Tag Archives: Nights to Remember

Loving your neighbor in Inver Grove Heights

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Last week the Inver Grove Heights City Council met to hear from the public regarding a new property maintenance ordinance aimed at instituting certain appearance, maintenance and lawn-care standards for private homes. As with many laws, especially those regarding private property, this ordinance wasn’t aimed at defining or protecting an owner’s property rights, but at criminalizing poor or indifferent citizenship. Of course, it’s all for a good cause: “It’s for the children,” one of the proponents said.

Apparently, it’s more harmful for children to see a messy yard than it is for them to see adults taking their neighbors to court to resolve a problem instead of pitching in to help.

As a property-owner I know how discouraging and aggravating it can be to share a neighborhood — or even a property-line — with an “eye-sore” home and lot. I am much more concerned, however, with the ever-increasing encroachments on property rights, typically in the name of “doing good.” From Kelo, to smoking bans, to how high you let the grass grow, it’s an ever-expanding power-grab passed off as being for the common good without any real examination of how much good — or how much harm — is actually being done. (On a side-note, I heard one news-reader on KFAN this a.m. referring to the new state-wide smoking ban in bars and restaurants, say the ban “does not apply to private homes at this time” — suggesting, what?)

In this particular case, this issue for me is not just a legal or conservative one about rights and what you can get people to go along with, it is a moral and Biblical one as well. Usually it seems that if you raise a moral issue these days it’s assumed that you want to impose some narrow-minded “thou shalt not” on other people. In this case the “thou shalt nots” being imposed are coming from the larger public and what’s being missed is the “thou shall” Biblical instruction. You know, the one that “thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.” Note, that doesn’t say “love they neighbor only if thy neighbor is a believer,” nor does it say “if you are a believer, thou shall love thy neighbor.”

What if that neighbor with the dilapidated house or junky yard is someone struggling just to make ends meet and can’t afford to make the improvements to the paint or siding that the community deems to be necessary? What if that neighbor is working two or three jobs and might skip mowing the lawn from time to time? What if your neighbors are an elderly couple who don’t have the physical, let alone financial, resources to maintain the property but are trying to live independently? Shall we just have our pubic servants, the police, march up to the door and slap a citation on it? Certainly it would be “legal.” Or, alternatively, shall we walk up to the door in person, knock on it and say, “Hi, you may not know me but I’m your next-door neighbor and I was wondering if there was something I could do to help?”

Ok, so what if that neighbor is a lazy bum who’s perfectly capable of maintaining his house or yard, or is someone who just likes to use old washing machines as lawn statuary? Well, it could be that your offer might not be well-received, or that your neighbor might think that you’re the nutjob. But if a succession of people approached him or her over time and offered to help (as opposed to demanding that he or she “straighten up”) what effect could that have? The neighbor would know that people are paying attention, that they care about the neighborhood and their property values, and that they’re willing to try to help first rather than condemn. He may not change his attitude completely but he may be motivated to try to make some improvements (even grudgingly) or even accept an offer of help. Which approach do you think ultimately contributes to a better neighborhood?

If that is starting to sound like a good idea to you, but you’re thinking, “yeah, why can’t the government do something to help that guy?” then you’re still missing the point. A lot of the problems we’re facing in our communities come from the fact that we’ve allocated to the government the responsibility of looking out for the well-being of those around us, of loving our neighbors. Sure, we mean to “do good” by passing new laws and taxes but we’re merely passing off our personal responsibility to do good to another, impersonal (and usually less efficient) entity.

Now it could be that your neighbor is a loser with no conscience or sense of shame who will readily accept help from you and your neighbor and just sit back and figure someone will always bail him out and never lift a finger himself. There’s certainly precedent for that happening when the help comes from a faceless government, but may not be so common when there are real faces involved. It’s worth a try at least to see if you can make a difference, and if someone is totally resistant or irresponsible there are other Biblical examples of how to deal with an unrepentent individual (and no, they don’t involve stoning — I’m thinking Matthew 18:15-17).

