In no other country’s university system, after all, does sports play anything like the central role it does in American academic life. Men do not go to Oxford to play cricket; the Sorbonne does not field a nationally celebrated soccer team. Even in the most sports-mad countries, sports is sports and education is education. That’s a better system.

College sports distorts academic life in many ways, beginning with admissions. Recruited athletes’ scholarships soak up almost a fifth of places at most elite colleges, and athletic scholarships raise costs for everyone else. People defend these programs as offering hope to black and low-income students, especially boys, who otherwise couldn’t go to college at all. But what about their high school classmates who do better in school and can’t afford higher education either? Where are our priorities? Right now, we are telling the kids at the bottom that the way out is not to study and take college preparatory classes but to work on their jump shot and their blocking. If there was no scholarship incentive for those skills, the kids might not blow off their classes in favor of endless hours in the gym. Instead of the false hope of winning fame and wealth by turning pro after college—a brass ring grasped by only 1.5 percent of seniors who play NCAA football and basketball—they might focus their ambition on careers that could lift them out of poverty for life.

-Katha Pollitt

As much as I enjoy college basketball, soccer and baseball, the concept of intercollegiate sports is sounding crazier by the day.

In fact, I would go even farther than Pollitt and say that a conversation needs to be had about separating sports from education not just in colleges but in high schools as well.

I for one would have been much better served academically in my teenage years if half of my high school teachers had been better at teaching than they were at coaching football and basketball (the real reason they had jobs in the first place).

I have to admit. It was a little frightening when I saw the above image pop up on a website I was using yesterday to watch an English soccer game the website I pay a monthly subscription fee to wasn’t showing until 11:59 p.m.

The first thought that came to mind was, “what the heck does Homeland Security have to do with a pirated English soccer game?” My second was, “am I in trouble?”

It turns out this website wasn’t the only one seized by authorities this week. Rather than take on the owners of the offshore sites, authorities simply seized the domains of a slew of the ones that stream live sporting events, presumably because there is a so-called Super Bowl Sunday and the NFL is afraid it isn’t going to make enough money showing the game for no additional charge to the millions of people with television sets or friends with sets across the country.

As someone in the growing minority of people ditching cable altogether (I don’t even own a television), I think it’s both sad and pointless.

It’s sad because I don’t have any other option to watch sporting events than to watch ESPN3.com and subscribe to online sites like MLB.tv and FoxSoccer.tv. When I don’t have an option to watch games online for a price – thankfully CBS gets it enough to show all of the NCAA tournament games online – I reluctantly resort to illegal sites like the one seized yesterday.

It’s pointless because those sites have probably already set up shop again under different domains. It’s kind of like the war on drugs. For every bust made, several more dealers pop up around the corner.

Like the music industry has learned over the years, piracy can’t be defeated but it can be contained with a little bit of ingenuity. Sadly, I used to pirate music I couldn’t find anywhere else online to legally download. Now, thanks to stellar online services like eMusic and iTunes I pay for 100 percent of the music I obtain. I hope to eventually be able to say the same thing about all of the live sporting events I watch.

I was first introduced to Holden Caulfield my junior year of high school. Like most teenagers, I dreaded having to read books and write papers. I had a particularly difficult time with my English teacher, who spent the majority of the class period pandering to the best and the brightest in the front of the room. These, of course, were the ones who pined for her attention as she seized every opportunity to patronize me and the other slackers, stoners and wannabe anarchists sleeping in the back of the room.

When my teacher handed out the topic list for our novel writing assignment, I scanned through the list looking for names of authors that I knew. Of course, I had heard of Walt Whitman and Robert Frost, so those were my first choices. The problem was that those were also the only authors that the others students knew as well, so by the time the teacher made her way to the back of the classroom, I was forced to randomly pick a topic, which ended up being about some book I had never heard of called Catcher in the Rye. For the report, I was assigned to write about the main character Holden Caulfield, and the many ways that he loses his innocence in the story.

As the time came to go to the library at school to research our topics, my frustrations continued as I found researching Salinger and his novel to be very challenging. It didn’t help that several of my classmates bragged about how much information they found on Walt Whitman or John Steinbeck. So while most of the students merely glanced at the book that they were writing about, I was forced to get most of my information from reading the book itself.

As I began to flip the worn pages of the novel, it didn’t take long for me to realize that the author used a lot of foul language. After discovering this fact, I made a vain attempt to convince my mom that the book’s language was too vulgar for me to continue the report. Eventually, I was able to coax my mom into asking my teacher if I could change my topic, but my teacher would not budge.

