Thanks, Presbyterians

I very much appreciate their putting together and maintaining their daily lectionary site, which is so well done. Here's John 15:1-11 for today:

1“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 4Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. 9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

Man, it's easy to misplace this truth, and, man, it always feel great to find it again.

The Dress Is Beautiful

Now let's have a meal together.

Rest in peace, Andy Griffith

I have a stupid and awful tendency to get agitated with my fellow survivors when someone I love dies. It irritates me when others mourn differently than I do. I get mad because I judge that they're not somber enough, or I get mad because I judge that they're too somber. Or I get mad because I judge that they celebrate the wrong things from the dead person's life--or that they missed the point or took away the wrong lesson. Any and all of the above. It's a wrong-headed, illogical and unhelpful way to live at a moment when one needs to be living right for the sake of not only himself but also for his brothers and sisters around him. But darn if I don't fall into that same manhole every time I walk down this street.

Andy Griffith died Tuesday, and I was surprised that it so staggered me. The man was 86 freaking years old. He'd been old for a long time, and there'd been reports off and on of his being sick. So many of the other people that I associate with him in my head--Don Knotts, Howard Sprague, Helen Crump, Goober, Patricia Neal, Dad--are already dead. Why would the news of Andy Griffith's passing surprise anyone? Well, it did me, and I ended up spending pretty much the rest of Tuesday in a haze of reading fantastic obituaries and tributes written by folks who are more adept at catching clues and collecting and expressing thoughts than I am.

Anyway, the focus on A Face in the Crowd has really--stupidly and awfully--agitated me the rest of the week.

Hey, I love this movie, too. I've got a VHS copy that I recorded off TV 15 years ago, and I'll bet that I've watched it a dozen times and loaned it out to at least that many friends and family. It's a great story; it's a great-looking thing, and Andy Griffith is one sweating, throbbing, laughing, crying, yelling, moaning force of manhood in that movie. It's a fierce and virile performance, and the people who made the movie obviously knew what they had, because the script for the trailer compares the 28-year-old, newcomer lead with Marlon Brando and James Dean.

"If Andy Griffith had won an Academy Award for A Face in the Crowd--as he should have done--his whole career might have been very different," Go Heath remarked around the HP office watercooler Tuesday afternoon. "As it was, he never got the chance to play as many dramatic roles as he should have had."

That's true.

But, man, oh, man, am I ever thankful that it worked out the way it did. Because had Andy Griffith gotten to be Marlon Brando or James Dean, we probably would've never gotten The Andy Griffith Show.

The Andy Griffith Show is my favorite take-me-to-a-time-and-place TV show of all time, and that's not the half of it. TV Land is going to run marathons of episodes today and tomorrow. They're going to kick things off at 10 Central this morning with "The New Housekeeper," the Oct. 3, 1960, debut, and you can see that Andy Griffith and the other people who made the show understood right off the bat the story terrain they intended to explore. There are strategic and personnel tweaks throughout the series' eight-season run. But, from the start, The Andy Griffith Show was funny in the way it was going to be funny and it was about what it was going to be about.

And what it was about, was living in loving community. It's about the balances to be struck or to throw out of whack between sweetness and authenticity and between compassion and justice. It's about the tension in a community between hospitality and security, and it's about what's it's like to deal with the problems of sameness and change in single individuals or in multiple individuals. And when it gets it right, as it often does--not "The Gospel According to The Andy Griffith Show," but "The Andy Griffith Show According to the Gospel"--it's as good as anything ever.

Andy Griffith's life story is filled with all sorts of bad stuff: feeling lesser than when he was a kid, getting too full of himself professionally when he was an adult, divorces and other family tragedies, horrible illnesses, falling off a roof. He was just another man, but I do find a lot of things about him to think about and to admire. Primary among them is that the signature piece of work of Andy Griffith's life on this Earth concentrated on no less than the nuts and bolts of what's it's like to actually live out, together, the kind of community that Jesus calls us to. (Calls us one and calls us all.) "Andy Griffith created aspirational television," Brad Hirschfield put it in Wednesday's Washington Post.

Amen, brother.

He Is Risen -- Now What?

It's worth remembering that the first reaction to the resurrection was one of terror. The Gospel is "good news," but even on a beautiful day like this one, it's a lot more complicated than that phrase normally implies:

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.

