Friday, May 5, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Jim Valvano, Peter Marty and Paul of Tarsus
Paul spoke to the synagogue in Antioch, wondering what would happen this time.
To us this word of salvation has been sent! What God promised our fathers he has brought to fulfillment for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second psalm, “You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.”
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs recognizes that we have to eat and sleep before we can consider other options – physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. After those survival needs are met (and there are more of them of course) it’s our responsibility as human creatures made by God to think past ourselves toward others, all of us brothers and sisters in the Family.
Peter Marty is Martin Marty’s third son, following in his famous father’s footsteps. I remember when my mom wrangled a meeting with Prof. Marty at the University of Chicago while I entertained ideas of being a student there. We sat and drank coffee, discussed the university and how I could benefit from being a student at the University of Chicago.
Martin’s son Peter decided to become a pastor rather than history professor in the midst of “transcendent” worship and volunteer work at an Oxford, England home for mentally disabled children. After graduation he led building crews in Africa at a primitive mission outpost. “The hospital there was mostly dirt floors. Very rewarding work.”
These days he pastors a church and edits-publishes The Christian Century. Like many of us he reads widely and is fascinated by facet after facet of our world. In May’s Christian Century he remembers basketball coach Jim Valvano telling his audience, a few weeks before his death from cancer, about three things to do every day: laugh, think, and cry. “If you laugh, think and cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.”
Marty’s take on that is …
to try to experience the widest range of emotions I can every day. Like the preschool wall poster of 30 facial expressions each labeled with a one-word, emotion, I want my life to be internally and externally expressive. To feel nervous, excited or surprised, to be aware of indifference, hopelessness, or rage; to recognize one is capable of resentment, guilt, or despair (and feel them when they show up), these sorts of emotions contribute to a life that can be really good. Across cultures, people who encounter a wide range of emotions through interesting and often unplanned adventures can enjoy a really good life that’s distinct from one that may be full of pleasure, achievement, or purpose. Even unpleasant experiences can be psychologically rich.
Peter wants to lead a happy life, and a life of deep meaning. Horace Mann told a graduation class at Antioch College in Ohio, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” That’s Peter Marty to a T, I think. But what he calls an “interesting life,” full of a variety of emotions wrung from a variety of experiences, beckons to him also. Not from far off, but from just over there, behind the cross, over the top of the hill.
Paul surely was also one of those guys, driven into the next adventure by his experiences in the last one, always getting back on his horse after a fall, always opening his mouth at just the wrong time in hopes that once again the Holy Spirit would come to his rescue with words and words and a glint in his eye that would turn his listeners’ eyes toward heaven. I hope he welcomed the emotions that can’t help but accompany the decision to say YES and the words that follow.
In Psalm 2, David speaks to kings and princes. But aren’t we all?
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice before him; with trembling, rejoice!
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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