Words from WW Blog

My seventh grade boys’ basketball team finished its season this past week. Yes, I know it’s only mid-November, but our league fits five different sports seasons into a school year. Boys’ basketball begins the first week in October. Girls’ basketball gets rolling the week after Thanksgiving.

Seriously, the time of the year did not make any difference. Our team of 13 boys, several unknowingly wearing some of the girl’s uniforms because the boy’s uniforms were too large for them, struggled at times to understand offenses, defenses, press breakers, presses, inbounds plays, and how to rebound…Wait a minute! That’s pretty much the whole game of basketball!

But they also struggled to keep track of their uniforms, where their water bottle was, not jumping over the free throw line, keeping their shoes tied, and not just running onto the court when they were told to sub in for someone during a game.

After all, they are seventh-grade boys. They are just beginning to experience underarm deodorant sticks, considering the value of combing their hair, and trying to figure out why the Mary Janes are always staring at them and giggling.

Basketball is like a 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle for most of them. They can figure out what the border pieces are and gradually which of the four sides each piece belongs on, but the overwhelming bulk of the picture is a mystery that will take a long time to figure out.

Consider this confusing puzzle. With 17 seconds left in the game and trailing by double-digits, one of my players tried to shoot a three-pointer on the opponents pass. The inbounds pass came from underneath the other team’s basket. Thankfully, the shooter didn’t connect on a three-pointer the whole season– and maybe his whole life– and wasn’t close this time either. But after the final seconds clicked off the question occurred to me, why had our four other players on the court also been lining like it was an inbounds play? In other words, all five had been led like lambs to the slaughter into believing they were shooting at the basket 94 feet away from the one they should have been heading.

Consider this confusing, misplaced piece. An hour before our last game one of our smaller players came to me and, with fear in his eyes, said, “Coach, I can’t find my uniform!”

“You mean this uniform that was left on the floor of the locker room two days ago?” Since his assigned number was on the uniform, I knew it was his.

Sheepishly, “Yes.”

Consider this very clear corner piece of the puzzle that is self-explanatory. In our last game, a very close game, the other team had the boy out-of-bounds underneath their basket. Number 40 was killing us all game and our main player had four fouls. At a timeout the other coach and I said to one of our players, “You have #40. Play him man-to-man, Number 40! That’s a four followed by a zero! Number 4-0! That’s who you have!”

The game resumed and number 40 received the inbounds pass right by the basket and laid it to put the other team up by two points with less than a minute left. We called timeout and said to our player, “You were suppose to guard number 40.” He looked at us and with sincerity written all over his face replied, “I forgot!”

It’s a puzzle and it’s puzzling…but I’m chuckling as I think about it.

Forty years ago plus one day ago, my wife said “It’s time!” I helped her down the steps to our Toyota Corona and we drove to St. Lawrence Hospital on the west side of Lansing, Michigan to begin a few tense and, for her, painful hours of labor and delivery. At 1:21 A.M. on November 8th, Kecia Corin Wolfe arrived and immediately gave us a scare as she struggled to breathe.

Forty years later we struggle to contain our emotions of thankfulness for her and pride we feel because of her. It is a bit strange to realize that you have a child who now has a four in front of her age, even stranger than that moment Carol and I realized we could order off the Senior Menu at the restaurant.

Kecia followed the trend of her mom and also gave birth to three kids. Besides that, she “mothers” and instructs a classroom of third-graders each year, sees their potential, applauds their efforts, and deals with the nonconformists. She has always been a self-motivator, striving to reach that challenging bar that seems ominous.

But more than her grit and punk, Kecia’s character is what brings tears to our eyes and smiles to our hearts. She is a woman of integrity, deeply-committed to her family, dependable for her friends. She has a soft spot for the struggling, shows an urgency in her praying for the afflicted, and strives to be available to listen to the hurting.

In my opinion, her patience is numbing. She goes to great lengths to help her students grow in their learning and also their maturity. Sometimes, however, she has to contend with parents who stepped out of line when common sense was being handed out. She sees down the road and what is best for the student, striving to hold her ground when she can see the ripple effects of bad student decisions on the distant horizon.

