Steve Bartman: Sacrificial Lamb

Last night ESPN aired a piece of original programming, a film called Catching Hell.  It was directed by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer) who, apparently, loves colons.  I wish I could say it was a "great" documentary because it's about a story that I find absolutely fascinating, but my fascination is, I think, the thing that saved the doc from being pretty sub-par.

The story of Catching Hell is the story of Steve Bartman, the Cubs fan who may have interfered with a Cubs outfielder attempting to catch a foul ball in the 2003 NLCS.  (That's "National League Championship Series" to you, the round of the playoffs before the World Series)  The Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908, are considered (by Cubs fans) to be cursed.

The Cubs were ahead 3-0 when Bartman reached over the wall in the top of the 8th inning of Game 6, but when on to lose that game and the decisive Game 7 to end their hopes of a World Series victory.  The interesting thing for us is the fans' treatment of Bartman, both in the stadium after the fateful play and in the weeks and months following the end of the series.

I won't go into the details, except to say that Bartman has been in hiding, literally, since that day 8 years ago.  He was tracked down by a journalist for this article several years ago, but that's it.  He's been offered hundreds of thousands of dollars for appearances, autographs, and commercials, and has turned down every dime.  He's gotten death threats, continually.  It's a tragic story.

In the documentary, a Unitarian Universalist minister, The Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, offers a religious perspective.  She compares Bartman to a sacrificial lamb, chosen by the "congregation" as the vessel into which they could pour their sins (or in this case, their hatred).  Of course, the Rev. Ms. Rolenz is constrained by her beliefs; she can't talk about Jesus.  Being a Unitarian Universalist, she doesn't think he's anything particularly special.  The image of the crowd turning on an innocent and demanding his blood (proverbial in Bartman's case, and literal in Jesus') is a "universal" one, but it's also a particularly Christian one.  Both Bartman and Christ were shouted at, spit on, and reviled.

It is our nature to turn our guilt into shouts of "Guilty!" directed at another.  The stadium that night and the city of Chicago did it to Bartman in 2003 and the world did it to Jesus.  A righteous man makes us all the angrier about our guilt.  Here's hoping that Steve Bartman knows that Jesus went through an even more terrifying version (the weight of the sin of the world versus the scorn of a baseball stadium) of what he did, and that Jesus' sacrifice was chosen.  And not only that, but that Christ died for Bartman, who ruined a game, and for all of us, in the face of all that we ruin.

Martin Luther on Grace and Peace

Having just begun our Bible study on St. Paul's letter to the Galatians (Thursdays at noon and Sundays at 9am), I was struck by some of Martin Luther's words in response to Paul's prayer that "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace" (Gal 1:3).  Luther says that Paul chose those words carefully, and that those "two words [grace and peace] contain all the belong to Christianity."  He says that "grace releases sin, and peace makes the conscience quiet."

Despite our efforts to achieve peace through a host of other methods: sound financial planning, righteous behavior, whatever; Luther contends that Paul's claim is that true peace can only come through grace.  He says elsewhere that our "quest for glory [and we could replace glory here with "peace"] can never be satisfied.  It must be extinguished."  In other words, there is no place you could attain at which you couldn't imagine being more peaceful.  "The grass is always greener," and all that.

Despite the fact that, because of Christ's saving work, we actually have been given peace through grace, Luther goes on to say that though the words are simple, "during temptation, to be convinced in our hearts that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing."  And this is true to human Christian experience, right?  When faced with a situation, to accept that our standing with God is secure even if we make the wrong choice is a next-to-impossible thing to accept.  This is why our consciences are so often troubled.  We just flat-out can't really believe that God will be graceful to us and we therefore cannot have peace.

This is why it is important for Paul to begin his letter by wishing the Galatians grace and peace through God and Jesus Christ.  This is why it's important for all of us to hear it every week, every day, every minute.  If you want to learn more about the wonderful grace of Jesus Christ that can lead to real and everlasting peace, join us as we read and digest Galatians on either Thursday afternoons or Sunday mornings.  All are welcome!

Days of Thunder - You're Out of Control!

Days of Thunder is such a fun movie.  For any who haven't seen it, it's Top Gun in race cars.  Literally.  Despite its therefore necessary fluff and Tom Cruise preening, Days of Thunder has at least one moment of true profundity.  Here it is:

I would argue with Claire (Nicole Kidman) on one point.  I don't think that most people "automatically know" that they are basically unable to control anything about their lives.  In fact, I think that the human impulse is to control every aspect of life, and we react very badly when control either slips away or is wrested from us.  Want evidence?  Just try telling someone that free will doesn't exist.  See how they react.  

