I've been a Christian all of my life. And yet, nothing had prepared me for the Truth (with a capital T) of God's love.
I was raised in the church, though I had little desire to do things God's way. I was baptized at 17 (that's what we evangelicals do, for you CRC types), but even then I was not completely honest with myself, my parents, or God. (I was caught doing naughty things, and I felt an appropriate pennance was to get baptized.) But even through all of those things, God was protecting me. "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." (Proverbs 22:6) That was a Biblical truth my parents held very dear, and a promise that God made good on.
Anyway, fast forward to about six months ago, mid-2003. I have a wonderful wife, a beautiful family, a new house, a great job, and a great church. And yet, something doesn't seem quite right. It had been the fall of 2001 when Nase attended something called the Walk to Emmaus. She had been healed of her fibromyalgia and her recurring aversion to being a wife and mother during this retreat. Perhaps more interesting than that, she came back with something like a glassy-eyed committment to Emmaus as a life-changing event.
My cult-o-meter was going haywire. "You've just got to attend Emmaus!" "When are you going to Emmaus?" I was reminded of the old Saturday Night Live skit: "I loved it, it was much better than Cats." I talked about not wanting to drink the Kool-Aid (a Jamestown reference for our younger readers). Whenever Nase or others from our church who had gone would ask if I were going, I usually asked something like, "Will I get to learn the secret handshake?" I was pretty intent on not going.
You see, I had had the mountaintop experience. I went to church camp when I was younger, I had done the singing around the campfire... and every time I did it, it was a "rah rah God" event that almost immediately wore off and left me with no application to my life, or even my Christian life (which I used to think was *different* from my "life"). Besides, I was pretty happy with my life and my committment to Christ. I felt like things were going pretty well, even though there were a few bumps in the road. The LAST thing I needed was some holy-roller camp where I would be slain in the spirit and lie flopping around and speaking in tongues. (Emmaus WAS founded by the United Methodist Church, where that sort of thing tends to happen.)
Ultimately, though, the pressure was too great and I went. I went mostly to get my wife, my parents, and countless people at church (all of whom had gone) off my back, hoping they would leave me to my life after I had gone. The odd thing was that both of my parents went with that attitude, both of them are very analytical with perfectionist tendencies (wonder where I get it?), and both came back completely changed. So I figured it couldn't be all bad...
And it wasn't. Most of the details of what went on up there are secret, as the walk is designed to run a certain way, and the "pilgrims" (the first-time attendees) are encouraged not to know or anticipate what's coming next. (In hindsight, I have to say that's the only way to do it.) Even with my reluctance to go, I left myself open to whatever God wanted to show me that weekend. "Even crazy people can demonstrate God's will" I told myself. "If I'm going to be here, I might as well do things like they want to do things." I turned off my analytical side (as best I could) and awaited His voice.
And boy! did He speak. There was no music, no TV, no contact with the outside world (especially difficult, since I went up on the night of game 7 of the Yankees-Red Sox ALCS... with the Red Sox up 4-1 and Clemens knocked out early!), and no clocks. With no distractions, including that of *time*, I was completely at the mercy of the people running the walk, and of God. All of those things, combined with a fabulously-planned time and a maturity (where I am in my walk with Christ) led to an amazing experience.
It was a sex-segregated camp, which was especially nice. I have not been in a men's group since we were attending Covenant Life Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, and I truly missed it. At CLC, it was nice to get to know a small group of guys well enough to open up to them and express my deepest struggles and victories, fears and desires. At Emmaus, the focus was very much the same. While I didn't immediately feel comfortable with the whole group (about 20 guys), I instantly clicked with my small group of six guys. The emphasis on, "Whatever is said on the mountain STAYS on the mountain" was helpful in conveying a sense of honesty and being able to speak without fear of repercussion once we all returned home.
My small group consisted of two pastors (!), a Spanish teacher from my town of Tehachapi, an English teacher and writer from Burbank, our table leader, and me. I was the youngest at the table, I think, but was in the middle of the pack in terms of marriage length. I have always received great wisdom from those older than me, and this was no different. I was able to share some dark places of my heart, and these guys were able to shed some light on those dark places. Though it sounds cliche, we laughed together, we cried together, we prayed together, we sang together. It was amazing.