Reluctantly, I continued reading the novel. As I followed the exploits of Holden Caulfield, I discovered an apathetic and sarcastic character to which I could relate. As I read about Holden’s struggles with isolation and loneliness and failure, I was able to gain perspective on my own.

Looking back to 15 years ago, I cannot honestly tell you anything that I wrote in that paper, or even what I received for a grade. I wish I could say that after reading the book, I immediately became the book lover and collector that I am today, but I was still young, still trying to figure out my place in the world.

I didn’t change overnight, but by my senior year, with the help of a new teacher, I started to appreciate literature. I started to read and write poetry, I helped edit my school’s literary magazine, and along with a few friends started our very own literary circle, dubbing ourselves The Meats in reference to The Beat Poets whose words we devoured and counter-culture style we emulated.

In college, I surrounded myself with classic literature; and, thanks to a local used bookstore, began to build a library of my own. I would go on to earn a degree in English literature, and eventually become an English teacher.  Holden Caulfield still sits in the back of my classroom trying to find his way. I hope that he finds it.

“I’m trying to get back into the habit of listening to music and not doing anything else at the same time. If music is worth anything, it should be worth listening to. That’s the whole point of it after all.”

-Positive Hindrances

I took Lava Dave’s advice and had my own listening without multi-tasking party tonight. I figured Built to Spill’s Perfect From Now On was the perfect candidate.

I didn’t expect it to take me back so quickly to my room in southern New Jersey a week after the Mormon girl I fancied moved to Virginia. It was, at that place and time, my quintessential heartbreak record. I listened to it for days on end with the lights out – no multi-tasking desired. I remember simply I wanting — high school cliche alert — to lose myself in the music and forget all of the lame teenage hormone-fueled feelings of sadness and angst.

“You better not be angry, you better not be sad. You better just join the luxury of sympathy if that’s a luxury you have.” 

Apparently, it didn’t completely do the trick because here I am a happily married and unheartbroken man (my heart breaks for more important things now like world poverty and injustice) thinking for the first time in 12 years about that emotionally sad but musically productive period in my life — the time the best record of the year and maybe of the decade soothed my heart, tickled my ears and taught me why music was not only worth listening to, but sometimes the only friend I had or even wanted. 

Maybe I need to make get back into the habit too. There’s no telling where, to name just a few, a spin of my old Velocity Girl, Dinosaur Jr., Blur and Jesus and Mary Chain records might take me when I shut everything out and have another listening without multi-tasking party.

Reading an article in The Nation about the so-called rebranding of the virginity movement, I had an immediate flashback to a youth rally I later regretted taking a group of junior high kids from my church to a number of years ago.

The guy speaking was one of those flashy youth pastor types with a master’s degree in youth ministry and a look-at-how-hot-my-wife is attitude. He was talking about sex, more specifically about the dangers of sex. I don’t recall him using scripture or talking about sexuality as a gift from God. He was basically trying to scare teenagers from ever having sex – which of course is a wonderful strategy for the kids who as a reward for actually listening end up in counseling because of performance anxiety once they do get married.

My kids were either snickering or too zoned out to know what he was talking about and I was busy trying to concoct an excuse for why we would have to leave early when he called for volunteers. He asked for 10 dudes to come forward. Ten promptly came forward. And then he asked for one female. One on the front row bravely raised her hand, not knowing that she was volunteering to play the slut in this twisted man’s idea of an illustration.

In front of a crowd of a couple hundred youth and adults, this so-called youth pastor explained that the female volunteer had hypothetically slept with all 10 of the men on stage and that because only one of them had AIDS she also too now had AIDS. All of this to illustrate that condoms are only 90 percent effective. Or something like that.

We didn’t stay too much longer after that but in my attempt at damage control ended up having a decent conversation about the whole ordeal. We talked about why what the guy had done was completely insenstive and disrespectful to the young lady. We talked about how she had no idea she was volunteering to be labeled so much more than just a youth group slut (youth group slut=a girl who kisses more than one guy in youth group) for a cheap and ill-advised illustration. We even talked a little bit about sex and why the church teaches and instructs people to reserve sex for marriage.

