“Do You Want It?” and “Don’t Give Up, Never Ever Give Up.” As the youngest, I still remember getting the ‘Spirit’ of daily 8am mass with my mom, brother and sister, and then the ‘Sport” of racing out of church to the playground to jump into a game of soccer or football, maybe even some baseball or keep away. Today, with 21st century technology, Spirit & Sport can be a facility where youth are developed in heart, mind, and body while giving back to seniors and those in need. These youth can be taught different athletic skills while also pursuing development in the moral senses all in ‘the JPII tradition of Spirit & Sport.’ The vision for this facility is to be a place where Spirit & Sport meet to lift up young and old and ask the vital question of how to become the very best we can be, never giving in, and never, ever giving up. This facility and its reach into the community, state, and nation will be unmatched and unprecedented in its extension of good will, outstanding service, and tremendous skill development. This love of sport meets love of spirit and building up of each person wholly to transform that love into something more than self-getting; but truly into that which is self-giving!
Speaking of love, as a child, I wrote two sermons for priests that both ended up being read from the pulpit at Sunday mass. One was on love and the other was on sunshine. I used the same technique of breaking up the word to represent each letter found in that word. Here are the excerpts from the sermon on love, from the perspective of a ten-year-old.
“Love one another. What does that mean to you? The Webster’s definition of love is: Strong affection, warm attachment. God commanded us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This was one of the two greatest commandments. How often do you really love your friend or your enemy? It is easier to love your friend, but loving your enemy is just as important. Actually, it is even more important to love your enemy, because God did, and he commanded us to do so also. If we break that command, we can go to God for forgiveness—because God is a forgiving God. And just as God will forgive us, he told us to forgive not seven or seventy times but seven times seventy times. To forgive, you must love that person enough to say, “I forgive you and let’s be friends.”
When you do get mad at someone, the best thing to do is to leave them, go to your room, close the door and talk privately with God. Ask God to help you go back to loving those people. It takes a lot of guts, right after you get mad at someone, to turn around and love them again. But remember, God is always with you and he will always love you. It’s hard to believe that God will always love you, even when you do something wrong, but it’s true—God always loves you. Take the word “LOVE” and divide it by letters.
L stands for Living. We are really living when we are loving everyone. Love is necessary, both here and now and for our greatest gift for giving love, time with God for eternity.
O stands for Option. We have the option of loving those around us and God above, or not. It is free will and our choice to love and receive all the blessings that go with it, or freely choose not to love and miss out on the grace and blessings we could receive.
V is for Variety. The reason I picked this word is because all of us who come to God, do so from a variety of families and for a variety of reasons. Hopefully, we come to God because we love him and we want to be with him both now and for eternity. That makes for variety with a great purpose.
E is for Endurance. This world is tough and we go through a lot of things, and endurance and trust in God is the only way to not only survive, but thrive. We are tested on this earth and through that testing, stress and strain, we are called to God and answer that call by coming to Him and loving Him in an obedient way.
Love—Living, Options, Variety, Endurance. So, the next time you hear the word “love”, really listen to it and hear the echo of its meaning inside each letter and how much it really means to you.
Love wasn’t always evident in the Scott household. In fact, sibling rivalry and thinking up ways to “get someone’s goat” as the saying goes was one of our favorite pastimes. Casey, my brother who was closest in age, was often ill during his youth, and he fought Crohn’s disease in his teens. We were all very protective of him.
My dad traveled often with his job, as a sales manager for Union 76, and Robb, the eldest at home, often took on the role of “dad”. One night, as we were all gathering at the dinner table, I took Casey aside and whispered that we should pull a prank on Robb with a fake punch. We’d seen enough action movies to know how to pull off a good one. My mother overheard our plan and warned me not to, but that only convinced me that it was going to be a great prank. Casey and I started up an “argument” in the kitchen—fully aware that Robb was already seated at the dinner table, and he could hear everything we were saying.
As Casey and I entered the dining room, I grabbed Casey’s shoulder, turned him towards me and yelled, “Take that!” as I swung a fist past his face. Right on cue, Casey clapped his hands together in a smack and crumpled to the floor in an ungainly heap. Robb became a cartoon of anger, as I literally swore I saw smoke coming from his ears. He jumped up in a fit of rage and came tearing after me.
I ran through the kitchen, out the back door and across my beloved driveway/basketball court in about two seconds flat, but Robb was right behind me, gunning towards me like some irate, Olympic-fast bull. Robb was chasing me down with only one thought in mind—KILL KELLY. I was running the fastest sprint of my entire life, gulping in air and screaming, “It’s a joke! It’s a joke!” Mom was yelling after Robb to stop, that it was just a prank, but it took half a block for Robb to realize that he had been “pranked”.
Instead of slowing his rage, the realization that he had been the victim of a joke only fueled his anger. We traipsed back to the house, but I could feel the resentment coming from Robb in waves. Mom was giggling, Casey was laughing and I was amused, but terrified that Robb still had it out for me. I slept on high-alert for the next two weeks, convinced that Robb was scheming up a plot of revenge—a lesson for playing on Casey’s weakness and humiliating him in the process.
This chapter fits well with the overriding theme of the book ‘Never Give Up.’ The idea of ‘Do You Want It’ and the hard work of Love—Living, Options, Variety, and Endurance also go hand in hand and lay the groundwork for skill development in Spirit & Sport. Make sure to have fun in the process, just not too much fun especially at someone else’s expense.
2 » He’s Alive
“He’s alive! He’s alive!”, they yelled from their patient’s rooms as they wheeled the surgery bed down the hall. The whole hall was abuzz with relief and joy. This seventeen-year-old patient who had been in the hospital for two months, had survived his second operation to help him overcome the terrible effects of Crohn’s disease.
This patient happened to be my brother, Casey, the same guy that was expected to grow to six foot two, but the disease saw to it that he would not get the nutrients to make that height. One could assume that if he had made that height (6’2”) he would have paved the way so I could have gone directly to the University of Minnesota, and maybe gotten off the bench for more than a minute or two each game. I guess God had a plan, and this was not it, for either one of us. I missed the opportunity to grow up with a brother who felt healthy and wanted to play sports all day, because he had to suffer a lot throughout his childhood and adulthood. That day, however, was a day of joy, for he was alive! This being alive was his own sense of Spirit & Sport where Casey could finally enjoy athletics, which he did throughout college and into adulthood. He also was alive to that Spirit of God where he developed such giving ways and a joyful nature, aware of both God and neighbor.
Photo: FamilyArchive
Casey with buttons
