all that said, I will attempt to set forth a few thoughts.

Being a Deacon in an Evangelical Baptist church is interesting. Oddly enough, the greatest satisfaction I have from being a Deacon is in serving the Lord's Supper to the people of God. The tradition in our church is for the Deacons to serve the bread and cup, or more accurately in our case, the gluten free wafers and the trays holding the little cups of grape juice. The Communion assignments are rotated so that over time, a Deacon will have opportunity to serve the bread and cup to just about everyone in our congregation, I really enjoy and receive much satisfaction in the performing of that service,

There are of course, other duties and responsibilities I have as a Deacon. One of the questions we as a Deacon Council ask ourselves from time to time is, "Are we what we say we are, or are we what we do?" That tension comes from those responsibilities we have and perform that might more properly fall under the office of Elder. I am not convinced there are any churches that have a perfect form and organization for church government. I know there are some who like to make that claim, but from what I have seen, they doth protest to much. Nor am I convinced that the Bible and New Testament in particular, are as clear on how church government should be organized as some would have us believe.

Our church is a relatively large church, though not what I would call a mega-church. That larger size presents challenges in terms of ministering to the whole body. None of us want anyone to fall through the cracks. That is always a challenge. There is more I could say, but will leave it for another time.

The seasons are changing; another week and Autumn will officially be upon us. The days continue to grow shorter. I have now been retired for ten months. I am still sort of working out what "retired" means. I had visions of doing more writing, but though I did finish some projects earlier in the year, not much has happened over the last three to four months. Getting our kitchen renovated was part of the reason for lack of writing output as well as the general ennui spoken of above. Writing is a discipline, and if I am to be any kind of writer at all, I will need to be disciplined in pursuing it.

The Football season is in full swing,(Go MSU Spartans!), and hockey is not far behind. In the meantime our Tigers are doing what they can to make it to the baseball post-season playoffs. Will this be the year the Tiger roars? Time will tell...

Strike Three!

He was a young Freshman pitcher from Flint. He came to Michigan State University to get an education with a major in history, and to see if he could get on the baseball team as a walk-on. If he could make the team, the prospect of an athletic scholarship could become a reality. He could very probably have gotten a scholarship at another school, but family tradition and the prospect of studying Civil War history under a noted professor among other things, brought him to Michigan State. This young hurler also happened to be by the cast of chance or design of providence, my dorm roommate.

So it was in that Spring of our Freshman year, one afternoon between classes, I went over to the ball-field where the University Freshman team was playing a game against the baseball team from a local community college. It was the bottom of the inning and the Spartan's turn at bat. It also happened Dave was coming up to bat.

It is a maxim of baseball that pitchers do not get very much batting practice. A pitcher's batting average will usually be one of the lowest on the teams. I don't remember what the exact count was; there may have been a ball or two, but Dave was quickly behind with two strikes. It also bothers me to this day that I do not remember if they were called strikes or came on a swing and a miss. But now the fun was about begin.

The pitcher wound up and threw the next pitch. Dave watched the ball go by.

"Strike three!" called the Umpire.

But as he was calling the 3rd strike, the ball hit the catcher's mitt, dropped and rolled a few feet away. Dave saw the muffed catch, dropped the bat and ran for first. The catcher was caught off guard by Dave's movement, but then recovering, grabbed the ball to throw to first to insure the out. He over threw the 1st baseman's glove, and there was Dave, safe at first!

What a whoop and holler erupted from his teammates! What would have been a strikeout, was by application of the 3rd strike rule and the catcher's error, a man on base. It was a real heads up play on Dave's part that turned a negative into a positive.

I don't remember anything else about that game, and as it was, it was the only game I saw Dave play in. He never did get that athletic scholarship and a year or so later, dropped baseball and concentrated on his studies. After those undergraduate days at Michigan State, he eventually went on to get a Masters and then a Doctorate in history with emphasis on the Civil War and Reconstruction.

If you are ever in New Haven, Connecticut, and wandering around the campus of Yale University, you might peer into a classroom and see David delivering a lecture on some aspect of the Civil War or Reconstruction. I don't know how much the Doctor remembers of his undergrad baseball days, but that one memory remains forever etched in his old roommate's memory.