"Life is moving at a higher rate of velocity all the time. How do we become salt to a world that seems to pass us by, or collide directly with our beliefs? Culture is not something we can avoid, but it is something we can try to shape. Join us for your survival guide to popular culture, technology, entertainment and the impact it has on us and we can have on it."
Mark's lesson was about velocity or how we are in constant activity. He talked about Parkinson's Law which says, "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion." How true is that? I find myself many days here at home making a list of all the things that I feel like I need to get done. That list just never seems to get completed because if it even gets close, I find something else to add to it and fill my time with--something I just have to do.
He said that "culture teaches:
Any unused minute is poor time management.
If you stop for a moment, you are left behind.
We run a race with no end, and we are left empty when we slow down."
He talked about how "the more culture can keep us moving at a frantic pace, the less we focus on meaningful things. The result is a generation of people who have low tolerance, small measures of grace, and shallow relationships." This hit home with me--big time.
Lately I have been feeling like I am focusing on me too much. I have found myself thinking way too much about the way I look and always trying to work to make myself look better--feel better about myself. For me this has come by way of exercise and eating and even clothes. Our culture is way too focused on how we look. If we don't have a flat tummy or the perfect arms or weigh a certain amount, we are just not doing enough to get that way. So, we do more and more and more. We try to eat right, we exercise, we read this article, we buy this piece of equipment.
What has been really weighing on me lately is the question of what is my mind focused on? What I have realized is it hasn't been focused on where it should be.
I have a wonderful mother. She has been THE BEST example to me of having your mind focused on the right thing. I watched my mom growing up--daily read from God's word and I am amazed now, as a mom myself, that I have not followed in her footsteps. Ashamed is more the right word. I have allowed myself to believe that I don't have the time and it is okay because I am a young mom with 3 little kids who take up so much of my time. It is a lie. It is an excuse.
Last night Mark read this story told by Bill Harley that he found about t-ball. It is about taking in what really matters.
Generally, I avoid looking to kids' organized sports for any kind of inspiration. I think we're better off leaving the kids alone and let them pick teams for themselves. But last year, I had an epiphany watching an organized league game, and the experience has spawned a philosophy I hold close to my heart. I call it going for the dog.
Last year, my younger son played T-ball. This is the bottom step on the 20-rung ladder leading to Major League baseball, where it is possible to make millions of dollars and buy your parents a large house. Needless to say, I was delighted when Dylan wanted to play, though the bank wouldn't give me the $400,000 mortgage I promptly requested.
The rules for T-ball are different in many ways from the major leagues. First, there are no agents. There is no reserve clause. You go to the team that chooses you. In fact, there are only two teams in the league, with 25 kids on each team. Parents are friendly to each other, a civility which will dissolve in several years as the lottery for positions in the major league comes closer and closer. In T-Ball, everybody bats each inning, regardless of how many outs there are. In fact, an out is a rare occurrence. All 25 players play each inning, and are littered through the infield, forming a wall of humanity through which it is virtually impossible for a ball to pass.
On each team, there's one player who insists on fielding every ball and then running after the base runner, never throwing it. Balls are never thrown, and if they are thrown, they must either go over the head of the intended recipient or hit them in the back. Every player who scores has hit a home run, no matter how many times the ball has been thrown into the outfield. No such thing as an error. In T-ball, each player has a different concept of the score. In T-ball, kids have to go to the bathroom almost immediately. Civilian parents go out into the field and console their children who have skinned their knees or bumped into their neighboring infielder. And, of course, in T-ball, no one pitches. The ball sits on a plastic tee, waiting for the batter to hit it, which happens once every three batters.
Now, on the other team, there was a girl I will call Tracy. Tracy came each week. I know, since my son's team always played her team. She was not very good. She had coke-bottle glasses and hearing aids on each ear. She ran in a loping, carefree way, with one leg pulling after the other, one arm windmilling wildly in the air. Everyone in the bleachers cheered for her, regardless of for what team their progeny played. In all the games I saw, she never hit the ball, not even close. It sat there on the tee waiting to be hit and it never was. Sometimes, after ten or eleven swings, Tracy hit the tee. The ball would fall off the tee and sit on the ground six inches in front of home plate. "Run! Run," yelled Tracy's coach, and Tracy would lope off to first, clutching the bat in both arms and smiling. Someone usually woke up and ran down with the ball before she reached first. Everyone applauded.
The last game of the season, Tracy came up, and through some fluke, or simply a nod toward the law of averages, she creamed the ball. She smoked it right up the middle, through the legs of 17 players. Kids dodged as it went by or looked absentmindedly at it as it rolled unstopped, seemingly gaining in speed, hopping over second base, heading into center field. And once it reached there, there was no one to stop it.
Have I told you that there are no outfielders in T-ball? There are for three minutes in the beginning of every inning, but then they move into the infield to be closer to the action, or, at least, to their friends. Tracy hit the ball and stood at home, delighted. "Run!" yelled her coach. "Run!" All the parents, all of us, we stood and screamed, "Run, Tracy, run, run! Go!" Tracy turned and smiled at us, and then, happy to please, galumped off to first. The first base coach waved his arms 'round and 'round when Tracy stopped at first. "Keep going, Tracy, keep going! Go!" Happy to please, she headed to second.
By the time she was halfway to second, seven members of the opposition had reached the ball and were passing it among themselves. It's a rule in T-ball - everyone on the defending team has to touch every ball. The ball began to make its long and circuitous route toward home plate, passing from one side of the field to the other. Tracy headed to third. Adults fell out of the bleachers. "Go, Tracy, go!" Tracy reached third and stopped, but the parents were very close to her now and she got the message. Her coach stood at home plate calling her as the ball passed over the first baseman's head and landed in the field team's empty dugout. "Come on, Tracy! Come on, baby! Get a home run!"
Tracy started for home, and then it happened. During the pandemonium, no one had noticed the 12-year-old geriatric mutt that had lazily settled itself down in front of the bleachers, five feet from the third-base line. As Tracy rounded third, the dog, awakened by the screaming, sat up and wagged its tail at Tracy as she headed down the line. The tongue hung out, mouth pulled back in an unmistakable canine smile, and Tracy stopped, right there. Halfway home, 30 feet from a legitimate home run.
She looked at the dog. Her coach called, "Come on, Tracy! Come on home!" He went to his knees behind the plate, pleading. The crowd cheered, "Go, Tracy, go! Go, Tracy, go!" She looked at all the adults, at her own parents shrieking and catching it all on video. She looked at the dog. The dog wagged its tail. She looked at her coach. She looked at home. She looked at the dog. Everything went to slow motion. She went for the dog. It was a moment of complete stunned silence. And then, perhaps not as loud, but deeper, longer, more heartfelt, we call applauded as Tracy fell to her knees to hug the dog. Two roads diverged on a third-base line. Tracy went for the dog. I hope you go for the dog too.
I want to go for the dog. I want to go for God. I am tired of allowing this world to dictate to me what I should look like, how I should spend my time, what things I need to have, etc. It is draining. I want to be that example to my kids that my mom was to me. Yes, looking nice and being healthy is important and good, but is that really what I want my kids to see me all about? Absolutely not.
I've got a lot of changes to make. For you few people that still read my blog, please pray for me. Pray for me to go for the dog.
