Just around the corner . . .

Spring training has arrived and with it the promise of a new baseball season. The last few years have not been kind to my beloved Seattle Mariners. Since their 116-win 2001 season they haven't had a winning season and the glory days of ex-Manager Sweet Lou Piniella are a distant memory . In my own estimation the moves the club have made this offseason haven't dramatically improved the team, but that's beside the point. I'm content right now to look forward to the prospect of a 75 degree Sunday afternoon in July with the sun beaming down in the blue sky above and the spacious pastures of Safeco Field's green outfield grass below. There, my girlfriend and I can enjoy some cold beer and peanuts and debate the questionable in-game decision making of manager Mike Hargrove (actually, the debate will probably be comprised of my own frustrated rhetorical questions and Olivia graciously humoring me by listening to my overly detailed descriptions of baseball strategy and what Hargrove natrually should have done).

In many ways I suppose that is my favorite part of baseball (probably not Olivia's though). Sure, the amenities are nice; baseball wouldn't be the same without sounds like the sharp crack of the bat and the pop of the thrown ball into a leather mitt. Or the thrill of rooting for a winning team and watching the entertaining spectacle of grown men trying to hit a small round ball thrown at 95 miles an hour with a round, wooden stick.

All of these are indispensible to my enjoyment of the game. However, what makes baseball most satisfying to me is what doesn't happen during the game combined with the anticipation of what possibly could happen. It is in these tense moments that baseball becomes more than entertainment, it becomes an event in which those who I'm watching the game with -- whether they be loved ones or strangers -- become as important as the game itself. And these sort of moments are plentiful in the game of baseball. It is a game of inaction rather than action; a time to ponder and dialouge rather than be force fed the lastest helping of entertainment value for your dollar.

Don't get me wrong, some games just drag on and on with pitching change after pitching change. If you find the game itself boring, that's because it probably is at times. I for one though, am still looking forward to the spring.

Great Lent

As the Orthodox Church approaches Great Lent, a quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann from his aptly titled book, Great Lent:

"One can say without exaggeration that the whole life of the Church is one continous commemoration and rememberance. At the end of each service we refer to the saints 'whose memory we celebrate,' but behind all the memories, the Church is the rememberance of Christ. From a purely natural point of view, memory is an ambiguous faculty. Thus to remember someone means two things. On the one hand memory is much more than mere knowledge of the past. When I remember my late father, I see him; he is present in my memory not as a sum total of all that I know about him but in all his living reality. Yet, on the other hand, it is this very presence that makes me feel acutely that he is no longer here, that never again in this world and in this life shall I touch this hand which I so vividly see in my memory. Memory is thus the most wonderful and at the same time the most tragic of all human faculties, for nothing reveals better the broken nature of our life, the impossibility for man truly to keep, truly to possess anything in this world. Memory reveals to us that 'time and death reign on earth.' But it is precisely because of this uniquely human function of memory that Christianity is also centered on it, for it consists primarily in remembering one Man, one Event, one Night, in the depth and darkness of which we were told ' . . . do this in rememberance of me.' And lo, the miracle takes place! We remember Him and He is here - not as a nostalgic image of the past, not as a sad "never more," but with such intensity of presence that the Church can eternally repeat what the disciples said after Emmaus: ' . . . did not our hearts burn within us?' (Luke 24:32)."

As Schmemann goes on to say, Lent is, rightly understood, a preparation for the today of Pascha (Easter); a re-entrance of the Church into the event itself. It is not restricted merely to the realm of "ideas," but also includes, as part of its celebration, the joy and sadness of the event in its "living and concrete reality."

In the past I have always considered Lent in primarily negative language. Lent was a time of the year in which Christians willingly (ideally at least!) limited themselves as a symbolic rememberance of Christ's willing sacrifice and death. What am I going to give up for Lent this year? In recent years I have found myself reacting negatively against my incorrect perception of Lent, going as far as regarding Lent as being oppressive to God's design for humanity. In light of my original incorrect perception, perhaps this reaction, regretful and heretical as it may be, was inevitable. At any rate, this year, I pray that as a gift of the grace of God, I might limit my passions during the lenten season in order to focus upon my true heritage in God's eternal kingdom. In so doing I become the recipient of a gift greater than any I could ever imagine -- I receive the love of God and as a result, I can truly love others -- a love mingled both in sorrow and joy.

