Well, what better way to spend a weekend than cutting loose with the fellas.
I woke up at 3am on Friday to catch a flight with Tyler and Steve David to Chicago...a place I have never been outside the airport of. We got seats on the flight and met up with two other guys hooking up with us to go to South Bend, Indiana. South Bend, for all of you who live under a rock, is the Home of the Fightin’ Irish of Notre Dame. That's right...Home of RUDY...and other Catholics.
We met up with Jaime and Tom, turns out Tom and I share friends of the family the True's. Anywho, we took off to the campus after getting to our hotel and meeting up with Jaime's little brother, Uncle, and Cousin.
Pep rally time it was. I have never seen an arena so packed...full with old people who can't let go of their college haydays. Standing room only. It was a good time but only made better when the band played that famous Victory March, at lesser campuses it is called a fight song...here a Victory March. It was also the 'victory march' of my high school back in New Jersey growing up...A fine tribe of Catholic men were we.
I felt close to my past days at St. Joes while on this campus...it really is a sub-culture, one that I appreciated this weekend. The leaves were changing vibrantly, the accents were thick and the beer was flowing among the construction-boot clad men of the frozen tundra region while they tailgated.
The game was as good as it could get. Front-row, 10 yard line, and most of the action was right in front of us as the golden helmeted battled across the end zone defeating the BYU Mormons heavily. Great game.
Better than the game was the dude time we spent. Making like the married guys were stickin-it to their wives by being there, and talking all tough about being the man and telling their wives what to do, each one of them checked in back home multiple times throughout the day exposing the lie. Behind their lies was the fact that each one of them secretly wanted that moment that Steve and Tyler were sharing, father-son time, and deeper than that, they each would have loved to share something as great as this with their wives, building on their intimacy. At least it seemed so to me.
It was great to cut lose with Tyler and Steve and just be dudes who love our Jesus and know they don't deserve his grace. We cussed. We drank. We adjusted things and spit. We made fun of just about everything... especially one another. Things that I used to associate with being Catholic...but that was a misjudgement. Growing up I understood my Catholic upbringing as Bob Hope sees sailors..."They spend the first six days of each week sowing their wild
oats, then they go to church on Sunday and pray for crop failure."
As a new entry into a mainly Baptist environment a few years ago, I thought this behavior was just so 'pagan.' Now, it seems more balanced than Southern Baptist life. Now let me say that our behavior was entirely in reserve and under control, please don't think all we did was cuss and get drunk, no one was even close to drunk. But, is was a very 'real' weekend.
Real Jesus. Real growth. Real Jesus growth. Isn't that what we are supposed to be focused on? It is not about behavior...it has never been about behaving a certain way. Sure, if we love Him, we obey Him, but we don't ACT like him to try and PLEASE Him...do we think He can be fooled? It has always been about growth in the heart of a sinful person toward God, no matter what increment.
Radiance.
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1 comment:
As a fellow recovering Baptist... I know exactly what you mean.
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