Posted tagged ‘Spartans’

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Wrestling with Spartan Loyalty

January 28, 2018

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                             January 28, 2018

                                 

It’s been a tough week in Spartan Land! The Larry Nassar horror had been going on for a while. I wanted to believe that he was more connected to USA Gymnastics than Michigan State University.

You see, that’s a big part of my problem, and struggle. I don’t want to believe that anything can go wrong in Spartan Country.

Sports Information Director at the Air Force Academy, Troy Garnhart, told me of the Academy’s football game at Michigan State a couple of years ago. He was impressed by everything- the people, the facilities, but, most of all, the hospitality and genuineness of the coaches and players. That’s what I want to hear! It’s difficult to hear that the coin actually has another side to it.

I want to believe that about the other university about an hour southeast down the road. Anything that makes Jim Harbaugh want to puke…like a blocked punt on the final play of a football game…brings a smile to my face!

But this is Spartan Land, and I wouldn’t even want such a debacle to happen in Ann Arbor. One of sexual assault victims of Larry Nassar is the daughter of a man who was a part of the youth group I led back in the early eighties in Lansing. Her testimony personalized a story that became so immense that there was a danger of seeing so many victims- more than one hundred and fifty, but forgetting that each one of them endured pain and suffering.

As happens in our culture, the indiscretions of one becomes the fault of the many. We’re teetering on the edge of a moral ledge where things that have been kept hidden are raising their ugly heads. In recent months, more than usual, an incision into the heart of our society has revealed the darkness of how we live. In our talent for avoidance we usually shrug off the rumors, but, in this situation, the reality has tsunami’ed us. The Nassar crimes are like when you look at a wall and see a crack in the paint, but when you more closely investigate it you notice that the crack extends in all directions.

I want to still live in Spartan Land but the “Green and White” has become grey-ish! I want my heroes to stay standing on pedestals, but I’m afraid that the possibility of falling off is increasing daily.

And how far does the failure of responsibility ripple out? A university president and the athletic director have already retired/resigned. The entire board of USA Gymnastics joined the list of resignations. How many more will be found to have ignored the elephant in the room?

I’ll always root for the Spartans, but when I wear my Michigan State hoodie nowadays I’m reminded more of the damage that has been done to a multitude of lives than I am of Spartan victories.

A school that has been known for “Magic” has entered a new chapter that is entitled  “Tragic”!

Categories: children, coaching, Community, Freedom, Grace, Nation, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
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Red-Green Color Blind on St. Patrick’s Day

March 18, 2017

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                          March 18, 2017

                            

I needed Carol…but she had departed the house early for a day of being a para-professional with middle school students who have special needs.

Unfortunately, I had a special need also! It was St. Patrick’s Day and I didn’t know what to wear. Being color blind I couldn’t figure out what I could wear that had green in it. I was scheduled for an interview that morning at a school, so I couldn’t wear one of my Michigan State tee shirts. They were the only shirts I owned that I was sure had green because the Spartan’s colors are green and white.

I faced a closet full of mixed-up hues and vague hints of color schemes. They looked like a color calculus problem with no clear solution.

People don’t quite understand the effects of color blindness. They ask me what is it I see? I see what I see, but am often confused by what it is. As I approach a stoplight on a foggy morning I have to slow down to see which of the three lights is shining. If it is the bottom one I know I can go.

I remember when I was first diagnosed as color blind when I was in fourth grade. I was given a group of circles, each filled with dots, and asked to say the number that was inside the circle. A couple of the numbers were as clear as day, but a few of the others…in my view!…had no number in the middle. In fact, I thought it was some cheap school prank made to make me look silly!

I drive a white car! I can figure out white usually! But white is not green, and my granddaughter has informed me that people will pinch me if I don’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. She had a smile on her face as she said it, like she was choosing the body part to grab hold of.

I settled on a new Roundtree & York shirt that looked like it could possibly have some green in the crossing pattern of lines and designs. There had to be some green in it! If I would have thought about it a little more I could have taken a selfie picture and sent it to Carol. Hopefully she would have a moment to view it before I headed out into a world obsessed with greenness.

At Starbucks I got looks! I checked my zipper! I was okay. My dense brain figured the looks were because of my favorite Starbucks cup, which is starting to look a little weathered in its whiteness.