Furthermore, do we know how many people might fall into this latter category, and might it be worthwhile to figure it out before writing an ordinance or passing a law? At the Inver Grove Heights meeting, one person asked the Council how many complaints had been filed regarding nuisance properties. The answer was 160. The questioner then asked how many private homes were in Inver Grove Heights. The Council and the proponents of the ordinance didn’t know.

How many of the complaints referred to the same property? They didn’t know.

How many complaints had been filed by the same person? They didn’t know.

For the time being, the Council has decided to proceed with a stripped down version of the ordinance that regulates junk, open storage, woodpiles and similar eyesores but not the outside condition of houses and other buildings. It was much less than ordinance proponents were hoping for, and the issue is still alive. A second reading of the ordinance is scheduled for the next Council meeting on October 8.

Bring the pain(t)

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“If you haven’t hunted man, you haven’t hunted.”
— Jesse Ventura

I breathed in deeply, imagining I could catch the invigorating smell of napalm in the morning. All I got was dank musk of the forest floor, the scent of plastic and the stench of someone else’s sweat from the borrowed helmet. And besides, it was late afternoon. My very own sweat was running into my eyes while swatches of sunlight and shadow cut across my vision as I scanned slowly through the leaves and branches that masked my position. Moving only my head, the light glared off of the pits and scratches in my visor and made the shadows seem even deeper as my eyes probed, alert for any sign of danger or opportunity, for any movement of branch or leaf not consistent with the slight breeze tickling through the oppressive valley. I cradled the gun in my arms and flexed my firing hand to keep it from cramping. I knew someone was out there. Someone who wanted to hurt me.

“But not if I see you first,” I thought.

Earlier in the day I had set out on a recon mission, moving along the trail in unfamiliar territory as my footfalls competed with my heart beat to see which could pound louder in my ears. The trail was clear. The trail was easy. “The trail is death,” I thought to myself. “The trail is the way the fat, stupid animals go and the strong, clever animals wait out of sight beside it and take the easy pickings.”

Picking your way through the branches and brambles, with the cockleburs clotting on your clothing, is hard. Life is hard. Learn to move through the forest and you might live. It’s a game really, like a snipe hunt. Except it’s not snipe, it’s snipers, and they really are out there. Is that sweat trickling along my spine or is it the prickly sensation of an unseen gun barrel drawing down on my back?

The first time I was shot wasn’t so bad, really. Everything was fine until the moment of sudden impact. “What? Me? Now? So soon?” flashed across my mind, but there was no denying the thick, viscous liquid that came dripping down my visor. I had reached up with my hand, brought it away wet and slick, the goo the consistency of a bird dropping. And it was yellow. Dammit, it must have been Ben who got me, and I was dead — at least until that round of Paintball was finished, anyway. Then I could seek my revenge. That opportunity had come about an hour later when I had Ben pinned down behind a curved metal barrier. I was to his left at an extreme angle that barely allowed me to see him, but enough so I could pump round after round past the edge of the barricade, so close to him that a deep breath on his part would have ended it, yet he held his breath and his unlikely position, unable to return fire. I fired three more quick shots to keep him still and then rose slightly to move to my right to get a finishing angle. Then came the all too familiar whack on my skull as the ball exploded on my scalp, a jet of orange paint shooting through my hair, dispensed by a shooter from across the field. Another important lesson learned: use your head, or someone else will…for target practice!


The Orange Badge of Courage. The paintball struck just above the curve of the hairline.

This time, however, I can make no mistakes. I am the left flank of the line, the end. I am Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine at Little Round Top. If I fall, if they get by me, the bad guys roll into our rear, capture the flag and it’s over. My eyes continue to scan the area in front of me. About 30 yards away is a wooden barricade, set between some trees, surrounded by brush. I have already swept it several times. This time a black paint hopper and barrel are sticking up above the edge of the barrier. That wasn’t there before! I bring up my gun, let out my breath slightly and wait. As the head inevitably comes up over the wall I pour about half a gallon of paint into the area; had I the time and the inclination I could have tattooed my initials into the wood. Instead I focus on keeping the unknown head down so he can’t get an aimed shot off at me. More paintballs are coming at me from my right now, but the angle isn’t good and the brush around me too thick to permit a serious threat. I fire some suppressing rounds in that general direction while keeping my eye on the original target, hoping he will take the opportunity to show himself. He does; I add another coat to the primer already laid down. I’m aware of activity to my right, but from my side of the lines, then some shooting moving away from me and then the cry — “The game is over!”

