Life - a team sport

Almost-summer is an interesting season.

The heat-absorbing black top warms bare feet as the evening air cools. Boys working together discover how electric circuits can make light bulbs go on and off, and how electricity can make things fly.

Setting up the disk to fly

Boys play baseball on Park District teams. Some get the idea of teamwork, functioning as a team, sooner than others.

Life is kind of a team sport. When the team wins, everyone wins. In our condo association, for example, minor repairs need to happen on the driveway before it can be sealed for the winter. It’ll be more expensive than simply sealing.

But in the long run, a well-maintained driveway will last longer and require less costly maintenance in the future. Because the association has set aside funds for this in the budget, there will be no special assessments. Everyone benefits.

I help my neighbor weed her flowers. Later in the week, she shares with me a delicious dinner she has cooked. Teamwork. Goodness reciprocated.

Supporting your teammates

After the ball game, all the boys on the team help clean up, collecting the bases, gathering paper cups and throwing them in the trash can. Teamwork. Everybody gets to go home sooner.

Life is about helping one another. With appreciation and reciprocating kindness, everyone wins.

Oh no! Not another sports is life essay!

Girls get equal time

Have I ever said how grateful I am for Park District programs?

January 2009, and it’s Park District basketball season again. The youngsters show up for weekly practices and eventually weekly games with their pint-size rivals such as the Knicks, Nuggets, and Nets.

It amazes me how much the kids improve from one season to the next. This year they are actually dribbling most of the time (as opposed to running down the court with ball clutched in both hands); they are jumping for and catching rebounds; they are stealing unguarded balls. In short, the games are becoming interesting!

Subtle discrimination surfaces. During warm-ups one of the boys escorts a girl teammate to the back of his line. With a word of admonition, the coach immediately moves the girl to where she had been in the front of the line, and puts the boy back in his spot -- an important lesson for all the kids on that team.

You see good sportsmanship when the ref blows his whistle, and the kids hand him foul balls without a blink or a scowl.

“Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love.” Mary Baker Eddy

Seeing the kids’ skills improve from year to year is pure joy.

And so should all our lives improve with added wisdom and experience honing our life skills. Life is action -- at whatever age or stage.

God, eternal Life, does not relegate us to become merely observers of others’ progress. We don’t have to enroll in a Park District program to catch the rebounds of opportunity to be a little kinder, to watch our transactions more alertly, to claim unguarded moments of joy -- day by day.

Grab that ball of life and take it down the court into new territory!

Dribble, pass, or shoot!

He tries for the basket

A diminutive second-grader in a green park district T-shirt, holds the basketball tightly for what seems an eternity, anxiously scanning the court for any green-shirted teammate available to take the ball.

“Dribble, pass, or shoot!” his coach calls.

Although park district basketball rules for second graders are very tolerant of the fact that children are just learning to handle the ball, the coaches also remind the youngsters of what they should be doing.

Dribble means to move while bouncing the ball. Pass means to get the ball to a teammate who might be in a better position to try for a basket. Shoot means to expose yourself to instant success or failure by aiming for that basket that seems so high.

In their own way, these action verbs describe life. Life requires us to be participants. Sometimes we dribble, looking for an opening, looking for what we are supposed to do next.

Other times we see clearly it is time to pass the ball to someone else, to give them an opportunity to go forward with something of value from us.

And still other times we realize we must leap up with hope, and maybe some skill and experience, and shoot for the basket.

If you are on a team, that team will support your efforts. Yet there are times when we feel like we’re on our own, and clinging to the ball hasn't been productive; when we know we need to dribble, pass, or shoot.

That’s when feeling cared for and loved by a tender Father-Mother God means a lot to me. The great Coach is with us no matter what. He/She provides the players we need in this Life-game. In turn, our job is to value and support our teammates.

Although these teammates may change with the seasons, knowing we can lean on an unchanging infinite Love, a strength and wisdom beyond ourselves, inspires us to go forward in unfamiliar paths, to be willing to step outside our comfort zones, to persevere and find solutions where none are obvious, to go forward in the expectancy of doing our best.

Go Team!

How is your life purpose?

Paul liked sports metaphors. He likened our life purpose to running a race. The Corinthians hosted the Isthmian Games, and it’s probable that Paul enjoyed watching some of these events.


Athletes in Olympia trained in gymnasiums.

The stoa, or covered colonnade next to the gymnasium, the columns of which you see here reconstructed after earthquakes, hosted philosophy discussions.


Paul pointed out that all the contestants run, but only one wins. What’s needed to win, he says, is focus. Greek athletes trained for ten months prior to the races. Paul knew the importance of staying in peak condition, staying alert to avoid anything that would distract from training.

