Homeless blunders

On a Friday night in December I led the homeless ministry prayer and scripture before a meal that my church serves in Logan Circle every Friday night. It was the first time that I had led anything in this ministry and I had a plan for how the night would go. That plan failed miserably.

It was super cold and breezy that night and I knew that I needed to keep it short. I planned to just read the passage from Isaiah about the suffering servant and pray, keeping less than five minutes if possible. I was going to explain how our God knows what suffering is like, knows what homelessness is like, and can relate to the deepest pains we have as humans, because he chose to live it. I thought it would be simple and relate well to the Christmas season, reminding all of us why we celebrate Jesus's birth. However, it was extremely hard to gain anyone's attention. I assume that the general inattentiveness was in part a result of the cold, the food being late, and my lack of assertiveness in the situation, but I felt for a moment like a street corner evangelist, yelling to get anyone's attention, and it irked me. I fumbled my message and preached a prayer, all the while having a glaring sense of myself as a fake.

Despite this awkward moment, it wasn't the most awkward of the evening. I was hanging around to have conversation with some of the people who come for the meal, asking how their lives are, and if they need anything that I can offer. One of the guys told me that his life really sucks. That it's not at all like what he expected it to be in Philly. I asked if he wanted to talk about it, and he just shrugged it off, generally implying that it is what it is. I wanted to care a bit more, so pried asking if I could pray for him and he glaringly responded that he was an atheist.

Now on normal days when I have some tinge of extroversion, I would like to think that I respond with a curious tone, wanting to know why he doesn't believe anything more than non-belief in everything, how that has shaped his life. But this day, I was already dejected and I really just wanted to crawl back into my shell of introversion, and I shut down.

I think I said something like, "Oh. Alright then. I might still pray because I think it matters, but you are welcome to continue to come and bring anyone to this meal. Especially to the Christmas service next week."

Actually, I think I'm watering down how awkward it actually was and what I actually said. I thought later about it and still think that conversation as a complete laps of real care, concern, or representation of what I want to be like as a Christ-follower.

But I guess that's just it. This blog isn't meant to be a lament of Christ-following failure; it's meant to point out that MY CONCEPT of righteousness is flawed. Look at how my plans and ideas shaped everything about that night: I had a plan for a message. I had an idea of how to communicate effectively with homeless people. I had an idea of what it looks like to share love from God with non-Christ-followers. Instead of my actions being an outpouring of belief, my concept of righteousness shaped my disappointment.

This flaw is, as most are with me and I would wager with us all, a control issue. If we control our plans, our ideas, our concepts of goodness, then we can measure the quality of our work and convince ourselves that we are doing good. By this measure, most of the time, I find my work to be less than adequate. I know what excellence is to me and I rarely, if ever, measure up. In fact, I sometimes feel trapped by incompleteness.

What if I lived by a different measure? What if that measure was already determined about me and nothing I did could change it? What if an entire community of people lived this way/What would that look like? Would it make a difference in the way we live? Would it make a difference in the world?

New Defensive Schemes are not Rockett Science!!

For my Philadelphia friends, this post comes with a disclaimer: I am a huge and slightly crazy LSU fan. So much so that at 1am on a Sunday night, when I should be sleeping to prepare for two long days of research ahead, I am kept awake by the thoughts of why my team is falling apart this year.

One of the main reasons college football scoring, and particularly SEC scores, and even more specifically LSU’s opponent’s scores, have gone up in the past few years is because of the innovations of new offensive schemes. Chief among these new innovations are two offensive schemes: the spread offense (Florida is the best at this right now) and the Wildcat running attack (also called the Wild Hog in Arkansas, the Wild Rebel in Mississippi, and I’m sure it has other nicknames as well. If you follow the NFL and not college, it’s what the Dolphins are using with Ricky Williams and Ronnie Brown in the backfield).

As these innovations have developed, what bothers me most is that defenses have approached these new schemes with the same philosophies that have worked on other offenses in the past 10-20 years: Nickel or Dime packages, the 3-4, or 4-3. DEFENSES NEED TO INNOVATE TOO!!!

I love defense! Actually, I love a good defense of a team I care about (LSU), way more than I love that team’s ability to run up 50 or 60 points on their opponent. I want to see my team’s defense shutout the opposition. I want it to mean something for an LSU opponent to score more than 14 points on them in any game. And so, I’m proposing a new defensive scheme as an approach to dealing with the innovations of the spread or wildcat offenses. It’s the 2-5. Or maybe I’ll call it the 2.5.

Here is what the base defense would look like (apparently at the top of this blog):

It would have two down lineman and five linebackers/defensive ends/athletes like nickel backs that played off the line at the snap of the ball. Of the remaining four defenders, two safeties and two corner backs would cover the perimeter of the defensive scheme. On the weak side of the offensive formation, the cornerback (the best cornerback on the team) would play press coverage, man-to-man with the safety on that side spying the run or giving help on the receiver (similar to cover two). On the strong side of the offensive formation, one cornerback, one safety, two linebacker/nickel backs (or more) would zone the remaining receivers in the formation. Everyone else would crash in on the line of scrimmage according to different blitz packages or in anticipation of the spread run option.

The idea is to limit the amount of people that the offense can key on as weak points on the field from the start of the play. Additionally, with only two down lineman on defense and everyone else crashing the offensive line, it would quickly wear on the offensive line’s strength and stamina throughout the game. It would also play a physical toll on the defenders that crash the line, so the team would need to have more than one group of competent “linebackers” that could alternate in and out throughout the course of the game, but if LSU recruits well, they have the talent on their team to do this.

Any thoughts?