While things had heated up by me, Kevin had grabbed the flag and gone forward, sweeping up the right flank and planting it in the enemy base while my two shooters focused on me. One of these was the Mall Diva. A third sniper, Tiger Lilly, meanwhile, had been waiting on the edge of the action, also focusing on me. “Ooh, Dad, if you had only come forward three more feet I would have had you,” she said. “Yeah,” I thought to myself, “and if fish had feet they’d be mice.”

Maybe next time, kid.

The bridges of Minneapolis and San Luis Rey, and the Tower of Siloam

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Who, what, when, where? Those are the first things we want to know when a disaster makes the news. Close on their heels comes the question hardest to answer: Why?

That question breaks into two parts, the physical and the metaphysical. Why did the bridge fail structurally, and why were these particular people apportioned to survive, die or be injured? The first question will eventually be known to the millimeter; the second will remain fuzzy. Implicit in the second one, however, is the fear that everything is random, that there is no justice, or that justice is applied on a scale so grand that we can’t calculate it; either way we are left with uncertainty as to just what measure is due us personally. The thing is, we want there to be a reason and order to things, and optimistically assume (or hope) that our own accounts will balance to the “good”; promising or justifying our own deliverance from calamity.

We easily extend our version of grace to others (as long as they’re victims and not members of the opposition party), generously judging them good or innocent by the most general of categories: he was a “nice guy”, she was a young mother. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” we cry. Other people, or other times, might view calamity as judgment or karmic justice.

Similarly, was it chance or God’s plan that resulted in the deaths in the collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis? Was it God’s indifference that lead to the fall, or God’s providence that the calamity was not more catastrophic? If there is such a “goodness” scale, by what measure can the survivors claim deliverance and what comfort can be given to the families of those who didn’t? How can a former missionary go missing while a child abuser survives?

People didn’t start asking these questions just when President Bush took office, either. In his 1927 novel, “The Bridge at San Luis Rey,” Thornton Wilder tackles similar questions and circumstances in the person of Brother Juniper who tries to ascertain the central failing in the lives of five people who perish when the titular bridge falls into a chasm. (He could come to no conclusion). Going back a bit further, in John 9:2, Jesus was asked about a blind man, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” Whereupon he made mud and put it in the blind man’s eyes and then sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam, healing his blindness. Interestingly, Siloam is mentioned again in Luke 13 when people suggest to Jesus that calamity overcame certain people as a judgment. His response: “… those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Or, (excuse my jump in character but not in context), in the words of Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, “We’ve all got it coming.” The point being made was that no one is innocent, but each may come to the revelation of salvation by grace; by the work of God, not man.

I’m not trying to be dark. In fact, I believe that there is an order and justice in the universe even if we can’t see it all at once. I believe that because, in fact, we are able to see beauty and justice from time to time. If it weren’t so, all would be chaos and despair. Instead, in the midst of the refining fire of a disaster there are gleaming streaks of gold rising through all the impurities; the acts of courage, altruism and goodness in the survivors and rescuers (perhaps even unplumbed in their lives up until that point), and of a community pulling together in empathy and faith.

Bridges are aspirational; tangibly they are an example of our ability to overcome an obstacle to achieve what we want. The failure of one is not just a challenge to getting what we want, it is a repudiation of our ability to even conceive of it; the cutting of the tight rope woven of our doctrines that we walk to find our own salvation. In Mark Helprin’s book “Winter’s Tale” the allegorical and eternal Jackson Mead, an engineer representing either Lucifer or man (I go back and forth on this), strives to bend steel, nature and his will into casting a tremendous bridge of light to Heaven that — like our human understanding — touches the far shore for a moment and falls. Yet one of the messages of the book is that the balances are exact; and one thing cannot fall without something else rising and even more gloriously.

