Shimmying the Extra Mile
"Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14b
Separate observers in the Ken Burns Baseball series style Babe Ruth as a parade all by himself and as erupting like an Everest in Kansas. But before there was the Babe, there was the brother. When the boy George Herman Ruth was declared incorrigible and consigned to St. Mary's reform school, Burns relates that his family rarely visited him. His classmates derided him with pejorative labels. But then there was Brother Matthias.
Ruth biographer Robert Creamer channels a little of the priest's apparent enthusiasm when describing him. Creamer says brother Matthias was a big, strapping Irishman whose skill at hitting a baseball with a shimmy stick seemed to inspire his young charge when little else in his life did. The priest seems to have been Ruth's first window on a sense of positive possibility.
I doubt skill at and passion for baseball were laid out alongside poverty, chastity, and obedience as priestly requirements. Perhaps Brother Matthias even wondered if his athleticism and enthusiasm were of wasted in this calling to deny himself and serve the priorities of another world. Yet it was this that captivated the kid who went on in measurable ways to change the world. Brother Matthias followed the calling, and presumably the rules and routines it entailed. He had enough energy, enough joyful enthusiasm left, it seems, to serve and testify to the Lord on the field of play.
This measure of the extra mile is compelling. Yes, we undertake in the original context of that metaphor to carry life's burdens without resentment, as the dominated were called to carry the Roman soldier's gear further than required. But how often do we have the Brother Matthias opportunity to show that God is good, that the life He gifts is often good, over and above the essential functions of our roles.
When we can, Tom Hughes, the pioneer of boarding school novels with his Tom Brown books, says we have the better part. When we get to choose, he coaches, having an impact at play is even more meaningful than going through life's required motions or holding others to that standard – necessary as enforcing self-discipline and discipline on others might be.
Where do we stifle what makes us individuals, what continues to light our passions, either because we resent the other aspects of what life calls for from us, or because we fear that to be ourselves will distract those we must influence from necessary priorities?
Separate observers in the Ken Burns Baseball series style Babe Ruth as a parade all by himself and as erupting like an Everest in Kansas. But before there was the Babe, there was the brother. When the boy George Herman Ruth was declared incorrigible and consigned to St. Mary's reform school, Burns relates that his family rarely visited him. His classmates derided him with pejorative labels. But then there was Brother Matthias.
Ruth biographer Robert Creamer channels a little of the priest's apparent enthusiasm when describing him. Creamer says brother Matthias was a big, strapping Irishman whose skill at hitting a baseball with a shimmy stick seemed to inspire his young charge when little else in his life did. The priest seems to have been Ruth's first window on a sense of positive possibility.
I doubt skill at and passion for baseball were laid out alongside poverty, chastity, and obedience as priestly requirements. Perhaps Brother Matthias even wondered if his athleticism and enthusiasm were of wasted in this calling to deny himself and serve the priorities of another world. Yet it was this that captivated the kid who went on in measurable ways to change the world. Brother Matthias followed the calling, and presumably the rules and routines it entailed. He had enough energy, enough joyful enthusiasm left, it seems, to serve and testify to the Lord on the field of play.
This measure of the extra mile is compelling. Yes, we undertake in the original context of that metaphor to carry life's burdens without resentment, as the dominated were called to carry the Roman soldier's gear further than required. But how often do we have the Brother Matthias opportunity to show that God is good, that the life He gifts is often good, over and above the essential functions of our roles.
When we can, Tom Hughes, the pioneer of boarding school novels with his Tom Brown books, says we have the better part. When we get to choose, he coaches, having an impact at play is even more meaningful than going through life's required motions or holding others to that standard – necessary as enforcing self-discipline and discipline on others might be.
Where do we stifle what makes us individuals, what continues to light our passions, either because we resent the other aspects of what life calls for from us, or because we fear that to be ourselves will distract those we must influence from necessary priorities?
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