And they said among themselves, "Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?"

And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away; for it was very great.

And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man witting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.

And he saith unto them,

"Be not affrighted:
Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified:
he is risen;
he is not here:
behold the place where they laid him.
But go your way,
tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee:
there shall ye see him,
as he said unto you."

And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre;
for they trembled and were amazed:
neither said they anything to any man;
for they were afraid.

-- Mark 16:1-8 (KJV)

The Ninth Lesson

Here is the ninth, the final, and the most beautiful lesson in the King's College Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Merry Christmas!

9. John unfolds the great mystery of the Incarnation.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1: 1-14

Won't You Come Home, Bill Butler?

I spent pretty much every uncommitted three- to 90-minute pocket of my weekend searching for that 1975 Topps baseball card. Found it early Sunday morning shortly before stirred the wife and daughter and commenced the mad dash to get out the door and to church on time. I was so thrilled. The discovery made better everything good about a very great Memorial Day weekend.

Bill Butler's is the first baseball card I ever loved. It was one from three magical packs that my Mom purchased for me on a trip back across Paducah from our new house on Cairo Road (in the Heath High School-feeding Concord Elementary district) to our old place on Kennedy Road (in the Tilghman High School-feeding Clark Elementary district).

We had been in the Kennedy Road house only about a year after moving from Chicago and, just a few years before that, Evansville, Ind. These were for my dad, who would turn 50 in October of 1975, the choppy waters of what would turn out to be a giant career and life change--from late nights in offices, estimating what it would cost the company for which he worked to build various commercial and public structures (other office buildings, pump stations along the Alaskan pipeline, the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, etc.), to early mornings in his own pottery shop, throwing stoneware crocks and vases. There was little room on our Kennedy Road property for a shop, as well as zoning restrictions against opening a retail storefront. And so off we moved to Paducah's western outskirts to give more flexibility for accommodating whatever Dad's (and our) future might hold.

I think we must've had two cars at the time--a white, Ford Pinto station wagon that was the family vehicle and a brown and yellow Nash Metropolitan that was primarily driven by the last of my three siblings to be living at home. I'll bet my brother was transporting little, delicate things that would fit in his tiny Metro and that my dad was loading and driving a U-Haul truck. In any event, I do know that it was just Mom and me in the Pinto, that we had just dropped our first load of boxes at the Cairo Road house and that we were headed back empty across Paducah to retrieve more. We stopped at a little grocery--at this time, it was either Holland's or Clement's--not far from the new place. I imagine we got little-bottle Cokes, probably for everyone, and I know Mom bought for me three packs of new, 1975-issue Topps baseball cards.

As Mom drove, I sat in the back end of the car, opening and thumbing through the cards from those first three of hundreds of packs that I would go through in the next 10, 15 years. The Pinto's back seat had been lowered flat to create an open bed for boxes. On the expanse of Navy-blue upholstery and in the 15 minutes or so it took to get back across town, I created some sort of baseballish game with the cards. I seem to remember Bob Collucio, Pat Bourque and maybe even All-Star Larry Bowa being among those first cards Mom bought for me. Bill Butler? No question. The 36-year-old memory of playing with his card in the hot back end of the windows-down Pinto ambling across Paducah glows like burning coal.

Paul Splittorff died last week, and that news sent me on a 1975 Topps baseball card jag. By some point Friday late night, I realized that Bill Butler was not to be found among the 400 or so cards that I have from the 660-card set. This would absolutely not do.

I started a search-and-rescue mission in earnest early Saturday, but efforts had to be more or less suspended once the ladies awoke Saturday. There was house-cleaning for a round of company this week. There was evening buffeting and playgrounding at Pennryrile State Park with extended family. There was getting the daughter to sleep that night. There were some short snippets of searching amid these activities, but things didn't ramp back up in earnest until early Sunday morning. After about 90 minutes of rifling through various boxes and stacks of cards, Bill Butler's misplaced face happily appeared. I spent a lot of the Sunday and holiday since reading about all-things 1974, the year documented on the back of the 1975 cards. (Turns out that Bill Buckner had a pretty storied World Series career even before Mookie Wilson's hit and that Julian Carroll's governorship had an interesting start, too.)

