Angels in the Outfield

Something very touching happened very late last night. While most of America had already crawled into bed, the Los Angeles Angels clinched the pennant. After six grueling months of a seemingly eternal-long regular season -- a length of time that just grinds players down & almost empties their souls -- those Angels laid claim to the best record in the AL West Division & the ticket to the playoffs that comes with it. It is an accomplishment that can only be celebrated one way: by pouring copious amounts of alcohol all over one another. It is a special time where hours & hours and days & days and months & months of hard work is satisfied in a moment of wild, unharnessed exuberance.

For the Angels, this season was especially soul-draining & trying, though. Because very early in the season -- in the very first week of the season in fact -- they lost one of their own. Nick Adenhart, a young promising pitcher, lost his life after his vehicle collided with another vehicle that was being steered by a drunk driver.

It was tragic.

The Angels were left to pick up the pieces. As is true whenever you experience loss in life, life goes on. It was really almost unfair for each of those team-mates of Nick Adenhart's. They still had a season to play. Grieving, they had to go out night after night & perform under the big lights. And that they did. Without wallowing in self-pity or making excuses for lethargy, they went out and did their job. And they won the pennant.

Respect THAT!

(I've gotta say, as a fan of the team that will have to face the Angels in the first round of the playoffs, I'm not excited about playing them. They're a stronger team because of what they faced. Stronger than other Angels teams that the Red Sox have whipped in playoffs past.)

And yet, despite going through arduous routine & having been focused on doing their job everyday, the Angels still remember their fallen brother. Along with releasing all the pent-up joy & happiness from their fantastic accomplishment, the Angels released some other emotions, too. They let the world know that it still hurts. They told their fans that, even in this fit of machismo & chest-bumping, it's okay to cry. The Angels just missed their friend. And so they paid tribute to him in one of the neatest ways sports has ever seen. Here are some of the images:



And then, after the traditional clubhouse celebration, the Angels took it back out to the field -- to the outfield -- where the Nick Adenhart tribute banner sat on the outfield wall all season just staring back at them. And they honored him there, too:



And here are video clips of the tributes:

From ESPN: the so-called "Highlight of the Night"

From MLB.com: The Angels in the outfield


That had to be so wonderful for those Angels players. As an outside observer, there's a strong sense in which it looked like they felt that they shared one last moment with their buddy, Nick. Not that it's all about me here, but I know the feeling in my own life of accomplishing something and thinking how great it would be if I could call Mom & share that moment with her. Sometimes it's crushing when I realize I can't.

So that's why it was so touching to see those players have that moment:

• to empty the cans of beer on that empty jersey as if they were actually piling on their team-mate in real life...
• to run out to right-centerfield to be with Nick as if he were actually there...
• to lift a can in honor to him as if he were there actually appreciating the tribute...
• to take a team photo as if having Nick's image in the back-drop finally actually made things feel complete again.

What a rich moment that must have been. And what a loving act for those Angels to make to their fallen brother, and to his family. And, really, to every family everywhere that's ever lost a member. I'm not gonna forget these Angels in the outfield. How special are they.

There have been some under-the-radar special moments in baseball in the last couple of years. Josh Hamilton destroying his demons in Old Yankee Stadium last July in the Homerun Derby. With each swing of the bat, it seemed like he was slaying yet one more demon after another. Jon Lester throwing a no-hitter after having beat cancer. The more fireballs he threw, the stronger he made us all feel against the powers that threaten to destroy our lives. And now we have the Angels winning the pennant & paying tribute to Nick Adenhart. Reminding us that even when we lose a big part of us, we still have one another. I just wanna break out in praise over God giving us these moments to enjoy.

Politics and Conspiracy Theories: A Testimony

First, I urge you to watch this clip. There's a small movement afoot in America to try to convince President Obama to release his birth certificate. And apparently, for reasons I'm not quite up to speed on, a "Certificate of Live Birth" doesn't qualify or isn't the same thing as a "Birth Certificate." Anyhow, I'd like you to listen to just about 5 minutes of the discussion where Chris Matthews & his guest, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., talk about conspiracy theorizing in general. Watch...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Boy, that conversation was right on.

There's something dangerous about the mixture of politics & conspiracy theorizing. A seductive danger. Because when you talk politics, you're talking about issues of high importance -- issues beyond yourself. Issues like personal responsibility vs. social responsibility, and national interests vs. international interests, and so on & so forth. Big things; important things. But when you introduce conspiracy theories to the mix, it creates an altogether toxic stew. Because you think that you're talking about something very important & very critical when in fact there is very little evidence to support the reality of the subject matter itself. And people can be moved to do very sad, dangerous things.

