Author: David Pierce

I’m not sure which it is: do we  learn early on that certain things go together or do we more figure it out?  When it comes to having a PB & J sandwich I actually prefer having fluff over jelly, and the person who sat next to me at the lunch table most days in high school liked putting mayonnaise to his peanut butter.  Now did he just figure that combo out (because I never would have), or did his grandmother spoil him with mayonnaise like mine spoiled me with fluff?  (The word “spoil” might be totally misplaced in this illustration!)  I don’t know which it is.  Oscar Hammerstein once wrote, “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.  You’ve got to be taught from year to year.  It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear.  You’ve got to be carefully taught.”  I don’t think the assumption here is that one must be taught to hate and fear because it’s unnatural.  Like it’s a once in a lifetime learning opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.  For human experience tells us, and dictates to us sadly, that being hated and feared are foregone conclusions.  Sometime, somewhere, someone, perhaps your own self, is going to find reason to hate and fear you.  Whether it begins with a hatred that turns to fear or a fear that turns to hatred, we don’t have to learn their names or faces.  We’ll know them when we see them. So what is it that must be taught?  Is it that we must be taught who and what to hate and fear?  As if the mere existence of hatred and fear isn’t toxic enough, we must be taught where and how to get the most bang for our buck.  The setting for Hammerstein’s words was the South Pacific in World War II.  I suppose in that time and place hatred and fear were tragically regarded as necessary defense mechanisms against being bombed again, against being surprised by hatred and having to live in fear again.  I’m glad though that the lyric doesn’t go, “You’ve got to learn to hate and fear,” because so long as it’s something I’ve got to be taught, I’d just assume skip class today.

I’ve titled this post, Bravery at Third and Home.  I’m playing on a softball team this spring.  (It’s a church softball team and so the degree to which the word “softball” applies may be debatable by some.  But the word “team” is as good as gospel truth.)  Running down fly balls, instinctively jolting left or right at the crack of the bat, pounding palm to mitt–all remind me of how good the game is for me, and how, in spite of my lackluster play, I am good for the game.    That both of these statements are true at the same time is a testimony to my dad, and here’s how: my dad is the fluff to baseball ball’s peanut butter.  In his own days of little league glory, my dad was a legend.  He is known to have pitched a game once in which he made every out there was to make.  He did it by striking out every batter but one.  In six total innings of play he whizzed the ball by 17 of 18 whiffers.  As for the one person who got a piece of the action, they hit a pop fly…to the pitcher!  In high school my dad is said to have shattered a batting helmet with his fastball (no heads are known to have been connected to the helmet at the time of contact!).  Had it not been for an unfortunate car accident leading to a broken neck…

Fast forward 10 years and my dad is standing back on the mound.  I’m sitting on home plate, literally.  “Don’t move,” he tells me.  Don’t move, I think.  Are you insane?  What if the ball comes in low?  What if I have to jump to catch it?  What if I have to jump to avoid it?  Can I at least kneel?  “No.  Keep your butt on the ground.”  That day, and everyday thereafter–spring, summer, and fall–my dad threw the ball right at my head.  I swear, a 6-cylinder Ford couldn’t have kept up with that thing.

In eighth grade I broke a bone in my left hand playing back yard football and had to take my first baseball season off in 7 years.  Honestly, I didn’t miss it.  I was kind of relieved actually.  I loved playing ball with my dad.  I loved knowing how to catch anything he threw at me.  But beyond this, I wasn’t very good.  I knew that in a year my 5 foot 2 inch, 90 pound freshman frame wouldn’t be able to hit the ball  beyond shortstop and my arm couldn’t throw for hard for long.  It’s not that I didn’t have it in me to try for the team anyway.  Or at least this is what I tell myself 18 years later.  Either way, anyway, I didn’t, and the goodness of that decision came to me, as it has before but perhaps never so mercifully, this past week at softball practice.  I was standing in right field, pounding palm to mitt, when the ball was popped up on the first base line.  I noticed that the person playing third put their glove up, as if to catch a ball that was flying 90 feet in an opposite direction.  A couple pitches later and the ball was popped up again, this time along the third base line.  The same player put their mitt up again, but didn’t move.  The ball fell about 3 feet to their right.  This is when I realized they couldn’t see the ball, and when I knew who it was.  We’d met at the church several months earlier.  A newcomer to the area, this elusive third basemen (were they brave? fearless? stupid? I was soon to find out) and I were both native New Englanders and soulful Red Sox fans.  What brought them to the area is perhaps a story for another telling.  What matters is what brought them out to softball practice.  That they loved the game and could spout statistical analysis on every major leaguer since Babe Ruth was not it.  That before the kids grew up and the family broke up they coached and cheered at every game, match, and meet was not it.  That cancer had taken their ability to see very well anymore was obviously not it.  That after missing the pop-up at third they still took batting practice, only to lay the bat down on home plate after just two pitches and flop down in the grass beyond the dugouts, surely that was not it either.  What made them do it?