The 35W bridge fell in a crush of broken steel, concrete and bodies — and though the dust sought to obscure it, we could suddenly see something clearly: we are the bridges, standing in or reaching across the gap for and to one another.

Standing, always.

Novella

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“Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.”
— Truman Capote

I don’t have the experience, yet, of being an author finishing a book so I don’t know if Capote’s words are apt. It seems to me the writing-publishing experience is more like being a parent and having a child leave the nest. As the parent of a soon to be 19-year-old still in the nest but beginning to make her own way I marvel at how what I’ve “created” has taken on a life of her own; how the countless hours spent shaping and imagining and agonizing over just the right word has inspired dialogue with subtleties, nuances and complexities I never realized were possible, and how a true character has emerged fully-formed and bursting to go forth.

For years this book was mainly blank pages; pages that consumed my life and were never far from my thoughts no matter what else I happened to be doing. Day by day those pages were filled, and while there are things I’d like to go back and rewrite there’s no guarantee that the story would be even better than it is now; even so I wrestle with the temptation/obsession to continue to tweak and polish.

Will anyone else understand the humor of page 112, or appreciate how difficult it was to write Chapter 19? Certainly not at the level I do, but that knowledge is for my own book, the one written on my heart. Now, though, it is time to see this through; to be proud to see all the time, work and love realized in a tangible package; to admire not just the cover but the spine; to breathe deep the aroma of the fresh pages and the glue that holds them together.

It is good.

At home in the Dome

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I’ve made passing mention here a couple of times that I used to be a scoreboard operator at the Metrodome, working games for the Twins, Vikings and Gophers as well as working the odd (some odder than others) concert, tractor-pull or pro-wrasslin’ match. I only mentioned it before to add context to whatever else I was writing about at the time, figuring some time I’d get around to dedicating a post to the experience and offering a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at major sporting events. I don’t know that there’s ever a perfect time to write something like that, but an e-mailer did ask for more Dome details the other day, so here goes.

Back in early 1982 I was an over-extended single guy looking for a part-time job to supplement my income, but I didn’t want to work at McDonald’s or someplace where someone I knew might see me. Perusing the want ads one day I saw an ad that went something like this: “Part-time opportunity, evenings and week-ends. Must be knowledgeable about football and baseball, able to type 50+ wpm and not afraid to perform in front of large crowds. For more info contact…” There was no mention of what the job was, and I almost dismissed it. The more I thought about it, though, I realized that there wasn’t anything in the ad that didn’t apply to me…even the large crowds thing. I applied, was interviewed, given a typing test and, obviously, hired.

There were 8 scoreboard operators plus Dick Davis from the Metropolitan Sports Commission who was in charge of the scoreboard and us. We were divided into two four-person teams and I was the only person who wasn’t a school teacher; six of the others, in fact, where coaches or had experience coaching as well. The system was all computer operated (though our first computers were very large and almost primitive) and there was a minor stink in the Strib before the season started because the new computerized system meant replacing the old groundskeepers from the Met who had been hanging the signs for the old board. Whatever.

The two crews alternated games, and within the crews we rotated through the four scoreboard positions on a game-by-game basis. Originally the job required someone to register balls, strikes, runs and the line score; someone to type in and display advertising and other messages during the course of the game; someone to keep track of and update out of town games; and someone to operate the sole video camera, perched on the second-deck fascia above third base. Unless the game was televised (and a lot of Twins games then weren’t) this was the stadium’s replay camera, beaming images to the black and white (black and yellow, actually) board, to be displayed through thousands of lightbulbs (“fuzz-dots” we called ’em). Resolution wasn’t very good, but you could see things well enough to recognize yourself if a crowd shot was put on the board.

The first balls & strikes console was a twitchy piece of dreck that didn’t have all the bugs worked out. Often you’d push the button for a ball or strike and it would delay the display long enough that you’d think it hadn’t registered the input, so you’d push again – only to see double strikes or balls suddenly go up. Push the button too hard to ensure it was registered and the same thing could happen. This was very frustrating to the operators and to the people in the press box, who were always looking for something to criticize.