It ended up being a teachable moment in an otherwise disastorous encounter with the kind of scare tactics that, like the illustration described in The Nation article of dangling a cinder block near a young man’s genitals, have failed miserably at changing young peoples’ hearts, minds and attitudes about sex.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” – Plato
Everybody loves a long weekend. But this year’s Memorial Day ought to be a lot more meaningful to all of us. We need to see it as a chance to pray for lasting peace and for our president, that he may lead our country to a new vision. Otherwise, our future will be marked by continuous open-ended global warfare, and we will have many more deaths to commemorate with each passing Memorial Day.

Tomorrow we should not only remember the dead, but celebrate life. We need to think about what Memorial Day really means–what the life of every deceased soldier means to his or her family, and to us.

These men and women were people like you and me. They loved their country and they loved their families. They had hopes, dreams and ambitions. They lived–and were willing to die–for a cause in which they truly believed. 

I believe all war is wrong–and most people do. Who isn’t for peace? As the old saying goes, “All war is civil war, because all men are brothers.” But I also know that many of those who die in warfare sacrifice themselves to save others. Would we have the same courage?

Families who have lost loved ones in combat should be comforted to know that even though they are no longer with us, their lives can still serve a greater purpose. No person dies in vain; every death carries a valuable lesson for the living. Children need to learn about the importance of human life, and every life story has something to teach them. This is true
education.

We need to channel our energies into positive efforts that will bring people together. Let’s become better role models for our children. To do this we must put aside all our fears, frustrations and anger. We must recognize that we have relied too much on our own knowledge and skills to solve our daily problems. We have forgotten God and lost our sense of community.

In this light, Memorial Day ought to be a time to visit our neighbors, local veterans, and nursing home residents. Too often, we don’t even know who our neighbors are.  Everyone needs someone to talk to. By sharing with others, we will find out that we have much in common.

When the speeches and parades are over, let’s also take time to stop by the local cemetery to stand beside those who are still mourning. Let’s grieve with them.

People are often reluctant to open up and share their needs with others. Yet only by allowing others to help carry their burdens will they find healing. Then the vision of freedom for which so many brave men and women died in past wars will become real.

Wherever people find one another and have community together, the peace that we all long for will be found. Let’s pray for those that have not yet found this peace.

Alfredo Molano, a Colombian exile in Spain, once wrote, “The true end of a war is the rebirth of life–the end of fear, the right to die peacefully in one’s own bed, and the return of laughter.” Some of my best friends are veterans, and I have had to think of them in light of these words. I have seen the scars they continued to carry long after the fighting was over–in some cases right up to the present. These are wounds that only time and prayer can heal.

Fortunately, many have found healing–some by reconciling with former enemies and others by speaking out about their experiences and educating a new generation about the futility and evil of war. The result of these efforts is a strong faith and a deep peace. Through their work they have become an inspiration and role model to many children. They are taking part, as Molano says, in the “rebirth of life.” These veterans are the real heroes of today’s celebration. I’m thankful for each one.

Johann Christoph Arnold is a pastor and author of ten books, which are available at www.plough.com. He is also a co-founder of Breaking the Cycle (www.breakingthecycle.com).

Thank God for mothers!

Mother’s Day is an opportunity to make life special for them. It is a chance to celebrate family. I thank God for my mother, who died some years ago. There is one thing I regret: for too many years I did not appreciate her enough and took her for granted. She was always there for us. I thank God for my wife. We have been married for 43 years and have eight children. God has blessed us with 41 grandchildren.

Mothers are the backbone of our society and the glue that holds a family together-their work is vital but often unseen. We all need to show greater appreciation for them. I pity the man who does not have a good wife to take care of him.

My favorite Hasidic saying goes, “God could not be everywhere at once, so he gave each child a mother!” Mothers should be proud to be mothers. It is a God-given task and privilege. Actually there is a mother’s heart in every woman, whether married or single. In the past, motherhood was regarded as the noblest calling of a woman. Today it is too often pushed aside by more “desirable” occupations such as careers, and seen as an inconvenience or even an embarrassment.

A true mother thinks day and night about the well-being of her children, and is the first to praise, comfort and protect them. She is willing to sacrifice her life for them. The pains of pregnancy and childbirth are borne by the mother, and she continues to carry the child in her heart her whole life.

Motherhood is a mystery. It is something truly divine for which every human heart longs. This is why mothers provide the most powerful influence on a child’s life, and are the most important role models for positive change in our society. When anyone is in trouble, or knows that they are dying, the first person they think of is their mother. When children start going wrong ways a mother’s prayer is powerful.