A couple of days later, I'm off to a slow start back to biz from the Memorial Day weekend. Still tangled up in this whole Bill Butler deal ... in the uniqueness of the whats that we treasure and the universalness of the how, in the woman and the coin, in the unequivocal "command" and "must" of loving, in "ways of childhood" vs. "childish things," in holidays and business and holy days and busyness, in vocation and occupation ... tick, tick, tick ... now 1 hours, 48 minutes late getting to work ...

The Bobby Knight story

I've struggled with what I want to say about this silly Bobby Knight controversy that flashed since he, apparently revved up by the laughs and adulation of a bunch of folks back home again in Indiana, made up a crack on UK that its men's basketball starters two years ago weren't attending class. I struggled with what I wanted to say even in that first sentence. What a truly goofy thing to even focus on. It's who cares, on top of doesn't matter, on top of wasn't accurate. And yet here I am about to hit the return key to Paragraph 2 and keep blathering on.

I've very much disliked Bobby Knight most of my life. I was born in Evansville, Ind., but spent ages 5 through 18 in Paducah, Ky., from 1973 through '86. The result of being and doing in these particular times and places was that I was a huge UK-basketball fan who was forever ending up at Thanksgivings, Christmases, etc., feeling pressured to defend Joe B. Hall to folks who either felt completely certain that their coach was better, tougher, smarter and of more integrity than ours or, even worse, wished we had their guy instead of ours.

In the years since then, though, it has become easier to be a pro-Joe B/anti-Knight guy. For one thing, neither is now the flag-bearer for the UK-IU rivalry, and, besides, the rivalry itself isn't what it used to be.

Also, Joe B's record seems more impressive than it did when he retired in 1985, now that we saw that the talent level of the players coming to UK in the early 1980s wasn't as dreamy as we had all believed it to be and now that it has become clear just how hard it is to keep the Wildcats among the nation's elite teams. Plus, Joe B never took another coaching job; it turned out he really was the kid from Cynthiana who got to realize his dream, who rode that roller-coaster of blessing and curse for as long as he could and who has spent the rest of his life processing the enormity of the experience from behind a banker's desk, at a microphone or on the end of a fishing pole. And through his radio show, we've gotten to know a pretty darned lovable Joe B--amiable, willing to acknowledge his limitations and failures, seemingly non-angry over a relative lack of appreciation for his accomplishments, well-adjusted ... happy.

And Knight? Well, I've already acknowledged that I'm not the right guy to come to if you're looking for someone to give him a fair shake, but I think it is fair to say that we've moved a long, long way from the days when a "BOBBY KNIGHT FOR PRESIDENT" bumper sticker was on about every fourth pickup you saw on a rural-Indiana highway.

So then bubbles up this story, and it tempts every small part of myself. I am tempted to mock, to ridicule, to skewer. And I am not alone.

But, you know what? Today is Maundy Thursday, and it's high time to at least start acting like I've learned something from Jesus.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

The revolution to which Jesus calls me (in fact, calls you, too) begins in my heart--first personal, then hopefully corporate. The revolution will not be televised (in fact, if it is televised, that probably means I've picked the wrong revolution). And, a lot of times (in fact, maybe most of the time or all of the time), the acts resulting from the faith yielded by the revolution will not look tough, smart or of integrity--even among people I respect and love.

This is not some clever writing device to blow the little and particular into something big and sweeping. I really do think God gets down to all of the small, seemingly meaningless places that our little hearts and minds take us. Jesus taught his disciples about the kingdom of God and His ministry by telling stories about fishing, farming, cooking, parenting ... the most ordinary and common of stuff in their lives. I think Jesus is constantly meeting me in places like Bobby Knight, interstate merge lanes and office squabbles to get me to turn around and follow Him somewhere bigger.

And this is not some tactical, kill-him-with-kindness strategy to appear to put myself on the high road and Bobby Knight on the low. There are instances we are called to call out wrong, reckless and hurtful behavior, and, Bobby Knight, you were behaving wrongly, recklessly and hurtfully. But Jesus calls me to honestly, humbly love Bobby Knight, and that's where it gets hard. Not complicated, just hard.

And on this Maundy Thursday, I know in my heart that I'm struggling to do that. I know in my heart that I'm still inclined to betray Jesus and deny His call. Bobby Knight is the latest opportunity for me to turn around and follow.