Sid Hartman, the grand old man of Minnesota sportswriting, was especially incensed by this type of malfunction. The press box was immediately outside the door of our room and any time a “double-clutch” occurred he’d jump up and storm in to announce that the count was wrong, as if we didn’t know it. I was working the out-of-town board one evening when Sid made about six trips into our “office”. When another glitch occurred he was on his way in again. I happened to be standing by the door, however, so I innocently turned my back to it as if to look over the shoulder of the guy working the message board, while casually flipping the door lock into place. There was much door rattling and cursing; muffled as it was by our air-conditioned booth, but I think I did hear mentions of my parentage and my own capability to ever father children, but he finally went away and didn’t come back the rest of the game.

That was actually kind of a fun memory. One of my worst moments, however, came before a game against the Blue Jays. Tony Kubek had recently been demoted from the “Game of the Week” and was working the back-up GOTW. He was also the main broadcaster for the Jays, which I didn’t know at the time. Anyway, I’m walking through the press box and here comes Tony Kubek! I say, with some amazement, “Hey, Tony Kubek!” He smiles. I then blurt, “Are we the back-up game today?” I wasn’t trying to bust his chops; I was just surprised that the Twins of that era might be considered for a national broadcast (even if as a back-up). Mr. Kubek was not pleased. Dick Davis, however, witnessed the scene and thought it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen and would never let me forget it, especially any time Kubek returned to the Dome.

There were other hero-sightings as well. In the early days we actually had to go down to the locker rooms to get the lineups, which were posted on a corkboard in the home and visitor clubhouses. I remember that Reggie Jackson, in boxers, tank-top and beat-up flip-flops, looked really old and that his calves seemed impossibly skinny. Ted Simmons wearing nothing but a jock is not a sight I’d wish on anyone. Another time I was writing down the visiting lineup, my piece of paper pressed against the wall under the corkboard. I finished and turned around to leave – and almost hit Sparky Anderson in the nose with my elbow. He’d walked up behind me and was eating a bowl of vegetable soup and watching me write down the lineup, or was perhaps just pondering making a change, and I’d never heard him approach. At least he laughed about it.

Another time I got the hairy eyeball from Don Drysdale when the White Sox were in town. He was standing in the back of the press box eating a hot dog when I came out of the scoreboard room about 20 feet from him. All of a sudden a fan in the row in front of the press box reached over the divider and grabbed my shoulder, shoved a baseball at me and said, “Hey, buddy – get Drysdale’s autograph for me.” It happened so quickly that I just obeyed, somewhat stupefied. I approached DD with the ball (he was close enough to hear what was going on) and he glared at me but took the ball and signed it (later I’d hear from others what a tough autograph he was). I barely got a “thanks” from the guy who gave me the ball. I should have kept it.

In addition to working World Series and ALCS games and an All Star game I also had the privilege of working Scott Erickson’s no-hitter and I got paid to see Dave Winfield’s and Eddie Murray’s 3,000th hits. I was also there the night Dave Kingman hit a monstrous foul ball straight up that never came down. The ball went into one of the holes stitched into the underlining of the Dome roof and disappeared. The funniest thing was all the Twins infielders (including shortstop Houston Jiminez – all 5′ 3″ inches of him) gathered in the middle of the infield, looking up at the roof in the hopes of fielding the pop-up. As the seconds went by, though, they started to get really nervous. All of a sudden they all simultaneously ducked and scattered in different directions expecting to be struck by the phantom ball that was never there. The next day someone in the Twins front office got the bright idea that before the first pitch of the game they’d have someone drop a ball from the ceiling and Mickey Hatcher would catch it and the umpire would call “Out”. Someone got up on the catwalk, Mickey and the ump positioned themselves near home plate, and the ball was dropped – by the guy above and by the guy with the glove.