But far more amazing than that was what God was doing in my heart. Although I have been a Christian pretty much my entire life, I have always filtered God through my mind, through peers, or through some other imperfect vessel. This one time in my life, I allowed God to speak directly to me, directly to my heart. He broke my heart for where I was *really* at in my life, namely that I had some serious pride issues. He showed me the places in my life where I wasn't surrendering complete control to Him. (There were a lot of them, more than I expected.) He reminded me of a conversation that I had had with a gal in the past that applied to my life:
ME: Love my neighbor? But God, I don't even LIKE people!
GOD: You don't love the ONE THING I care about?
Ouch. He reminded me that outside of making him known to the world (with the intent of having everyone I know come to know Him), He has little interest in anything else I can do with my life. So He broke my heart for people. The way I describe, in an all-encompassing way, what God did to me while I was there is this:
Like a surgeon, God reached into my chest, gently massaged my heart, and brought me to life. Not "brought me BACK to life", but brought me to life for the first time. My heart is finally beating for what He wants.
I don't know if that can even convey the restoration that God brought to me up there. I was ripped open, completely exposed to God... and He desired me. With all of my faults, and all of the blackness of my heart, God still wanted me. ME. He reached into my chest, my most delicate place, and lovingly gave me life. He judged me, SAW CHRIST, and found me worthy of the calling to which He has called me. Have you ever considered that God sees your darkest places and STILL wants you? You are nowhere NEARLY as good as you think you are, yet all God sees is Christ. It's mind boggling.
My heart has especially been broken for the "career Christians" that don't really know God's love. I have lived my life doing the right thing, I have known of God and His law... I have BEEN THERE. I'm a missionary's kid and I'm a pastor's kid. I've been involved in church leadership, I've been a member of a number of different denominational and nondenominational churches across the country. And almost across the board, people are missing one big fact: GOD LOVES YOU. He wants to display His love for you. He has plans for you, plans to prosper you, and not to harm you. He wants to be your all, leaving you lacking no need. He wants you to have life abundant, and that's not in the sweet by and by... it's NOW.
Don't get me wrong: I have no desire to preach to you. I want you to get the chance to experience that which I've experienced. I want you to begin to believe just how much God loves you. I want you to be ecstatic about God's love for you. I want you to prove God right when He chose you.
I'm as left-brained and rational as just about anyone I know. I understand the arguments about convincing oneself about the benefits of something; heck, I've forwarded the same arguments to "on-fire" Christians. I don't purport to understand, in an intellectual sense, what God is doing in my life. I don't even understand why God does the things He does, but I believe that "His ways are not my ways". And I know that I know that I know that He loves me *in spite of* my knowledge, not *because of* my knowledge. I don't necessarily have to know, in an intellectual sense, His ways to believe that He is leading me in a wonderful direction.
Suddenly, "evangelism" isn't as much a chore as it is introducing my best friend to everyone I encounter.
Rush Limbaugh says that the national media is making a mountain out of a molehill with Donovan McNabb (saying he's better than he actually is) because he's black. He gets fired.
Warren Sapp says that the NFL front office is a bunch of "slave drivers". Nothing. No media outrage, no idiot ESPN cokehounds frowning and shaking their heads, no race crisis for his remarks.
Um... huh?
Long in coming, I finally blog about the final park. This, of course, doesn't include Toronto, to which I HAD a ticket, but had to skip for lack of a passport, which was sitting safely in our "Important Papers" file at home.
Before the disaster that is Detroit, I wanted to offer an oh-so-exact numerical analysis of my experience at Fenway.
game: orioles at red sox (9/22/03)
park: fenway park, boston
game quality: 9
park mystique: 10
park beauty: 9
crowd ambience: 10
neighborhood: 7
food: 9
beer: 8
With apologies to Ron, Fenway was just (as I've said before) the best baseball experience I've ever had in my life. Everything about it was just right.
