Saturday, December 15, 2007

Please Not Pettitte


Oh no, not Andy Pettitte. I have always loved Andy Pettitte as much as I hated Roger Clemens. (The great things about sports is you get to love and hate with the purity of the Psalms!) And not just because Andy Pettitte taught Sunday School.

I'm sorry, Theresa, in my posting earlier this week, that I compared our Sunday School team-teaching to you being Pettitte and me Posada.

(I'll still take Posada. Theresa, you can be Dontrelle. But please come to Queens, Dontrelle, take the 7-train, not the D-train.)

I always figured that Clemens was on Rocket Juice. But to learn that Andy Pettitte is supposed to have taken "human-growth-hormone" is just too hard to bear.

I always figured that Pettitte's friendship with Clemens had to be chalked up to Grace, like Jesus loving sinners. There goes that sentiment.

When my kids were small, we all were fans of Lenny Dykstra. When Nick was six and Anni was four they would call out "Lenny Dykstra" when they saw him up at bat. We loved his energy and style of play, but also that he was one of ours, not just a Dutchman, but a Frisian!

And then he bulked up and tried to be a long-ball hitter. God made him a lead-off man, and now he wanted to hit home runs. No, Lenny, no. And how did he get such big muscles over the winter?

Well, as Frank DeFord always says, sports is the entertainment business, and sports stars are entertainers. What we do is amplify entertainers.

This past week we had some children singing in our sanctuary, and they miked them and amplified them with enough electronic equipment for a Stones Tour. Children's voices on steroids. It seems to be what people want.

It can't be good for the souls of those children, and it was very bad for Lenny Dykstra's body. I don't know if Pettitte still teaches Sunday School, but Sunday Schools have to offer children a whole different set of expectations, and give them back their own small voices, and quiet sounds, and their bodies as temples.

2 comments:

Cotton Wool & Silk said...

"Analogizing" miked and corded children singing in church to athletes on steroids is only ONE of the reasons I love your blog!

Ah, for purity. . . I'm just an old f___ like you I guess.

Old First said...

Well, Kath, I'm honored.

You know, we have a kintting-and-spirituality small group. We should have you come down the Hudson and lead a retreat or something.

My grandmother, whom I occasionally write about, knitted for ninety years. She was the oldest girl in a large Dutch family, and she started knitting at age 3.

She didn't stop, except to sleep, till she took her final rest.