Thoughts on Kentucky Basketball after the Kansas game of Nov 18 2014

I’ll admit it, I have believed every Kentucky basketball team I’ve seen before, was as good as this one - of course, this one actually is. If you want to die with Kentucky basketball on top, start living a riskier lifestyle and quickly get your affairs in order. This team doesn’t just play above the rim, it does work up there. If you want to see a better basketball team, lie down and go to sleep, because you will only see one in your dreams.

The graphed relationship between Kentucky’s performance and my sleep after a game is best represented as an inverted-U, with performance on the X axis and my sleep on the Y. After the way they played last night, I thought I would never fall asleep.

Dakari Johnson looks like a retired NBA center. He is the only big man we have who plays below the rim, but ask anyone who goes against him in practice or in games how much fun he is to play against. I am guessing they would say: it’s aggravating, frustrating, tiring, grueling. The ball seems to calm down when it finds itself in his hands. He says he is working on his free-throw shooting. He’s an ole pro. He will figure it out.

Willie Cauley-Stein looks like an avatar drawn 1.5 times normal size, by an imaginative artist specializing in the human male form. Imagine shooting a basketball with him prowling between you and the goal.

Alex Poythress jumps like he is made of 40 pounds of styrofoam instead of 240 pounds of muscle. At least I did not have to try to sleep last night with my dreams haunted by him blocking my shot from behind, the way a couple of Kansas players did.

Tyler Ulis moves the way we all do when we imagine ourselves a big-time college basketball player. He hit a 12-foot tear-drop with such touch, it might have been written and directed by Steven Spielberg and performed by Meryl Streep.

After last year’s tournament, every time Aaron Harrison rises up to shoot from the arc with his head leaned back and the ball heading for the bottom of the net, it’s as if everything goes into slow motion and I see his twin to the left of him, mouthing: “Go, Go, Go” and I hear Jim Nance say: “This is the spot where he does it!”

Karl Towns has a prissy gracefulness that makes it hard to take your eyes off him. Like all great players, what he does is better analyzed later in the replay, than as it occurs, because it’s often too subtle to appreciate in real time.

Andrew Harrison heads for the goal like there’s a tofu burger on the rim and he’s a vegan who’s been visiting his meat-eating family for a week. But he’s unselfish enough that if he sees one of his voracious teammates in a better position to eat, he will dish it to them.

Like a lot of Kentucky fans, I spend a lot of each game screaming my disbelief at what the TV is showing instead of what it should be showing.. An alley-oop that sailed out of bounds, should have been a spectacular dunk. A free-throw that should have been hit, bounced off the rim. This problem is especially acute for me with great freshmen players. Right now, I am still having trouble believing my TV when it shows Devon Booker and Trey Lyles missing shots. I may have to buy a new TV before long, if this keeps up.

In last year’s tourney game against Michigan when Marcus Lee’s head seemed to pop up beside the rim after almost every Kentucky miss and he would flush the ball into the net, I realized: I may never have been properly introduced to this young man. I still get the feeling I know precious little of what he might be able to do, but I am okay with the fact that he may show me something entirely new the last game he plays at Kentucky.

According to the data from the combine, Dominic Hawkins has a 44-inch vertical. How many 11^th men in college basketball can jump nearly four-feet high, play solid defense and knock down the occasional three? I will give you a minute while you look that one up. None is it? That’s sort of what I thought.

Derek Willis’s sick reverse dunk at the end of the second exhibition game, made me wonder whether he ought not to have transferred to another school for more playing time. But for his sake, I am glad he didn’t. He has a free front-row seat for every game this team plays and that, is priceless.

The Movie Boyhood and Available Me

In the Spring of 1988, I was finishing up my Ph.D. at UT-Knoxville and I had a few job interviews, one of which was at the University of North Carolina – Asheville (UNCA). While I was interviewing, two people who taught what I would be teaching there and were leaving, asked if they could meet with me. They told me they had learned UNCA had no intention of ever tenuring anyone to teach what we taught. I chalked it up to them being bitter for not having received tenure and so when I was offered the job, I took it knowing there was no one on planet earth that would not absolutely adore me if they got to know me. I think I thought; look how far I had come and how far my potential projected me to go. How could I not get tenure? I was lovable and destined for greatness!

