Giving Thanks

The United States was the first country to celebrate a holiday specifically for giving thanks.  Instituted during the Lincoln Administration, Thanksgiving has been lost in the shuffle, buried under commercialism, gluttony, and football.

The mindset of modern America seems to equate thankfulness with weakness.  If you are thankful, you are dependent on something or someone else.  You didn't do it by yourself, you had some help.  You had to have someone pave the way.  You were weak.

I do not agree.

A person wrapped up by themselves make a really small package.  If you do it all by yourself, you will only get what your effort can provide.  It flies in the face of our love affair with sports.  In football, try moving the ball without someone else blocking.  In baseball, the individual vs. nine game, the best are successful only 30% of the time.  In basketball, five team players usually beat five individual players.

As a high school golfer, I hated the notion of team golf.  Might have more to do with being rather unlikeable at the time, but I hated the idea of playing well but losing.  I wanted it in my lap, regardless of how my talent level wasn't what I believed it to be.  I was the weak link, and I am thankful for those guys who were my teammates now.  They helped me discover what I could do if I worked at it.

As a coach, I taught team ahead of individual.  We worked on individual skills early in practice and brought everybody together to make a team at the end.  I'm thankful I had kids that listened, and parents that bought in with what I was teaching.

I am thankful for living the United States.  It is a place where I have to the opportunity to find a team to achieve more than I could on my own.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to succed or fail at what I have been called to do.  It's not about me, but I have the opportunity.  All I want is the opportunity.

I am thankful for the people that served, fought, and died to make this country free. Without their sacrifice, no one gets the opportunity to succed or fail.

I am thankful for family, friends and co-workers who support each other as we try to succed and bounce back from failure.

I encourage you to reflect on what makes you give thanks.

What I Saw This Week

I am generally a pretty observant individual.  It is a trait that makes me a candidate for officiating whatever sport may be at hand.  I pick up nuances and details a lot of people miss.  With proper schooling, I could have been a doctor.  As a doctor, I don't have to call it immediately.  I just need to be accurate.

So, what did I see this week?

-I saw sixty degree weather turn into six inches of snow.  Doesn't happen in Florida, but Northern Indiana is good for that.  Might have something to do with that large body of water called Lake Michigan.  In fact, the wind chill factor this morning is around zero degrees.  As a softball coach, if your under 12, I'm cancelling practice.  If you're over 12, focus.

-I saw a sixth grade boys basketball coach get tossed from a game.  I didn't do it: my officiating partner did.  As a long time coach, I will never understand how coaches of kids who aren't even teenagers yet want perfection out of the officials and the players.  You, as a coach, aren't perfect and you don't control what the officials call or don't call.  Get over it and focus on what you can do to help your players get better.  Leave working officials for the guys who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to coach.  When you get there, you will have earned the right.

-I saw an observation solidified: the better the players, the better the officials calling the game.  It's a simple matter of percentages: the more things the players do right, the more obvious the errors and fouls.  When the younger kids do something right, the more beautiful it is to watch when it happens.  Otherwise, just keep encouraging them.  The freakish level of athleticism required to earn professional contracts are just not available to everyone.

-I saw a puppy buried.  We adopted a pug at the end of September with knowledge she might be pregnant.  She delivered four beautiful pup on November 3.  We watched one, temporarily named River, stop eating, be hand fed, and decline.  She passed Thursday evening.  I saw my kids and wife bounce back.  I look forward to seeing the three remaining pups get bigger and stronger.  Right now, these pugs look like little teddy bears.

Take the time to really see things you don't normally see this week.

Keep Them In Your Prayers

I seldom write about local events, but one this week has hit closer to home.   While I'm not in that circle, it has brought to mind a wave of memories and how grateful we should be for transparency.

The event was a murder in Indianapolis of a pastor's wife, a one year-old at home and another on the way.  It appeared to be a home invasion that led to the shooting, two lives cut too short and many people shaking their collective heads in disbelief.

Most people are shaking their head in academic disbelief: How can this happen?  Why did this happen?  It is so terrible.  They are right.