I do, though, think that Claire is right in her main assertion.  Control is often an illusion.  Cole's assertion that he desires to "control something that's out of control" (his racecar) is an obvious contradiction in terms.  Even if he is able to control the car he's in, he can't control the other "infantile egomaniacs" on the track.  

As Claire points out, we can't even control the goings-on within our own bodies!  We can put braces on our teeth, Norvasc in our blood, Paxil in our brains, collagen in our lips, and silicone in our breasts...but we can't control the only thing we're really trying to:  aging and death.

This urge to control goes all the way back to Eden when Adam and Eve desired to "be like God," i.e. to be in control.  The result of their decision is that we all desire control and, most nefariously, have convinced ourselves that we have it.  The upshot of this delusion is that, as our sense of control rises, our feeling of need (especially for a savior) wanes.  Better to acknowledge the truth of the situation, that we are perilously out of control, both internally and externally, and are just moments away from a debilitating crash. 

Eyes open to the realities of life, and our lack of control, we are much more likely to cry out for help.

The Toddler Gospel

This week's post is copied from the wonderful Mockingbird Blog, to which I am a sometime contributor. The original post can be found HERE, and it is written by my friend Sarah Richey:

I was reminded recently of the wonderful children's book, The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. For those of you who haven't read it in a while, it's about a little bunny who decides to run away.

He tells his mother, "I am running away," and she replies, "If you run away, I will run after you. For you are my little bunny." So the little bunny schemes, "If you run after me, I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you." And the mother never hesitates, "If you become a fish... I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you." And it goes on, and the little bunny becomes a bird, and a crocus, and a sailboat...and the mother becomes a tree, and a gardener, and the wind, and so on, always finding her little bunny. In short, it's brilliant! I'm no connoisseur of children's books, but I can't think of one that better describes our relationship to God. We run away, and he becomes like us to bring us back to him.

So, reading the Runaway Bunny reminded me of another favorite and classic children's book, The Little Engine That Could. Just thinking about it makes me feel nostalgic; the little bright blue engine, the colorful vintage pictures of the dolls, toys, the clown, the candy!

But flipping through it, I realized that now its message is lost on me. "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." conjured up uneasy memories of self-esteem workshops in middle school and a stressful feeling that I should ditch this post and get back to studying for an exam. It seems that life is just a little too real for the Little Engine for the thoughts occupying my head are less often "I think I can, I think I can" and more "Why didn't I?" or "No, I guess I couldn't". The pictures are fun, but I fear that I may have read the Little Engine a few too many times, and the Runaway Bunny not enough.

And the Floodwaters Rose...

After deciding to cancel the 10:00 service...where would you have parked, anyway?

Our foyer, which is about FOUR FEET above the ground!

So then, after the waters receded, and the dove did not return to the ark, the National Catastrophe Team showed up.  No, they're not a government agency.

Everything below four feet from the floor had to go...literally, everything.

Groundwater contaminated stuff needs to be thrown away...and there was a LOT of groundwater contaminated stuff!

The rebuilding process is underway...thanks for all the prayers and support!

Eternal Sunshine and God's Okay

I just watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again last night. As always, wow. If you haven't seen this amazing Michel Gondry film of 2004, written by the one-of-a-kind Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) and starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet (nominated for an Oscar), you must rent it TONIGHT! Call me and I'll loan it to you!

In broad strokes, (mild spoiler alert!) the film is about Joel and Clementine (Carrey and Winslet), a normal couple who fall in and eventually out of love with one another. Clementine, the impulsive one, has Joel erased from her memory. When Joel finds out, he is crushed, and in turn, agrees to have Clementine erased from his memory. The film follows Joel's memories of his relationship with Celementine (as they are erased!), and his gradual realization that he wants to keep the memories rather than lose them.

Unfortunately for Joel, the procedure gets completed, and he wakes up with no memory of the woman he once loved. Somehow, though, he and Clementine (neither remembering the other) go to Montauk the next day, meet up, and begin what they think is a new relationship. Confusing? Yes, you'll have to see the movie twice, but it's well worth it.

