Stories and tales from a guitar-picking writer, theologian, speaker, blogger and entertainer. From small town quirks to the bizarre realities of family, whacky church life and slightly damaged kinfolk, insights from a reluctant son of the South takes you along. Never know where it’ll end up but it’s sure to be worth the trip.
confession on the air, will you stop by to receive
penance instructions about being a better father and husband?”
It’s just too easy to weigh in on the comments of Mike Francesca and Boomer Esiason about Daniel Murphy’s decision to take two days to be present for his baby’s birth.
Daniel Murphy, new Dad, plays second base for the New York Mets.
Of course, we live in a time of sportainment. More and more, as politics becomes hopelessly unresponsive and global problems impinge on every part fo life, sportainment is the way we escape–from real life. Except that ultimately isn’t an option.
One day I listened in on sports radio–I admit, it’s a guilty pleasure on the way to the hospital or a meeting, in part because I will always laugh at something pretentious, silly or absurd. And much of what is discussed is fun to consider. A husband caller complained to Paul Finebaum about a player’s tweet after Alabama lost its bowl game that “it’s only a game.” His argument was that it isn’t. He went on, passionately, to say that though he was a member of a church and loved his family, that during the football season he spends more time and money on the sport than on his wife and kids or his church.
My jaw dropped since I am a minister, but why should it? I like to imagine that I might follow up crazy calls. What would I say? Disguised voice: “This is Dr. Hapner Wogwillow. I am a marriage therapist. I treat his wife for depression and recognized him in the call. He needs to go home. She just left for good with the kids. I will tell him their names if he’ll call me. BR-549.” My other idea was to, “J——, this is your pastor. Now having heard your confession, will you stop by to receive penance instructions about being a better father and husband?”Continue reading Daniel Murphy, Sports and Babies
I watched all the passion and powerful energy around the football season this year. I have watched the most 3college football in years. “What if the church generated such passion?” I imagined a coach’s assessment at the end of the year. It went like this:
(At the end of the year banquet) Great season, people. We had our MVPs and our Most Improved. It looks like we have a solid core back this year and that bodes well.
We finished the year with a winning season. Of course, we had our losses, too. Some major leaders and talent have gone to the next level, which in the kingdom of God is heaven.
We had some transfers to other teams, and more than a few injuries. In this league, the injuries
C’mon!
are harder to see. Quite a few have torn ACLs, (Attitudinal Christlikeness Lethargy) and more than a few are on suspension for inactivity.
The most exciting news, though, is we had a great recruiting season. Gifted people everywhere you turn, at every position. And that’s good. We have more than a few seniors who are not far from graduation. They’ve kept the faith and fought the fight for a long time, and our lack of depth has been a real challenge, so they are happy to see these freshmen and sophomores coming in here to help. We need them to step up and help right away.
We ought to be motivated to have a championship season. The big game every week comes when we file into the sanctuary and listen to the Lord’s word, re-tell the story of our team, and get inspired by the great heritage of saints. That’s our name, you know. The Saints. Not the New Orleans’ ones.
And when we all execute our assignment we’ll win every time—blockers removing the obstacles out there and making way for the good news, passers sharing the gospel and kindness, practicing stewardship and pouring out blessings for the world, when our receivers go out and catch the ball and run for daylight, they carry the good news of the gospel to the world, to the lonely, the desperate and the hopeless.
This year, we aren’t settling for a few measly points of improvement. We are going to the top. It’s silly for grown men to mope around for months over football games. We’re about real and eternal things.
8. No, the real championship is the Kingdom of God. Healing diseases, crushing poverty and injustice, helping the illiterate to read, telling the story of Jesus to those who don’t know it. Loving the unloved, working for reconciliation and forgiveness. I’m tired of being number one in football, obesity and high blood pressure. I’m ready to lead the nation in hope and the love of God and blessing little children everywhere.
We have our opponent, of course. The Bible describes him as a roaring lion, seeking to devour us. Mostly that happens when we turn in on ourselves, or look at our troubles, or abandon hope and think we’re beaten. Or responding with hate and fear. Or worse, start blaming each other and sulking. Win together, lose together.
If we believe in the One who called us here we can do it! Just believe in each other, do our assignments, don’t listen to the crowd and the critics, get up when we get knocked down, and always, always play the game with fearless confidence. Now let’s get out there, and when you walk into this arena of worship on Sunday, come dressed for the fight, come for a victory, come to praise and pray and go forth. And accept nothing less than the victory of God for everyone. YEAHHHHH!h
We prefer a safe mediocrity to a persuasive truth telling.
