The Boys of Summer

Greetings Dear Readers,

I am enjoying the World Series. I would enjoy it more if it were the Braves and the Red Sox. Can anyone tell me why? That is another tale though. It is important to me this game of baseball. It has been since I was a small boy. From games watched in Atlanta stadium with my Grandfather, to listening on my Sinclair Oil transistor radio on my lonely front porch, to watching with my sons when they are both boys and adults.

I cannot watch a baseball movie without crying. Deep within my soul is a place where the boy, the teen, and the man in me meet. By week’s end the hoopla of this World Series will end and the baseball season will move into a long silent winter. Other sports have found ways to stretch the season but baseball truly hibernates. This winter seems one of discontent. I move into it both more centered and lonelier than I have felt in many years.

I see fissures on the horizon that I do not know how to navigate. The holidays are more uncertain and I am more determined to celebrate them properly. Currently the Phillies trail the Yanks 3 games to 2. Game six will be played in New York. I will do as a I do every year and watch For Love of the Game when the series is over. Then, like baseball I will enter the long dark winter, waiting for the thaw that brings back the energy of boys and men.

Much will go by in the world before the infields are groomed. I will be half a century old before my pastor offers his public hope for the Cubs again. April will come and all over the country home plate umpires will point at pitchers and yell, “Play Ball.” Until then I must walk the winter and ponder what it is about men playing a boy’s game the reaches so deep into my soul. I will ponder why it forces so much emotion to the surface and see how I can better connect to Christ through this feeling.

Soon the snow flies and the winter oasis of Christmas will distract me from the absence of baseball. But today, on the cusp of change I feel impending loss. It is neither logical nor rational, but it is there and real. In my life it is the bottom of the fifth inning and the game is official.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a home owner. He brings new and old things out of his treasure store."