Everyone in the outfield just stood there, murmuring and confused.  “Should we cheer for them, give ’em a little pep talk?  Two pitches?  That’s all they’re going to give themselves?  What should we do for them?”  I didn’t know but what to do first.  I jogged my way across the infield and sat down beside them in the grass.  “I had to try,” they said.  So that was it.  They were willing to risk the darkness, to stand on the third base line where the ball might come whizzing by faster than a Ford?  For all they couldn’t see, they might as well have just sat their butt on home plate.  All this just to be able to say they’ve still got a good inning or two left in them.  “I’ll just take this glove back to the store tomorrow and tell them it didn’t work for me,” they said.  I just sat there in silence.  From where I sat, the glove worked like no glove I’d ever worn.  “Where did you learn to do that?” I asked them.  “Did someone teach you to do that or did you just figure it out?”  “To do what?” they said.  “To say you’re a baseball player just because you have a glove.  Bravest damned thing I’ve ever seen.”

Hatred, fear, bravery.  Does someone teach us the difference or do we just figure it out?  Which is it?  I’m not sure it matters.  Bravest damned thing I’ve ever seen.

As I said in my first post, blogging is a new venture for me.  If there is an etiquette to blogging–to knowing what to write and who to share it with–I worry that I’m more likely to get my fingers crossed on the keyboard and offend you, my unassuming reader, than I am to say, “May I?” and, “Sorry.”  Maybe it’s dishonest on my part but this is, I suspect, why I’ve said so little about myself as the writer.

By day I’m a preacher.  I have a pulpit, a congregation of listeners, a business card with an address linking me to a church.  Now what I know, and what I’d like you to know I know, is that neither the pulpit nor the congregation nor the church are really mine.  They belong to God Almighty and to the world God is so desperately wanting to reach to heal.  That I get to stand in the pulpit, before the congregation, at the church, means I’m just playing my part willingly (sometimes not so willingly) in the healing process.  Preaching I find is dialogue.  It’s not nearly as one-way as it appears.  To the degree that it is dialogue I am (I’ll say it again),  just a player, a single player among many.  The best preachers are the ones who when you sit down to listen to them make you feel like you’re stepping into a world already in motion, and you’re being offered a seat on the grass.  So in the midst of the spinning you can rest, even lay back and close your eyes, provided you reopen them often enough to remember where you are and how you got there.  You’ve been invited.  God wants you to step onto the canvas, to lend your voice to the dialogue, to play your part in the healing process.

When I first set up this blog and filled out the section entitled “About the Writer,” I failed to mention that I am a son.  My mother, quite naturally of course, caught this omission.  Honestly, I didn’t mean to not say I am a son.  It was just a given to me.  I mean, everyone is either a son or daughter.  I just figured that what needed to be spelled out is who I am beyond this.  What my mom reminded me of though is that without first being a son, I am nothing else.  This is a powerful realization that cuts two ways.  Some people grow up as sons and daughters without moms and dads.  Maybe mom and dad were lost to them or mom and dad wanted to be lost to them.  Either way you are still a son or daughter.  In my case, my parents had me and gratefully kept and raised me.  That I am a son is a powerful given.  That my mother wants to make sure I claim this before the world is even more powerful, not because it’s a given to me that I am a son, but because it’s a given to my mother that I am her son.  She invited me into this world if you will.  She wants me here.

There is a story about a young girl who was dying.  Her father runs to find her a healer, someone who can rescue her life.  On their way to where the little girl is, the father finds out that his daughter has died.  But the healer says, “Do not worry.  She is only asleep.” Whether she was asleep or had in fact died we never find out.  If we take the Healer at his word, it’s a given that she’s only asleep.  But the story ends with the Healer taking only the girl’s parents and those we are told who were “with him” and they go in to get the girl up.  I’ve always wondered why everyone else gets left outside while all the magic is happening inside.  Couldn’t we all stand to see a bit of miracle?  I don’t wonder if it happens this way because the Healer knows that most people, after seeing the girl sitting up at the breakfast table eating again, will still be trying to figure out which one it was: sleepiness or deadness.  And when she grows up to get a job, and she gets a business card with a title on it, or she becomes a mom herself, the world won’t see her for any of it.  But to mom and dad it won’t matter either way.  That she’s their daughter is a given, and that will be enough.