Baptist news wires recently carried the story about a successful protest by a Baptist preacher to remove a movie from Lifeway stores. The movie is “The Blind Side,” starring Sandra Bullock. It was based on the book by the same name by Michael Lewis, who also wrote, Liar’s Poker and Moneyball.
Michael Lewis
I happened to meet Michael Lewis years ago when he was writing the book, and he told me he was working on a “really interesting story.” It was about a young man from the meanest streets of Memphis who was adopted by a family and placed in a white private Christian school. The story is well known by now—Michael Oher went on to be a football star at the University of Mississippi and now plays for the Baltimore Ravens.
I bought and read the book when it came out, and went to see the film. Football movies are pretty well required viewing in Alabama. So I was more than amused with all the other moral problems at the moment—debt, wars, racism, the disintegration of families, and do I need to go on?—that a PG-13 movie could cause such an uproar. According to the report,
LifeWay Christian Stores will no longer sell videos of “The Blind Side” after a Florida pastor proposed a resolution for next week’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting protesting the sale of a PG-13 movie that contains profanity and a racial slur…[the stores decided to] pull the movie, an inspirational film starring Sandra Bullock that tells the true story of a white Christian family that adopted a homeless black teenager who went on to play in the NFL, to avoid controversy at the June 19-20 SBC annual meeting in New Orleans. [The pastor who brought the resolution] said there is much about the film to be commended, but there is no place in a Christian bookstore for a movie that includes explicit language that includes taking God’s name in vain.
I get it. It’s Baptist to speak your mind. I know language has become debased and misused. And, it’s the right of any store and its owners to sell or not sell what it wishes. Still, it stirred a few thoughts about the mostly non-existent tie between Christians, especially evangelical ones, and the world of the arts. And why fewer people want to be Baptists.
Walter Brueggemann once said that in the book of Leviticus, which for some odd reason has become a moral center for a lot of people today, there is an emphasis on holiness as “purity.” There are other forms of holiness in scripture—moral and ethical righteousness, for one, that sometimes comes into conflict with the notion of purity. Jesus encountered this among the Pharisees, who could not do the deeper right things for fear of disturbing their own ethic of remaining personally removed from what might compromise, taint and violate their ethic of purification holiness.
I have thought a lot about Brueggemann’s distinction since I first read it. Somehow, a fully biblical notion requires more than avoiding “impurities.” Yet purity is important. An obsession seems to lead always to a rather puny moral energy that dispirits more than it inspires. Inevitably, it ends up with an account of morality that is always boycotting, removing itself from sinners and sin, and circling the wagons.
Jeremy Lin and the Knicks finally lost a game. Look for some of the “Linsanity” to fade. Expect a second wave of rumLination to follow, as the bandwagon backs over the kid from Harvard. I don’t even watch the NBA anymore, and
Superman downed by New Orleans' Kryptonite unis
basketball was my sport. I don’t know what it was, but after Jordan, Magic and Larry and their supporting casts went away, it sometimes seemed like the NBA turned into the athletic version of the Kardashians. LeBron is still hated for leaving Cleveland. Truth is, if the NBA game has changed a lot in recent years, so have games in general.
We can recite the litany of why’s:
Win no matter what.
It’s about the money, the mansions, the bling and the babes, no matter what you say.
Agents.
Shame has lost its identity in our world—no publicity is the only shameful state.
Tradition, love of the game, team: why do they sound “quaint”?
If you want an indicator, consider that staying for your junior year in college is considered “noble”. Since when did education become a liability and being rich a necessity?
Maybe that’s why “March madness,” the NCAA’s annual “survival of the fittest” is so much more attractive to me than the NBA. I was a high school basketball player. I wasn’t great, just okay. Co-captain of my high school team as a senior and all that. But years after I graduated, I kept playing—intermural in college, even playing with the high school kids as a pastor until my joints wore out. All because there was something FUN about the physical test of shooting, dribbling, passing, playing. Most of all, trying to win together.
I like Jeremy Lin. Nothing to do with being “Asian” (why do we always go there?), Harvard-educated (okay, he can get a job when he retires), third-string sub who makes good, but just because he reminds me of a time in my life when I’d rather shoot hoops in forty degree weather than play guitar—and that was saying something.
