LP is on study leave.
Amy Wyatt offered this
reflection during the devotional period at the start of our September
2012 Session meeting. We thank her for allowing us to share this with
our Beacon Lite readers.
I'm not sure how
common or uncommon my faith journey has been. I do not feel as though I
really grew up in the church. I was baptized, confirmed, and married in a
church, and my parents were consistently members of one church or
another, mostly Presbyterian or Congregational, but we moved several
times while I was growing up, and I honestly have very few memories of
actually going to church as a child. As I got older, though, through my
high school and college years, I was drawn back, largely because of the
stories. I love words. My favorite part of worship is the sermon. I look
forward to hearing the scripture and understanding its significance in
the time in which it was written and its relevance today. So over the
years, I have returned week after week and always to churches in which I
found a message that challenged me intellectually and spiritually. I
think that is probably true for many of us.
I am fairly certain
that I am not unusual either in that my faith has wavered over the
years. I continuously question many elements of our belief system and
wonder often about God's plan for me. And often I find my footing again
in my family and, oddly enough, in baseball. Allow me to explain.
I come from a long
line of baseball enthusiasts on both sides of my family, but it is
mostly my father who is responsible for encouraging a love of baseball
in my sisters and me. Growing up in New Jersey in the 1950's, my father
was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan until the team moved to LA. Then, he became a
Mets fan since the alternative was becoming a Yankees fan, which just
wasn't going to happen. My father was a successful high school athlete
who loved watching sports when he no longer played himself. He taught my
sisters and me to throw a football, to shoot a basketball, and to field
and hit baseballs. My sisters and I all took to baseball, and later
softball, more naturally than to other sports. It was just part of what
our family did. But, since a true game of baseball requires far more
people than we had in our household, we became devoted players of the
game of catch instead.
In an article that
appeared in TIME magazine in 1998, Roger Rosenblatt wrote about the game
of catch, "They do not call it a game of throw, though throwing is half
the equation. The name of the game puts the burden on the one who
receives, but there really is no game to it. Nobody wins or loses. You
drop the ball; you pick it up."
My father gave me a
copy of this Rosenblatt column as he did so many articles and newspaper
clippings. He would leave them on my dresser for me to find the next
time I came home for a visit. There would be a post-it note attached
with some sentence fragment scrawled in his minute cursive: "FYI, Amy"
or "read this and thought you'd like it. Dad." I no longer have the
post-it with his handwriting, but I remembered this article. It goes on
to talk about the game of catch as a metaphor for communication within
families. Rosenblatt continues, "A game of catch is an essential gesture
of parenthood too, I believe, when families are working well. Everyone
tosses to be understood. The best part of the game is the silence." My
father was a brilliant and eloquent businessman who, oddly enough, often
struggled to find the right words to say to his children. I did not
understand that until I had my own children and was struck by the
inadequacy of language to express what I was feeling toward them. But I
see now that there were so many ways he sought to reach me. One was by
leaving me articles on my dresser so often: his way of telling me that
he knew me well enough to know what would interest me and that he
thought of me when I was away. Another way he sought to reach me was
through games of catch. He very rarely made it to the actual softball
games we played because of his work schedule, but we could always play
catch on the weekends. Back then I thought it was just about improving
my strength and motion. Now I think it was about something more-a way to
reach out and break the silence without actually breaking the silence.
My father passed away
five years ago after a two-year battle with a brain tumor. It has been a
while since he and I played a game of catch. In the years during which
he was sick, my family prayed a lot and asked for more prayers from
members of our congregations and friends and family. I will always
remember and cherish the support we received from my congregation in
Vermont and my parents' congregation in Connecticut. In the years
immediately following his death, I struggled considerably with my faith.
My father's death was my first experience with death. At that point, I
still had four living grandparents. I had been confident that, once he
passed away, he would go to heaven and no longer be in pain and that I
would always have this sense that he was still with me, just way up
there. My struggle came when, after his death, I felt so profoundly
alone. I had thought that I would feel his presence still with me, but I
didn't. And I didn't know how to deal with that. I questioned whether
there really is anything after life. Then I felt guilty for doubting.
But, as I said
before, I often find my footing again in my family and in baseball. My
sons are also devoted players of the game of catch. And so, it was one
spring afternoon when I was playing catch with Bruce in the front yard
that my faith was partially renewed. The ball flew back and forth
between the two of us. His strength has already surpassed mine, but we
both enjoy snagging the ball deep in the pocket to get the full "thwack
thwack" of the ball on the leather echoing in the street. Bruce asked me
to throw it several yards away from where he was standing so that he
could run and catch the ball, as he would in a real game. So I did.
Bruce ran up the slight hill in our yard, dove to catch the ball, and
fluidly somersaulted and popped back to his feet in one motion. For a
baseball fan and a proud mom, it was a moment of beauty. But it was also
a God moment. I don't know what else to call those moments that take
your breath away and make you shiver. It was really the first time since
my father had passed away that I felt his presence. I don't mean to
imply that I think his spirit was here in Cincinnati with us. But there
was something timeless and so closely connected to my father there that I
had to stop playing for a minute.
I find it sad that my
sons will never play catch with my dad. I wish they could. But in a way
they do and always have. Their grandfather is part of every day of
their lives because they have little bits of him in them. And, as I
realized that day watching Bruce catch that ball, my father is always
with me and within me. I am, of course, a product of my parents' lives,
and my boys are, in turn, a product of my life. In the traditions Colby
and I pass down to Bruce and Eli, we keep the lives of our parents and
grandparents alive and present. I hope in the legacy that we pass down,
my boys see that their lives can be about devotion to something bigger
than themselves, bigger than the present, about the timeless. I hope
they see that devotion in the work of this church, in the professions
their parents have chosen, and in the friendships we have been blessed
with. I hope they hear that devotion in the words we say to them and
sense it in the gestures we make when we cannot find the words. I hope
they find it in the small things too - in a magazine article left on the
dresser, in a game of catch. Because sometimes the small things end up
being the big things, the moments where God silently steps in and pulls
us back.
I
hope that they find what I believe I found that afternoon in the yard -
hope. While I still doubt and wonder and question, I also hope that I
am not alone, that every time I throw, someone somewhere will catch.