I worked hard, rising early, and throwing myself into anything they asked me to do. The students seemed to like me and I loved the thought of being a university professor. My wife, daughter and I were not going to be wealthy, but we would not be poor and I would go down in history - if nothing else, as that little crooked-nosed boy from Beattyville that made a University professor.

Then, just before the department Christmas party in 1992, I was told by my department chair, he would not be supporting me for tenure, and that I should look for another job. My wife and I went to the Christmas party, but we felt awful. Suddenly we were outsiders, not accepted by long tenured members of the group. We felt rejected and unwanted.

I struggled to keep my spirits up enough to meet my classes that Spring - looking for another job. Then, in March, 1993; Tanga, Stephanie and I were at our favorite little bookstore, just up from the Fresh Market in Asheville and I was browsing books in “spirituality” or some such section; and I came across one entitled: Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, by Chogyam Trungpa. I bought it, and to say I read it would be an understatement. I poured it over my soul. Or, to say it another way, I set up camp in its pages. After I read it a few times, I returned to favorite passages to deepen my understanding. I still read parts of it 21 years later. Looking back, it’s clear: phase one of my life ended with the reading of that book.

One way of thinking of the first phase of my life is as the instrumental phase. In phase one, everything was there for me to use: people, time, material things, and even what most people called spiritual things. For example, I got saved and surrendered to preach to win my father’s love, not because I had some deep reverence for the Bible’s teachings. Even my wife, daughter and family seem, in retrospect, to have been there for my edification or as an accomplishment of mine to be pointed at. I had married a sensible, steadfast person – to cover for whatever extent I might not be those things. Any evidence on the part of my daughter that she was brilliant, offered a chance someone might say she was like me. My father and mother became early benchmarks – since they had not finished middle school – indicators of how far I had come by getting the Ph.D.

Phase two did not bring perfection; instrumental me still exists; and comes back with a vengeance from time to time. But phase two gets its name – available me – from the fact that there seems to be a trustworthy person inside me to which I can go for insight, wisdom and restoration. Since March of 1993, around 7800 days have passed and I have meditated at least thirty minutes a day, every single one of those – 45 minutes a day for the last 10 years or so. I might have missed a day or two and if I did, I made up for the loss by meditating the next day. Beginning in October, 2013, at the recommendation of my daughter, I began doing yoga poses as I remain in a state of meditation. This combination of yoga and meditation will remain with me for the rest of my life. I will not quit it, although it may get adjusted or something added to it.

Let me see if I can describe this “available me,” I mentioned. I say it is available me, because it always seems to be there if I can get instrumental me to shut up or leave. Instrumental me remains, as I said, but in phase one; instrumental me was on his own, he had no available me.

What does available me offer? Meditation and now meditation/yoga, is the place I go to be alone with available me. Sometimes when it’s just available me, it feels as If I have gone home. The peace and contentment opens my eyes to mistakes instrumental me is prone to. One of the big mistakes instrumental me makes is to ignore anything that does not pertain to whatever goal I am pursuing at the time. Even when I am not meditating/doing yoga, available me will show up randomly, asking instrumental me to leave for a while; and I will smile inside, sit quietly and just breathe.

In the last month, I have seen the movie Boyhood, twice. I seldom see movies. Tanga does not like to go to the theater and I cannot stand any sort of violence. I had begun to be that way regarding movie violence, even in phase one, because in 1991, during the first Iraq war; I walked out of the movie Dances with Wolves, because I could not stand the violence on screen that reminded me of the people being killed somewhere in the middle east.

But now when I see a certain type of movie, the world is left outside the theater and it means instrumental me is left to pace back and forth in the lobby while available me pays mindful attention to what is on the screen. The first time I recall being aware of available me in a movie was when we saw Forrest Gump, in 1994. As the movie is coming on, there is a feather floating through the air and the camera follows its meandering path. I began crying following that feather, knowing it symbolized paying attention to the non-instrumental parts of life, such as feathers being carried by the breeze. That was the beginning of a wonderful relationship between available me and the sort of movie that asks you to pay attention to the non-instrumental parts of life.