There are still plenty of great NBA players and people who are about winning. Shaq, Tim Duncan, last year’s Mavs and the largely unheralded bench guys who lay it on the line. But fame and fortune have crowded “team” into a tie for third at best. Watching an NBA game just ain’t Lakers-Celtics in the 80s. Where are you, Bill Russell, Magic, Larry? And maybe today’s games just reflect us in general.
So I like Jeremy Lin. Nothing to do with Asia, Harvard or world peace. Linsation is just about doing your best. Call it excelLINce—character, quality, and love of the game. He’s an amateur (from the Latin word for “love,” thus one who does something purely for the love of it) in a game long ruined by money. Ultimately, if the human soul is to survive, there has to be something in us that we do for the sheer pleasure and value of doing it and the joy of watching.
Hey, kid, pick yourself up. You’re gonna lose now and then. Get ‘em tomorrow.
The author as Northmont Thunderbolt, ca. 1971. At least uniforms HAVE improved
How do you measure a life? Gene Bartow is a legend now, having passed long ago from active coaching to the place where no one else can reach you—retired success. But since he passed away, Birmingham, Memphis and the college basketball world have been filled with remembering. He is a college basketball Hall of Fame coach who coached 1000 games in his career. He finished with a 647-353 record over 34-seasons. He [i]was a success at Memphis State, leading the Tigers to a remarkable championship game appearance in 1973, where they lost to UCLA and John Wooden. He was national coach of the year that year. In all, his teams appeared in the NCAA tournament 14 times.[ii]
He is too often only remembered in the national press for one thing– for a time when he was successful but it wasn’t enough. He was chosen to succeed the legendary John Wooden at UCLA, the greatest coach of all time, who had a reign of ten titles in twelve seasons, the tenth in his retiring year, and seven in a row during that time.
So in 1975 Gene Bartow came to UCLA to replace the legendary Wooden when he retired. He stayed only two turbulent years. He was 52-9 record and took them to the NCAA tournament both years and was in the Final Four one of those. But it wasn’t good enough. The Washington Post quotes one of his players, Marques Johnson from that team. “He was a
John Wooden and Gene Bartow
sensitive person,” Johnson said in an interview. “He was used to being totally embraced as a coach and a person, and he was just not ready for the kind of vitriol thrown at him when he took Coach Wooden’s place. He never came to grips with it, and it bothered him more than anything. After two years, he was gaunt and pale, and he refused to read the Los Angeles newspapers or listen to the radio because there was so much negativity. But he was a wonderful human being, a super nice guy and a great coach.”[iii]
As a coach, Gene Bartow touched the edge of the big prize twice, but never won it all. He left the dream job that became a nightmare. He decided instead to come to Birmingham, Alabama and help build an athletic program and basketball team for a then-fledgling university at UAB. He did reach great success, including seven NCAA tournament appearances. But he never won the “big dance,” as they say.
But another event, the dramatic run to the edge of a championship with the Memphis Tigers in 1973, may have been his real greatest moment. “I don’t think this community ever had better race relations than when Gene coached at Memphis,” a friend said. “He had the way of bringing everybody together to support his team and the entire university.”[iv] It hadn’t been long since the painful memory of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Times were tense in the entire country. Then the city of Memphis was unified for a time around the glorious run of a Cinderella team that almost did it.
They lost, as I mentioned, in the championship game, to the juggernaut UCLA, coached by Wooden and led by future
One game short, 1973
NBA stars Bill Walton and Keith Wilkes. So his highest career points were two Final Fours, a lot of tournaments, being the sacrificial lamb at UCLA, and then to rebuilding himself as well as building UAB in Birmingham.
So how do you measure a life? While we’re measuring, it might also be worth mentioning that he ended his life with the nickname, “Clean Gene,” a moniker few carry in college sports these days of rogue fans, agents and corruption, for the way he ran things. He gave a race-divided city in Memphis something else to rally around and focus on in a painful historical moment. He started a great program in the city where we live that has had some really great moments. He battled stomach cancer to the very end with humor and grace.
I think it is fitting that Gene Bartow passed from this earth in the time in which one weekend carried the UAB-Memphis game and will be followed next weekend by Martin Luther King day. I’d say, all in all, he did the right things. The rest is just wins and losses.
It always matters how you play the game. John Wooden and Gene Bartow would agree, and maybe now they get to talk about it. All the rest is just wins and losses and what other people think. Rest in Peace, Coach. You went out on top.
The Flatpickin' Pilgrim's Progress 
