absolutely monotonous. Yet, when the ball is teed up and the whistle blows, he swings into action and does one thing: he produces. I can tolerate a gamer if I can at least get him to show some interest in practice. Punctuality is a must and he can’t mouth off or get too cocky. He can’t be a cancer on the team. If he is, he’s out.
Gamers are vivid examples. Most athletes I’ve seen and read about have to work to get into shape. They must work hard and pay attention in order to be game-ready. And this is certainly true of my students who have gone on to play in the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA. If we took the gamer example and relaxed our discipline out on the athletic field, if we allowed all of our athletes to slack off, if we accepted less effort from our players instead of more, we’d never win a game. We’ve all heard the expression What does it take to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. And we can all hear the gamer now say, That’s not true. I hardly practice and I’m at the top of my sport. So what do you say to a quarterback who won’t practice, yet brags about throwing a touchdown pass in the last game?
Talk to me when you’ve thrown fifty of those in a season. That’s what I’d say.
In July of 2012, something unspeakable happened inside a multi-plex movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.
James Holmes sat through several minutes of the Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, before slipping out the back door and returning with a cache of weapons. Twelve died that night, including a six-year-old girl. Fifty-eight others were injured in the AR-15 assault rifle attack—one of the worst in U.S. history. People want to know where God was in all the mayhem. They want to know where He was during the Sandy Hook school shooting in December of 2012.
The O.J. Simpson verdicts were handed down in October of 1995. As Simpson was released of any legal culpability in the murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, Denise Brown gasped, “God, where are you?” Her shock as well as God’s hand in all this will be the subject in a later chapter entitled: The Problem of Evil of Suffering.
We could go on and on. September 11th. The tsunami that hit Southeast Asia. The earthquake that rocked Haiti. The JFK assassination. The Holocaust. The Lincoln assassination. The Black Plague. People that are angry with God, or are irritated with Him, or even question His existence, love to needle believers with these vivid examples—these vivid, epic disasters. They wait for a calamitous situation to explode, and then point an accusatory finger at the sky as the media dissects the event and sifts through all the misery. With over seven billion people inhabiting the planet, and with millions of cameras capturing everything, there never seems to be a shortage of bad news. And when we run out of human-induced pain to report, we turn our anger at the weather (the new sworn enemy of humankind and a foe that simply cannot be overcome) and curse every wildfire, tornado, hurricane, drought and flood.
Where is God in all this? Those who cling to vivid examples as their only avenue to experiencing God are missing the bigger picture. So, too, are many of the believers out there. Many of us tend to see God in the obvious: a spectacular sunset, in a daring rescue mission or when somebody buys 100 bicycles for foster home kids at Christmas. That’s God in action, yes, but such shining and vivid examples are easy to spot. The challenge comes in the opportunity to experience Him in the cool breeze that blows off the ocean, the gentle rustling of leaves, the smile of a neighbor, the cooing of a newborn baby, a warm handshake, a friendly embrace, laughter among friends, or even the voice of a devoted wife reading to her Alzheimer’s afflicted husband.
God, where are you? Well, everywhere. Not just on the billboards and neon signs of life. So, let’s get in the habit of looking for Him everywhere and in every person we meet.
I Made a Mistake
“Si, San Juan!” March 2, 1979 National Airlines Timetable Advertising New Air Service
25 Minutes to Midnight…
My ninth grade Spanish teacher, Senora Greene, was a real gem. One of the best I’ve ever encountered. She was sweet but expected nothing but the best from each and every one of us. Boy, did I learn that the hard way. One day I took this unit test and, afterward, felt I had done very well. In one of the sections, I was to respond to a series of questions, using complete sentences of my own.
-Do you have a sister? Si, tengo una hermana.
-Do you have a pet? Si, el nombre de mi perro es Christy.
-Have you ever been to Disney World? Si, fui con mi familia en Mayo.
There were about a dozen other such questions on the test. I quickly answered each one and thought I was incredibly sophisticated. I was able to respond to senora’s questions in the present, the present perfect and the preterit. Like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, I was certain my answers would simply blow Senora Greene out of the water. Not only would I earn an ‘A’, but I fully expected to see EXCELLENTE scrawled across the top of my paper in three inch letters, underlined twice and wrapped around a Red Rider B.B. Gun.
What I got back horrified me. My poor test was hemorrhaging red ink. Why, I asked myself? Where on earth did I go wrong? I spotted my mistake immediately. I had begun all of my sentences in that section with si. Anyone who knows anything about Spanish knows full-well that si means if. In order to have si mean yes I had to place an accent over the i. I failed to do that in every single, blessed instance. And for that crucial blunder I paid the price: a half-point penalty for every missing accent.
Yes, I could have taken greater care to proof read my answers before turning in my test. I didn’t. But I’ll tell you one thing: since that day I have never forgotten to accent that i. In fact I later caught this very mistake in an airline timetable. A local carrier had initiated service to Puerto Rico with a nifty slogan: Si, San Juan! If San Juan? I took out my red pen and immediately deducted a half-point. By the way, the airline is no longer in business.
Think back to all those math courses in high school and college. How many times did we put a positive in front of a number when it required a negative instead? How many times have we dialed a wrong number? How many times have we looked up a movie and misread the starting time? How many times have we forgotten to send that birthday card?
Mistakes. These are all mistakes. Preventable, yes, but they are mistakes.
So what should we make of the case of Father Gustavo Miyares, former priest for the Archdiocese of Miami? Father Miyares actually served as my vocation director in the early 80s. From what little I can remember, he seemed reserved and friendly. His parishioners apparently loved him.
As it turns out, Father Miyares had another side to his personality. In October of 2006 a $25 million lawsuit was filed, by a gentleman, against the archdiocese claiming that Miyares and former archdiocesan priest Pedro Jove had fondled and raped him while attending a summer camp at St. Vincent DePaul Seminary in 1981. A second victim stepped forward the following month, claiming that Miyares had fondled him over a period of three years. The Archdiocese of Miami investigated the original allegation, and called in the priest. Miyares, in front of archdiocesan officials, admitted to sexual misconduct calling what he did “mistakes of many years ago.”1
Mistakes? This man lured a minor to the seminary in Boynton Beach, did unspeakable things to him and then has the gall to call his lewd and illegal actions mistakes? If Miyares had forgotten his contact lenses that night and thought he was having sex with an adult— that could have been construed as a mistake. An improbable mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. This man knew exactly what he was