She is a person of faith, understanding that there is a strength that is not her own but available to her, an Encourager that walks closely beside her while, at the same time, dwelling within her. She knows Jesus in a very personal way and models Christlikeness for her kids.

As Carol and I look back over the years, we can see how God has shaped her into who she is. We can remember heartaches that wounded her and yet caused her to be sensitive to the stumbles of others. We remember the few times her friends failed her and can see how it has caused her to latch on to the principle of authentic friendship. We remember her successes and see how they instilled in her the excitement of applauding the successes of others.

She has lived a life well for the past forty years and, we pray, as she celebrates this milestone that she will see the coming years as being a continuation of the impact she is having on those around us. Happy birthday, Oldest Child!

Yesterday I was the guest teacher for our middle school’s physical education teacher. It was…different!

It’s not that I had never been the substitute for physical education. About three years ago I filled in for the teacher so many times I left him a welcome letter with instructions one day. Since I was teaching a language arts class the whole time last year, this was my first P.E. class in two years. All that being said, it was still different. There is a different vibe going on with many of the students.

For clarification, I had two classes each of each middle school grade level, 6th, 7th, and 8th. In each class there seem to be more outliers, students whose main objective was to be noticed in some way. For a number of them, outward appearance is how they distinguish themselves: hair color(s), clothing, facial indifference, voice volume, a style of shoe that would only look in-place at an army boot camp, jewelry from the beyond, and…one Apple AirPod.

When I announced to each class that we were going outside to play a variation of the game of Kickball, there were whines and groans from a number of them. It had been a cold week until yesterday, temperatures mostly in the 30s and 40s, but yesterday the sun was shining and most of the classes enjoyed 60’s and low 70s. The groans were an indication that many of them have become sedentary creatures, more comfortable playing video games and doing social media than physical exercise. Of course, I also have to attribute some of the groans to middle school students’ reactions to a direction given by the teacher. It’s on the same level of reaction as Americans who are told that there’s a new tax in town that they will be “participating in.”

So there were appearance outliers, allergic to outdoor physical exercise…and then there was the dumbfounding realization that a number of them had never played kickball, or even knew how to play. Seriously! I’m not exaggerating! They had no clue. I’m sure they could tell me how to be categorized as awesome and amazing on Minecraft, but what to do as a rolling ball comes toward them…confusion! Obviously, none of them live in the Colorado Springs neighborhood close to the center of town that has a weekly kickball game where whole families gather to kick and run and laugh and bond. You know, the one that was shutdown by law enforcement for a while out of concern for someone getting hurt, since they played in the middle of the street. (The middle of the street used to be where most of our games of football and whiffleball happened in my growing up years!)

Finally, every class had several students who had no interest in learning. It wasn’t a lack of interest in learning a new game, but rather a lack of interest in learning. Since they didn’t have a laptop in front of them to do classroom assignments and sneak in a few minutes of playing a video game, their attention was on their class friends and perfecting their ability to stand around and do nothing. The idea of being a part of a team in a game for a few moments was something they had no desire to commit to. Kinda like those students in the classroom who contribute nothing to a group project that involves two or three others. There was no sense of responsibility and desire to be a part of a team effort.

All that being said, there were plenty of students who WERE with the program, who did contribute and enjoy it, and were engaged, but that category of student seems to be a diminishing part of the student population. My opinion only, I think it’s another ripple effect of the pandemic and a mostly-lost year of school socialization and in-class instruction. Many students are still searching for their place, fearful of becoming so engaged and then suddenly relegated to remote learning. They are only showing half of their faces, so how can they be identified?

Back to my first statement. I taught P.E… and it was different. It makes you long for the way things used to be, as opposed to the new norm!

Yesterday Carol and I were in attendance at the funeral of a dear elderly gentleman who passed away at the well-lived-life of 90. During the service a lady, who like the deceased, had been a mentor for me spoke about her departed friend. Since I had retired from my career as a pastor at the end of 2015, our paths had only crossed a couple of times.

As she spoke I felt a sense of sadness and loss at how we hadn’t connected, the opportunities that we had missed. She being in her late-80s now, it really had fallen to me to initiate our chats and I had let it gradually drift away. After the service we were talking and I apologized to her. I said, “Vera, I’m sorry that we haven’t gotten together with you, taken you to dinner, and talked for about three hours. I have no excuse. Quite honestly, life has gotten in the way.”