Mothers remind us that there is a loving God above us who will take good care of everyone, especially children. Whenever a tragedy occurs-no matter where in the world this happens-you will always find mothers both weeping for the dead and bringing comfort and security to the living.

As we seek to improve the education of our children, let us start by taking better care of our mothers. This will enable them to provide better homes for all of us, and ensure the survival of our society. Never before in our history have so many men abandoned the children they fathered. Fathers are vanishing from their children’s lives, not just physically, but legally as well. Therefore, congratulations to all single mothers and grandmothers who do their best to raise children on their own. They often struggle under the most difficult circumstances. They are the real heroes of the family-and not just on Mother’s Day.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you!

Johann Christoph Arnold is a pastor and author of ten books, which are available at www.plough.com.

Gift book. That’s the first thing that came to mind when my copy of Brennan Manning’s latest, The Furious Longing of God arrived in the mail last month.

A stretch to fill 144 pages even with a generous helping of white space and large graphic dividers splitting up the text that on appearance alone hardly justifies the $16.99 price tag, the book can easily be read over a long lunch break or a train or bus ride to or from work. That’s all it took for me to read it anyway.

Fully digesting the poignant prose contained and meditating on the questions asked at the end of each chapter? Well, that’s taken a bit longer.

In fact, as I write this I’m still registering and processing Manning’s insightful meditation on what he describes as God’s furious longing for the individuals scripture says he created in his own image. I’ve placed the book, heavily dog-eared from the first run-through, by my bedside in hopes of reading and further unpacking his words and the “consider this” questions at the end of each chapter with my wife. I look forward to passing the book on to another sojourner as Manning himself suggests when we are finished.

Manning, best known for The Ragamuffin Gospel, introduces the book much the way he introduces himself at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and from there goes on to tell a story about a time he was on a shrimp boat caught in a storm he was convinced would kill him. “It was a fury unleashed,” Manning writes.

From there Manning uses the storm memory as a metaphor for God’s furious love, which he illustrates with personal anecdotes of an illiterate woman reciting scripture on her death bed, an overweight student saved by a father’s kiss and a street vendor blown off by a priest (Manning) in the company of millionaires and mixes with a healthy dose of scripture and a fitting reference to Don Quixote.

Along the way he jars the reader with his blunt honesty and is unapologetic to his critics who say he focuses too much on the love of God and not enough on “judgment and hell and how to keep Christ in Christmas.” His basic message is straight from Jesus’ words recorded in John 15:12: “Love one another as I’ve loved you.”

He sums it up with this:

“Why do we judge Jesus’ criterion for authentic discipleship irrelevant? Jesus said the world is going to recognize you as His by only one sign: the way you are with one another on the street every day. You are going to leave people feeling a little better or a little worse. You’re going to affirm them or deprive them, but there’ll be no neutral exchange. If we as a Christian community took seriously that the sign of our love for Jesus is our love for one another, I am convinced it would change the world.”

Cliches and Thomas Kinkade-inspired artwork held safely in check, The Furious Longing of God is a gift of a book written to a Christian audience that, as typically is the case with Manning, would benefit from unpacking, discussing, rereading, meditating on and ultimately putting into daily practice.

“Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary
some in the wrong direction
Practice resurrection”

When I heard these familiar lines of poetry recited in the opening moments of a play celebrating the farmer, author, poet and activist Wendell Berry on Thursday, I felt a chill come over me like I have seldom experienced watching a stage production.

Practice resurrection. Two words of the 1973 poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” that, repeated while a hammer dulcimer played softly in the background, nearly moved me to tears as I pondered the deep meaning behind a simple, yet insightful turn of a phrase.

The poetry of Wendell Berry is full of moving moments like that, times where a simple phrase, a humorous anecdote or an observation of the natural world triggers the so-called light bulb of our minds to ever so gracefully turn on.

Wild Blessings, a new play based on Berry’s poetic works, is billed as a celebration of a faithful steward, a friendly neighbor, a loving husband and a kind of modern day prophet claimed by environmentalists, literature enthusiasts, Christians and conservatives alike. But the 75-minute play is as much a celebration of the things Berry has inspired readers for decades to appreciate, enjoy and protect. 

Aided by the lurid sounds of a hammer dulcimer and the striking photographic and video images visible through a large wall resembling a bay window in the middle of the stage and an even larger screen behind it, the play features four actors – an older couple and a younger one – dramatically reading Berry’s words. The actors march in circles, dance, play violin, guitar and percussion and sing. The hammer dulcimer player also sings, but the music mostly provides the soothing backdrop for the words that indirectly weave (using only words from Berry’s pen) a narrative of a slightly mad farmer, out of place in the city who falls in love, returns to the fields, raises a family and fights to hold onto the simple, beautiful things in life like family, friends and God’s creation.