I say this from experience.

My Mom was a conspiracy theorist. I'll try to spare you all the details, but I'm going to give you a lot of them. Because you need to know how insidious this way of thinking is. Because bad thinking begets bad life decisions. And I'm here to tell you that conspiracy theories leave a wreck in their wake.

As Mr. Tyrrell said in that clip, my mother was essentially a very bored lady. And about five years ago, she began to be caught up in conspiracy theories about the powers that were: the Bush Administration. My mother became convinced of theories that insisted that the President & his administration had engineered the 9/11 attacks. She made me watch videos & read materials insisting on the validity of this conspiracy. When I tried to show her evidence that contradicted her claim she refused to read it. Needless to say it was a trying experience.

A few other examples:

• She believed that the raised number & intensity of hurricanes from 3-5 years ago was from "the government" manipulating Gulf of Mexico temperatures.

• She believed that the Asian tsunami resulted from government seismic tests run amock.

• She believed in the Illuminati, that the Da Vinci Code was REAL, and that the plot from movie "The Manchurian Candidate" was an imminent threat.

So what? She believed crazy things. What's the big deal?

Well, for one thing, it consumed her life. Mom lived on-line, consuming all kinds of conspiratorial information while neglecting everything else -- including herself. For one thing, she didn't have a mammogram for almost 3 years. Not because she couldn't afford it, but because she didn't care to go get it. And so when she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer (there is no stage 5) and died 18 months later, we were all left thinking, "What if she'd gotten her mammograms & we had caught this earlier? What if???"

She sent E-mails to friends & family members about everything she was learning about government conspiracies. Yep: my mom was the "crazy aunt." She filled up everyone's E-mail inboxes with mail, guilting people to read her messages, and hurling obscenities at people when they wouldn't. To this day, I have over 3,000 unread E-mails in my Inbox at my Hotmail account from my Mom. I think I leave them there because it's something from my Mom that I can look back on. But everytime I try to look at a couple, they only make me sad because they're full of such meanness & vitriol.

There is one that my sister and I like to laugh at, though. I always would try to resist my Mom's imperatives about reading her messages with as much gentleness & firmness as I could muster. Every once in a while, though, she would goad me into reading one. And I would respond, and list all the issues I had against whatever conspiracy was being pushed. Talk about getting her goat! Oooh, it would fire her up when I was actually right & she was wrong, and she realized it but wouldn't admit it. So this one time, after pretty successfully countering whatever conspiracy claim she was furthering, she wrote back & called me a "mother f****r." Cracks us all up to this day! I guess I left my Mom feeling pretty jobbed after that particular E-mail.

That wasn't it, though. Not only did she spend all of her time on these issues, but just about all her money also. My sister & I have a storage unit and garage full of items to prepare us for the end of the world. Solar panels and batteries to hook up for whenever the power grid goes off line. Buckets upon buckets of vacuum-sealed food for whenever there's a run on grocery stores. At least we got rid of all the gold she had buried under the house. She liquidated all her assets into gold & silver. How dangerous! And of course it only made her more scared, because the black helicopters were out to come get her buried treasure.

If only I were joking.

I've become convinced that the theories my Mom adopted were calculated carefully by one end of the political spectrum to prey on the fearful & instill even more fear against the other side of the political spectrum. My Mom was a Democrat and loathed President Bush. But this theory today about our new President & where he was born is crafted by fearful people on the other side, and that theory is calculated to stir up even more fear about the party now in power.

I understand that these theories can sound enticing. And that they start with reasonable doubt ("Why IS the government trying to take more control???..."). But they really begin to lose touch with reality, and can start to lead to irrational behavior & difficult consequences.

And by the way, it's not just dumb people that are vulnerable. My Mom had a Masters education. I heard a story a few months ago about a man who committed a murder suicide with his son because of a conspiracy theory. That man was a respected licensed financial adviser who was head-deep into some theory about our economy. These theories prey on smart people too, and they make them do very foolish things.

I say all this to warn my friends about pursuing this kind of thinking. Question really hard what you hear from the political voices that appeal to fear. Just for fun, try to play Devil's advocate if you hear a political voice subtly pushing a conspiracy theory. I guarantee you that you'll find holes in those theories that you can peel open and expose.

I just wanted to share what happens to people who say that they're just pursuing "honest questions" & end up doing so to their own detriment. I saw what happened with my Mom when she went down this road. It didn't take her to a better place; in fact, it just left behind a giant mess for her loved ones to deal with when she was gone.