The young wife and mother was Amanda Blackburn.  Her parents are Phil and Robin Byars.  He is a pastor, too.  For the best part of fourteen years, he was one of my pastors.  For the best part of a decade, he taught the Master's Class, which my wife and I attended.

Phil Byars is one of the finest teachers I have had in any classroom.  Having two B.A. degrees in Social Sciences and Business, I have had a few teachers.  Phil blew them all away.

He used an inductive teaching style.  He would pose the situation, and then listen.  He would take the answer and probe, challenge, guide, direct to the understanding of the subject.  It takes great knowledge and love for both the subject and the student.  Phil knew the Bible and loved the people in the Master's Class.  You didn't have to ask him: you just listened.

It is no surprise he was made the Lead Pastor of First Baptist Church.  The down side is he can't preach with the inductive teaching style.  He can still teach.  And it is still done with great love.

One thing about Phil's teaching was that he abhorred the academic answer: an answer that sounds good but has no practical application.  If you dared to give an academic answer in his class, be prepared to tell what that looks like in real life.  If you couldn't make it practical, it wasn't of use.

Robin matched Phil with her support, her knowledge, and her love.  She knew the Bible as well as anyone, and brought an answer in support of Phil's teaching.  I remember a number classes opening with Phil's word, "After class last week, Robin pointed out..."

We watched Amanda grow through her middle school and high school years, not up close, but knowing she was being taught and shepherded the way we were each week.  She had a great model of teaching in her father and a great model for a pastor's wife in her mother.  I can't help but believe something incredible was going to happen with her life.  She was working with her husband, planting churches.

As I write this, the celebration of Amanda Blackburn's life is beginning in Indianapolis.  We ache for the Amanda's husband and son, for Phil and Robin and her siblings, James and Amber.  It would be academic to bring a cliche'.  It takes knowledge and love.  These attributes are not in short supply.

Postseason Blues and Officials Stripes

I know it has been a while since I have written.  My only excuse is a lack of interest and too much to do.

I found the baseball playoffs less than interesting.  Maybe the biggest reason is a lack of available games on television.  The American League seemed to always be on FoxSports1, while TBS and TNT seemed to be the general outlet for most of the games.  The World Series finally made it to the big stage on Fox, but by then, casual fans are more interested in football.  Tends to happen in early November.

I am not sure why Major League Baseball is so set on destroying it's fan base.  Let's take the biggest stage in baseball and hide the majority of the games, especially the Toronto Blue Jays.  The winner of the division with both the Yankees and the Red Sox are still a mystery to most baseball fans because their games were afternoon starts on the obscure FoxSports1.  Also, let's start playoff games so late that future fans can't see heroes being made because they're in bed instead of watching the game.

I remember the split concentration at school, wondering how the playoff games were going.  I ran home from the bus to find out what was going on.  Kids don't see it that way today, noses in their smart phones and wrapped in the world of texting their friends, FaceTime or Skype.  A number of the best player who will spend time in the Major Leagues someday have probably asked the question, "Who's in the World Series?"

Hey, MLB, get this stuff right.  A great game will go down the tubes because you sacrificed future fans for current money.

-I was going to skip the noise around Greg Hardy and the domestic violence charges that were expunged.  In light of the pictures that came forward, it brought to mind the subject of character and sports.

Sports reveals character.  The large number of appearances of NFL players on police blotters shows that we are a society of settling for the look of a winner and not actually being one.  We look like a winner in high school, and it's okay he slapped his girlfriend around.  In college, he split her lip, but he could play ball and we needed it to bring in those alumni dollars from a great football program.  Now he's in the NFL and it's big news that he engages in domestic violence.

Women, girls and children being sacrificed on the altar of football.

-My volleyball season as an official was good enough that I have a number of games lined up for next fall.  I passed the basketball official's exam and have a number of games scheduled, starting this Thursday.  Primarily elementary basketball schedule at the moment, but will possibly see some middle school and maybe even freshman games before the end of the season.

However, I have discovered there are almost 3,500 basketball officials in the stat eof Indiana.  Seems like too many to me.