So under the section, “About the Writer,” where I list ten or so things about myself, I’ve made sure now to say, I’m a son.

The idea of starting a blog came to me over a year ago.  I like to write, but somehow that didn’t feel like good enough reason to blog.  Somewhere someone has said, “Write only what matters.”  Well, I’m not sure that will be the case for me and my blog.  I better settle for hoping that what I write will matter.  But even if I fail there, I can say that writing matters.  Sharing matters.  This blog is likely to be a mishmash, a melting pot, a deranged clump.  It might get read by the people I share a house with, or a church with, or a town with, or those I call family, or colleague, or foe.  No doubt all these and more will inspire and shape what I put down here.  Again, sharing matters, and I’m grateful for those who have shared with me.

Like many across our country and world, I’ve been tuned into the recent bombing devastations in Boston, Massachusetts.  I actually get to call Boston and its towns to the south home, and so, like many, I can say that the events of this week have been more than just a news reel.  They have felt personal on some level.  But I’ve been trying to sort out what that means to call it all personal.  Some speak of the terror itself as personal, and we want, with all our might, to see those who have caused us injury, injured.  We want those who have shut down our bus lines and driven us indoors behind locked doors, to be shut up and driven away forever, maybe even to the grave.  For others there is the personal loss of safety, of not knowing if, when, where something like this could happen again.  I no longer live in the Boston area and so that kind of personal-ism doesn’t feel so personal to me.  Of course, there is the personal tragedy of losing a loved one, or not knowing if a loved one will be lost still.

In the church, where just about everyone might turn today, it’s Easter.  Not too many people catch that.  “Easter was a day three weeks ago,” we say.  Fortunately though, Easter is a season.  As a season it’s not over when all the candy has been eaten or the leftover ham is gone.  It’s not even over when the final verse of the Easter hymn is sung and Jesus himself is pronounced alive again.  Seasons mean that whatever got us there in the first place will come again.  Death will come again.  Not even resurrection lasts forever.  As a season Easter also means though that when death does come again, it won’t get to last either.  If Easter is a single moment in a single day belonging to a single person, say Jesus, then we might do well to see how Jesus handles his moment in time.  He doesn’t keep it to himself.  He finds everyone who is anyone who has experienced death lately and he breathes on them, which is to say, he gets close enough to let them see, feel, and even smell what new life is like.  That we all might remember we’re still alive.

I’ve named my blog, PleaseGrace, remembering that grace is for the giving and the taking.  There will always be a want for justice, for payback.  But before we reach for these we might first remember those who shared grace with us when we said, please, and maybe even when we didn’t.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

O Lord, we are the doubters.  Overcome with sorrow, not believing that anyone can really move past the betrayal of friends and the denial of loved ones, we are the doubters.  O God, come among us, breathe peace into our doubt.

O Lord, we are the hurting.  Our lives are shattered by the pain of death, by the anxiety of having more needs than we can possibly fill ourselves.  We are anxious for hope.  We are the hurting.  O God, come among us, breathe peace into our hurt.

O Lord, we are the fearful.  Our world is ruined by a thousand wars producing thousands of hungry, homeless mouths and leaving a thousand more hearts without care.  We have underestimated or perhaps taken advantage of our powers.  Can anyone set it right for us again?  We are the fearful.  O God, come among us, breathe peace into our fear.

O Lord, we are the.  I don’t know, what are we Lord?  We are the ones who go by so many names.  We have grown so familiar with ourselves and the way things are that we hardly know what to call ourselves or what to do with ourselves.  We sit locked behind closed doors, closed hearts, closed minds, and for all of this our hands are closed too.  O Lord, who are we?  We are the ones you died and rose to save.  We are the ones you’ve come to, to say, “Peace be with you.”  We are the ones who are sent out in hope and faith to overcome the world with love and renewal.  O Lord, come among us, that we might never be alone.  Breathe your life upon us that we might walk in the spirit of Jesus always, for who we are is your people.  Amen.