She understood, but it didn’t erase the disappointment I had in myself. Life had been thrown into a container, shaken, and rolled out like Yahtzee dice to reveal a new configuration. Last year I unexpectedly had ended up teaching 7th Grade language arts from August through May. My teaching has been heavy on the assignments so far this year also. COVID-19 has thrown a monkey wrench into the plans for most of us. There have been other things that have come up as well, but the bottom line is that I so often allow responsibilities to get in the way of relationships.

It seems like the responsible thing to do, right? Taking care of responsibilities is the grown up thing to do, right? In saying that I’m feeling my “Martha” coming out. Jesus had been at her house and Martha had been scurrying around taking care of “responsibilities”. After all, the bread doesn’t get ready for baking on its own…and this is Jesus that is being waited on…and, and someone needs to take charge and get the dishes, drinks, napkins, food, dessert, and wash basin ready. The words of Luke put it into context. He says that “Martha was distracted by the preparations.” Meanwhile, her sister Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, which irked Martha to the nth degree.

And Jesus replies to her whining with these words,  “Martha, Martha! You are worried and upset about many things, but only a few things are needed—or indeed only one^. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Well, my Martha had been in the dominant spot for a while. Life has gotten in the way. I’ve tended to be richly responsible and relationally-restricted.

There’s been glimpses of relational richness, like when I flew to St. Louis about month ago and drove up to Springfield, Illinois for a reunion of my Judson College cross country team 45 years later. What an awesome couple of days that was! I thank God for Jim and Lynn Fay who brought up the idea last March when Carol and I drove over to Aspen and had dinner with them during their days in Colorado skiing.

Life just has a way of getting in the way and blurring our vision. My two best friends in ministry, Chuck Moore and Tom Bayes, and I have talked about getting together for the past two years. Tom lives outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Chuck just began an interim pastor position at First Baptist Church of Foxboro, Massachusetts. He also had a heart episode almost two years ago that put the fragileness of life squarely in front of us. Tom’s son, Brandon, has pressed us…all right, scolded us… about the need to get it scheduled.

I miss people. I miss my friend, Dave Volitis, who lives in San Antonio now. And I miss my best friends from high school, Dave Hughes and Mike “Fairboy” Fairchild, one in Bradenton, Florida and the other in Rochester, New York. I miss Harold and Carol Anderson, now living outside of Las Vegas; and David Leonard and Dave Golder in Mason, Michigan, who I served on the Mason School Board with; and Dave and Pam Shaffer in Davison, Michigan; and Wendell and Heather Garrison, now serving in

The Marthas in us have distracted us with all the other “stuff” of our lives. Maybe you’re like me. Maybe there’s someone you need to call up and invite him/her to join you at Village Inn for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Maybe it’s simply someone that NEEDS YOU to call him/her!

I don’t watch that much TV. At least, that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. What I do watch, besides The Andy Griffith Show on MeTV, is the local news at 6:00 in the evening. I’ve noticed that most of the commercials are either tooting the horns of personal injury attorneys or sports betting businesses. Both give the impression to the viewer that big money is coming their way, that only a fool would pass up the opportunity to get what they deserve.

Whereas sports betting businesses mostly feature a well-known celebrity actor or athlete, the personal injury firms put someone on camera who seeks to gain the sympathy of the viewer with his story before he breaks into a smile with the sum that his attorney gained for him.

Gosh! I’ve never wanted to see that old commercial so much as now. You know, the one where the elderly lady says “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” Bring on some of those commercials from the past that made us chuckle, but were a lot closer to reality than the present.

Personal injury attorneys and sports betting firms are two present-day examples of our culture’s obsession for “getting something for nothing.” Yes, the personal injury situations have involved someone being in a car accident or other unfortunate occurrence, but the commercials quickly change the focus to the gigantic sum of money that was won.

Last week I was out for a walk and I came upon a broken jar. I noticed that in the midst of the glass there were coins…pennies, a few nickels, and a couple of dimes. I picked them all up out of the brokenness, only pricking myself on a glass shard once, and smiled all the way home with the discovered and unearned fifty-three cents. I only lost a little bit of blood in the transaction but you know the old saying…”you can’t get something for nothing!”