Boyhood is such a movie. The first time I saw it, instrumental me stormed out within minutes of it starting, leaving only available me. Forty-five minutes of available me, is rare; even in the best meditation/yoga sessions, but here was a movie two hours and 45 minutes long and instrumental me left available me alone the entire time.

The movie is about a boy growing up over the course of 12 years. All the members of his family age with him, just as the members of our real families do. Being able to see the movie a second time, was like being able to go back home and see a young man and his family grow up again. Available me loves paying attention to the little things, it empathizes with faces, minds, bodies - with life itself. I cannot go back and see myself grow up and see my family age with me. I cannot even do that with those I love. But this movie was perfect for available me. Every scene, now familiar, became a chance to savor each detail, to feel it more deeply than I had been able to the first time.

A lot of people have come into and gone out of my life. Instrumental me has been there through it all, but during phase two, available me has been there too. Available me has a tendency to fall in love with everyone and everything, he comes to know well. This past summer when I wrecked my car of 11 years, I took a picture of it with my phone to send to my wife and I realized, it is running. Hot water and other fluids were streaming out, but it was still running. I got in and turned it off – for the last time. The wrecker driver brought me home and took it on to the junk yard, while available me had a good cry.

Available me can be that way about cars, movies and this past summer, in Alaska; when I had time to sit by a quiet pond in a forest, instrumental me stomped off and available me sat there for several minutes. Finally, available me began to repeat: I can’t stay here, I can’t stay here; and it brought me to tears, because available me was not only saying he could not stay there, he knew it also meant: we cannot stay in this world.

But it’s people available me loves the most and this is the part that tends to get me in trouble. Instrumental me knows people as a means to an end, but available me studies them like an artist. Available me attends to every gesture: the way they say words, their marvelous faces, their lovely qualities. Pretty soon, available me becomes attached to people and wants them to stay. It is not an exaggeration to say available me loves people almost too deeply, pulls for their life to turn out well, even wants to become one with them.

Seeing Boyhood a second time, unlike life itself, gave available me a chance to study those people more carefully, to see their life turning out again. I think available me cried throughout the movie, not only because of the opportunity to see “these beautiful lives unfold one more time”, but because it reminded available me: I will never be able to live the wonderful moments of my life again. It made me want to spend less time with instrumental me and let available me do all my living.

Stuck in Lodi, Again

Don turned the windshield wipers down a notch and then back up on high, as he always did in a hard rain.

            “Why can’t windshield wipers go faster?” Don asked.

            “Why can’t you drive slower?” Mary said.

            The rain came down in torrents. Cars had on flashers and a number of them were stopped in the Garden State Parkway emergency lane to let the storm pass.

            “It’s a contest with you, isn’t it?” she asked. “Driving fast in the rain is a chance for you to pay the universe back for you screwing up your life. You need help buster. Jesus God, see, you almost hit that concrete barrier.”

            He leaned forward, gripping the steering wheel hard.

            “Where are we even going? If we’re going to get groceries, we could have gone to the Pathmark in Lodi. Then we would not have had to risk our lives in this crazy-ass rain.”

            “I wanted to do something different one Saturday morning, ok? Is that so bad? I didn’t know it would be raining like this. I was hoping to drive a little and see a wee bit of the world outside Bergen County.”

            He thought of telling her the thought had occurred to him as he drove home from work on Friday evening and the song on the radio was: “Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again", but that would only make her start in to another theory as to why he was insane. Anyways, it was not true. He had not heard that song for years. He hated the song, actually.

            She slammed her hand on the dashboard.

            “I can see the headlines now, couple killed in car wreck driving over into Essex County because they were tired of Bergen County,” she yelled over the noise of the rain on the top of the car.

            “The only one of us who is going to die is me and that won’t be from my driving, it will be from your mouth,” he yelled back.

            They passed the sign welcoming them to Essex County, NJ.

            “Okay, now you satisfied?” Mary asked. “We are out of Bergen County.”

            “Yes, I do feel a little better,” he said.

            The rain had let up as they made their way into East Orange.

            “You want to go to Seabra?”

            “That’s in Newark, asshole,” she said. “Anyways, what do you want at Seabra? Are you suddenly going to be come an international chef?”

            “No, I thought it might be fun to walk through and see what they have,” he said.

