Coming Up For Air

The Atlanta Braves' highly touted pitching prospect Mike Soroka made his major league debut last night. Technology's tools which have debuted themselves since the last time I watched baseball with much intensity added to the experience of admiring Soroka's command. Superimposed graphics helped me follow the sweep of his breaking pitches and chart their pinpoint location just at the edge of the hitters' strike zone. Watching Soroka and fellow 20-year-old phenomenon Ronald Acuna, Junior excel along with 21-year-old Ozzie Alblies is an interesting experience for this middle-aged fan paused at mid-career. Sure, there is some crankiness as I wonder how they can be so good so soon, and even more whether they have anything approaching the wisdom to understand how blessed they are. If I can see that I sometimes took my skills and my job for granted at twice their age and in a counseling field that prizes perspective, surely they do. How will they handle it when windows of opp...

In the fourth season of the 90s television show Mad About You , the enduring Buchman marriage at the center of the show is going through what husband Paul describes as a cold streak. He and wife Jamie have been unsuccessful in their efforts to conceive. They are blaming each other, or at least taking out their frustrations on each other as the nearest available target. Sitcom circumstances posit Paul and Jamie alone in the apartment of Paul's cousin Ira. Looking around, Jamie notices that Ira features more pictures of the Buchmans than they have in their own home. Paul candidly responds that Ira loves them more than they love themselves right now. We need Iras and reminders of how they see us. In isolation, we know our flaws. Perhaps their importance is magnified by their sheer repetition as we think critically about ourselves. Do something well, or kindly, and our focus is on how much better we could have done it. Under the Cervantes principle that no man is a hero to his own hous...

In school, I had a friend named Sarah. She wasn't the bubbly sort, but she was unflappable. Shortly before a major paper was due, Sarah's grandmother was near death, and she dutifully went out of town. Although completing the paper required all night upon her return, she completed it. Knowing my own anxiety, I gushed that I could not have stayed calm under such circumstances to complete it. You didn't see me, she said. I wasn't calm. David allows us to see faith's battle with anxiety as a work in progress. We take steel's strength for granted as we ride in vehicles or ascend in skyscrapers. Here, the smelting of faith's steel in Psalm 56:8-10 ( NIV ) is transformative enough to slow down for stop-action examination. 8 Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll – are they not in your record? This is an honest, detailed complaint. Trailing the particular human causes of his misery  is prayer as a kind of protest. "God, are You getting this down? I...

Professor Joshua Chamberlain was out of his element. As portrayed in the movie Gettysburg , the novice at soldiering was summoned by his commanding officer. Chamberlain figured he might need to explain his decision the day before to order an anachronistic bayonet charge against superior numbers – even though it worked. Instead, he found headquarters noticeably relaxed. His decision was celebrated for its results. Since no fighting was expected in the day ahead, the tone was conversational, inching on an optimistic arc. That wasn't good enough for Chamberlain. "My men need a meal, sir," the just commissioned Colonel spoke directly to instruct his superior, unlike Chamberlain a seasoned military professional, "and ammunition. We are out." The commanding general was just as blunt. Turning, he delegated, "See to Col. Chamberlain's request." And it was done. A pervading air of optimism met the specifics of individual need. Logistical advantages, the mom...

Last night presented a perfect April evening. The humidity hasn't yet settled over South Carolina, so the party honoring my wife's birthday opted for an outdoor table. The subtle splendor was marred by a man-made buzz from overhead. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's, well, yes, it was a small and noisy plane pulling an advertisement across the sky. Naturally, the eye followed the ear's unwilling fixation on the unusual. Only, the eye couldn't find its reward for turning its attention skyward. As we watched the plane hired at great expense, the message it thrust before us was unclear. The merchant traded altitude which put his message before more people for clarity. The print was too small. Even as we pieced together the point deemed important enough to take it to the skies, we were underwhelmed with the snippet about offerings from another local restaurant. There is a Scriptural point here, and it can also be found in 2 Samuel 18:21-22. King David's genera...

The current National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, HR McMaster, knows something of the dangers of Isaiah 1:23 and the parallel restoration God offers three verses later. He doesn't use the biblical cadence, and neither does Patrick Radden Keefe profiling McMaster in this week's New Yorker , but the same tension pulls taunt both pages. McMaster knows what distorts the advice of counselors to the nation's highest leader. As an academic, McMaster warned in his book Dereliction of Duty of the pull to tell President Lyndon Johnson only what he wants to hear and of the dangers to a nation that can result. If rebellion and bribes tempt the princes of Isaiah 1:23 and wine addict and distract the nation's leaders in Isaiah 28:7 and Daniel 5:1-4, surely the lure of approval can be just as intoxicating. Leaders from the days of Isaiah and Daniel, and including more recent examples the 1960s to the present are capable of overemphasizing what is importan...

Dana Goodyear profiles novelist Rachel Kushner in this week's issue of the New Yorker . Of Kushner's adolescence, Goodyear reports, "Among her peers, she says, 'Intelligence with a form of ugliness,' so she did her best to hide it." This glimpse gives me a chance to reflect on why I don't. My insistence on seeing the beauty in lively, intelligent curiosity finds its roots in the same murky passage of adolescence through which Kushner deemed it essential to hide her gifts. It was during this period that I met Jim Garrick, a man incapable of hiding enthusiasm for anything. He countered coolness as the coach of a national elite academic team. In my most formative years, my psyche was shaped by associating points and praise with pushing beyond the basic outlines of a subject in order to move on to the next minimal requirement. This was my conditioning and Garrick desired to win based on the performance of his starting lineup of knowledge machines at least ...