Such a saying, however, shows a person’s age and ineptness. Even our government, past and present, has lent their support that we can get something for nothing. Of course, the future kids of our grandkids will be paying for it, but that won’t take any skin off of our backs. My cynicism is beginning to ooze out!

Jesus said that “No one can serve two masters“, but we’ve evolved into unbelievers of that principle. Our culture has become firm believers in being self-serving and self-advancing. Consequences be damned!

But there are consequences that try to be hidden behind the curtains. For example, at the bottom of the TV screen in very small print for about three seconds at the end of each sports betting commercial is a warning about gambling. If you can pause your screen for a few moments you’ll see that it mentions a gambling hotline phone number for anyone who has a gambling addiction. Not even a speed reader can read the miniature-sized words in the time they are projected.

In other words, the consequences are in the fine print that warn of future devastation. We don’t want to talk about that though!

After winning the first basketball game off the season, my seventh grade boys team received a dose of reality in Game #2 this week. It wasn’t that we were manhandled. In fact, with a minute left in the game the score was tied. Our opponents, however, hit an improbable three-pointer and then added two free throws in the closing seconds to take the game 32-27.

The reality medicine began before they even began warming up. It was our first game as the visiting team and one boy with a “deer-in-headlights” look said to me, “I’ve never played an away game before.” I looked at him and used Gene Hackman’s line from the movie Hoosiers.

“Guess what? The rim is ten feet high…just like it is in our gym!” He looked at me as if I was putting him on.

And then the game started…and the dribbling started. We dribbled like there was no tomorrow. If the basketball had been a set of tires on my CRV I would have had to replace it because of wear. We dribbled to the right corner. We dribbled into two defenders. We dribbled with our head down. We dribbled to the restroom…and the concession stand…and to the parking lot. Dribbling seemed to be like that college Psychology 101 class that you’d have to take before you could take Psychology 102. It seemed to be viewed as mandatory.

The next day in practice, my friend and co-coach, Ron McKinney, and I sought to correct a few things. One of the corrections was the dribbling with their head down. For several minutes each of the players put on a pair of special eyeglasses hat intentionally are made to keep the ball handler from seeing the basketball when he dribbles it. It’s always a hoot to see a kid trying his hardest to see the basketball when the eyeglasses are made to keep him from seeing it.

And the second thing we did toward the end of the practice was to take the air out of the basketball. We didn’t tell the boys we were doing that, we just did it. Suddenly, in the midst of their scrimmaging Coach McKinney snuck the other basketball in. The first boy immediately tried to dribble it and the ball only bounced back up about four inches. It confused him, but he knew he couldn’t dribble it again after he picked it up. He passed it to a teammate who followed the same pattern: Dribble, confusion, pick the ball up, and pass it.

It went on like that for a while. A few of the boys were trying their hardest to get that ball to bounce. Gradually, almost all of them understood what was going on and what we were trying to get through their heads. One player, however, five minutes after we had started this lesson on “dribbling addiction” shouted, “Hey! There’s no air in the ball!”

The interesting thing about basketball is that when James Naismith invented the game, players weren’t allowed to dribble. They could roll the ball, but otherwise they had to pass it. The NBA’s obsession with one-on-one matchups has created dribbling fanatics. We want our players to be able to handle the basketball, but, most of all, we want them to understand how to function as a team that experiences success because the sum of all the parts is more important than any one person.

At this level, at least for us as coaches, it’s not about winning and losing. It’s about teaching them the game of basketball. What brings a smile to my face is seeing a young player figuring out what the right decision is and the fundamental skills of the game being executed correctly. Sometimes you’ve got to have kids put on dorky looking glasses and take the air out of the ball for them to get to that point.

One evening I was driving down the six lane road close to our subdivision when another SUV buzzed by me going about sixty in the 45-mile-an-hour speed zone. I glanced over to see the speeding vehicle and I noticed the light of the driver’s cell phone held by him at the top of the steering wheel and he was texting…as he turned right!

We’ve been told about the perils of texting and driving, but, in my opinion, it was just another example of a culture that is addicted to multi-tasking. Many of us are finding it increasingly difficult to focus on one thing at a time. I put myself in that camp. As I watch The Andy Griffith Show on TV I’m playing the game Words With Friends on my iPhone and shelling peanuts.