            “Fun, wow, yeah, I can’t imagine anything more fun than walking through a grocery store in Newark on a rainy Saturday morning,” she said.

            “Ok, damnit, what’s your version of fun in New Jersey on a rainy Saturday morning,” he yelled.

            “I have no idea,” she said, “No earthly idea.”

            He drove out of East Orange into Newark and pulled into the Seabra parking lot. 

         He saw no sign of a silver Nissan Sentra. 

            

Social Fabric or How Our Current Accounting Methods Are Inadequate

I wrote this in response to a friend’s comment on something I had shared on yesterday’s Hobby-Lobby supreme-court-decision story.

“Social fabric is woven by interlacing our interests with those of others. Even when I am warm, someone else might need the blanket we wove together.”

I am here to see if I can expound on this a bit.

Facebook is a source of a lot of inspiration and frustration for me, I must admit. I hate seeing that someone I thought walked on water as a teacher years ago, has political opinions that are almost entirely the opposite of my own. On the other hand, I love it when I see that someone I have not seen in years has weathered the political polarization storm that has hit the United States in the last 35 years and still offers up thoughtful ideas, and I must admit, who agrees with me.

Irrespective of whether we agree with one another or not, though; one fact remains: we are all alive at the same time and even if we live in different states or nations, we want mostly the same things – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Some people seem willing to pursue liberty at the expense of their life or happiness. Some appear to only care about happiness – defined essentially as entertainment. Some have a definition of life I have trouble recognizing, that is; to even die as a martyr for a ideology, in some cases ostensibly to get to some sort of better life in the one they presume follows this one.

When people live together in one nation, as many of my friends and I do; we share common citizenship as well as common humanity. Those of us who are U.S. citizenship or are hoping to obtain citizenship, share – whether we like it or not – common interests. If the air where you live is polluted, the water where I live is fouled, there is a mass killing in which your loved ones are involved, your daughter, sister, wife or mother needs birth control; it affects us all, because we could all easily swap these and other unwanted conditions tomorrow.

Most of the money I have “made” in my life has come from the taxpayers of Tennessee. The exceptions are many, but they did not last as long as my jobs in Tennessee. These other sources of income have been: McDonalds, Emerson Electric, IBM, Valvoline Oil, Central Baptist Church in Maysville, KY, First Southern Baptist Church in Terre Haute, IN, Newnam Funeral Home, the state of Kentucky, and my sister’s father-in-law. All of the money I have “made” has been money I have co-made. How is it possible for one person working as part of an organization of hundreds or thousands of people to imagine she or he has “made” that money on his or her own? That would be like saying each of us must pay off individually, our share of the national debt. Can you honestly say how much of the national debt you owe - is due to what you have done or not?

Do you see how our economic system is much clearer on what we are each due and much less clear on what we each owe? If accounting could be done perfectly, we would have a clear understanding of both.

A CEO who makes 10 million dollars a year, has a clear understanding of his or her (usually his) income. What he will not know is how much of that 10 million is due to the efforts of others, to political/legal/economic connections he has that others do not have, infrastructure provided for his company by tax payers, so that the company profits are large enough to pay him his salary/dividends, law enforcement provided by public money that keeps him safe and so on. If we could do full accounting - not simply account for each person’s income but trace that income back through all the channels from which it came- I would not have to put “make” in quotes when I write about it, but we would all know how much our effort effected what we “made” and how much the efforts or presence of others effected what we “made.”

This sort of full accounting would do away with the notion of personal income and reveal that all income is derived collaboratively. It's just that we do not have an accounting system sophisticated enough to reveal this fact and since we do not; we are free to pretend that all the money we “make” is ours to keep. People often rail against income redistribution as socialism, as if all income distribution were not socialist.

People also love to talk about personal responsibility, as if it is the only sort of responsibility. In truth, we have both personal and social responsibility. In fact, I would go so far as to say, we only have social responsibility, since anything I do personally will affect others either directly or indirectly.

Those of us in the U.S., live in a nation with five percent of the population but one that contributes around 20% of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – the ones causing global climate change.  Our accounting system again, does not allow the amount each of us contributes to this problem, to be measured – although there are crude measures you can find on the internet - and we cannot really ever separate it all out, because so much of what I do, I do as part of an organization of people – the place I work pollutes en masse; or as a community of people – the place I live pollutes en masse. In fact, we are only beginning to do environmental accounting at the aggregate level, let alone address it at the individual level.

