MASTERY

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So I’m watching Sportscenter and a feature segment appears pointing out that the University of Connecticut (UCONN) Women’s basketball team has won 79 straight games (81 since the day I began writing this post). They haven’t lost since April 6, 2008. They’ve won 78 of 79 games during the streak by double-digits and out of 3,160 possible minutes, the Huskies have trailed for only 114. They have dominated to be sure and the success they have experienced goes virtually unrivaled in both men’s and women’s hoop.

In their most recent contest prior to the starting of this post, the ladies of UCONN defeated Holy Cross by 80 points 117-37, Holy Cow! Why were they playing Holy Cross in the first place? At any rate, the guy who coaches these remarkable women is named Geno Auriemma. In an era where coaches leave loyal fan bases to chase dream jobs and public school teaching gigs are no longer a dime-a-dozen, Auriemma is beginning his 26th season. He is the all-time winningest coach in UCONN history at nearly 86 percent. Who wins 86 percent of their games over a quarter of a century of grueling Division I seasons? While coaches and players dream of putting it all together to win a championship, Auriemma has done it seven times. And despite his rare air, coach Auriemma epitomizes the goal of most of the “driven” people in our world today – to be better than…

When you think of Women’s college basketball, three perennial powers come to mind: UCONN, Stanford and Tennessee. All make annual trips to the national tournament and all expect to be dominant and indisputable. But then, of late, schools like Baylor have entered the mix with their 6’8″ phenom Brittany Griner. And of course Rutgers is a well coached squad. But at day’s end, are more schools like the elites or more similar to Oregon State who hired Scott Rueck formerly of George Fox University to come in and deposit more than just basketball into the lives of his young athletes? I think the latter. Somewhere along the line we humans become obsessed with comparison but we’re not born that way. In the first four years of life we learn and apply incredulous amounts of information. If we are not raised in abusive environments, every mastery is celebrated from language acquisition to walking to tinkering with golf clubs we might have tried to eat just one year earlier. Mastery is enough to merit a sense of accomplishment. But something changes. Mastery and application of skills ceases to have importance. Coach Auriemma  seems like a humble dude. Rather than want his seven titles, maybe we should want the strength it took to remain faithful to preparation for the 10 years before he ever won his first title. Could winning simply be the byproduct of mastery?

MAKING SPACE FOR GOD

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Ten players from the basketball team that I coach went with me to a seminar on Saturday called “Making Space for God.” It was hosted by Renewed Living Ministries and I didn’t know how they would react but they made it through with a high degree of engagement. The lady who ran the seminar knew they were coming and made it a point to provide 3-4 sandwiches per glutton. She also pointed questions at them showing that she valued their opinions and their staying awake. It was cool to see high school boys demonstrating maturity. It’s Monday now though and that was on Saturday so today I’ll get the real low down on how they felt.

As for the seminar itself, I loved the honesty in the exercise. It’s funny to realize that you’re so conflicted, both wanting to find your way back to your spiritual home and being anxious about the demands you think will be levied upon you when you arrive. There was more reflection at this event than I’ve ever done, a truthful introspection like I’ve never witnessed en mass. At one point we were asked to write our fears and concerns along with our desires and longings on a post-it note. We had all been given a composition book with an envelope inside labeled “TRUST GOD?”. We were instructed to put the post-it note in the envelope and realize that the “TRUST GOD?” question was a loaded one that had more to do with making space for God than making a decision to have faith in Him. After all, how can one believe in one whom they do not know? It made perfect sense to take this day to reconvene the heart and its beat maker.

One of the initial discoveries revealed during Saturday’s event was that there is in me a severe unwillingness to make space for the God upon whom my whole livelihood hinges. You gotta start somewhere even if that starting place is grim. And yet in the gray there was hope because of how refreshing it is to sit outside on a California Saturday knowing that God is sitting above, inside, with and for you. When distance is placed between the tangible life and the spiritual life for the purpose of connecting to God, something happens. And as surreal or preposterous as it sounds, that’s also why it’s not worth selling. It sells itself and yet come Monday it is once again a labor to slow down and make space for God. But I think before we start practice this afternoon, we’ll take 10 minutes and let the team make some space.

