Story of a Champion: Bible Quiz

Last weekend marked 20 years since my second championship in a church Bible memorization competition called "Bible Bowl". Ironically, on Sunday as a lay reader at church, I ended up reading a passage from Acts 2 that I had memorized one of those years that I competed. "Parthians, Medes and Elamites...". The connection made me a little nostalgic for this quirky chapter in my life, and I thought I'd share some memories of it with you, dear readers.

As a pastors' kid who moved around all the time, I wasn't very involved in school activities. Church activities dominated my schedule, and it turns out that my gifts lent themselves to the bloodsport of memorizing scripture and then reciting it or answering quiz questions about it. Bible Bowl was a speed game with three teams of four players each competing to buzz in and answer questions read by the quizmaster.

When I started as an eighth or ninth grader, our teams muddled along and always lost at Regionals to this team lead by a guy named Glen Wendt. Spectators tossed around the word "genius" during his reign of terror. I always thought machine suited him better. He was to Bible Bowl what Pete Sampras was to tennis in their respective primes. The answers came out, but there was little emotion. Sweater vests? Yes. Gold-framed glasses? Yes. Emotion? No.

The summer before junior year of high school, I moved from Pittsburgh to New Jersey. I had few friends and a new crop of competition for Bible Bowl. We were in a different region, and the Wendt Machine had either aged out of Bible Bowl, or at least we wouldn't face him until Territorials (the big championship). I lost track of the dude because I never really knew him, and I honestly don't know if I ever faced him in those later years.

What I did do - lacking a social life - was get very good at Bible Bowl. All of the standard questions and bonus verse memorization questions came from a designated book or a few books of the Bible per year. On a team of four, we'd then divide the designated book(s) among us, memorizing verses and drilling on questions. I read my sections every morning at breakfast, reading as far as I could while I ate my cereal and then picking up the loop where I'd stopped the next day. I quickly became the anchor for my team and - cockily - started memorizing some of the bonus verses in my teammates' sections. (The author is on the right, braced for competition in the photo).

This would make a better story if I could remember specific competitions that year, especially the important ones at regionals and territorials. I can't remember enough details for that, but I can offer a few vignettes. We always did a "systems check" before competition to ensure that everyone's buzzer was working properly. One time, bored with the proceedings, I brought a realistic looking water gun (when one could still buy one), pointed the gun in the air and conducted the systems check with the point of the barrel. In intense anxiety situations, I always puked in my youth. Before the first Territorial championship that I won, I did have to bolt out a side door and find an out-of-the-way spot across the parking lot to empty my nervous guts. My coach came and found me and inquired as to my health. I honestly said that I was fine and felt much better. Also, I skipped prom to compete in the Territorial championships, twice. There wasn't definitely a girl who would have gone with me had I asked, so it kind of solved a problem for me to have "something better to do" on those nights. My brother - better with the ladies but worse at bonus questions than I - drove from the second championship to the tail end of senior prom, where he relieved his date's older brother of stand-in date duty.

Finally, I remember the delirious joy of winning at something I'd worked so hard at with my teammates. Accomplishing the ultimate goal after working hard and focusing on it for months at a time provided an awesome feeling of satisfaction.

Atta Boy, Drew Forster

If any blog post can right an injustice, I hope this one will. Last weekend, I attended the grand opening, ribbon cutting and dedication of the Salvation Army Ray & Joan Kroc Community Center in Boston. Joan Kroc, the matron of the McDonald's fortune left $1.5 billion (that's a lot of Big Macs!) to the Salvation Army to build about 30 of these centers around the country. In Boston, the Uphams Corner/Dudley Square neighborhood
View Larger Map had wanted a community center for at least 20 years. This part of Dorchester/Roxbury's recent history has been marked by gun violence and a lack of hope. In vibrant, often prosperous Boston, this neighborhood just couldn't catch a break from the economy or city hall. The spirits of its Dominican and Cape Verdean immigrant families were unbowed, and individuals and groups never stopped working and hoping even when it might have been easy to do so.

Now, they have a 90,000 square foot, beautiful and functional community center with a big gym, a climbing wall, a dance studio, a truckload of elliptical and stairmaster machines, a recording studio, an indoor water park and outdoor splash playground, performing arts space and a "peace chapel" in which to remember those whose lives were cut short by violence.

