Making Maps

Soccer is war; the field is Normandy, fresh for the storming.  I was a soldier there, storming the ramparts and bringing victory to the allies.  As a twelve year old, I had seen my share of combat; every other Saturday new villains appeared and the fighting began all over again.  Further, I had done drills to sharpen my skill in our weapons of choice; a foot and a ball.  Things were riding on our battles.  Heavy things.  Important things.

Pictured above: Jimmy;
Age 11; Midfielder.

That's what we believed anyway.  Soccer is something we, as twelve year olds, needed to understand.  Battle was how we were told to understand it.  Combat.  Serious stuff.  

Stuff is serious in battle because there are grave repercussions for losing.  In a war, everything is on the line because we understand war as a fight for your life.  When soccer is a war; soccer is a fight for your life, which makes things difficult when soccer isn't your life.  So, seeing as how I made a pretty terrible soldier, I quit.

If you need to get somewhere, you look at a map because you trust that piece of paper you're holding to be a pretty accurate representation of that somewhere you're going.  But anyone who used Mapquest before five years ago can tell you that not all maps are created equally.  Some maps are more accurate than others...for some people.

Poems are famous for using maps and getting the girl.  I speak for all men when I tell you that we sometimes have trouble expressing our feelings.  So we use a map to get the girl.  

"I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea, 

And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of ships; 

But the loveliest things of beauty God ever has showed to me 

Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the dear red curve of her lips."

The best maps we use are the maps that best explain the world.  Some people think soccer is best explained as a war and some people think the girl they're smitten with is the loveliest thing God has shown them.  Even if you disagree, the world is a complex place.  What kind of meaning will you make?

Professionally Speaking

I like to dance but I am strictly recreational.  However, I do consider myself to be professionally recreational, which just means I have confidence in my inability to do the true art form of dance any justice.  It was only just a while ago that I decided to go professionally recreational.  But the important thing was that it was a choice.

One of my only moves:
"the elbow drop."

A professional is someone who does something for gain and when I dance I gain something.  In the past, I always wanted to sustain when I danced.  I wanted to sustain my image, my pride, my dignity.  But to be a professional, you have to give something up.  In order for life to come, it must first be given up.  That's a hard teaching but anything worthy is hard.

Only a professional dancer can profess dance because that person is giving something up to gain.  The difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional makes his trades his life for his work while an amateur works his life for a trade.  Professionals are different because they chose to go on when what they do doesn't make sense anymore.

If you're ready to gain life then you're ready to give it up.  If you profess something, what is it that you're giving up to get it?  

Irrationally Rational

It would be nice if everyone simply acted solely on rationality, but people can't really be rational when they're angry enough to kill.

I don't see that as a problem though.  There are those that say rationality is the ideal; if we could all be perfectly rational, we'd all be fine.  That might be true, but we'd also be terribly boring.  We act in ways that don't always make sense, and sometimes we even know that we're not making sense, and that's ok.

The deepest and most life giving parts of your story are deep and life giving because of something that you felt in that moment.  The worst and lowest points in your story are the worst and the lowest because you felt worse than low.  There was more than emotion in that moment, but to put yourself back in that time; to flip the page back and scan across those words of joy or words of pain, you have to immerse yourself in that joy and in that pain all over again.

This remembering is an emotionally hard thing to do.  Hard things are the most worthy things though.  In relationships they move us the farthest. This is true for God too.

In the one hundred and sixth Psalm, the author recounts how God heard the cries of those He loved.  This caused God to remember the agreement He had made with them, and instead of destroying His people, God shows mercy.  God is moved.  Man moves with Him. 

Humanity can get very frustrated with the fact that we are made in the image of an irrationally rational God.  It's that very frustration that proves our emotional nature.  We're predictable sometimes, but our deepest places aren't places of calculated thought.  No, we are beautifully flim flammy.  Our deepest places are merely tear ducts full of salty joy and pain.         

You Are Not Enough

Someone who has 14 or so speeding tickets is cool.  That person is a rebel; someone who seems to be deliciously aloof; all on purpose.  A true civil renegade who spurns the law because of some higher knowledge and authority.  This person is the archetype aimless drifter who throws off the restraints of society and makes his own path.

I've now received 4 speeding tickets which is just a stupid number of speeding tickets to have.  It means that I'm too fast to be lawful and too slow to bash on the establishment.  I'm stuck in the speeding ticket middle; a place where it just seems like I can't commit to being on the side of good or evil.  Soon the police will call me up and ask me if they can really count on me to uphold the precious pillars of social normalcy or if they should just issue a warrant now.

When you're in the middle of the maverick and the mediocre, you're nobody.  Having 4 speeding tickets is the worst when you live in a world that's stuck at the ends of the spectrum.  You're either all in or all out.  You should know that you're now on the scale.

On the scale it's better to be a quitter than a trier and a failer.  It's best to be a succeeder but if you can't then definitely be a quitter.  Being a quitter is not so bad because you can survive on being a succeeder on a scale of your own design.  But not if you have 4 speeding tickets.  You're sunk if you've got 4 because it's too many to be too few and too few to be too many.

If you're a 4 speeding ticket person then you'll always be just on the cusp of enough.  You'll run run run run run and it will not be enough because you'll never be close enough to 14 tickets to have what it takes.  You'll have to be a quitter if you ever want to be a succeeder.  But having your own scale just makes you a quitter who's a succeeder at being a liar.

No one wants to be a liar and no one can really be a succeeder.  So we run run run run run and realize that we are running in a straight line on top of a sphere.  We're walking a tightrope that is lying on the ground.  We're believing in a south that exists as only one small direction of a compass rose.

There's only one thing to do.  Step off the scale even though you can't see anything else.  Fall off the edge of the tightrope even though there appears to be no ground.  Do it because you'll never reach the end of your run.  Do it because you're not enough to be something and too much to be nothing.