“In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness, and they resist it with all their might. That is why they persecute it and crucify it…There is no truth towards Jesus without truth towards man…We cannot follow Christ unless we live in revealed truth before God and man.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Chapter 11 on Truthfulness

AWAY I WENT

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In 2002 I scheduled these “God Getaways” once-a-month for twelve months. There was a conference center in Lake Hughes, California that accommodated people who worked in the full-time ministry for free when space allowed so I took ’em up on their offer. It was about a 1.5 hour drive from where I lived but the goal was consistent with the title – to get away. I remember struggling with being alone, but desperately needing time to isolate. I remember how tired I’d be driving around the winding turns of the Angeles National Forest and how I’d always get to the conference center later than I intended. I’d pull-up and knock on the center director’s door to get the key and he’d have that look on his face like, “Really…” Nevertheless, there was an indescribable quiet in those times. I’m not sure I had told anyone where I was so had I been mauled to death by a bear it’d be years before the forensics came back and kinfolk notified . Sometimes I was at the center less than 24 hours and sometimes all I did was sleep upon arrival. But even the sleep was different there because there were no radios, phones, televisions, no ambient thoughts of frustration and exasperation…only a desk, a pad and a pencil. I marveled at how intentional I had to be every month to even have a chance of getting there, how I had to say no to so many things to end up in the quiet place. I remember passing on it one month because the homie invited me to a poker game. The world is fast my friends and noisy. You gotta be “stomach-growlin’ hungry” to find quiet in your life. I ended up doing 6 out of 12 that year and that was the first and last year I’ve ever done something of that nature. It was the first and last time I calculated a “slow down” in a short lifetime that’s gotten anything but easier and anything but calmer. This weekend I’ll be revisiting what I wanted to start in 2002 by attending a silent day event hosted by an non-profit called Renewed Living Ministries. More to come.

THINK AGAIN

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One of the greatest barriers to your mission is forgetting to be creative about reaching your audience. Coach Norman with Vincent at NBC Italia '10.

I thought by now I’d have published my book. Needless to say it’s been a grind at best and a nightmare at worst. But I was driving west on the 210 Freeway yesterday when it hit me that I should start over and write another book. When I went to the self-publishing agency with my original work, I paid my money and uploaded the necessary files to their author center. It seemed easy enough since it had taken more than a year to get to that point. I had an errorless, cleanly designed version of my book ready to be printed, so I thought. To my own chagrin, a tennis match began between myself and the self publishing agency about PDF specifications, photos and other details. I moved from elation to disappointment to rage. I was into these cats for $1200 and they couldn’t deal with minor fixes. But as it says in chapter 4 of 12 LESSONS I’VE LEARNED from NOT PLAYING BASKETBALL, It’s Never Always Someone Else’s Fault. I didn’t read the fine print and that’s exactly what the publisher used to fend me off. So…

I thought to my self, “Self…you’ve been blogging for 1 1/2 years or so. Couldn’t you do a daily devotional or some daily inspirational anthology based on all the blog posts you’ve done?” It was a cool breath to hear these admonitions. Someone mentioned it three months ago and I brooded over it before allowing it to dissipate. It’s funny how sometimes things that seem easy become hard, perhaps to show you that there’s more to be discovered. When I first finished 12 LESSONS…, a former book editor told me to pitch it to literary agents which I did for about a month before gettin’ real soft. Rejection after rejection poured in and that’s when I deviated…decided to self-publish. Now I’m back at the beginning forced to rethink my cowardice pertaining to the original book and the money I spent on a self-publishing package. I should’ve listened to that retired book editor who said, “Hey, you got something here.” I’m listening now.

NON-LINEAR LIFE

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You think Shaquille O’neal will ever wear a Lakers uniform again? Doesn’t really matter but I never thought he’d be in Boston, Cleveland or Phoenix. I watched him at Louisiana State University in the early 1990s. I never thought he’d be a Laker in the first place. He was tearin’ down backboards literally and redefining the game of basketball. He was “the master of disaster…7’3” according to his line in the Fu Scnickens “What’s up Doc.” He’s not 7’3″ but you know how Shaq is when he starts talking. Shaq is an example of the non-linear life – the anything-but-a-straight line existence in which life ebbs and flows. I’m a lover of progressions and some things are anything but progressive. You date someone, you break-up and you generally don’t return to revisit the relationship on a second go if it’s truly done. Remarriages of divorced spouses occur but not so often. Going back to jobs you once left are uncommon practices and it’s likely because of the perception that life should be a trajectory. And that trajectory can’t have stops on it that appear to be duplications. Somewhere we learned to deduplicate and we’re really good at it. But what happens if the place, the person, the apparatus is the same but your role has matured?

Is it possible to cycle through familiar places with heightened perspective? Alas, the true test of maturation may be in how willing we are to serve in the places we’ve been. Chapman University barely resembles the school from which I graduated in 1997. If it was a human, it surely be the $6 million man a la Lee Majors. And with such transformation I can assume that there may be new directives, new goals or insights for today that were inconceivable 13 years ago. The point? I have a fear that I wonder if anyone shares? It is the fear of HO HUM. New is exciting and rightfully so but old can be new if you are not the same as you were your last trip through. The non-linear life can move from left to right and seemingly back to the left (no poiitical implications intended here). What appears to be “Been there done that” is likely “Went there once so long ago I’m excited about doing this.”