Meanwhile, a disenfranchised employee down at the memory-erasing office decides to mail former patients' files back to them, having decided that the whole memory erasing thing is immoral. The upshot is that Clementine and Joel, thinking they've just met for the first time, find themselves listening to tapes of each other telling the doctor why they'd like to erase their former lover. They hear all their complaints about each other before they get into the relationship! And then we get the following exchange:

Joel: I don't see anything I don't like about you.
Clementine: But you will! But you will, and I'll get bored with you and feel trapped, because that's what happens with me.
Joel: Okay.

Joel's "Okay" is a profound statement of love. Provided with empirical proof that this nascent relationship will not be idyllic, he decides that he loves Clementine enough to get into it anyway. I've thought since I first saw this film that this idea must have been Charlie Kaufman's inspiration: If two people knew a relationship wasn't going to work out, would they get into it anyway? How powerful is love?"

His conclusion is that love is very powerful...perhaps the ultimate power. Love causes us to do irrational things; behave in irresponsible ways. As Christians, we believe that love is the foundation of everything. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16). And this love, true to form, is irrational and irresponsible. It is love that is one-way, love that is unreturned. We are incapable of loving back in the same way that we are loved. We might say, with Clementine, "I'll get bored with you and feel trapped, because that's what happens with me." And Jesus, knowing us, and loving us, says, "Okay."

Little Miss Sunshine and Losing

With one of the indie hits of 2006, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (directors) and Michael Arndt (writer), introduced us to the quirkily disfunctional Hoover family. In Little Miss Sunshine, it is little Olive (Abigail Breslin) who drives the plot. She is seven years old, and is invited to participate in the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant in Redondo Beach, CA. The trick is, the family lives in Albuquerque, is poor, and nobody trusts anybody enough to leave anybody behind. So they all pile into the family's VW bus and hit the road. The driver is patriarch Richard (Greg Kinnear), purveyor of a self-help Nine Steps to something book. His wife, Sheryl (Toni Collette), doesn't have a trait to pigeon-hole her, but she's the manic glue that holds the family together. Sheryl's brother, Frank (Steve Carrell), is fresh off a suicide attempt and may or may not be the world's preeminent Proust scholar, depending on who you ask. Richard's father (Alan Arkin, who won an Oscar for the performance) is along for the ride, too, having been kicked out of his retirement home for lewd behavior and rampant cocaine use. Completing the family constellation are Olive, the would-be pageant queen, and Dwayne (Paul Dano), a Nietzsche-reading sulker who, in his own words, "hates everyone." Quite the rogue's gallery.

A family such as this is certainly ripe for conflict, and much conflict arises on their two day trip across the Southwest. The particular conflict that I want to focus on today is Richard's conflict with his family over his Nine Steps. Fundamentally, the Nine Steps are like any self-help program: They posit a capability inherent in everyone and then attempt to teach you to access it, and then to use it, to achieve your life goals. Richard has drunk his own Kool-Aid to the point that when Frank comes to their house from the hospital, he explains to Olive that Frank "gave up on himself, which is something winners never do." As you might imagine, all the winners vs. losers talk around the home has alienated his son, pushed away his father, and brought his marriage to the brink of divorce. And then, in the ultimate indignity, Richard himself is shown to be a loser, when the book deal he's been counting on falls through.

The losing ways of the Hoovers are brought into sharp relief by the filmmakers upon their eventual arrival at the Little Miss Sunshine Pageant. It is immediately obvious that Olive, sweet, precocious and talented as she is, is no beauty queen. There is a quiet push from the family, now closely bonded together due to the harrowing experiences they've shared on the road, to pull Olive out of the pageant.

Ultimately, Olive herself is asked what she'd like to do. She's clearly intimidated by the other girls, and has never been more sure that she's fat, but she decides to go on anyway. As the family expected, she is woefully out of place, and that's never more apparent than in the talent portion of the competition. But, amazingly, when Olive fails spectacularly in her dance routine, the family runs up on-stage and joins her in the dance, embracing their collective loser-hood.

And really, that's what Little Miss Sunshine is all about. It's about a man, but really a family, who is so afraid of being a loser that he creates a system that "guarantees" winning. But the winning (a happy family) only gets created when the losing is acknowledged and embraced. We might draw the parallel to the Church's "law." The church attempts to create a "Nine Steps" to a good life, to happiness, by giving us all kinds of things to do. But the law can't make us good. In other words, its requirements don't give us the power to keep them. It's only in realizing that we're losers that true winning is possible.