Being Nobody's Son

Enlightening words from Jim Sollisch this past Sunday...

[Being a son...] was my defining role for 49 years, until my mother died last April.

I mention this because I have learned in this year of grieving that most people calibrate their sympathy to your age. People seem to assume that the further you get from looking like a son, the less painful it must be for you to lose a parent. I suppose there's some truth to that, but no matter how old you are there's a powerful sadness to being no one's child. It took me by surprise.

I miss my mom every day. She visits my dreams, nagging me. I ache to tell her what each of my five kids is doing. To show her the house my wife and I just bought. To let her know whom I ran into at the store. My longing surprises me because I, too, feel like I'm old enough to be immune from needing my mother. But I have learned that we are still children, walking around inside these aging bodies.

That hit the nail on the head.

A hard part about mourning the loss of a mother when you're grown up is that it feels so emasculating to admit to: that you miss your Mom. What man cries out for his mommy??? And so it is a challenge to confront your feelings (and not run from them) and still fight to maintain some sense of dignity in doing so.

Also, there is difficulty in coming to grips with the idea that you are no longer someone's son. Think about it: of the hats we wear in society, and the roles we play, how long have we played each of them?

I've been doing ministry for about 7 years.
I've been a real tax-payer for about 4 or 5 years.
I've been a licensed driver for about 13 years.
I've been a Christian for 15 years.

But now consider that I've been a son since I came out of the womb. Or if you want to be real precise, go 9 months before then. Before I even breathed fresh air, I was somebody's son. And, yet, now I don't play that role anymore. That was a familiar hat to wear -- a comfortable hat, and a comforting hat. But it's not there on the shelf to wear anymore.

I don't say that to elicit any "I'm so sorry" comments, or to linger any longer in self-pity. Just to share insight into what people feel when they lose a parent. I think I've shared in prior postings about how it's a sad thing. And that it's a unique thing. And several other observations. But what I'm saying now is how this deal is also a disorienting thing. That constant of constants in our lives -- Mom -- when she's not there anymore can be almost a confusing thing. I mean, in the sense that a major part of our identity over the span of our lives has suddenly vanished -- that's a challenging thing to cope with. It's just one more thing to face among all the rest of the challenges -- actually missing Mom, managing the waves of emotion that come with a death, and so forth.

And like Mr. Sollisch says, it took me by surprise, too. I hadn't anticipated it. But it's a part of the deal.

In some ways, I've thought of this part -- being nobody's son -- as "graduation." As we live life, we progressively graduate to new levels in life that present various challenges at differing degrees of difficulty. In some ways, it feels like a new level. And there are other levels ahead. And then there's Bowser waiting at the end... ;) just kidding.

But, in a sense, it's natural. Mothers eventually die. Offspring have to function without their mother at their side.

Of course, realizing that doesn't make the process any easier. :) As Mr. Sollisch said in the article, I'm not sure the longing to continue to be a son ever really goes away. But having the progressive sense about life helps conceptualize the big picture of everything. And having a big picture perspective is important to finding the way forward.

I'm not sure how to finish this up, so I'll say a note of thanks here to readers who have made kind gestures of compassion recently, around the anniversary of Mom's passing & Mother's Day. If there's one thing I continue to learn through this, it's compassion. I'm grateful for the notes, the kind words, the thoughts of remembrance. They've been a relief. And I thank you all for them.

Re-Thinking Birthdays

I've been wondering lately: how selfish are we on our birthday's? Seriously.

I kid my sister about it, but she almost literally makes her's a month-long holiday. "I can't do my laundry... for crying out loud, it's my birthday in 12 days!" Okay, she's not that bad. But I do call her "The Birthday Diva."

There is a lot of sort of culturally-induced pressure on us to make sure we have a great day on our birthday. We're supposed to get well-wishes, phone calls, cards, gifts, etc. If we don't, our birthday's ring sort of hollow. Our birthday's are all about us.

And then I think about who did all the work on our birth dates. The wonderful women who hauled us around in their wombs for 40 weeks. And then went through that unimaginable experience of bringing us out into the open world. And then put up with all of our shenanigans, and loved us despite them, for however many years we've known them. When I consider all of that, it makes me think that we're putting the wrong person up on a pedestal on our birthday's.

From now on, I'm resolved to treat my birthday as I would Mother's Day. I'll accept the well-wishes & kindness when it comes. But, from now on, I'm going to focus my mind & energies on spending each October 23rd celebrating my Mom's goodness in giving me the gift of life. She's not with me anymore, but I'm going to devote that day to her: whether that's remembering her, donating some service or money to a charity she loved, or whatever.

