Two Moments of Living Poetry

1. In the current issue of First Things, David B. Hart elegizes baseball as the perfect expression of Platonic philosophy (http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/07/a-perfect-game). His description of baseball's idealism of timelessness, proportion, and exultation of the human spirit is so elegantly written that I feel unworthy trying to sum it up in a sentence. However, Hart surprised me by not following through on one thought in particular. In talking about the religious sentiments found in the Great American Pastime, he touches on the Western Religious vision of eschatology: "within the miniature cosmos of the park, the game must be played down to its final verdict and cannot end before judgment is passed." But although he tips his hat to the Great Yogi, he overlooks the fact that baseball is one of only a few sports (I almost said the only sport, until the S.O. (who, by the way, is utterly confused by the game) tempered my enthusiasm) which is not played to a clock, and as such the microcosmic universe of the ballpark has the possibility of infinity; even if such possibility could never fully be acted on, we are aware that we enter, like life, not knowing when it will end or how. And in this timeless nature, the great religious tropes of salvation and redemption come fully into play. The second baseman who mishandled a throw early on which enabled the other team to score runs may, at the end, post a game-winning four-bagger, or conversely, after sterling catches halt a rally, the left fielder may strike out in a pressure-filled situation in the ninth…and yet still have a chance at penance if the game continues. The philosophical possibilities are endless.
   
2. Do you know how in movies, time-lapse photography can depict hours, days, weeks passing by in seconds? This morning, I walked out of the apartment to go to church, knowing only from my window that the sky was blue and the sun was shining. Then I looked up at the sky and saw a vision I don't think I have ever seen before or since: the white, fluffy clouds passing over my head faster than clouds had ever moved before, as if the entire spin of the axis had increased in velocity. At that moment, I was filled with a sensation that here was visible change happening all around me, and maybe, just maybe, it was a sign that my current straits in the job hunt were not going to last. My status as a single person and a technically homeless person ended in unexpected ways…why not this status as well?
   

   And I had been reading Donald Miller before setting out, and his maxim that "Wonder is the feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped-out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder."
   

   This was wonder.
   

   And I got down on my knees in the morning dew and thanked God for it…and after hearing the Gospel of Luke today—ask and it shall be given, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened—I went into the little chapel of St. Andrew and prayed some more, with full heart and childlike devotion.