Good question, Mr. Ward

My fifteen minutes

I commute to work daily by bus to downtown Seattle. The other day, as I pulled into the Lynnwood Park and Ride, I noticed a few people huddled around one of the hundreds of vehicles in the lot. I was intrigued by the scene, so after parking I decided to investigate. Once I got closer I noticed that it was a camera crew nosing around the cars, one of which had its back window partially bashed in. A woman (it turns out her name is Tracy Vedder) approached me and asked me if I would mind being asked a few questions on camera for a story about the safety of using the Park and Ride. It was pretty hilarious, as soon as the camera started rolling, she got really intense and posed the questions in a very serious and dramatic tone, "Did you know that police have recently posted signs stating they are going to be using 'bait cars' to help trap thieves? How do you feel about this? Do you feel safe leaving your car at the Park and Ride?" Pretty heavy stuff; I can't imagine that they would actually run the story and as far as I know, it never has. The camera man thought he was pretty funny too, asking me how to spell my name. It was eerily familiar to watching Bill Murray trade barbs with his camera man in Groundhog Day, the main difference being that I remained silent and never did say anything back to the cameraman.

Mystery and reality

"Truth for us is not a system of thought. Truth is not created. Truth is. Christ is the truth. Truth is a person. Truth is not limited within our apprehension of it. Truth transcends us; we can never come to the full comprehension of Truth.

The search for Truth is the search for the person of Christ . . .

Truth is the Mystery of the person of Christ; and, because it is a person, the Mystery is inseperably linked with the event; the event of the encounter. Mystery and event are one . . .

The Mystery, for the Orthodox mind, is precise and austere reality. It is Christ, and it is to meet Christ" -- Mother Maria of Normandy

What I find particularly profound about this quote is its connection between Mystery and event; Mystery is beyond our comprehension and understanding, but it is also connected to the tangible reality of the person of Christ.

Sufjan Stevens

Back in October, my friends Paul and Amanda were planning on traveling to Seattle from the eastside of Washington State to visit Olivia and I. Even though we didn't have tickets, we were going to try to scalp seats for a Sufjan Stevens show on Sunday night. Paul and Amanda got in on Saturday night and decided to stop by the venue to see if by some chance, last-minute seats had been made available for this sold-out show. Lucky for all of us not only were they able to get four tickets together, but the seats that were available were in the orchestra pit!

Paul and I were very excited but guarded. Sufjan was a musical favorite of the both of us. We had seen him once before in the spring of the same year during an all-day music festival, and his performance was underwhelming. Perhaps part of this had been due to our high expectations for the show, but nevertheless, Stevens and his band seemed out of place and underprepared. Paul and I reasoned, "the seats we've bought aren't any more expensive than any of the others put on sale for the show, they couldn't actually be in the orchestra pit, could they? They must be obstructed view at the very least?"

After we got inside the Paramount (a beautifully restored old theatre in downtown Seattle), the usher pointed us down to the front of the venue toward our seats. This was a good sign. We walked down the long aisleway, watching to see when the row numbers would correspond to the ticket stubs in our hands. We kept going and going and going and eventually came to the end of the rows. Only two rows of folding chairs remained at the very front and they were restricted access. Could this be it? Another usher verified that this was indeed where our seats were located. We were in the second row, center stage, 8 ft. from the stage. We couldn't believe it. We had gone from not knowing if we would even be able to successfully scalp tickets to the show 24 hrs earlier to having the the best seats any of us had ever had, for any show, ever. Not bad.

As difficult as it would be for the music to live up to the location of the seats, it actually surpassed it by far. The manner with which Stevens conducted himself was absolutely without pretension. He came out with the rest of the road crew in the "disguise" of a baseball cap and helped set up the gear. He engaged with the audience in such a pure and humble way, it could almost be described as reverse charisma. The music wasn't too shabby either. With a total of 20 band members, he had a full horn and string section along with a regular 5 piece band. The video shot below is from a show two weeks prior to the one we attended, although it is shot from almost the exact same vantage point as our seats. The grainy amateur video doesn't do the music justice, but it is still pretty darn good. As you watch Sufjan tickle the ivories as a sort of indie-rock Liberace, I hope you get to see the ten minute video in its entirety, because it is worth it.



PS - I jumped on stage after the show and grabbed Stevens' setlist. It has ridiculous, over-the-top code names for each of the songs in the show (i.e., 'The Transfiguration' is listed as 'Transfigured Readiness of 20 Yurts').

Or not . . .

I was close to getting the numbers right. Colts win, 29-17.

Super Bowl XLI

Bears win, 31-20. You heard it here first. Then again, I haven't watched an entire football game all year, so I'm probably wrong.

I work too though, I really do

Over the past few years I've had the opportunity to live a variety of places, from the Midwest to Northern California and my native Pacific NW. Each place that I've lived has its own unique allure: the farming fields of Minnesota - vibrant and green during the summer and bleak and white-cold during the winter. The sun-filled days in California with its sweltering heat. Of course I'm biased as to which I prefer, but for my money, the beauty of the Pacific NW trumps them all. My own photography isn't the best defense of this claim but I think that despite my shortcomings the grandeur of the Olympic Mountains and the Puget Sound speak for themselves. This is the view from my office. The challenge this time of the year (or any for that matter) is to be able to find a clear day without clouds. It's on days such as these that I remember that there's no place like home.