I kinda wish I had a couple do-over's so I could have practiced this in her presence. Put her up on a pedestal instead of letting culture dictate to me that that day is all about my personal happiness.

From now on my birthday will be "Thank Mom Day." Just thought I'd share that out loud...

Natural Highs: Walking With a Toddler

Taking a not-quite 2 year-old for a walk.

I have a favorite baby at church. I'm sorry if the other young mother at my church is reading this, but she probably knows its true anyway. :) Her name is Cassie. She will turn two in the spring of '09. And outside of her parents, I may be her favorite person in the world that she sees on a semi-regular basis. It makes several of the ladies at church jealous on certain days when she's shy: she will come to me & let me hold her, but hardly anyone else. She is the cutest little friend I have.

Cassie has the most charming smile. It could charm the socks off anyone. It did my Mom. Many of you may not be aware that my Mom was not a fan of the Churches of Christ. It would take a big event to get her through the doors. But once when she came to visit the church where I preach & she met Cassie, she wanted to be there every time the doors were open. My Mom loved little girls. She used to joke about how she'd buy anything if the person selling it slapped a little girl on their commercial, like in this Cheerios commercial. Wouldn't matter if it was anthrax! Mom would buy it.

I guess that sort of explains why the first time I saw Cassie's cute smile at church again after my Mom's passing that that was one of the more emotional parts of the grieving experience. I realized how Mom loved that grin, and how she wouldn't ever see it again. She wouldn't get to watch Cassie grow up like I was going to.

Still, I enjoy anytime I get Cassie to myself without one of the other kids or Church members harassing her to hold her. Whether it's holding her & her playing with my glasses, us playing her "Sharing game" (She's holding something -- anything -- and then she hands it to me, and then I hand it to her, and then she hands it to me...), or whatever we do together.

But my VERY favorite thing is when I get to take little Cassie for a walk. Cassie started walking some time ago in the summer, and she loves to do it. I'll stink my index finger down toward her, and she'll wrap her little hand around it, and we will walk around the church building. We'll walk down the hallway, through the fellowship hall, down another hallway, into the auditorium, around all the pews, back into the foyer, back through the hallway. It doesn't matter where we go. The fun is just in sharing the walk with her. It's a total natural high.

Spiritual Growth Workshop

Every two years, Christians from all over Florida (and a couple other places) gather in Orlando, FL in July for a weekend seminar called "The Spiritual Growth Workshop." I was able to attend this year, and here are some of my reflections...

• As I was driving down on Thursday, it hit me that it was exactly eight years ago at this conference that I began to receive my call to full-time ministry. Some people get uncomfortable talking about a call, and I understand that; I'm just not shy about it. I don't think I'm extra spiritual, though, because I have a moment to point toward. I read a book in undergrad about personality type & religious leadership, and the book told me that my personality type (INFJ) tends to experience "a call" to ministry very strongly.

(However, I do think I am extra spiritual because of my personality type. That same book proclaimed that Jesus was probably an E- or INFJ. So, basically, I'm a lot like God)

SGW 2000 happened after my freshman year at Florida. I was majoring in Chemical Engineering. I had excelled chemistry & math in high school (and hated liberal arts stuff), but I was beginning to grow disinterested in those subjects. I was really beginning to thrive in my faith, and even remember thinking about taking a possible future role in church leadership seriously. It occurred to me that I might be a future Elder or Deacon in the church, and if that were going to happen I ought to take my faith more seriously. So I was doing a lot of reading and searching, and exploring the spiritual disciplines.

The minister of my home congregation had tried to put a bug in my ear a couple of times before about ministry. In a very flattering way he would say, "Boy, Philip, I think you've got a lot to offer, and I'd really like to see you become a minister." When I ran into him at this workshop 8 years ago, he couldn't help but do it again. I remember replying that I had been thinking about being an Elder or Deacon one day. A few moments later, his friend Wayne Kilpatrick (a regular speaker at SGW who I had just listened to) passed by and he introduced me saying, "Wayne, meet a future Elder or Deacon in the church." I can't remember the last time I'd been so flattered & embarrassed.

As I was wandering around the convention area of the hotel that afternoon, looking at the book exhibits & fraternizing with others off and on, an uncomfortably direct question hit my head: "What's stopping you from pursuing a life of full-time ministry?" Having just come out of a serious romantic relationship, and feeling relatively untied-down, the simple one-word answer was even more unsettling: "Nothing."