The reward for the winner was a wreath of pine or laurel. Paul contrasts this with the reward for a life in service to God -- heavenly approval of unselfish love for one’s fellow man.

So once again Paul speaks across the centuries.

Find your relationship with your creator. Discover how He/She wants you to use your gifts, your talents, in the service of others. And focus on achieving this goal. Be alert to distractions, for the devil doesn’t like good things going on, and diversion is a favorite tool. Stay in mental and spiritual shape. And keep to your course.

There’s no limit to the good we can accomplish, if we give our lives to Christ to transform for his spiritual purpose.

Success in life depends upon persistent effort,
upon the improvement of moments
more than upon any other one thing. . .

If one would be successful in the future,
let him make the most of the present.

Mary Baker Eddy

Valuing the moment

Paul would have walked this street in Philippi

(The rubble remains pretty much where

earthquakes have left the pieces.)

On this trip to Greece to find Paul the apostle, and better understand his life purpose, I wonder if Paul had been an athlete. He shows his respect for runners by frequently using racing metaphors.

I’m impressed that he refused to be shackled to his past. If anyone had a past to regret, it was Paul. As Saul, he mercilessly persecuted Jesus’ followers, even stood by approving Stephen’s death by stoning.

But Paul was so busy going forward with his Christ mission that he couldn’t indulge the past. He refused to let regrets or remorse anchor his life purpose in the murky waters of what happened last week, or three years ago.

He writes to the Philippians, “I keep going on to try to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has already won me to himself.” Modestly, he continues, “Of course, brothers, I do not think that I have already won it; the one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. So I run straight toward the goal in order to win the prize…” (Today’s English version)

Rejecting the temptation to dwell in the past is an apt beginning for Paul appreciation. Most of us on this tour have, for two weeks, left behind friends, family, careers, responsibilities, not to mention time zones.

Every person in our group is facing forward -- with anticipation and good cheer. Missing our flight from Paris to Athens (due to an influx of travelers at the passport checkpoint, and a minimum of official checkers) produced not a single grumble or complaint. This collective expectant attitude constitutes a good start.

I wonder if I can resolve to be as committed to the good of the moment as Paul. My life mission is not likely to be as world-shaking as his. Yet can I be as consistently aware of my own purpose to also love with God’s unconditional love? To shake up that part of the world my life does touch with this incredible love?

And why not! Valuing God’s love for each of us, this moment, is everyone’s present opportunity.

More about "now."

By the way, for those who may be interested, this tour was hosted and led by http://www.biblicaltravels.com/

Riper years, and what's next?

In the early days of TV, there was a great program called, “Life begins at Eighty!” Each week wonderful men and women in their 80s would share insights into their hobbies, activities, and busy lives. Oddly enough, you didn’t hear these folks discussing diseases or diagnoses. They were too busy living life.

Decay and decline are not laws. Someone wisely observed, “You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.” The women in my family are incredible. And they do laugh a lot. See laughter blog.

An amazing octogenarian aunt has just begun going to college for the first time in her life. She is loving her teachers, her classes, her classmates. She’s working hard and earning some of the best grades in the class. And her dear husband is cheering her on.

Tired of the low activity level retirement was providing, something in her intuitively rebelled against the world’s “over the hill” attitude. Auntie is living this sentiment by Mary Baker Eddy who thought a lot about what advancing years should bring. Eddy wrote, “Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom.”

And, “Let us then shape our views of existence into loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather than into age and blight.”

Would you believe, as this column was being written, a friend emailed the following link. It’s a great video example of women of riper years having a ball!

Basketball and progress

My 8 year-old grandson plays park district basketball. He's had to learn patience with himself and his teammates as they develop their skills. Yet his tallness gives him some advantage. Recently he had a clear shot at the basket. As he lifted the ball over his head, the one tall kid on the other team came from behind and plucked it out of his hands.

Our boy was stunned, because in all his 6 Saturdays of playing experience, no one had been tall enough to steal the ball in this novel way. An expression of total disbelief registered his surprise before he recovered and trotted down court to defend the other basket.

Have you ever felt on the brink of accomplishing something really good, and suddenly the opportunity was snatched right out of your hands? I sure have! What helps me is to realize that the important thing is not what seems to have happened, but how we deal with it. Blame and resentment are counterproductive. In the give and take of life, as in basketball, there really isn’t time or place for negativity. Progress demands a flexibility that includes forgiveness and moves on, ready for the next rebound. God has designed us to forgive and go forward.

Mary Baker Eddy in her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, wrote in the chapter on Marriage, that “Patience is wisdom.” While patience isn’t a hot item in today’s Western culture, it is part of the mix with progress and forgiveness. Its value for making good decisions and for coming to constructive terms with the unexpected is timeless.