Come On, Make the Play
There are so many things I'd like to blog about, sometimes I actually get around to it. Thing is I'm so busy with work and family. I regularly work 10, 11 hour days, and on Friday nights my son plays high school football. His team has a bye week this week, so I'm able to sit here at the computer for just a bit.
Another thing I've been doing is struggling to keep my sports celibacy. Since 1998 I've sworn off watching seeing reading following any sports stuff, simply because I get too emotionally involved. Really, sounds melodramatic, but I just do. Too many heartbreaks just get me.
I actually do pretty well, I really do...
But yes, often I'm weak.
Like this week.
I have to tell you, I'm a Kansas-born boy who was raised in the San Francisco bay area. I now live in the Los Angeles area so my favorite pro sports teams are the Chiefs, Giants, Royals, 49ers, and Angels. If you follow any of this at all, you'd be able to figure how I've been overwhelmed this week with the most boffo sports week ever for my teams.
Among other things, the Chiefs hammered the perennially great Patriots on Monday night football. Tuesday night the Royals had one of the greatest comeback victories over the A's to move on in the playoffs. Kansas City is rockin' right now. Meanwhile the Royals are playing my other AL team the Angels and the games are close, tight, and exciting. Wednesday night the Giants shellacked the Pirates to move on, and just today got by the heavily favored Nationals to take game one of their series.
Wuh. Oww.
I'll certainly get back into sports celibacy mode sometime. No expectations one way or the other, just having fun.
But I will say that I do have an idea of why this sports thing so appeals to me, among other reasons. The most relevant for this post is that on that field you're up against someone who's going to take you on, to challenge you, who's up there and in there for a reason.
They're capable and just want to mix it up, have the interaction, seek great accomplishment. It's all laid out right there on the field, and there is no question what the truth of a thing is.
Swing and miss it's a strike. Tackle him short of the first down marker and you get the ball.
I gravitate towards this because there are so few out here in the real world, on the playing field of vibrant discourse, who are willing to do this.
Really mix it up about truth things.
I share all of this because this week Camille Paglia wrote a piece in Time magazine that was pretty amazing. Paglia is a feminist of sorts -- don't know much about her except it seems like she has an ideologically conservative streak but it also seems she's not much for truly addressing "sexual freedom". I don't know, don't take my word for it. There is certainly much more about her I don't know yet.
But in this piece she speaks about the evils of sexual assault and that the world in its benighted, ignorant bubble of humanist fantasy just does not get it. She uses language that describes something that has been on the minds of millions and millions for centuries and centuries. Some now actually still do see it, though the profound and vast humanist indoctrination has muted them quite nicely.
What is that thing?
Sin.
In fact, as I read Paglia I felt like she was channeling Jonathan Edwards it was so rigorously vicious. You know Jonathan Edwards, that preacher of old who said we're dangling like dainty spiders about to fall in the raging flame. You know that talk, the stuff read by all school children -- yes, public school children -- for the purpose of identifying lots of spiffy adjectives and shrugging off its meaning as Neanderthal religious pap.
Thing is, Paglia doesn't pull any punches. Right there in a major mainstream news weekly, just flat out saying there is sin all around and we just don't appreciate it.
Of course, she isn't about to go the distance and say the only way out is Christ.
She just says it, that bad stuff, and uses some really boffo words to elucidate it for what it is. So then, yeah, what difference does it make. What's left for those who like staying with Cain completely away from the One they could call on. They could call on the name of the Lord, such as at the end of the fourth chapter of Genesis.
Instead it'll just be more of the war. Cain against those seeking to kill him even when he holds the iconographic signature of his authorized rule. Caesar against any usurpers as much as he provokes them. People lost in that morass just slugging each other and, yeah, there's the sexual assault and the other savage crimes and all the brutal law enforcement over and over and over again.
In fact, just read in Psalm 14, what evildoers do. They, quote, "devour people as if they were bread." There's human sacrifice right there. Can't be any clearer, what Paglia wrote can't be any clearer.
Oh yeah. I did say I like the competition, like in sports. But I want to prevail with my teammates. I want to hang with those who see the truth about things and the grace that is poured out by God. Instead it is just people walking away with "I don't know the faintest thing you're talking about." Errgck.
Come on people. Get in the game. Find out what's truthful. Let's talk about it even if it gets nasty.
