Christmas Roots

Look, I understand the composition does not rival Beethoven. The lyrics do not threaten Hoagy Charmichael. The singing—while excellent—cannot compare with Pavarotti. But this song played on my stereo tonight and it reduced me to tears. I sat there, weeping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqy6bXgkND0

I know people who feel this way about Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, New York, Vermont, Missouri, California. I even know people who cry over New Jersey, though come to think of it, this may be for other reasons.

I would love it if everybody felt this way about the soil that sprung 'em. I have not lived on Hoosier turf for almost twenty years. I genuinely love living where I do, but something in me just longs for home at certain times of the year. Christmas is one of those times. Today in a phone conversation, I told a very good friend I was going home this week to visit family. She said, “Mike, you have lived here for how long? Traverse City IS your home.” And I said, yes, it's one of my homes. But deep in my DNA, Indiana will always remain my true home.

I was born in Richmond, Indiana. I have also lived in Carmel, Bloomington and Seymour. I know the mascots of so many Indiana high school teams: Wildkats, Archers, Red Devils, Minute Men, Trojans, Cougars and, of course, Indians. (Not the Huskers and if you have to ask, sorry, you're not a died-in-the-wool Indiana prep basketball fan.) My beloved German Shepherd Wolf and two of my favorite cats, Popcorn and Shadow, are buried on acreage overlooking Lake Monroe in Monroe County. I played basketball at Bloomington North. My father graduated from Warren Central. My wife and I played in the pep band at the NCAA championship game for the '81 Hoosiers.  When I drive across the pool table flats of the northern Indiana farms I feel like I am approaching the navel of my universe.  When I hit the hills of southern Indiana, I know I have arrived.

God has blessed me greatly. I truly look forward with contentment to the life I have yet to live here in northern Michigan. And yet, especially this time of year, I thank God for whence I came. How lucky am I?

A probably doomed voyage into the dress code storms

Allow me to stipulate a few facts.

1. I am not, and never have been, a girl. Nobody has ever asked me to cover my bra strap.
2. That does not mean I am not allowed to have opinions about issues that impact women. “You're a white male. You have no right to talk about these things,” is precisely the kind of discrimination people who make such statements say they abhor.
3. I have tremendous respect for Barb, and her twin daughters Rachel and Hannah. Though I sometimes disagree with them I listen to their ideas. They make me think.

First, I despised dress codes when I was a teen. Teens should despise dress codes—and all seemingly arbitrary rules that restrict their freedom of expression. Yet adults should still make those rules—and amend them when wisdom requires it.

After circling the sun more than fifty times, and volunteering in a high school for more than a dozen of those years, I can state unequivocally that we must have dress codes. Female and male, some youth will always push the limits. If the code softens, many of these testers will push even farther. They look not to set a more reasonable code, but to cause turmoil and/or to get noticed. Unless we have a reasonable dress code fairly enforced, chaos will eventually ensue. Every time. Every time.

Yes, unfair and stupid enforcements of dress codes happen. And yes, those enforcements have always come down far more commonly on females. This is wrong and should stop. But the remedy does not lie in stopping all enforcement (see above paragraph). The remedy lies in holding authority figures accountable for their decisions.

If we're going to expect fifteen year-old girls and boys to make proper wardrobe decisions, then we must demand greater probity from their elders. They must enforce the dress code fairly.

Barb and others on Facebook have raised the related issue of how different body types get different treatment. The cute top that a skinny girl can get away with wearing gets (as Barb puts it) a more curvy girl in trouble. This, too, seems unfair but this, too, seems to have a solution. Enforce the code on the skinny girl, too. And boy.

We all have a responsibility to the larger community. This means dressing modestly. It means enforcing dress codes with wisdom and tact. It means holding males to the same standards as females.

It does not mean that any attempt to make a girl dress more modestly is slut shaming. It does not mean that males of any age have the “right” to make lewd comments or even touch women who dress in ways that catch their attention.

We all have a responsibility to the larger community. As a husband, father of a young woman and a young man, and pastor my responsibilities include showing respect to women of all ages. I also feel the need to stand up for time-tested principles.

What are your responsibilities?

Looking Down on Earth

I have become fascinated with watching the live feed from the International Space Station.  Get it here: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/09/watch-stunning-live-nasa-feed-of-earth-from-space/

At first, gazing at the majestically rolling view gave me what I thought of as a godlike perspective.  At the equator the Earth rotates at a velocity of 1070 miles per hour.  The ISS flies at about 17,000 miles per hour.  Its orbital path takes it north and south but always in an easterly direction.  That is, it overtakes the earth's spin.  It takes only ninety minutes to make an orbit.  On a good day I can drive to Clare, Michigan in ninety minutes.  I have no particular need to see Clare, Michigan.  I do, however love to watch the passing view from the ISS.  It seems very much like a miracle.

I have seen the Nile snaking from central Africa through the yellow desert to its deeply green delta--all in one glance.  I have seen tightly-wound storms.  I have watched dusk fall across India.  I have made out Grand Traverse Bay with all five Great Lakes in view at once. 

You probably know that water covers over 70% of Earth's surface.  Watching the ISS camera feed  confirms this.  Blue dominates.  But it may take you a while to realize that in the forward- and backward-looking views the tiniest sliver of a crescent along the curvature of our globe is not blue water, but blue atmosphere.  We live in a thin--you might even say gaunt--envelope of air.  Perhaps we do not have quite the stable, secure environment in which we would like to believe.