Perhaps someday when the accounting problems are fixed, we will be able to measure exactly the value each of us is adding during our lives and how much it is costing the planet to support us. Let me be the first to hazard a guess: we will all be lucky to break even.

My Responses to Paul Prather's thought-provoking Column on the Sin of Pride

I remember my mom, Alice, in her latter years saying that the older she got, the fewer answers she possessed.

"Heck," she added, "I'm not even sure anymore what the questions are."

That observation wasn't original with her, I imagine.

But she's the first person I heard say it.

And it didn't make much sense to me. I was young and full of sap and owned the patents on sure-fire solutions to every dilemma.

Trying to decide who to vote for in the next presidential race? I could direct you.

Trying to decide who to vote for in the next presidential race? Research their positions, find out who is funding their campaign and what they stand for, seek to understand the issues of the day by reading widely and looking out for spurious reasoning from those who are not trying to inform you but to deceive you. You have a right to an opinion in politics, it just needs to be informed and not based in faulty reasoning.

Having difficulties in your marriage? I could fix it in three simple steps.

Yes, it can be difficult to avoid problems in ones marriage, but that does not mean you cannot try to learn what the pitfalls are and how to avoid them. The science in this area may be contestable but a person who has just married should seek to become knowledgeable of the institution in which he or she is now invested. It is inevitable that we will make mistakes and be humbled by the lesson, but we must work hard at it and not simply say, whether my marriage works out or not is a matter out of my control.

Troubled by a convoluted theology? I'd unpack it for you.

Convoluted theologies do exist, as do those that are a lot better grounded in reality. We should not simply throw up our hands and say we cannot tell the difference because you can bet those who are espousing the convoluted theologies are not going to stop spreading their “truths.”

Got a squirrelly kid breaking your heart with his rebellion? I could tell you how I'd straighten him out, if I were you.

Parenting is, maybe above all else an inexact process. Like a minefield, you never know exactly where you might misstep and to deadly results. I agree with this one, but again, you should still seek to become wise and astute in your parenting practices. If you find and use the correct approaches to raising your child, the child may still rebel or turn out rotten; but it does not necessarily mean you should have done anything differently. Parents who have done the right things should not beat themselves up when the child does the wrong things anyway.

The older I get, though, the truer my mother's words become.

I see it now, Alice. I truly do.

I realize I was immature and self-deceived. Many people are.

Too often we feel required — by whom, I'm not sure — to set everyone else straight, when frankly we can't even find the wisest path for ourselves.

We voice confident opinions on weighty matters about which we know nothing.

There is no doubt that this is true, in fact, our opinions are often stronger on those things we know the least about, because we know the challenge to convince others of something that has little factual, scientific, or evidential support; will be more difficult to argue.

Eventually, we suffer a jaw-slapping dose of reality. Or several doses.

I cannot argue with this point. We are all going to eat crow at some point or another. That does not mean we were not entitled to state our opinion though. We should learn from each case, not to be silent, but work harder at understanding that which we are talking about.

These days, for me, the hardest part of my jobs as a pastor and a columnist is finding topics every week I feel strongly enough about to express opinions on.

I don't have many strong opinions left: about religion, politics, marriage, economics. Whatever the subject, I'm fairly sure I don't know the best answer.

I can certainly understand his position on this, especially if his roles as pastor and columnist do not give him much time to research subjects and become relatively authoritative on the subjects. But, if this is the case, perhaps he should consider giving up one or both of his positions. Maybe he is too strapped for time.

Because half of the sure-fire answers I patented 20 or 30 years ago turned out to be wrong. They were sure-fire until I faced complicated, bone-grinding problems of my own, tried to work my solutions on them and saw all my efforts fail.

So the lesson being wrong gave him was that he should not have had opinions in the first place or that all of his opinions are now wrong? If, for example, he had the opinion that someone should be humble and not a know it all, should he renounce that opinion because sometimes people who are arrogant and say they know something, actually turn out to have been correct?