From that there'll be truth, oh, there'll be hard, difficult truth. But guess what.
We'll also find grace, and mercy, and healing, and wholeness
And Him.
Another thing I've been doing is struggling to keep my sports celibacy. Since 1998 I've sworn off watching seeing reading following any sports stuff, simply because I get too emotionally involved. Really, sounds melodramatic, but I just do. Too many heartbreaks just get me.
I actually do pretty well, I really do...
But yes, often I'm weak.
Like this week.
I have to tell you, I'm a Kansas-born boy who was raised in the San Francisco bay area. I now live in the Los Angeles area so my favorite pro sports teams are the Chiefs, Giants, Royals, 49ers, and Angels. If you follow any of this at all, you'd be able to figure how I've been overwhelmed this week with the most boffo sports week ever for my teams.
Among other things, the Chiefs hammered the perennially great Patriots on Monday night football. Tuesday night the Royals had one of the greatest comeback victories over the A's to move on in the playoffs. Kansas City is rockin' right now. Meanwhile the Royals are playing my other AL team the Angels and the games are close, tight, and exciting. Wednesday night the Giants shellacked the Pirates to move on, and just today got by the heavily favored Nationals to take game one of their series.
Wuh. Oww.
I'll certainly get back into sports celibacy mode sometime. No expectations one way or the other, just having fun.
But I will say that I do have an idea of why this sports thing so appeals to me, among other reasons. The most relevant for this post is that on that field you're up against someone who's going to take you on, to challenge you, who's up there and in there for a reason.
They're capable and just want to mix it up, have the interaction, seek great accomplishment. It's all laid out right there on the field, and there is no question what the truth of a thing is.
Swing and miss it's a strike. Tackle him short of the first down marker and you get the ball.
I gravitate towards this because there are so few out here in the real world, on the playing field of vibrant discourse, who are willing to do this.
Really mix it up about truth things.
I share all of this because this week Camille Paglia wrote a piece in Time magazine that was pretty amazing. Paglia is a feminist of sorts -- don't know much about her except it seems like she has an ideologically conservative streak but it also seems she's not much for truly addressing "sexual freedom". I don't know, don't take my word for it. There is certainly much more about her I don't know yet.
But in this piece she speaks about the evils of sexual assault and that the world in its benighted, ignorant bubble of humanist fantasy just does not get it. She uses language that describes something that has been on the minds of millions and millions for centuries and centuries. Some now actually still do see it, though the profound and vast humanist indoctrination has muted them quite nicely.
What is that thing?
Sin.
In fact, as I read Paglia I felt like she was channeling Jonathan Edwards it was so rigorously vicious. You know Jonathan Edwards, that preacher of old who said we're dangling like dainty spiders about to fall in the raging flame. You know that talk, the stuff read by all school children -- yes, public school children -- for the purpose of identifying lots of spiffy adjectives and shrugging off its meaning as Neanderthal religious pap.
Thing is, Paglia doesn't pull any punches. Right there in a major mainstream news weekly, just flat out saying there is sin all around and we just don't appreciate it.
Of course, she isn't about to go the distance and say the only way out is Christ.
She just says it, that bad stuff, and uses some really boffo words to elucidate it for what it is. So then, yeah, what difference does it make. What's left for those who like staying with Cain completely away from the One they could call on. They could call on the name of the Lord, such as at the end of the fourth chapter of Genesis.
Instead it'll just be more of the war. Cain against those seeking to kill him even when he holds the iconographic signature of his authorized rule. Caesar against any usurpers as much as he provokes them. People lost in that morass just slugging each other and, yeah, there's the sexual assault and the other savage crimes and all the brutal law enforcement over and over and over again.
In fact, just read in Psalm 14, what evildoers do. They, quote, "devour people as if they were bread." There's human sacrifice right there. Can't be any clearer, what Paglia wrote can't be any clearer.
Oh yeah. I did say I like the competition, like in sports. But I want to prevail with my teammates. I want to hang with those who see the truth about things and the grace that is poured out by God. Instead it is just people walking away with "I don't know the faintest thing you're talking about." Errgck.
Come on people. Get in the game. Find out what's truthful. Let's talk about it even if it gets nasty.
From that there'll be truth, oh, there'll be hard, difficult truth. But guess what.
We'll also find grace, and mercy, and healing, and wholeness
And Him.
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