One of my all-time favorite memories, however, came when I was working the camera back in the fuzz-dot days and doing crowd shots between innings. As I panned over a boy that was about 10 years old he saw he was on the board and then thought it would be funny to flip me off. Dick was in my headset saying, “Get off him! Get off him!” but I said, “No, just stick with me here” and I zoomed in on the kid, who immediately got very shy and embarrassed. He walked over a few seats and sat down low, trying to get out of sight. He looked up at the board and saw he was still up there. He slunk down even further and moved over several more seats, and I again followed him. By this time the crowd was laughing so the kid got up and ran up the stairs to the concourse. About that time the inning was beginning and Dick said, “OK, back to the game” but I suggested he take the camera shot off the board but to stay with me. He agreed and sure enough, a few minutes later the kid stuck his head back in from the concourse and looked to see if the coast was clear. Seeing the line score on the board he stepped back into the aisle. “Now!” I said and Dick immediately put the camera shot back on the board — the crowd roared, the players on the field (I was told) started turning around trying to figure out what was going on, and the kid high-tailed it back out to the concourse and has probably never gone to a ballgame since.

The camera also helped me get published in Sports Illustrated! Back in the day when Bob Uecker was doing his “I must be in the front rooow” commercials for Miller Lite, the Brewers came to the Dome for a series. Ueck’s commercials, if you recall, ended with him way out by himself in center field, hollering to the nearest guy, “Great seats, eh, buddy?” As the game went on I saw some guy sitting in the upper deck, center field, all by himself. I zoomed in on him (showing plenty of empty seats) and asked Dick through the headset, “Is that Bob Uecker?” He thought that was pretty funny so he told the guy working the message board to create a 1/3 board message with the words “Is that Bob Uecker?” to go alongside my camera shot. A couple of weeks later SI came out with a story about Ueck and the article started off by referring to my caption and camera shot from the Dome.

Well, those are some of the baseball memories. There’s more I could write about some of the amazing things I did and saw at football games, tractor-pulls and the Pink Floyd and Rolling Stones concerts, but I’ll save those for another time.

Dying easy, II

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A few days ago I put up a post referencing how safe our lives have become and suggesting that we had to go looking to find things to kill us, and usually found them embedded in the things we’ve used to make our lives easier.

Our desire for easy and convenient kills us with useless calories, toxic drink dispensers and mutated nutrients while we celebrate progress and our exceeding cleverness. Why, to do without these fruits would be regressive, even primitive.

Morally we also like things easier, and we don’t like to put the hard work in to examine ourselves and cut the slack out of our lives, thinking that as long as everything “looks good” then we must not be too bad. We certainly don’t want to be bothered with the work of taking a stand in the hopes of changing others (unless we’re one of those who can’t wait to change everyone but themselves), so we watch that video, play that game, revel in those lyrics. Why, to do without our rationalizations, to be willing to say something is actually evil, would be regressive, even primitive.

It’s far easier to act as if the “science” of our morality has all been settled, that evil has been driven from our land along with the wild, man-eating animals, leaving us this convenient, easy life where we assume everyone’s just naturally got it all figured out and evil is merely a quaint concept to be manipulated for power and ratings, or to describe how someone else votes. Or else a venial sin is blown up into a huge paper dragon so that certain warriors can similarly puff themselves up to do battle with it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

And then someone shoots up a school, pours acid on a playground slide or opportunistically twists another person’s name and reputation for personal gain on a national stage and we gape in horror and wonder how anyone could do such a thing even though it happens in one form or another every day. Meanwhile, the TV networks that won’t show a fan running out onto an athletic field because it gives the yahoo the exposure he’s looking for and only encourages others, trip all over each other to broadcast the addled rantings of a self-absorbed maniac.

A friend who is a carpenter recently opined, after touring several million-dollar homes, how disappointing the workmanship was in these beautiful and expensive abodes. Things certainly looked nice, but to a practiced eye the mistakes and cover-ups for the mistakes were jarring. Something might look right, but if it’s not properly squared up it’s eventually going to sag and crumble, no matter how expensive and modern it is.

I can’t imagine the architect is too pleased.