As a kid I occasionally had dreams in which I could fly.  As I remember them, I could start walking and then somehow just start soaring slowly over our neighborhood.  Watching the ISS feed feels like those dreams on steroids.  Yet the perspective it offers ends up making me feel not godlike, but humble.  I have yet to make out a single man-made structure (beside the arms of the ISS that appear in some of the images).  And above that curve of the globe sits the utter darkness of space.

Gaining a little perspective every now and then is a good thing.  I need to get cut down to size from time to time.  Yet though I cannot stop watching the Earth pass beneath me as I vicariously ride the International Space Station, the experience unsettles me.  I guess I need God, not to feel godlike, after all.

The Immaterial Boy

I gave a ride to Madonna's brother today. His name is Anthony. He wears fashionable eyeglasses and an expensive pair of boots, but his coat is ragged and he smells of stale body and smoke. He spent the past several nights at the church I pastor. He is homeless.

Anthony, Craig and T.J. could not crowd onto the morning bus. They are our guests through the Safe Harbor program, in which area churches house and feed the homeless. The harsh winter has swelled their numbers. One bus cannot get them all into town. The driver failed to come back for these men. And so they waited. Craig sat in a chair with his head between his knees. T.J., a bearded man with piercing eyes, shuffled around in a wide circle. Anthony and I talked a little. He has obvious intelligence and a deep, warm voice. When sober, he occupies an important position within the homeless community. Ron, one of our church members and a staunch Safe Harbor volunteer, tells of having watched Anthony break up a nasty fight between three homeless brothers. Reporters often seek his opinion on issues like whether our town should convert the former Boy's and Girl's Club building into a permanent homeless shelter.

When the bus did not come back, I invited the men into my truck. We left the parking lot in total silence. Thinking how awkward another ten minutes of that might be, I asked whether they came from around here. Craig said yes. T.J. said nothing. Anthony said, “Actually, I come from downstate originally.” Craig proceeded to carry the conversation on solo. He called himself something of a local historian. He told me his mom had dated a Mr. Murdick in high school. He gave me an expectant look. Then he added, “You know, Mr. Five Dollar Piece of Fudge Murdick.” (We call tourists “Fudgies” up here because many of them buy fudge at one of several locally-owned shops—including Murdick's.) Craig went on (and on) to claim he was related to a whole string of rich local people, naming an attorney; the guy with the mansion on West Bay who made his money selling dial-up modems back in the day; and Perry Hanna, one of Traverse City's founders.

I dropped Anthony off first, at a grocery store. I drove the still-talking Craig and T.J. on to another church where they serve breakfast every weekday morning. When I let them out T.J. came to my window and thanked me.

Earlier this morning a woman about my age came to the church. Kari, her thirty-something daughter, is a homeless alcoholic. Last night, the first in the twenties (a heat wave!) for weeks, she chose not to come inside. Instead, she ingested enough to drive her blood/alcohol count to .5. The legal limit is .08. Somebody called 911, they got her to the ER, and now they await a bed in a regional detox center. Her mom came to get her medications and the meager belongings that fit into her storage tub. All the Safe Harbor guests have a tub. We looked up her number but could not find it. It turns out her daughter no longer had anything to store.

Jesus said, “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do it as if you were doing it to me.” This lessens the sadness I feel when I think how far Kari and Anthony have fallen. But it lessens it only a little. May God have mercy on them, each and every one.

The Big Ten, the SEC and Academics

(Disclosure: my wife and I graduated from Indiana University. Heck, we even went to high school in Bloomington.)

In this year's bowl games between teams from the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten, the SEC won 2 out of 3. This continues a trend that has held for years.

Those three bowl games generated $10,550,000 in payouts to the teams and their conferences (source: http://www.philsteele.com/bowls/13-14/bowlprojections.html.). Count all bowl games involving a team from these two conferences and you get an additional $87,620,000. How much more did their team's successes generate in alumni donations? Division I football and basketball are about money. Every other factor eats money's dust.

The smallest school in either the SEC or the Big Ten is Vanderbilt, with 12,795 students (source: http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/profile/#enrollmentfall2012). Most of them have at least 35,000. I can personally attest that students approach college with a wide—and often, wild—variety of motivations. Some of the best research and teaching happen in big schools, though often not for undergraduates. Nevertheless, I admit that I am about to engage in wide—and possibly, wild—generalizations. So here goes.

The SEC uses the NCAA's minimum academic eligibility requirements. Find them here: http://www.ncaa.org/initial-eligibility. The Big Ten has higher standards. It also gets higher results. Last year its schools produced three academic All-Americans in the major sports. This is an average year for the conference. The last two major sport academic All-Americans from the SEC were Tim Tebow and Peyton Manning, who graduated from Tennessee in 1997. The aggregate GPA for SEC major sport athletes in 2011-12 was 2.35. For the Big Ten it was 2.87.  (I had to compile these statistics from each school's compliance page.  If there is a single source for this I could not find it.)

Generally speaking, the Big Ten has got it right.

Could you find exceptions, stories of Big Ten athletes who cannot spell NFL and of SEC athletes who make superb use of their educations? Of course.

Should students with sketchy high school transcripts be permitted to play NCAA sports? I say yes—especially if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds.  It gives them a chance to get an education.

Does the stereotype of the SEC as a bunch of cheating dunces have validity? Some. But for every Kentucky basketball program the conference can boast a number of success stories. The Blind Side movie tells one with great heart and power.

But we must understand that in the NCAA's Division I it's about the money, not the learning. Some places (especially the Big Ten) do a better job of giving their athletes an honest education. Given the size of the potential monetary reward if you cheat, I find that admirable.