Or maybe it was because I was a good-looking 62 year old man!

I thought I noticed one elderly lady looking at me and positioning two of her fingers into a tight position. I wondered if she was having a stroke! She wasn’t! I remembered my granddaughter’s words. This lady was ready to pounce…or, pinch my arm! I scurried to my white car!

But I had my new Roundtree & York green, brown, red, and blue shirt on! Perhaps this lady had a distorted kind of color blindness, like a color blind psycho…seeing things that aren’t there and not seeing things that are there!

St. Patrick’s Day is torturous!

After my interview, in which I got concerned looks at my color attire, I stopped at Carol’s school to check on something else with the athletic office secretary.

“You’re not wearing green today!”

“I’m not!”

“No!”

I flinched like she was about to pinch me. “This shirt isn’t green?”

She laughed deeply at my tainted tintness! I scurried home to the safety of my vacated residence…and changed shirts!

Categories: children, Humor, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
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March Sadness

March 19, 2016

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                          March 19, 2016

                                            

Dear Sir,

Our family suffered a devastating loss yesterday that will require multiple grief counseling sessions. We have a lot of questions that don’t seem to have answers. Most of them begin with the word “Why?”

Depending on the family member our grief has emerged in various ways. Loss of appetite is a common element. Other signs of our suffering include hair-pulling, moments of walking around in a zombie-like state, spontaneous bursts of tears, and sleepless nights filled with that one word. That’s right, why?

I’m wondering if you can fit us into your counseling schedule immediately…like this afternoon. I know that is short notice, but so was the loss we incurred. You see, it wasn’t suppose to be this way. We’d planned ahead and prepared for what we thought was going to be a glorious ending. To have the rug pulled out from under us like this is a bitter pill to swallow. We know it has happened to others in the past, but we never expected that it would happen to us.

You see, our Michigan State Spartans were a two-seed. Two-seeds aren’t suppose to lose in the first round. In fact, we thought our glorious end was going to include cutting down the nets in Houston two weeks from now after being crowned national champions.

But a fifteen-seed beat us! Middle Tennessee State University. Their name even suggests mediocrity. Yesterday, however, they played top-level basketball and our Spartans were stunned as much as we were. Things like this, however, are suppose to happen to Georgetown and Syracuse because they deserve the grief, but not us!

So you see, our need for counseling is urgent. March Madness got blanketed with March Sadness. We cried in our soup and went through two boxes of tissues. I’m making a Sam’s Club run this morning to buy boxes of tissues in bulk because we’re going through them so fast.

As I’m writing this a propane gas tank delivery truck went by with the company name on the side: Blue Rhino! Middle Tennessee State’s mascot name is “Blue Raiders.” As the truck moved past I instantly saw “Blue Raiders” instead of Blue Rhino. I’m haunted and afflicted! I counted Blue Raider players shooting three’s in my sleep last night!

Please respond immediately…unless you’re a Michigan Wolverine! In that case, please disregard!

Categories: Christianity, Death, Faith, Humor, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
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Does God Care About Sports?

March 31, 2014

WORDS FROM W.W.                                                          March 31, 2014

 

About a week ago our local newspaper ran two different columns from the sports editors in response to a letter from a young girl who was inquiring about the level of God’s interest in sports.

The writers gave some excellent examples in the affirmative to the question. God does care about sports…just not as much as we do! God does love sports…just not as much as some people who wear spikes on their shoulders, paint their faces black, and wear Raider jerseys.

Sports has an important role in our culture, but sports sometimes becomes our culture. The lines get blurred on what is healthy and what is fanaticism. When lines get blurred the weird and unthinkable starts sneaking in the back door that has been propped open. People start bulking up, but bulking up isn’t good enough! Sometimes steroids and other “Miracle-Gro” hormones get added to the equation to give the athlete an advantage for now…and consequences later.

Sports has replaced the Sunday Worship Service, ironically, as what is worshiped. People will go to a Saturday night service so they can watch the Sunday afternoon Broncos’ game…or just not go to church at all!