Following along, even for someone familiar with many of his works, was somewhat dizzying at times. Unlike reading the words on a page, the combination of stunning visuals, soothing music and dramatic acting gives little time for you to completely digest. Breaks in the action do occur and the topically connected transitions are generally well played (he titles of poems flash on the screen as the images change), but as the play inches intermission-less toward the finish it does make you wish you could hit pause or maybe rewind on a few of the scenes.

An outline in the playbook might have been helpful as a guide, but in the end Wild Blessings succeeds in maintaining a lot of the subtlety, humor and vivid description that make reading Wendell Berry’s poetry such an enriching and life-giving experience. It doesn’t tell you how to think or lecture about why mountain top removal, conspicuous consumption or infidelity should be avoided. It shows you what you are missing when you trade in natural beauty, elegance and grace for artificial comfort, perceived safety and reckless convenience.

In other words, it shows you what it means to practice resurrection.

Wild Blessings is appearing until April 26 at The Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Click HERE for more information.

They sing so you don’t have to. That was the sarcastic response a friend of mine in college would belt out whenever he’d catch me singing along a little too loud or enthusiastically to the stereo.

He had a point, but that didn’t stop me then and doesn’t stop me now from singing along to my favorite songs. Heck, I even try to sing along to Sigur Ros sometimes when the mood is right. Most of the time I screw up the words to songs anyway so singing along with a guy who actually isn’t singing anything isn’t too much of a stretch for me.

My wife, of course, doesn’t always appreciate my singing. She often reminds me that she is aware of the song I have in my heart and that she appreciates it, just not all of the time.

I sing a lot during the day, usually from the moment the pop radio station wakes me up to the moment right before I go to sleep. It’s often something catchy and good like the refrain in Wilco’s “Impossible Germany,” or anyting on The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” album, but more often than not it’s the chorus of whatever Rod Stewart or Phil Collins song woke me up that morning. I’m really not particularly picky when it comes to the songs I sing during my day. I’ve been known to regularly belt out what I like to call growly-voiced Creed imitations I’ve heard on road trips when K-LOVE was the only station the car radio would pick up.

But as much as I love singing and don’t mind public embarassment on elevators or in grocery store aisles, I often hesitate to join the chorus of voices that are often singing along at rock shows. When I was in high school and wanted to separate myself from the other casual fans and people I considered posers I would mouth the words to the songs I knew to prove to those around me that I knew more than just the music video I had seen on 120 Minutes or the single that received regular rotation on Y100. When the crowd would go crazy singing along to “Cut Your Hair” at a Pavement show or “Sometimes Always” at a Jesus and Mary Chain show I would cross my arms and quiety judge everyone. They sing so you don’t have to, I would say to myself.

Now that I’m older and spend way less time going to see bands play I’m less sensitive about those who choose to sing along from the crowd. In fact, I often find myself enjoying the site of some stranger singing along more than I do watching some of the boring musicians I have seen over the years standing there mostly without any expression as they perform. One of my favorite and more memorable concert-going moments in recent years was at a Damien Jurado show watching a completely ecstatic guy from Sweden dancing and yelling the words to “Like Titanic” as a much more subdued Jurado sang from the stage at the Khyber Pass Pub in Philadelphia.

Just the other night, I was spellbound by a bearded man in the front row mouthing the words to Jamie Barnes’ “Harp of the Fool.” I had heard the song dozens of times before and even seen the Louisville singer/songwriter perform it on a couple of occasions. But as I watched this perfect stranger sing it and followed his intense facial expression as he mouthed the words “But the harder I fall the more that victory seems further away,” the song had a much richer and more meaningful connection. I’ve listened to the song a half dozen times since and I still get that guy’s face out of my head.

In that moment, it no longer mattered that I was standing way too close to the speaker and that the opening act played too long. I felt a connection to the performer, the song and the crowd around me that can’t be recreated in a digital download.

Maybe my friend was wrong, after all. Maybe they sing so you can too. And maybe when we sing along, we inspire others to let down their guard, to shed their fear of embarrassment or ridicule, forget the music review they are going to write on their blog later and tap into the power of redemptive art, creative passion and off-line community.

Photo by Michael Ralph