Filings: NSF

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One of the songs we sang in church on Easter Sunday had these words:

I’ll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross.

We’ve sung that song a few times before and each time I usually think to myself that I do know how much it cost to redeem my sin — it “cost” Jesus having to come to earth in human form, being beaten, crucified, dying and rising again. Yesterday, however, it really sunk in for me that there is a difference between “knowing” and “experiencing”. Or, to put it in the words that occurred to me, it’s the difference between receiving a check for $1 million and writing a check for $1 million.

That’s not to say that most of us haven’t tried to write out our own check for our salvation, either out of our man-made doctrines or new age spirituality, or based on our “good works”. Inherent in all of those thoughts is that deep down we assume we’re not “that bad” (even “good”), so how big a check are we really talking about? The thing is, there is no check that we can write ourselves that would pay that debt, even on an installment plan. That’s because we all fell for the marketing incentives and opened our accounts at the First Bank of Hell (hey, I got a free toaster!), and those checks are always going to bounce. They’ll come back stamped NSF — Insufficient Faith. And man, those penalty charges eat you up.

Nor do I get any closer by taking that revelation and thinking that I’m a worm, a worthless sinner (especially if done with an all-too-human sense of pride at my humility). True, on my own that is what I’d be, but Jesus looked at the value and decided I was worth it. I don’t know which revelation makes me weep more.

It is a gift that I can’t explain, rationalize or justify; all I can do is either accept it or waste it. There were many over the weekend who tipped their hats to the “message of Jesus” without realizing the sacrifice he made. There were the ones, even in Christian leadership, willing to call him “Teacher” but not “Lord”. I know; I’ve been there, done that myself. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity (and KingDavid reminded me):

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg–or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that [alternative] open to us

Filings is an ongoing section of this blog where the posts focus specifically on issues of Christian life. The name comes about because “filings” are the natural by-product of Proverbs 27:17: “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

Herb Carneal

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“Some love the sound of the loon or the teal,
but I love the voice of Herb Carneal.”

That’s a snippet from a song I heard Garrison Keillor sing a long time ago. I don’t remember what the song or the context was, but that couplet always stuck with me because it also expressed the pleasure and comfort I took from listening to Herb call a Twins game. There was just something so natural about the way he described the action; you could tell he enjoyed what he was doing, even in the most wretched of seasons – and there were enough of those over the years to have made a lesser man long for laryngitis.

It’s kind of funny, but when I think of his voice now I don’t think of baseball as much as I do night driving on a warm summer’s evening; of settling back in my seat, the windows half open, letting the dark air and the golden tones eddy about me. Baseball is about the only sport I enjoy listening to on the radio. I can barely stand to watch the NBA, let alone listen to it and the college game isn’t much more compelling. Hockey and football have so much going on that, while I’ll listen to a game on radio, it’s only until I can get to a TV, whereupon I’ll dash inside to watch the rest. Many times, however, while on my way home and listening to Herb call a Twins game, I’d sit out in the driveway or garage and wait until the end of the inning before going inside and turning on the set. With Herb there was never any rush.

Herb and former Cardinals announcer Jack Buck were as much of the sound of baseball to me as the crack of the bat, and their style and grace was always a pleasure, and now they are both gone. There are other announcers who are alright, and some who are annoying (it took me awhile to appreciate John Gordon, and I can’t stand Buck’s son, Joe). In recent years I could hear Herb’s voice getting weaker, but it was still a baseball voice and the few innings he’d work each game were like getting the last piece of cake: you knew it was going to be good, but soon gone. Last week when the newspaper had the story that he didn’t feel strong enough to work the Opening Day game, Twins fans knew it wasn’t a good sign. Herb said he hoped his voice would be strong enough to return soon, and even though I read his words in the paper — rather than hearing them — they struck me as having the same note of plucky optimism he’d use when saying “Wait until next year” after another 90-loss season. Like the Twins mantra, he always seemed to know that you can’t take any one loss too hard.

This one, though, is going to be a toughie.

The StarTribune has a collection of some of Herb’s classic calls here.