Contrast that with the Detroit Tigers game. Granted, I wasn't expecting much; I wasn't even in line to see the Tigers break the record for most losses (i.e., WORST TEAM EVER) in a season. Granted, I was on death's door with a nasty chest cold (which, four weeks later, I am finally shaking). Granted, I ended up leaving in about the fourth inning and getting lost around downtown Detroit (which, I might add, is absolutely unredeemable). Even so, Comerica Park in Detroit was one of the low points of my journey, a point that I felt obligated to fulfill, rather than privileged to visit.
Everything about Comerica Park felt strained. Some general thoughts:
Stupid Red Sox. They win with Wakefield (their #3 pitcher) and lose two with their #2 and #1 (AT HOME) pitchers. Now they have to win three of the next four games from the Yankees, which I would suspect has been done only a handful of time (including the regular season) since the Evil Empire started its run at buying World Series rings in '96.
Game three was a complete mess, with a 4th inning that seemed to last an hour. The bizarre inning included Pedro throwing behind, and hitting, Karim Garcia, Garcia attempting to sever Todd Walker's legs sliding into second on a double-play ball, Pedro threatening to hit Jorge Posada in the head, Clemens throwing a pitch to which Manny Ramirez (wrongly) took umbrage, Don Zimmer (yes, THAT Don Zimmer) charging Pedro, Pedro dropping Zimmer. In fact, the only thing it didn't include... RED SOX OFFENSE.
So long upset victory in game 1. So long surprising steal of home-field advantage. (Of course, this was the Yankees' third consecutive postseason win at Fenway.) So long critical game 3. Hello familiarity. Hello Evil Empire. Hello curse.
I came to realize this evening that my body has been hardwired to respect the Curse of the Bambino. Just watching the game this evening, I had the overwhelming feeling that the Sox were just GOING to lose and the Yankees were just GOING to win. I even started to feel sick to my stomach.
And then: a miracle. The Sox bats woke up (three HR for the best slugging percentage team ever). Wakefield's knuckler was floating and dancing, and making Yankee hitters (and the Sox catcher!) look foolish. Fate seemed to be smiling on my Red Sox this evening, and they beat the Yankees 5-2 in game 1 at Yankee Stadium. GO SOX!
(19:17:54) pcg@AIM: you in a better mood tonight?
(19:17:58) pcg@AIM: or still have me blocked?
(19:18:03) Ron: i am very pleased
(19:18:14) Ron: but now you're blocked
(19:18:33) pcg@AIM: so you won't read how the series won't even make it back to Chicago
(19:18:41) pcg@AIM: okee dokee
Not that I have such a colorful homage, but SOX WIN!!! Coming back from 0-2 in a best-of-5 series, they beat the A's in game 5 IN Oakland. BRING ON THE YANKEES!!!
So after my excitement in New York, I was all geared up to have a relaxing day at the HMS Putnam and enjoy the evening at Mecca, that is, Fenway Park. The oldest park in the majors (hi Ron!), Fenway has been a dream of mine for years. Even before I became a Red Sox fan in 1986 (all hail Buckner!), Fenway was one of those places like Wrigley that is a must-see in baseball.
It didn't hurt that the Sox were in contention, though I suspect the fans would have been just as good. The place was absolutely electric, even in the walk from the "T" (Boston's subway) station to the park. Like Wrigley in Chicago, everything around the park revolves around baseball and the park itself; the smell of the sausage, the call of vendors, and the bits of conversation floating to the surface about the love of the Sox or hatred for the Yankees.
We approached Fenway toward left field and the all-famous Green Monster. Even though our seats were in the right field box (just behind Pesky's Pole), we decided to enter behind the Monster and walk all the way around the stadium. This would allow us to survey the beer situation first-hand.
Entering the Holy Land, we were immediately greeted by the familiar green-and-brown view of the grass and infield dirt through one of the tunnels. The view was about enough to bring me to tears. (Okay, I'm a loser. But it was really a beautiful moment.)