I remember feeling very intimidated & shaken when worship began before the evening keynote session. I was sitting with my friend Kristen and her Mom, and Kristen noticed that something was off with me. I imagine that I looked like I had seen a ghost. She asked if I was okay, and I told her I'd talk about it later.

And we did. She gave me some great advice: take a few months and stew on it. She said that if it was a whim it would settle down, but that if it was a real yearning then the desire would grow even more. After a couple months of careful consideration, I decided that I would transfer to Harding the following fall. And that was that!

• So, I brought warm feelings down to central Florida with me. Instead of catching the Thursday evening keynote, I spent that afternoon and evening with Kristen & her husband Justin in Gainesville. They are fantastic people -- Kingdom servants of the highest order. We chit-chatted about a host of things, and our old campus minister Donny D. came over for about an hour and we engaged in our old pastime: SPADES! I can't explain how much that card game was a staple of my UF college experience. You just would have had to experience it to understand. Let's just say... lots of late nights, with lots of store-brand Mountain Dew, and lots of goldfish crackers, and WWF wrestling was involved with all of that somehow as well.

• The speaker quality seemed a little down this year. Other than Randy Harris (who really did just a marvelous job on content, even if he recycled a bunch of old jokes I'd already heard -- I am a sermon hound, however, so I may be the only one who caught the repitition), Randy Lowry (new Lipscomb Prez), and Wayne Kilpatrick, there wasn't really anyone else I enjoyed. There was this especially poor speaker named Matthew Dabbs. I hope they never invite him back.

• I typed that last part with my tongue firmly pressed in my cheek. The author of Kingdom Living is one of my "best good friends," and it was so much fun to see him get an opportunity to speak. I already told him this, and he probably recognized it, but I just sat through his session with a big, goofy grin on my face. Matt has a special mind, and it was encouraging to me that he was given a platform to speak. He did a great job talking about the Kingdom of God out of the Gospel of Mark.

• Another fellow minister that I enjoyed running into this weekend was Damien Barber. Damien's Mom Janice and my Mom got to be best buddies last year when they met at radiation clinic everyday (that's a picture of my Mom on the left in her profile picture). And it just so happened that both of their sons were, as my Mom would say, "Church of Christ ministers."

Mama loved Janice. Janice had never been to the beach, so this time last year she invited Janice and her family down to Panama City Beach for a week. They rented a 3-bedroom condo, and Mom took care of the bill. It dove-tailed with Damien & his new wife's honeymoon, so they stayed there for part of the week as well.

Mom *loved* doing stuff like that. She called it "Playing Santa Claus." Paul called it "being a cheerful giver." It comforts me that right before that Paul says that God loves those kinds of folks.

Damien gave me the news that his Mom is in remission. Praise God for that!

• You know, sometimes -- maybe even a lot of times -- the business side of Kingdom work can be awkwardly incongruent with Kingdom values. Matt & I spoke about a couple of situations like that over lunch Friday -- ungodly Elders, or ungodly ministers, or awkward leadership situations.

Its even sort of funny how selfish ambition can get caught up into a profession where you would expect the greatest leaders to be the most humble. There's a sense in which a conference-type atmosphere is a showcase for your own ministry skills: one's ability to speak, or to "work a room," or network with brotherhood power-brokers, or whatever.

I think I'd be dishonest if I said I didn't struggle with that. There's a part of me that feels like I have a word or two to share with that kind of an audience. And when I hear a speaker not quite deliver -- as I witnessed in a few occasions this weekend -- Satan can be suggestive in urging me to feed that little pride monster inside.

I think a great counter to selfish ambition, however, is spending yourself in encouragement. Rather than spending the weekend sulking over insulted pride, I chose to focus on building up others around me. There's something about "playing Barnabas" that heads off selfish ambition completely.

• Its good to receive that kind of encouragement, as well. At one of the final sessions I went to, I ran into an old UF buddy named Scott. You'd have to know Scott to appreciate this, but he looks JUST LIKE "The Rock." He can even do that thing with his eyebrow. One of the first things Scott said to me was, "When are you speaking?" I told him I wasn't, and he said, "Man, they need to get you on the roster. You should be speaking at this thing."

Scott is a great encourager. I remembered that I spent some of my last months in the campus ministry at UF teaching a Wednesday night Bible class, and Scott always had some of the most encouraging comments for me each night.

Scott introduced me to his new wife, and said, "This is Phil... he was in the campus ministry... '98-'02, right?" I had to correct him and say, "Nope -- '99-'01. I was there just for two years." Scott said, "Oh. Well, you just made a big impact."

Thanks, Scott ;)