A Threadbare Palantir

… hockey rink.

As Bill Kinnon is wont to quote from Eugene Peterson, on keeping missional simple -

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. And that is what He is calling us to do.

This year my lovely daughter, light of my eyes, is playing hockey on a boys team. She is sixteen and the only girl on a team of boys who are all 15 about to turn 16. When the season started, we were welcomed to the team very cordially.  But she came home from practice and announced that, “the Terror Twins are on my team!”  These are two young men she tried out with two springs ago and they were beyond annoying during tryouts.  They are indeed identical twins.  You can tell them apart by the difference in their hair length and the numbers on their jerseys and that’s about it for most of us mortals.  And her description of them has proven apt over the course of this season.  One of them has gotten himself kicked off the team for poor sportsmaship … after being on probation for the month of December.  Together, they caused division on the team, anger and strife amongst the players, the coaches and the parents.  Quite a twosome, these two spindly 15 year old boys, with their single mom clearly at the end of her rope.

Sometimes there just ain’t nuthin’ can be done.  People are too entrenched in the way they think about a person or a situation.  But you can change their response to another tangential situation and help them grow closer in another area.  That in turn allows some of the ice to thaw or crack and some other things to begin to change.  So it is with the Terror Twins.

Recently another young man on the team, a friend of the Terror Twins, became quite ill.  He was hospitalized with double pneumonia and had to miss going to a tournament we were all looking forward to.  Suddenly, I knew exactly what to do.  So I wrote an e-mail to all the parents on the team and told them that I was going to send the young man an Edible Arrangement (chocolate dipped strawberries, bananas and pineapples) and if anyone would like to chip in to help out, they could.  But there would be no repercussions if not.  It was just pass the hat.  Almost everyone did, but some did not.  I’ve lost track … no … I never kept track of who did or who did not.  But the effect on the team and the parents was so much fun to watch.  They began to smile at each other again.  They began to remember that these are boys (plus one girl) and it’s not the NHL.  Really.  They began to realize that it had been bad, but not that bad and yes, we could all go on and finish the season.  They found their hope again.

Sometimes the neighborhood looks suspiciously like a hockey rink.

Filed under: Livin' the missional life, Lovin' my neighbor by threadbaresonja