My brother Drew has been working on this project since it was no more than an idea on paper. After Drew's work five years ago on the proposal helped win a high stakes internal competition among Salvation Army centers in cities across the northeast US, they asked him to stay on as the first full-time employee of this idea. The injustice came this weekend when I read through the twenty-some page program for the weekend's festivities and saw my brother's name nowhere. They compounded the injustice when, in 3 1/2 hours of speeches and festivities by politicians and fundraisers and the Salvation Army muckety mucks from Massachusetts and the upper administration of the northeast US, no one said "Drew Forster" once. Not when recounting the history of the project. Not when they showed the beautiful video presentation he created. Not when they lauded lots of others who did less to make it all happen. The picture at the right is one of the only ones I got of Drew on Saturday, and it's blurry because he virtually never stopped moving, working during the festivities.

I realize that tons of people played a role. I realize that when a billionaire gives you $80 million and you raise another $30 million locally, that there are Certain People to Thank. I just wish they had added Drew to the list.

Drew's daughter Sydney did tell him at the end of the day "I'm so proud of your work, Daddy." But she shouldn't have been the first to say that out loud.

Since the big wigs didn't give Drew an atta boy, I now shall. Drew may kill me, but here's what they should have said.

Tons of people contributed to this grand occasion. It's safe to saw, however, that no one has contributed more time, intellectual resources or passion to this project than Drew Forster. Some helped launch the notion; others contributed money and ideas and expertise. There were those who brought certain aspects to completion. But no one was present - as was Drew - from proposal to ribbon cutting. Drew attended over 100 community meetings. We've said there were 200 official community meetings, so let's conservatively put Drew at half of those. He consistently sacrificed evening family time to talk and listen in Upham's Corner. Drew listened to the community about what they wanted in a neighborhood asset unlike anything they'd ever had before. Drew connected with those who have labored with lesser resources on the goals on which hew as now privileged to work. Drew participated in architecture discussions, fundraising discussions, demographic analysis (56,000 people within a mile of this spot; 19,000 of them children) and program planning. At the end of the first week of operation, Drew knew who had been there five days out of five. Hip Hip Hooray!

Actually, one person said "Drew was here all along", but she said it to her friend in the hallway when she met me, Drew's twin brother, the guy freaking people out all day by looking - if not dressing - exactly like him.
Isaura Mendes said it. Ms. Mendes lost two sons in two years to gun violence in the neighborhood, and now she crusades for peace. She knew that Drew was there all along. She knows that Drew gets it. Drew helped plan for the Peace Chapel, an oasis of serenity in the busy hive of the Kroc Center. it's a place to remember those who tragically don't walk down Dudley Street anymore and to pray that fewer young people die this year than last. Ms. Mendes represents so many other parents grieving the worst possible loss. "Drew was here all along", she said.

On that fifth day of Kroc Center operations, Drew greeted a member of what he dubbed (on the spot) "the five for five club". When he inquired after the man's "better half", who had accompanied him on his first four visits, he first said that she wasn't feeling well. After a moment, he said that, actually, that day marked seven months since their son Matthew had died of a gunshot wound at age 30. His wife didn't come out that day because - naturally - she still grieves over their son's death and that day was particularly difficult. Drew asked the man if he knew about the Peace Chapel and took him upstairs and sat quietly with him on a pointed day of remembrance.

Drew has dreamed this place on paper and in meetings and in PowerPoint and in letters, and I can't think of someone better suited to now be opening all of its many ambitious programs. They should have said that on Saturday. Drew was there all along.

For more information on the Kroc Center or to make a gift in Drew's honor, please visit http://www.use.salvationarmy.org/use/www_use_bostonkroc.nsf/

Holy Week in Full

A warning to regular readers: this post is much more reverent than my usual fare. It's downright spiritual. Oh, and it really has nothing to do with parenting. And it's too long for proper writing on the web. Oh well.
If you're a person of faith, it might resonate with you. If you're not, it may pique your curiosity or put you in a fit of pique. If it's going to be the latter, maybe you just skip this and catch my normal snide self in my next post.

