A Piper Cub Lands in Philistia

Arrrr, it’s me boutique, matey!

Alternate title: The 80s were the “me” decade, but we’re so over that now.

John McCain won the Florida Republican primary yesterday. His response to the situation (emphases mine):

Not sure how someone who’s constantly getting in bed with the other party can possibly unite his own party.

But the more laughable part is the fact that he referred to himself as a conservative. Even if you’ve been under a rock for the last 5 years, and don’t know how un-conservative McCain has become, consider this. Fairly reliable sources are saying that Rudy Giuliani will be dropping out of the race today and endorsing McCain.

How conservative can you be if Rudy Giuliani is endorsing you?

The only good part to all this is that, at least, James Dobson and his sheeple won’t be electing a Democrat in November.

In a chat in the comments of another post, my friend Joe mentioned that he had heard/read that there were some great Christian guys that are/were in the Atlanta Braves organization.

And there have been. John Smoltz, Sid Bream, and Methusaleh Julio Franco leap to mind.

There was one particularly funny moment regarding a Brave’s Christianity. J D Drew played the 2004 season for the Braves. His agent (at least, then) is Scott Boras. Shortly before the season started, Drew was being interviewed on local sports radio.

They were asking him the usual new-player baseball stuff — what he felt that he could contribute, what he saw as a recent outsider, etc. Then they noted that “we know that your faith is very important to you”, then asked, “how do you balance that with the fact that your agent is, you know, Satan?”

If Allen Iverson is “the Answer”, can we please beat the snot out of whoever asked the Question?

Apparently, this was part of an MKL Day celebration.

Read this story today and thought it was fascinating. Apparently someone misplaced a camera and the folks who found it tracked them down via the photos on it. But it took a while, with a few dead-ends. Interesting little mystery.

Sid Bream made an appearance near me today. If you don’t know who Sid is, shame on you. He was the Atlanta Braves’ first baseman from 1991-1993 and the man who made “The Slide” in game 7 of the 1992 NLCS.

If you don’t know what “The Slide” is, shame on you again. You can read about it on this Wikipedia page, or you can see it on this YouTube video, starting at 3:35. (Actually if you’re a Braves fan, just watch the whole thing. It’s pretty cool.)

He’s also a brother in Christ. His face really lit up when I said, “Thank you for coming, but more importantly, thank you for your testimony.”

Below is a slideshow of pictures that I took at the event. Or you can just look at my album (with a chance to see a full-screen slideshow).

And, no, I don’t know what the deal is that I keep wearing my Third Day “Time” t-shirt to Braves autograph sessions.

UPDATE: Nothing like having the author stop by and chime in. See the comments below while I try to get my swelled head through this doorway.

Welcome to Fred
Brad Whittington

When I was about 75 pages from the end of this book, I decided that I’d write a review. (I read a lot more books than I review. I just don’t bother to review something unless I have something relevant to say about it.)

At that point in the book, I had been finding it very enjoyable even though nothing very remarkable had happened to the protagonist. Hence the post title — the day-to-day stuff happens to Christians, too.

Toward the end of the book, some significant stuff does happen to the protagonist, but it’s largely internal and/or spiritual in nature. For me, this just kicked it up a notch, as Whittington is good at even writing the mundane in such a way that it’s enjoyable.

Enough generic rambling. What’s this book about?

It’s about 250 pages. (insert rim shot here)

The story is told from the perspective of Mark Cloud, a Baptist preacher’s kid (PK) in the late 60s and early 70s. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, the family moved to Ohio when Mark was 8. While there, he had some of the usual kid adventures, as well as encountering some things that would play a role in his life later. While in Ohio, Mark becomes good friends with a neighbor kid nicknamed “M”, and both become enamored with the hippie culture. Being fairly insulated, they don’t know about free love and drugs, but do love the clothes, hairstyles, and general counter-culture attitude of the hippies.

After four years in Ohio, the family moves back to Texas, but this time to a miniscule town called Fred (hence the book title). Even though Mark is not a Yankee (a fact that he makes very clear), he’s told that he dresses and talks like one. After all, in a town drowning in denim, no one else is wearing white bell bottoms and olive-green shirts. And the talking isn’t so much accent as it is the fact that he speaks a bit more eloquently than his peers, nearly bursting a blood vessel when he eventually gives in and tries to learn to say “ain’t” and such. As someone who moved from Philadelphia to suburban Atlanta when I was 12, this fish-out-of-water aspect was heavily identifiable to me, but still often hilarious.

Eventually, Mark acclimates to his surroundings and his peers to a degree, but eventually realizes that he’ll never fully fit in, partly because he’d have to totally divorce himself from who he was, and partly because PKs always get treated differently. This struggle runs through much of the book, but sometimes is moreso in the background.

As do most adolescents, he starts having some doubts about some of the things that he believes. But he never expresses them for fear of general impropriety (as the preacher’s kid) as well as fear that his father might disown him. This is another theme that runs through much of the book, but is somewhat resolved by the end.

A couple of things impressed me in particular. While there were several themes, issues, and occurences throughout the book that all converge in the last few chapters, Whittington doesn’t just wrap up everything in a nice little bow. Rather, the convergence is moreso an acknowledgement of how God uses things in our life that (at the time) seem to have no relevance but (later) turn out to be very important.

The other thing that struck me was another issue which was never specifically stated, but with which I identified readily. Mark’s dad often peppers his speech with big words and “odd phrases” — and is once actually described by Mark to one of his sisters as “you know that’s just how Dad talks”. Yet, the book, narrated by an adult Mark, has much of the same chracteristics. Mark clearly “turned into” his dad.

Apparently, from what I read, Whittington’s writing improves with the second and third books in this series. I thought it was pretty darn good to start with, so this evaluation has me looking forward even more to reading more of his work.

There’s a blogger out there who always refers to his famous pastor and author as “my friend and mentor, John Doe*”. Now besides the fact that I’ve got a better Friend and Mentor, am I the ony one that sees this name-dropping and immediately thinks “Tommy Flanagan”? I keep waiting for his next comment to be about “my wife, Morgan Fairchild”.

If you’re too young to get the reference, please refer to this instead.

* Name changed simply because it’s not relevant to my point

(reason #473)

We often think of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, but it occurred to me recently (at a new level) how difficult it must have been for the Father.

Matthew 26:37-39 (emphases mine):

Here’s a video of Tom Key talking about Cotton Patch Gospel that includes the scene from Gethsemane.

If you’re not familiar with the play or Clarence Jordan’s book on which it is based, I’d advise watching the whole video as Key gives the backstory. If you are familiar and just want to view that scene, it starts at 1:56.

Jordan’s writing (and Key’s interpretation) really de-King-James-ifies the scene and shows the desperation that Jesus was feeling at that time. I’m not a parent, but even when I see my wife in pain, I know I’d do anything to make it go away. But if I had a son, and he was begging me to let him avoid going through excruciating pain, I’d do it, no questions asked. If I was God, I’d have ended it right there and said (literally) “to hell with all those humans”.

It’s amazing that Jesus did not pray to the Father for twelve legions of angels to deliver Him. To me, it’s even more amazing that the Father didn’t send them without a request.