I notice high school students at sporting events can’t simply cheer on their team and talk to their friends. They have to check their cell phones every thirty seconds for an incoming text, a just posted social media post, or to communicate to the person sitting beside him/her.

I’ve had a student this year in middle school that needs constant supervision in regards to his laptop, because he will jump from class assignment to playing a video game as easily as turning on a light switch. The temptation of the video game just a right click away is too much for him, and he can click back to the assignment at the speed of light.

There are many possible reasons for our multi-tasking addiction, or at least excuses. We’re busier people than we’ve ever been, right? My grandparents would disagree with that, rising at 4:30 in the morning to take care of the cows, and doing whatever needed to be done for as long as it took to do it! A more accurate defining of our fascination with multi-tasking is that we are a distracted culture. We chase squirrels in our thread of thoughts and ideas and find it challenging to finish assignments and projects.

I admit that there are many more opportunities and options today to give our divided attention to. In my growing up days our TV received three channels and one of them was fuzzy at best. Today we receive we so many channels and stream so many programs that we’d need to be cloned to view them all. Channel-surfing is just another variation of multi-tasking. It just means we can watch four different shows in the same block of time as we flip back and forth.

I see ramifications of this multi-tasking in relationships. People find it increasingly difficult to focus on a conversation for very long. I see it in my spiritual relationship. Prayer becomes a challenge because of the other thoughts crowding into my conversation. Staying focused on the words of the Old Testament book of Jeremiah without a sudden detour to something that catches my eye a few feet away is a dilemma.

Doing one thing at a time is antithetical to our culture. Doing many things mediocre is more common than doing one thing well.

Carol and I have been busy the past three days taking care of our two-year-old grandson. Our youngest daughter gave birth to a new baby brother for the two-year-old and we’re preparing him for when he’s not the center of attention in another day or so.

A doll baby with no hair has been frequenting the living room of their house. The doll baby has a nap bassinet and a rocker that he can lay in. The two-year-old has been dragging the pretend b baby from one to the other and feeding him with a baby bottle. Most of the time he tips the bottle and inserts it in the baby’s mouth, but sometimes he puts it in one of the eyes…or the ear. Kinda like watering all of Mommy’s flowers, not just one of them.

He also brings the doll baby over to me so I can hold him. I do the sound effects of a baby slurping on a bottle that seems to add to the two-year-old’s experience.

He doesn’t quite understand the proper way to carry a newborn. He dragged the pretend child by one of his ankles across the room like a hunter dragging his fresh kill. However, I haven’t seen a chokehold yet, so that’s a positive.

The two-year-old has a play basketball hoop that’s about two feet high. It rings when one of the play balls goes through it. i was sitting on the couch when the ring filled the air. I turned around to see that the doll baby had been slam-dunked headfirst into the hoop. I need to move that hoop outside for a while.

Let’s be honest! It’s got to be strange to be the only child for so long and suddenly some new kid comes into your residence to take away most of your attention. Sibling rivalry has its roots right there in the midst of it.

On the other hand, we all survived. I was the youngest of three, so I can’t really say how my older brother reacted to my sister being brought home to join him. I’m sure they had gotten over their levels of jealousy by the time I showed up and bailed each other for who got to hold me. I’m pretty sure I was never slam-dunked or had a bottle stuck in my eye.

The two-year-old will adjust and graduate from pre-school indignation to mentoring and guiding older brother. He will even show his younger brother how to slam-dunk a ball instead of a baby.

My seventh-grade boys’ basketball team had its first game yesterday. I don’t know if you can remember playing the first game, wrestling a first match, or running a first race in a sports season, but for a bunch of seventh-graders it’s resembling of the release of a balloon before a knot can be tied in it. There’s a lot of energy, excitement, and total ignorance to what has been worked on and practiced.

It’s what my co-coach, Ron McKinney, and I had expected. After all, these boys had never played a middle school basketball game. Most of them had never played a game where two people wearing black- and-white striped shirts were on the court with them.

Honestly, I did not expect much. My pessimism had taken root in the four days of practice we had before our first game. When we scored our first basket ten seconds into the game I thought “Well, we won’t get shut out.”