I hate Palm Sunday. Not that I would have it any other way, but I hate the way the service starts with Hosanna and gets to Crucify! by 25 minutes in. Nothing brings home the role of my own sin in the crucifixion and my own need for the redemption of the resurrection quite like Palm Sunday. Which is precisely why I don't like it.

To back up, I grew up worshiping at The Salvation Army, where the church calendar means nothing. Easter Sunday arrived with no prelude, except maybe some shopping for a new outfit. Out of nowhere, we just woke up one frigid April Sunday and went out on a hill or even on folding chairs in a church parking lot for a "sunrise service". The closest we had to a liturgical tradition was the stop at McDonald's for breakfast sandwiches between the sunrise service and regular church. The egg has some spiritual significance, but a) I don't think those are necessarily real eggs and b) combining them with American cheese and English muffins, while trans-Atlantic, probably robs them of their Trinitarian meaning.

Now, I worship at an Anglican church and have learned to love the richness of the church calendar. The Lenten season through Holy Week makes Easter mean so much more.

At Ash Wednesday, we start with the pleasing symmetry of having ashes applied to our foreheads created by burning last year's palms. Hard to say whether that's a resurrection or a reverse resurrection. Either way, it's an important reminder that we are all ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

In Lent, worship changes in subtle ways like the eliding of the word "Hallelujah" from the liturgy and a much-less decorated altar. Purple stoles remind us that we are awaiting the crowning of a King. Individually, we give things up or take things on as a discipline. This year, I've found that I could live without facebook during Lent, a valuable lesson.

Then, we arrive at Palm Sunday, and the Hosanna!-Crucify! whiplash occurs. That whiplash sensation used to catch me unawares. I would forget from one Palm Sunday to the next everything but the joyous waving of the palms in what insiders call the "holy pretzel" processional. Then my complicity in Christ's death would rise up just a few liturgical minutes later. The past two years, though, I've been cast as Peter in our congregation's passion play. Apparently, i'm typecast as being disloyal in times of trouble. Anyway, rehearsing for the Passion means that I'm tuned into Palm Sunday for weeks in advance. We yell "Crucify!" over and over again. Reciting Peter's denials, I embody all the most obvious flaws of disciples, both biblical and contemporary. I don't actually need Peter's words to embody those flaws, natch.

Maundy Thursday claims two superlatives in the liturgical calendar: 1. most mispronounced day (Maunday Thursday seems more like a trick of the parallelism-craving mind and tongue than a mistake about how Maundy is spelled.) and 2. coziest service of the year. I like to think it's cozy because we remember the Last Supper in the Upper Room not because the service is so poorly attended. Jesus and the Disciples lived such a public life together during His ministry that the Last Supper strikes me as a rarely intimate moment. The most intimate act that happens in the sanctuary at any point in the year happens on Maundy Thursday as friends and family members wash each others' feet. And in case you didn't know what was coming the next day, this service ends in total darkness and silence.

When a friend in college talked once about leaving the Good Friday service in grief, I had no idea what she was talking about. Again, at that time, I knew nothing of the rhythm of the church calendar, and the notion that a service could bring home the reality of Christ's death as much as she described it (her face was altered, she discovered upon seeing her reflection in a store window). Three hours in length, this service reminds us of what it must have been like for Jesus' disciples and family members to watch and wait, scared witless, while he died and was taken away. The oft-quoted "Today is Friday, but Sunday's a-comin'" sermon undersells the importance of pausing on Friday to take in all the dire sadness of The Death without which there is no resurrection. Today is Friday. Let it be. Sunday has its own business.

Finally, having turned our minds and hearts in so many directions for 40 days (plus the Sundays that are feast days and not technically part of Lent). we arrive at Easter with the proper appreciation for all the fuss. At our church, we bring bells and ring them like crazy people as we celebrate the empty tomb and worship the risen Messiah.

To paraphrase a Pittsburgh political slogan: I hate Palm Sunday because I love it so much. Even if you missed Palm Sunday this year, I encourage you to participate in the rest of Holy Week at a church near you that observes it. And next year, you can do the whole shebang. There will be no denying it: It'll be your most meaningful Easter ever.