WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Does Membership At CPC Imitate Either Baseball or Soccer ?

Baseball is a team sport, but it is basically an accumulation of individual activities. Throwing a strike, hitting a line drive or fielding a grounder, are primarily an individual achievement.  The team that performs the most  individual tasks well probably will win the game.  

Soccer is not like that.  In soccer, almost no task, except the penalty kick and a few others, is intrinsically individual.  Soccer is a game about occupying and controlling space.  If you get the ball and your teammates have run the right formations, and structured the space around you, you'll have three or four options on where to distribute the ball.  If the defenders have structured their formations to control the space, then you will have no options.  Even the act of touching the ball is not primarily defined by the man who is touching it ---- it is defined by the context created by all of the other players.   

Soccer is a collective game, a team game, and everyone has to play intelligently the part which has been assigned to him or her.  In the 2014 World Cup matches, Brazil wasn't clobbered by Germany because the quality of  the individual players was so much worse.  They got slaughtered because they did a very poor job of controlling space.  A German player could touch the ball, even close to the Brazilian goal, and he had ample room to make the kill.

Many of us at CPC spend our days thinking we are playing baseball.  But, much of the time we are really playing soccer.  We think we individually choose what path to take in getting involved in CPC church life.  However, what we perceive as "life at CPC" is, in fact, the context created by all the other CPC members.  It seems analogous to the soccer team's attempt to control space on the playing field ---- our church members define the context, but they do it for proactive reasons, not to put up a defense.

The creation of church context happens through at least three avenues.  First, there is "contagion."  People absorb memes, ideas and behaviors from each other, the way they catch a cold.  If your church friends are active in care-giving, for example, you are likely to be similarly active.  If your church neighbors play fair, you are likely to play fair.  We all live within distinct moral ecologies.  The overall environment influences what we think of as "normal" behavior without our being much aware of it.

It can work in the opposite direction, as well.  If the majority of the congregation wishes to take a particular action opposed by a minority of members, the latter may well leave the church and worship elsewhere because such conflict will be absent.

Then there is the structure of our social network.  People with vast numbers of acquaintances have more church job opportunities than people with fewer but deeper friendships.  Most organizations have structural holes, gaps between two departments or disciplines.  If you happen to be interested in a leadership position where you can make a contribution to the social network, your visibility may bring an invitation to serve as an Elder, Deacon or in other decision-making roles.

Innovation is hugely shaped by the structure of failure and recovery.  Broadway was said to be incredibly creative in the 1940's and 1950's because it was a fluid industry in which casual acquaintances ended up collaborating.  If the structure of an organization becomes more rigid over time, often that change in structure will lessen creativity.

Finally, there is the power of the extended mind.  Our consciousness is shaped by the people around us.  Each close friend you have probably brings out a version of yourself that you could not bring out on your own.  Such close friends may inspire us with new ideas, or help energize us to do something we would never have attempted on our own.

Once we acknowledge that in our life at CPC we are playing soccer, not baseball, a few things become clear.  First, awareness of the landscape realities in CPC life is extremely important.  It means being sensitive to the full width of the CPC environment, feeling where the flow of events is going.  Being an effective CPC member is in practice more than just conscious, rational perception.

Second, predictive models will be less useful.  Baseball is wonderful for statisticians.  In each "at bat" there is a limited range of possible outcomes.  Activities like soccer are not as easy to render statistically, because the relevant spatial structures are harder to quantify.  Likewise, at CPC, many initiatives may quietly be undertaken which ultimately do not take root, even though they looked promising at the outset.

Finally, soccer is said to be like a 90-minute anxiety dream ---- one of those frustrating dreams when you're trying to get somewhere but something is always in the way.  Is this yet another way soccer is like a life of faith at CPC?  Our life of faith may appear at first to be an individual endeavor.  However, as with soccer, at CPC we continue to seek a collective involvement that enriches our lives, whether we are observing from the stands or playing on the field.

______________________________________________________________________

These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this summer at CPC.

______________________________________________________________________

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: A Lesson From The Olympics

Last weekend many Americans watched on TV the opening of the 2016 Rio Olympics.  This event attempts to bring together the top amateur athletes in the world, to show off their amazing talent.