There's nothing like experience to open your eyes.

So, the only thing experience can teach us is that the insight we gain from our experience cannot be trusted? Do you see the circularity, and utter hopelessness, in this statement?

I keep gaining more and more of it.

Much of my experience is unpleasant, and that's a good thing.

If the New Testament is to be taken at face value — and (here's a genuine opinion!) I think it largely is — pride is the sin God finds most offensive.

The irony here, of course, is that one of his few remaining opinions is that God hates pride in people. Do you see how arrogant it is for a person to say he knows exactly what God thinks? Did God choose him to send this message to us? I can see it if he quoted something like: "Pride cometh before a fall", but even that is someone else’s opinion.

I'm amused, and a bit frightened, when I encounter religious people railing against, depending on the decade, gambling, drinking, premarital sex, abortion, gay marriage or a big carbon footprint as the ultimate sin that makes God retch.

I agree here. I am sickened when I hear other people weighing in on many of the life choices of others. But if someone says a person should not abuse alcohol because it will kill them or because they might drink and drive and kills others, that to me is a sound opinion and should be stated. He makes the mistake of lumping all opinions in together. If the science says that we should be reducing our carbon footprint because of global warming, which it does; then how is me believing I should do that, in any way like my saying someone should not be allowed to marry someone of the same sex. Those are separate matters, the former based in science and the latter based in tradition and superstition.

Nope. It's pride. That's the biggie.

How prideful, to announce you are speaking for God.

Pride makes us feel superior to our fellow human beings. It enables us to ignore our own destructive actions. It lets us pretend we're so special we don't need God's mercy and don't need to show others mercy, either.

The Scripture's equally clear about the virtue that most pleases God: love.

In the biblical paradigm, love means not judging others, proving ourselves generous of wallet and spirit and, for want of a better description, basically treating everyone, regardless of his or her station or sins, the way we'd want to be treated.

There is no doubt love is wonderful and should be encouraged, but we should treat everyone the way we would want to be treated if we did the same things they did. If someone ignores science, for example, and continues to operate the corporation he runs in efficient ways, thus harming the natural environment for us all; he should be treated as harshly as I should have been treated had I done that.

It's hard to do those things as long as we feel superior.

Love, then, operates hand-in-glove with humility.

Sad to say, many of us don't come ready-made with either virtue.

From the Garden of Eden on down, outlandish hubris has been a fatal flaw of the human race. So it's in God's interest, and in our own interest, for us to discover exactly how un-superior we are. The Lord, and the very universe itself, seems dedicated to producing this discovery.

Because you're straight, are you disgusted by the idea of some man having a romantic relationship with another man?

I cannot disagree with him here. He makes a valid point.

Your favorite son, your namesake, will soon emerge from the closet.

Are you outraged by irresponsible people who make poor educational and career decisions, then expect the government to help support them financially?

I am outraged by people who make poor educational and career decisions, but I hope I can tell the difference between them and people who have been slapped with a harsh life circumstance through birth or choices someone else made for them. In both cases, they should be given our compassion and in some cases, they should be supported by the rest of us until they can get in a position to support themselves.

As you near retirement, your company will go bankrupt, you'll lose your pension and you'll find yourself begging for Medicaid.

Do you roll your eyes at slothful, broken-down folks who eat processed food, get fat and can barely walk through Wal-mart without gasping for air?

You'll run enough marathons to wear out your hips and knees and end up motoring around Walmart in one of those carts for the feeble. Despite all that fiber you digested, you'll develop colon cancer.

It is possible to make good and bad choices with respect to your health. Those who know what constitute good choices and make them, should seek to encourage those who are making bad choices to change their ways and make better choices, not make fun of them. I agree it is never effective to make fun of someone else, and yes, in part because we all have ways in which we too can be found wanting.

When such woes beset us, we ought to fling our palms up and praise God.

We've been positioned to behold the truth: we're but dust. We're at the mercy of forces beyond our control. We're silly and deluded about our wisdom and importance.

Seeing that, suddenly we crave God's forgiveness. We crave the forbearance of other people as well. Through our newfound neediness, we discover within us affection, understanding and patience toward our fellow pilgrims.

When that happens, we've crash-landed at the doorstep of heaven.