Dear Reader,
This past week was a long one. Between traveling, work, and a wedding, I just couldn’t find the time to write. All I have to show for this week is three measly lines for a poem I’ve yet to complete. By the time Sunday rolled around I was exhausted. After church, I plopped down on my couch and flipped through my usual go-to shows. Nothing seemed interesting until I remembered the 30 For 30 documentary about the 1986 NY Mets: Once Upon a Time in Queens.
If you know anything about me, you know that few things matter more to me than my home borough of Queens, and God’s favorite team, the NY Mets. (If you don’t believe me I’m happy to walk you through a brief Biblical/Theological survey proving that indeed God looks favorably upon the NY Mets. e.g. “God is close to the brokenhearted and to those who are crushed in spirit.” Ibid. A Theology of Suffering.)
For three blissful hours, I sat in front of the TV and barely moved, watching the likes of Keith Hernandez, Darryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, and Doc Gooden perform acts of baseball wizardry, leading a rag-tag group of baseball miscreants (save for Gary Carter) to World Series glory. While I was struck by the first-hand accounts of that 1986 season, what I found more interesting was how the people of the city used the Mets as an archetype for life in NYC in the 80s. The Mets became a rallying point for a city recovering from economic and civil turmoil, the city and that team had a sort of accidental symbiosis, each informing the other, providing meaning to those who were following along, seeing themselves in the players, and the season as it unfolded.
Baseball is magical in that way. It’s truly a sport that lends itself to story. Curses, superstition, legends, and myths run amok on the baseball diamond. But upon further investigation, it’s less about Baseball itself but about us, our ability to make meaning out of the seemingly meaningless.
Victor Frankl, psychiatrist, and holocaust survivor posits that a person’s primary motivation in life is meaning and that meaning could be found in all circumstances. Our ability to make meaning allows us to make sense of the senseless, to derive lessons, and direction from that benign and the terrible, or as Qohelet puts it, “God sets eternity in the hearts of men.”
In this way, we are all artists, poets, and writers. We take the everyday ordinary occurrences of our lives and make sense of them by giving them meaning. As Socrates points out, it’s the unexamined life that is not worth living. Our lives find meaning when we take time to step back and ask the hard questions, the big questions, the ones that loom over each of us like a shadow, begging to be explored. Questions like: Who am I? Why am I here? Why do we suffer? Is there a God?
The answers to those questions aren’t only found in highfalutin texts or in great spiritual experiences. They can also be found in the everyday and the ordinary, the crack of a baseball bat and the roar of a crowd, and the long-suffering of a dismal Baseball franchise. There, if we look hard enough, the big questions wait to be answered, just beneath the surface of the mundane movements we call life.
Recent Publications:
Interview: W/ Forefront 360, On my latest collection Skipping Stones.
Reading Recommendations:
Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness
Seamus Heaney, Field Work
Writing Update:
I wish I had an update about my novel but sadly I haven’t been able to give my manuscript the attention it needs, for now, free of the red pen and its judgment. However, I am happy to report that I have begun outlining my next poetry collection, tentatively titled, Driving North. With the success of Skipping Stones, I hope to find a new publisher who can help drive this new book into the hands of new readers.
Wish me luck!