Observatory. Perspective.

When I got here to the big WV, i had lots of interesting ideas rolling inside of me to try out, to infuse, to dare. If there is anything in this sweet world of activities I love, it is fierce competition--I don't care if it is Irish rugby or a sweet chokeslam by the Undertaker at the infamous Wrestlemania. Either way, there is something that is unleashed within when solid competition results in some ephemeral sort of victory. It simply awakens us (hence validated by the popularity of something called....ESPN, is it?) Anyways, I had a couple of choices: 1.) Join a wimpy league of sorts of older post-primal multi-gender wannabe athletes who would rather reflect on their times of physical vitality than actually push themselves to something of value. No thanks. 2.) Attempt to coach. Spread the fierceness and hunger to the little ones and let the holy rage leave them drooling through their vastly young, youthful nights.

Here I am three months later after a basketball season with 9 and 10 year old boys left aghast, quite stunned. Fierce can hardly convey what when on. First, the boys laughed at the sight of their coach, being that a sophisticated and quite amiable young woman would dare to usher them into the long-awaited hoop dreams of intense basketball elite-hood. I didn't think they could handle this. I infrequently screamed, "Get hungry boys!" Well those little rascals understood that dis here Wo-man was gonna work their little tails and have so much fun they'd pass out with pure delight. To sum it all up briefly and nonetheless perceivable, we ended the season with our biggest success as this: The boys understood the difference between offense and defense. This was huge-- though it was not all the fierce intense insanity I'd hoped for, and though it was exhausting, it was finally attained. We ended the season shooting on the right basketball hoop. And, they came to understand and respect the feisty wit of a woman in the realm of sports. It was like, Boom-shakalaka, boys.

So to celebrate our crazy wild, intense season...I loaded the boys up for a run to Cicis--the place of many bathroom runs and the sketchiest (if even real) pizza ingredients known to man---we played with the claw machines and i whooped tail on ice hockey. I wanted to ask them if we could hang out after season and play, but, I, uh, knew I couldn't. I just knew our time of insane competition had come to an end. Fun at the heart of it, but done. They just showed up, played with their hearts, smiled just to hold a basketball, and life was simple.

On my way home I started to get really carried away by feeling this awry sort of sorrow for them. That soon enough they'll reach adolescence-- they'll start feeling more accepted by society for trying harder at intellectualism and their sports and impressing the ladies; they'll begin the neurotic tendencies of trying hard to be good, to be happy, to try whatever it takes to be at home in their own reckless, wild souls. I even look back as I tried so hard-- as a person, as a Christian. Tried to think great thoughts, tried to reconstruct long words and tried to give big hearty advice with great wisdom. But the truth is, everyone, somewhere, somehow-- 8 years old or 98 years old have come to grips with the shattering love of life, love of God at some point. The rest of our crazy, unwinded trails take off to somehow convert that loaded mystery that encountered us into words, lots of words, then the studying of those words and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then so we try to put this love thing into our lives. We try and try and try. We say, "Hey you, love, I'm trying to put you in my life here. Woulda just do that for a second?" Over and over, trying and trying. We think with our minds to try and understand our minds. We try to control ourselves with ourselves. We pray, honestly from our hearts, but end up just trying to listen to ourselves pray prayerful words. We push words to love, but our own wretchedness loves the splendor of the way our love looks rather than love itself. We try, and we suck at trying. Where is it in us where we become like the children again, to respond to life and love as unthinkingly and unknowingly possible without a mere wince of the eye? Maybe, yes, it is good to "know", but maybe not to know in the sense of understanding. Even as I'm writing this I feel this ache of slander that's been torn out. Noooo!! Seek, try to understand hence your "Faith may dwindle"!! That's what's been shoved in my brain into the afar abyss--- But this is how it is with truth. It keeps shocking us.

Shock. Then another. Then another. Until I'll I wanna do is escape that heinous rhythm that makes me feel powerless and nothing, but entirely loved, entirely at home, and somehow, impossibly possible.