Scottie Scheffler leads the world in birdies after bogeys. For those who might not be familiar with golf’s scoring ways and words, that means that, most times, when he finishes one hole one stroke over par, he finishes the next hole one stroke under par.  One step back, followed by an immediate step back forward. Trip, stand-up and walk. Trip, stand-up and walk. Trip, stand-up and walk. This is how you keep from ever falling far behind. It’s also how you end up way ahead.  

The best of the best don’t land with a splat on a bed of concrete when they fall, they bounce.

I remember when (I suddenly sound like my Granny) we used to have to be at home on Thursday nights at 9:00 PM if we wanted to watch Grey’s Anatomy. We couldn’t consume Meredith and Derek with all their accompanying angst on a Sunday afternoon when our hearts had enough bandwidth for absorption of their twisty lives -- it was Thursday night or bust. And if it was “bust,” we’d arrive the next Thursday night at 9:00 PM painfully in the dark. Now, we can watch a whole season on a dawn-to-dusk Saturday, if we’re so inclined. Or we can catch the latest episode at halftime of the Super Bowl, if we choose. 

Our world is built like Furr’s cafeteria. We can order up exactly what we want.

On my inaugural jaunt into the world of publishing, the literary agent I contacted said she wasn’t sure what my collection of stories (that ultimately became “Rooted to Rise”) was, but she did believe it was something. While we were trying to get a handle on that, she said I needed to get some of my writing “out into the world” before she shopped a book. She implored, “I need for you to do two things: Get active on social media and start writing a weekly blog.” 

One outta two ain’t bad.

In the front of the auditorium where our church family gathers on Sunday mornings, a sign hangs high and bold summarizing Ephesians 4:11-16. It says very simply, “Do Your Part.” The flag flies at the top of the baptistery marking the symmetrical center between two ginormous screens, but I have to think it hangs there for reasons beyond balance.  The message that is clearly being sent is “get involved.”  Get involved with the activities the leaders of the congregation have planned, but probably—maybe even more so—get involved with leading others to Jesus Christ, via the baptistery below.  “Do Your Part” it says, echoing the gist of the Bible.

I wondered, “What’s my part?” And, “Whose job is it to decide?”

“What separates the ones who make it?” I am asked by a parent in a group of parents who really want to know.

“What does ‘make it’ mean?” I bounce pass back, in search of clarification. Success wears all different kinds of eclectic clothes.

“You know, not just the players that are good enough to go on to play in college, but the ones who, once they’re there, become like household names.”

“I looooove the cover!” a considering reader says as she picks up and thumbs through my latest book. 

“Me, too,” I tell her. “The story that birthed it is every bit as good.”

Then with eyes that hold the door agape, she invites me to go on. 

Every gameday, prior to tip-off, my assistant coach would print off a bare-bones paper we called “Post Game Thoughts.” We passed these out to our players in the locker room immediately following their sprint up the tunnel after games. 

The house I grew up in was always stocked with red rags. We had them in the cabinet under the kitchen sink, the corner of the laundry room, the bathroom floor next to the plunger (just in case). But we didn’t only keep them there. The ever-absorbent automotive staples were also stacked knee high in tenuous towers on the floor of my dad’s painting shed. A sack stuffed full of them rode around with us behind the bench seat of his Ford Ranger, a few bumped along in the trough of his golf cart, and one was often hanging halfway out of the back pocket of his jeans. Before the days of disposable everything, these industrial towels were our clean-up go-tos. We never knew when we would need one, but a red rag was within reach in case we did.

And like the Energizer Bunny, they lived on and on and on.

Values drive decisions. Big ones in hairy times. Small ones when no one’s looking. Gnarly ones deeply embedded beneath shrouds of bells and whistles and tangled tresses. What we really believe in the core of our gut serves as our navigational rudder. It keeps our heads clear, allowing us to move quickly. Act consistently. Find our way through the mud and the muck. Our principles function as both a lighthouse and a compass to help us make our way. 

When we keep them top of mind, that is.

The official tossed the ball, supposedly straight but slightly sloping toward the visitors’ side of the half-court line. Our center, perched in the supreme ready position, her dominant arm crooked like a statue’s ready to unfurl and reach, took full advantage of the gift in an alien gym. Rising to meet the ball at the top of its flight, she tipped the leather prize toward our wide-eyed teammate who was posted-up on the edge of the circle, hand extended like a catcher’s mitt.  The tip-off  was soft and right on target. Our eager teammate pulled it in, then spun on her opposite foot, simultaneously pushing the ball off the floor in front of her as she raced toward the open goal. It only took two bounces to get to the rim where she cleanly kissed it off the glass for the first two points of the game.

The jam-packed gym went wild.

Start with the socks.  That’s what Coach Wooden said to do. Put them on attentively. Get the stitches on the toe-line straight then pull them tight, smoothing the cotton insulation to and around the heel before securing the ribbing snuggly above the ankle. “You want to make sure they stay in place,” said the Wizard of Westwood. 

Wrinkles pass their problems up. 

A few words from my favorite author, Anna Quindlen…

At first a dribble thuds. In virgin care, the basketball is a foreign object that seems more square than it is round. But fingertips learn fast. A symbiotic relationship forms in the crouched rat-a-tat-tat of repetition where handlers recognize early, the give of supple leather separated by predictable seams. The ball teaches you how to bounce it, if you hang out with it enough.

Just a few days after the glittery New Year’s Eve ball dropped as everybody was lacing-up their tennis shoes and heading to work out, I overheard a stranger say that she’d made it all the way through 2024 without buying any clothes. Three-hundred-sixty-five days without an apparel purchase. Impressive. Not a pair of socks. Not a sports bra. Not a trendy jacket or a pair of jeans. 

All the plexiglass goals in the gym had been swung up by their mechanical arms toward the rafters, their nets hanging sideways, still, closed for business for the day.

Happy New Year!!! The blog will return next Tuesday, January 7, 2025.

Thank you for reading in 2024!

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Dear Santa,

The countdown is on. Only a week left until you kiss the wife and board the sleigh. Do you feel harried, like we do?

My guess is no. 

All my teams got the iceberg talk.  We had a paper handout -- clearly before digitization – that we passed out for our players to put in their notebooks on Day One. An enormous floating glacier shelf provided palpable fodder for an important conversation with our team about what the outside world sees and what it doesn’t. The players the media doesn’t feature, the traits that must support the skill sets, the stuff most would call mundane—we had to understand how much it mattered, regardless of the attention it did or did not garner. Though we marvel at the shiny, frozen chunks that proudly poke out above the water, ninety percent of an iceberg’s mass lies below the surface.

“Once-shattered confidence re-breaks easily in familiar places.”  I just entered that in my phone. I said it to a friend this morning while discussing his team’s painful plight in a contest that reflected the worst of them. The sentence, sitting on the shards of a lopsided loss, has a story I can touch. It illuminates and helps us both to find a why-now-how that grounds us. Roots stretch out in all directions around the words. Maybe they still will in a month. Maybe they still will in a year. But then again, maybe they won’t. Most likely when I return to find this sentence under a random “Thoughts” heading on my iPhone, I won’t see the thinking that came before and after. The sentence will float as an alien object disconnected from the shaky ground that bore it. The tenderness will be gone.