PRAISE IS BLOG WORTHY

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Los Angeles Laker Shannon Brown has bounced around the NBA and its minor league (NBDL). No doubt praise has made him the player he is.

There is false praise and there is deserved praise. And I’m beginning to think that whether you receive the former or the latter, the effect of praise on a life is incalculably great. Have you ever been praised? If not, I’ll bet you’ve either been or are angry and cynical. You have a tinge of jealousy at the sight of the success of others. You once gave up on a sport, an activity or piano lessons because you attempted mastery of something in an environment devoid of praise. Bold accusations. Unfair? Inaccurate? No to the first question and maybe to the second but I doubt it.

Praise is underrated though we may feel otherwise. It is freely given to certain gifted members of our society catapulting them into a level of stardom that feeds on itself. People become elites because of praise. Praise is both a drug and an impetus. Wantonly given it can make an athlete more confident than he should be but in its proper dosage it is the difference between finishing what you started and moving on to the next pursuit. Praise is powerful.

Not only is receiving praise a stimulus for greatness but giving it is as well. We’re familiar with praise in the Christian vernacular. You want to know why preachers admonish parishioners to praise God? According to my own pastor praise is a reminder that you are NOT limited to the vices of this world. You “are better than that” as trite as it sounds – better than addiction, better than imploding your marriage and better than abandoning your children. Praise is a reminder that you’re a part of the creative genius and that God can and does equip people to thrive through and beyond crises. If you think horizontally, couldn’t praise work the same way when we give it to friends, strangers and the students/athletes we impact? Praising someone else doesn’t diminish YOU. If it’s cyclical, praise will give life to the aspirations that reveal the best you have. The artist, the songwriter and the guy who finally made an NBA roster after playing in the NBA Development League all need a healthy amount of praise. Some would like to believe they’ve gotten where they are without it but chances are that if you’re a “self-made” man you’re fueled not by a desire to be your best but rather by anger and the need to establish an identity. Wanting to prove others wrong is not the same as believing that you’re where you’re supposed to be. Praise makes you strong when you receive it and when you give it.

“THAT AIN’T NO RIVALRY”

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Sir Charles Barkley once said that a rivalry is when you win some of the games and they win some of the games. On one occasion, discussing the Sacramento Kings vs. Los Angeles Lakers playoff battles of the early 2000s, he simply said, “That ain’t no rivalry. The Kings just got their (butts) kicked.” True.

When you’re Kobe Bryant, the key to a third straight championship is befriending the arch rival. Ron Artest, Matt Barnes and Steve Blake are proof and you can click their hyperlinked names to find out what their statistics have been against the purple and gold in recent years. Done clickin’? See, these dudes were real buttocks ailments until they joined the Lakers’ ranks. And here we are freshly across the threshold of a new NBA season with the usual suspects in action making enough money in two pay periods to equal a worker bee’s lifetime of earnings.

Players move in the NBA all of the time as they do in other sports. This is why Brett Favre waits until all of the hard preseason workouts are over before reporting to Viking camp which just happens to be the nemesis of his first NFL team the Green Bay Packers. A rivalry is a rivalry in professional sports until your rival writes you a big fat check. Loyalty has not a different face but rather the familiar one of conditionality. You ever check the salaries of the jocks we worship? Kobe will make $24,806,250 this year and that number is likely a significant factor in his vestment with the Lakers I fell in love with in 1980. But I don’t want the smooth taste to fool you in this post. I’m not especially interested in exorbitant salaries and circumstantial allegiance.

A real rival can never be satiated, appeased or reconciled. He is an enemy through and through and you hate the breath he exhales. His thoughts toward you practically reek of malice at best and produce predatory intent at worst. A true enemy will never be your comrade in arms because truth be told, you are the reason for his arms. The point is that there is an evil that causes our petty grievances to pale. Like the receding waters before a Tsunami wave, is the delusion that for one second the destructive and avaricious system of our world wants what’s best for you. This is what we call an intentional false analogy – that is, comparing Shaq signing with the Boston Celtics after being loved in Los Angeles for seven years with evil that is personified in biblical literature. Shaq is foul for wearing that green but at least I understand. It’s basketball, he’s in a fraternity of men who understand the business they help perpetuate. But life? This is different. In my “land,” there’s this real rival, an insidious Satan which literally means adversary in Hebrew. He bears nothing in common with you for if he did, perhaps you could appeal to such commonality and form an axis of evil. The problem is, he neither needs nor wants your help. You can’t pretend to share his objective for you are his objective. He is singular and unwaveringly intent on compromising you simply because of the genesis from which you sprang. Heavy stuff. I just thought it’d be cool to rant about what an enemy really looks like so we put this Lebron James/South Beach thing in perspective. Fight the right fights when you walk out of that door today.