Once again, ironically, as a Baptist pastor I must applaud the Mormons. Last weekend the BYU women’s basketball team was playing a Sweet Sixteen game against undefeated Connecticut. The Cougars hung tough, but lost to the undefeated Huskies. But long before that game was played it had been determined that if BYU would not play a game on Sunday, March 30.

Wait a minute! This is the NCAA…March Madness…hoops hysteria!

The Mormons would not let sports shape what they firmly believe in. I find that level of commitment a bit lower in Protestantland and the Catholic culture.

God cares about sports. He cares about people realizing their potential and purpose. Shooting a long jumper with a fluid stroke that more times than not results in the “tickling of the twine” is a gift, but it often gets confused with purpose. God’s purpose for our life…I pray…is more than how well I can flick my wrist in the releasing of a basketball.

God cares about sports and the positives they can teach…the work ethic…the incredible learnings from being part of a team…the friendships…the physical development as a result of getting in shape.

He cares about the opportunities that sports can bring into a world that aches with disappointments and negative diagnoses. If it hadn’t been for sports Michigan State’s Adreian Payne would not have met an eight year old girl named Lacey who had been battling cancer. Sports, namely being a 6’10” center on the Michigan State basketball team, was the avenue that brought him into Lacey’s hospital room at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan.

But it was a little girl’s battling for her life that brought perspective into Adreian’s life.

God cares about sports, and he also cares about whether or not we can keep a healthy perspective on things that are temporal and things that are permanent.

I still love shooting the long jump shot, although my knees seem to be protesting it more and more, but more than that, I love coaching basketball and being used to have a positive impact on young people’s lives.

God cares more about my impact on the younger generation than he does about how sweet the rotation on the basketball looks as I shoot it towards the basket.

The guy who mentored me in coaching, Don Fackler, brought that perspective to me. Don had a sweet outside shot, and if I was guarding him down low he would make me pay by scoring and also sliming me with his perspiration. He sweat more than anybody I knew! But his impact on how I coach now is seen in many ways. I never used the word “discombobulated” until I met Don Fackler.

At his funeral some twelve years ago now the aisles of First United Methodist Church in Mason, Michigan were filled with his former players…young men and women who had been impacted by him. Young men and women who were now raising their own children, or pursuing their college degree, or making a positive impact wherever they now lived.

I think that’s why God cares about sports, and that’s why I also care about sports.

Categories: children, Christianity, Community, Death, Faith, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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Being A Six Foot Ten Inch Friend

February 7, 2014

WORDS FROM WW                                                          February 7, 2014

 

 

“Basketball can sometimes become the gateway to discovering what is really important about life.”

 

Adreian Payne is six feet ten inches tall, and is an All-American basketball player on the Michigan Sate University Spartans. When the NBA draft happens next summer he is projected to go in the first round.

But basketball has become secondary to Adreian this past year, due to an eight year old girl who comes up to about his waist named Lacy Holsworth.

Adreian met Lacy when he and some of his Michigan State teammates had toured the pediatrics ward of Sparrow Hospital the previous basketball season. Lacy had been diagnosed with cancer. As his teammates were about to leave her room she asked Payne to stay for a moment. There had been a bond that she sensed with him. Perhaps it was because Adreian’s mom had died when he was 13, and so he had endured a lot of pain and difficult times in his life. They traded phone numbers that day and began to text one another. After Lacy finished her chemotherapy treatments and returned home she would come to Spartan home games wearing the number 5 jersey- Adreian’s number. He would bring her onto the court during pre-game warmups and have her shoot a few shots. In her bedroom she has an “AP Wall” where she posts newspaper clippings of Payne’s MSU games.

After she and her family returned from a trip to Disneyland she felt a familiar pain in her jaw. The cancer had returned, and chances were good that this time it wasn’t going away. She started chemo treatments again. One day she said absolutely no visitors…except Adreian!

One day when the weather was really bad and he couldn’t get off campus to go visit her in the hospital he tweeted his 18,000 Twitter followers asking them to pray for Lacy.

The prognosis for this little girl is not promising, but Adreian Payne will walk with her through each of the battles.

Basketball has simply become the avenue for his life to journey with her, and although Payne will probably make a good living playing the sport he excels at one little eight year old girl will always help him remember what is really important.

 

Categories: children, Christianity, Death, Faith, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Prayer, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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