So Steve and I walked and walked and walked. The stadium was quite crowded, but it felt like a big party. (Crowded games elsewhere felt more like we were cattle being herded; this felt like we were all pushing to get into Studio 54 in 1979.) Everywhere we looked, we saw Bud Light, Coors Light, and the occasional (and somewhat acceptable) Amstel Light. We reached our row and walked to our seats, and I resigned to bash Fenway for its gross misunderstanding of the beer needs of its fans. Our seats turned out to be fairly good, with a fairly good view of home.
Unfortunately (and I don't have any pictures of this, so use your imagination), we were right near the tunnel from the concession area, where people would come out holding their food and beer. They would proceed to stand directly between our seats and home plate/the pitching mound and block our view while they blearily tried to figure out where their seats were. It's like these people had no clue about the Arabic numeral system and those bizarre squiggly lines. They would proceed to stand there like idiots, usually when Jeff Suppan was tossing a 1-2 pitch to one of the Orioles. The gal next to us even yelled at a couple of folks who appeared to have started drinking at about 9a that morning and weren't even bothering with tickets, just standing these like drunken, smelly zombies.
So Steve and I decided to move. There just happened to be two seats on the other side of Pesky's Pole with an even better view of the action. What's even better: there was no traffic between us and the action! Now, if I were rating the groundskeeping crew (or *stands*keeping crew), the Fenway bunch would get fairly low marks. (Keep in mind that no one had sat at these seats for this game... this was all from previous games at some point.) Luckily, I'm not rating the crew, I don't care about a couple of peanut shells, and we had incredible seats.
Oh yeah, there was a game going on as well. Normally, I'm a big fan of pitching duels, of low-scoring games. But I don't go to Fenway to see the Red Sox' .290 team batting average (or whatever; mlb.com is hosed) to see a pitcher's duel. And I wasn't disappointed; the Sox jumped out with three runs in the bottom of the first with a combination of hard and scrappy, patient hitting. As the game progressed, we saw a bomb by Manny Ramirez to the right-center bullpen, a hooking homer by Trot Nixon that landed about eight seats from us, and a bullet by some Orioles hitter that nearly decapitated a guy about nine seats from us and a couple of rows back. Best of all, my Sox won 7-5. :-)
Back to the beer situation. After the first inning or so, I felt the tug of the beer and sausage temptations. Instead of walking back around the field toward home plate, I continued along our original counterclockwise path, now toward centerfield. And lo! do mine eyes deceive me? Do I see Heineken ON TAP? Right alongside the sausage vendor that dost tempt my tastebuds with so many carmelized onions and peppers on top a spicy link? Yea, verily I saw correctly. And at $5.50 (a full 63% of a draft BUD LIGHT at Shea), I had a beautiful night filled with of lots of beer, lots of spicy sausage, and lots of sunflower seeds.
The crowd at Fenway blew away any other crowd I had seen, with Wrigley coming in a strong, but distant second. (Part of this could have been my love affair with the Sox, of course. The fans at Wrigley were wonderful, and were still the best looking, but Fenway was absolutely on fire compared to a tame environment like Dodger Stadium, and even more alive than Wrigley.) It only occurred to me by about the 4th inning that there were no "Let's Go Red Sox" or "MAKE SOME NOISE" cheers coming over the loudspeaker. In fact, other than the announcements germane to the game itself, NOTHING came over the loudspeaker. And yet, Fenway was one of the noisiest parks, with regular chants and cheers, and even the only park to feature The Wave. (Dodger Stadium is the only other place among the dozen or so parks I've visited that did The Wave. They still do it better than the fans at Fenway.) Point being that minus the modern-day perks of a technologically-superior stadium, surround-sound to every seat, etc. Fenway was the most spirited place I had been, led by the fans and only the fans.
But I'm rambling now. Fenway was everything I wanted it to be, everything I dreamed about for years. Even the rumored shortage of drinkable beer was overblown. I've said, and will continue to say:
Fenway was the best baseball experience I've ever had in the twenty-plus years I've been involved in baseball.
Period, no question. I loved Wrigley, Shea's fans had a lot of character, but Fenway was the entire package, a complete dream-come-true. Fenway is the kind of place that, if I am within 500 miles of Boston between the months of April and September, I will visit at nearly any cost.