And then we scored again, and again, and again. The guilt about my lack of faith began to ooze out of me.

But first game jitters took a firm hold of our bench. When I told one of my guards sitting on the bench to go in for a certain player he was off the bench and six feet onto the court before I could blink. I yelled, “No!” and pointed for him to go to the scorer’s table. His excited look took on a moment of confusion, as if I had just spoken Russian to him. Others in the crowd were beckoning him to the scorer’s table and it sunk in.

A minute later another sub started to go from the bench to the court when I told him to replace someone. For this boy I was ready. I grabbed the back of his jersey and reeled him back to me. A minute later my third catch of the day was one of my bench players who was replacing one of my Bigs. Unfortunately, I could only get a hold of the elastic band around his shorts. Laughter emerged from the bleachers behind me as I halted his progress.

First game jitters cause players to react in different ways. I’m sure a few of my players didn’t know what a scorer’s table was.

And then there were my runaway locomotives who hustled like crazy, but don’t yet understand that the train slows down coming into the station. One boy made three or four steals and missed all of his layups. In fact, I’m not sure if any of his layups actually hit the rim. The good news is that none of them hit the wall behind the basket. Another boy looked like a deer standing in front of an approaching semi, his eyes as big as saucers and scared silly. A third boy’s knees were shaking so bad I thought he was going to fall out of his chair.

They were a dozen excited, nervous, forgetful twelve-year-olds, playing in front of a full gym of classmates, parents, grandparents, siblings, and make-believe girlfriends. It does things to a kid to see so many people watching him with smiles on their faces.

And it does something to a coach to have his team surprise him in a good way! Lord knows I’ve had plenty of games where the team I was coaching surprised me in disappointing ways!

And so today we practice all of those that they forgot to do yesterday. We’ll make sure we do layup drills and maybe, just maybe, practice getting off the bench and reporting in at the scorer’s table. It may take a few games for things to take root, but but for seventh-grade boys, they are as cute as can be, and life is good!

Yesterday, with the help of my team managers, I handed out basketball uniforms to the twelve seventh-graders who have been invited to be on the team. It’s an experience similar to seeing a kid in the toy section of a store. There are a lot of comments that begin with the words, “Can I have…?”

Going back in ancient history to when I was in tenth grade, I remember getting my uniform. In terms of my physical appearance, it was like I had bypassed the line where height gets handed out. As a sophomore, I was still only about 5’2″ and had not even come close to a weight that included three numbers in it. I was one of the last boys on the JV team, closer to the water fountain than I was to the coach, and the uniform I received looked like it had been in the rummage sale “free pile”. The JV team got the old varsity jerseys, but there weren’t enough of them, so two or three of us received uniforms that were tattered, unimpressive, and with different styled letters and numbers. We were, as my parents would say, “a sight for sore eyes!”

My seventh-grade players started requesting numbers. My friend and co-coach, Ron McKinney, who has the same sarcastic humor as me, asked if anyone wanted #8? One boy raised his hand, not realizing that in basketball (excluding the NBA) legal uniform numbers never have 6, 7, 8, or 9 in them. I explained to the boy that an official reporting a foul uses his fingers to communicate the number of the player and that there are only five fingers on each of our hands.

“Coach, could I have number 11?”

“Coach, could I get 32?”

“Is there a 23?”

“Hold it! Is there anyone here whose name is Isaiah Thomas?” Clueless faces that make me realize most of them don’t even know who Isaiah Thomas is. “How about Michael Jordan? Anyone whose name is Michael Jordan? Any Magic Johnson’s here?”

Twelve faces that convey the answer no look at me.

“So, boys, the uniform you are assigned is more about the size that fits you than it is the number on the front. We have five smalls, and a bunch of mediums. If you are smaller in size you need to understand that if the number you desire is a medium-size jersey, it’s going to fit you like a chicken wearing a bearskin. Coach McKinney and I don’t want anyone running down the court and leaving their shorts behind.”

Everyone gave me looks of understanding. Better to have a uniform that fits you like a glove than a jersey number that keeps falling down to your ankles. Our first game is this coming Wednesday. We may have difficulty making a left-handed layup, but at least we’ll look good.