Celebration aren't Rockett Science

After all the celebrations that have taken place in the last few weeks in Philly and Nationally (the World Series Championship and the Presidential Election Results as the biggest two), I've been meaning to write about how these celebratory experiences were significant to me (and maybe to us).

Celebration in general is very significant. When we show our excitement and passion for something, we show our true colors. You can't hide behind the facade of the middle road (the critic's road, the indecisive or objective road) and celebrate something. Nope, you have to put yourself out there and say "I care, and this moves me to joyfulness!!" (well, you probably wouldn't say it like that, but you would say "F*** yeah!!" or "Wahooooo!!!" or something else.) But you are really showing that you were invested.

It's good to be invested in something. I think we often ride the fence in order not to get hurt or let down. I'm a king of this. I often stay indecisive so that I'm safe from the disappointment. I think it's noble and objective thinking, but really I'm just controlling my outcome.

What I realize is that when we make a decision and have something riding on the outcome of an election or a sports team or some other random thing, we find community. Making a decision lumps me into a group of people who have made a similar investment of time, energy, and passion. When it succeeds, we succeed together. When it fails, we fail together. What's significant is that it breaks down walls that existed before. It loosens our views towards "those people" and helps us to realize that we are more similar than we thought.

That was what was coolest about these past few weeks in Philly. Celebration has torn down some of the barriers that has kept this city bitter and it's people unfriendly. Who knows how long it will last (It's probably already faded a good bit with the change in the weather.), but for a season our hearts were softened. We hugged, high 5ed, and yelled in the streets together, and we felt like a real true community. Good celebrations can do that.

Diamond Mines, Not Rockett Science.

It doesn't take rocket science to see that this diamond mine is a very bad idea. This is one of the largest diamond mines in the world and it exists in Siberia. Given, it is in Siberia (an area of the world where I don't understand why anyone would want to live there, except people who might have extreme cases of allergies and can't handle ANY pollen seasons), but look at how large this mine is compared to the town around it.

It could create a whole series of your crater jokes like:

• Your crater is so big you need road signs to tell you which way is up.
  
• Your crater is so big it gave alien spacecrafts and meteors an inferiority complex.
  
• Your crater is so big it creates its own WIND current. (The last one is definitely true; I'm not sure about the rest. Feel free to add your own joke.)

This disturbs me for many reasons but I'll share two. First, what is our obsession with diamonds in general? They are a nice, clear (most of the time) birthstone, but are they really worth digging a "black hole" to the center of the earth to find. I mean, they aren't even that rare. The diamond supply is completely controlled by two or three major distributors that regulate the price and create the buzz for the industry. Before the 1920's most engagement rings weren't diamonds; they were likely some simple ban of metal and (if you were lucky) your birthstone. So, the craze for diamonds is purely a marketing scheme that has shaped our culture and become a status symbol for love.
"How much do you love me, baby?'
"I love you enough to contribute to the destruction of the earth on behalf of this jewel."
(and for some, it is the size of the jewel that matters.)

Second, there are some scientists working to develop a drill that will dig through the earth's outer crust and explore what lies beneath. It really is becoming a "Journey to the Middle of the Earth". (It sucked as a movie, maybe it will work as a science experiment.) The drill is like 25 times longer than the Empire State Building is tall.

I know we are a curious species, but I see this experiment going badly. If we already have a greenhouse gas problem in our atmosphere that contributes to global warming, what will happen when we puncture the outer crust and create massive volcanoes and gas emissions that we will not be able to control?

If you want some more information about this diamond mine, here is where i found it.

Literature Review is Rocett Science

You know what is rockett science?

No. I'll tell you what it is for me.

It's writing a literature review!!!

I am looking at the 25-30 resources I've read in the last few days to be able to write an analysis of literature that relates to all of the things I've studied over the past 2+ years, and what will shape my remaining work (writing a thesis) and I AM FROZEN by THIS PAPER. It's as if Einstein just walked in with a newly formulated theory of relativity and handed me his work to see what I thought. First of all. How would I know what to say to Einstein? and Second of all. I'm a social scientist, and I would be the last person in the world to understand what to do with a physics theory. So you see my problem....

it's not rocket science!!

It really isn't.

In order start writing on this blog again I have to tell myself, "It's Not Rocket Science". I don't know about you, anonymous reader (annon, because I haven't told anyone that I have started writing), but it is easy to convince myself that what I write is unimportant, unnecessary, unpolished, and just generally not ready for an audience of any kind. You see. I have this secret desire to use my cool last name to grace the front cover of a hardback book some day. Which means, I would have to have something important to say, or at the least some catchy idea that would convince a publisher I could put food on their table. (As far as I know, a cool name alone doesn't push merchandise. Right BonJovi? Oh, WAIT!!!) In order to come up with decent ideas, I need to be searching for what I find interesting; and for me that requires writing. So when I feel like I just can't do it, I need to remind myself that this is not rocket science.

Some things in life, for me at least, do seem to be rocket science. Finding a job tops my list this week. I am working on a Master's Degree in Community Development and I want to work for an organization that cares for the Urban poor. I thought I had a job lined up recently, but when the organization discovered that it was not going to receive a grant for community development work, my job position crumbled. So now it is back to square one. I am asking the same questions most 20-somethings ask like "how do I make a living doing something that really matters?", and "what am I really passionate about?", and "Am I really an expert in anything that would pay my bills?". Sadly, my 20s are dying but these questions are not. Is it time for me to grow up and take on some responsibility? Maturity to me is rocket science.

But I shouldn't say that too loud our I might start convincing myself that everything is too difficult. So for now, I'll keep telling myself that none of this is THAT hard; I do have options. I do have ideas. I do have words to write. And I hope it sparks some interest.