I watched some of the performances.  Later, while I was in bed, attempting to fall asleep, I wondered what life might be like as a world-class athlete.  I envied the gracefulness, poise, strength and agility I had watched that evening on TV.  It was truly inspiring.

Then I began wondering about the "moral universe" of modern sport.  It seemed to me it is oriented around victory and supremacy.  So, the sports hero tries to perform great deeds in order to win fame and glory.  It doesn't really matter whether he or she has good intentions. Their job is to beat the opponent and avoid the oblivion that goes with defeat.

I was thinking that the modern sports hero must be competitive and ambitious for his or her own success.  (Let's say he's a man, though these traits apply to female athletes as well.)  He is theatrical.  He puts himself on display.

He is assertive, proud and intimidating.  He makes himself the center of attention when the contest is on the line.  His identity is built around his prowess.  His achievement is measured by how much he can elicit the admiration of other people ---- the roar of the crowd and the respect of TV producers.

His primary virtue is courage ---- the ability to withstand pain, remain calm under pressure and rise from nowhere to topple the greats.

This is what we go to sporting events to see.  This sporting ethos pervades modern life and shapes how we think about other things ---- such as business activities, academic achievements and political competition.

Well, it was Sunday night, and thoughts about the life style that Jesus was seeking for us slipped into my head.  We often talked about this in our Central Presbyterian Church worship services.  The message would be about redemption, self-denial and surrender to God. 

So, I was unable to avoid comparing the sporting ethos and the religious ethos.  One's ascent in the sports universe is a relatively straight shot ---- you set your goal, and you climb toward greatness.  In fact, your progress usually can be measured.  However, one's ascent in the religious universe often progresses by a series "reversals," by which we seem to be turned inside out.  You have to be willing to lose yourself in order to find yourself.  To gain everything, you have to be willing to give up everything.  The last shall be first!  Most importantly, "It's not about you."

For many religiously-oriented people, humility is the primary virtue.  One achieves loftiness of spirit, in their view, by performing the most menial services.  Think about Mother Theresa.  Or, the Old Testament King David who started out as a shepherd.  You achieve your identity, the religious believe, through self-effacement.  You achieve strength by acknowledging your weaknesses.  You lead most boldly when you consider yourself merely an instrument of an outside, larger cause.

The most perceptive athletes have always tried to wrestle with this conflict ---- the demands of the sports ethos VS. the demands of the religious ethos.  Can these be reconciled?  Is it possible to give up playing for your team, so as to play selflessly for God?

A few years ago, The New York Times published a column by writer David Brooks, in which he quoted Joseph Soloveitchik, a prominent Jewish theologian.  Soloveitchik was quoted as saying that people simultaneously have two natures.  First, there is "Adam the First," the part of us that creates, discovers, competes and is involved in building the world.  Then, there is "Adam the Second," the spiritual individual who is awed and humbled by the universe as a spectator and worshiper.

David Brooks saw Soloveitchik as assuming that humans are the product of God's breath, but also "from the dust of the earth."  The two natures of mankind, he would say, have different moral qualities.  One nature is "the morality of majesty," and the other is the "morality of humility."  They exist in creative tension with each other.  A religious person shuttles between them, says Brooks, feeling lonely and slightly out of place in both experiences.

If you agree that each of us has these two natures all the time, and that they are always in conflict, then when and by what rules do you decide which nature to "exercise" at any point in time?  Of course, there will always be those who believe they have only one nature, only one morality.  For them, life's purpose appears easy.  But, for the rest of us, don't you think that life and religion are a bit more complicated?

Which "nature" are you pursuing at this moment?  Why?

______________________________________________________________________________

These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this summer at CPC.

______________________________________________________________________________

WEEKLY  COMMENTARY invites YOUR comments . . .

          Based on this week's story, let's talk!

          What's your take on this week's subject?

          To input your thoughts, scroll down to "No comments"

               and click, or if others have commented already, scroll

               to "Post a comment" and enter your comment in the

               related box.

           Your comments will be read by all viewers of this archive

           and they may respond to your comment.  Hopefully, this 

           will start a conversation!!

_______________________________________________________

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: How Gifts of Money Best Help the Poor

What is the best way to help the poor?  We may face this question several times a day ---- poverty has many faces.

Suppose you encounter a panhandler on the street.  Are you reinforcing a dependency or meeting an urgent need, if you hand him a $5 or $10 bill?  Are you paying for a hot meal or cheap rum?  Is the hand-off of money intended to ease your own sense of guilt that you have so much?  Or, is it perhaps just to let you get safely past him without engaging him personally?  People who say there is an easy answer might be failing to listen to either their head or their heart.

One may feel some personal satisfaction when we think we are helping someone, but can we help them so much that we have weakened their own desire and ability to gain the freedom of helping themselves as much as they might?  Perhaps we need to ask a few questions, and fine-tune how we should make our loving gift.

I believe in the well-known slogan: "It is better to teach a man to fish, than to simply give him a meal!"  Giving the meal is very short-term, "dead-end" help.  Teaching him to fish is a gift that keeps on giving, as it will provide him with many future meals.

We need to be smart about how we help people, so as to build up their personal capacity, and thus lessen their dependency on others.

Seeking the "right" balance between help and dependency is not limited to "churchy" situations. Parents face this dilemma daily with their children.  It often seems easier to do something for the child, instead of patiently waiting for the child to do what is required.  What is age-appropriate child obedience?  Parents often do not agree on this, even within the same family.  I think I was fortunate because I was the eldest child ---- my parents were much more forgiving of my slow learning than they were with my younger brother.  My parents were not what popular literature today calls "helicopter" parents, hovering over their children.  But, they learned from experience and nurtured the long-term goal of developing in each of us as much self-reliance as we were able to handle.

At Central Presbyterian Church, we try to help relieve poverty by doing more than simply giving donations to poor folks.  In the spirit of trying to "teach the poor to fish," we often look for partners with the skills and programs that teach these "fishing" lessons.  Then we work with the partner by contributing to their financial resources.  For example, in 2015, our CPC Members In Mission Team contributed from our Lena Willis Bequest to a not-for-profit organization in Morristown named Homeless Solutions, Inc. (HSI).  Our 2015 grant of $18,000 was to help them continue their good work of helping their "guests" rebuild their lives and successfully return to independent living.

Homeless Solutions, Inc. provides emergency shelter and transitional housing in Morristown for the homeless and working poor of that community.  They have been helping those in need for over 30 years, and in 2015 served 382 people.  But, importantly, HSI provides much more than just shelter!

One of the features of their work is the Family Shelter Program for women and their children, providing case management, independent living skills training, parenting education, counseling, linkages to medical care, child care and transportation.  Over 50% of those entering the shelter are victims of domestic violence.  Approximately 25 to 30 families, including over 50 children and 20 single women are served each year.

HSI also has a single-men's program, providing shelter for as many as 25 homeless men at one time, with about 100 men served annually.  The Men's Shelter Program provides case management services, including money management training, and assists with benefit enrollment, plus placement in permanent housing.

Yet another way that HSI "teaches people to fish," is the Transitional Housing Program.  The purpose of this program is to support and train families who are making the move to independence.  In order to eradicate the underlying issues associated with recurring homelessness, structured supervision is provided to foster self-sufficiency.  The participants are housed in ten self-contained apartments.

So, what's the answer?  Is the handing off of some cash to poor people the best way to help the poor?  It certainly is the most simple for the donor!  However, CPC does more than just write a check. We look to fund outside programs designed to change people's lives ---- hopefully moving them closer to self-sufficiency at a better level. Without CPC's gift and the financial gift of many others, the folks in Morristown's HSI programs would not be "learning to fish."  HSI would not be able to claim "a hand up ---- not just a hand out."  Many lives would be stuck in dependency.

But, CPC by itself cannot do the on-going, face-to-face work undertaken by HSI.  And HSI does not have the financial resources to undertake their programs alone.  Working together, however, CPC and HSI can make a long-term difference in the lives of many people.  We would not accomplish this if we merely handed out gifts of money directly to the poor.

______________________________________________________________________________

These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this summer at CPC.

______________________________________________________________________________

WEEKLY  COMMENTARY invites YOUR comments . . .

          Based on this week's story, let's talk!

          What's your take on this week's subject?

          To input your thoughts, scroll down to "No comments"

               and click, or if others have commented already, scroll

               to "Post a comment" and enter your comment in the

               related box.

           Your comments will be read by all viewers of this archive

           and they may respond to your comment.  Hopefully, this 

           will start a conversation!!

_______________________________________________________