“THEY AIN’T NOTHING UNTIL WE CALL ‘EM”
It’s Spring, the baseball season has started, and my Yankees have won a few games! What could be bad?
I love the story about the young and old baseball umpires. The Young umpire says to the old one, “If it’s a ball, I calls it a ball…And if it’s a strike, I calls it a strike.”
The old umpire goes for his chewing tobacco and says, “Them pitches ain’t nothing until I calls ‘em.”
There is so much truth to that: the balls that get thrown to us aren’t anything until we call them. That great baseball fan, William Shakespeare, put it this way in Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Gabrielle Meyer
This point was really driven home to me recently when I read a short article by the writer, Gabrielle Meyer. She grew up above a carriage house on an old estate near the banks of the Mississippi river. She is still near the muddy Mississippi, but now Gabrielle lives near the headwaters of the river in Minnesota.
From working with the Minnesota Historical Society, Gabrielle has developed a real love of history, which she has leaned on in her novel writing. Many of Gabrielle’s books deal with time travel and historical characters from different periods. For example, her novel When the Day Comes centers around Williamsburg, Virginia in 1774 and New York City in 1914. A young woman by the name of Libby experiences time travel through both places and eras.
Gabrielle‘s 40th birthday was in 2020. Prior to COVID-19, she had big hopes and dreams for her 40th birthday celebration. But about six weeks before her big day, Gabrielle‘s part of the world went into almost total lockdown.
“As a day got closer and closer, I had to accept the fact that I wouldn’t get the celebration I had wanted. I tried to make the most of it and planned a good meal to enjoy with my husband and children at home,” she wrote.
It seemed like life had really thrown her a curveball. Gabrielle woke up on her birthday “feeling melancholy and hopeless.” Her big day would just be another boring and drudgery pandemic day. Nevertheless, she tried not to give into pessimism and to remain open minded to calling the day something different.
“I was in for a few surprises. In the middle of the night my dad had put a huge sign in our yard to tell the neighborhood it was my birthday. My sister had brought gifts and dropped off a cake at the end of the driveway. It was later that day, when my husband called me outside, that I got the biggest surprise of all. He had organized a drive-by parade, and dozens of friends dropped off gifts and wished me a happy birthday,” Gabrielle gratefully explained.
It turned out that family and friends were tossing fantastic pitches to Gabrielle. “What started as the saddest birthday turned into the sweetest as I was showered with God‘s love and the love of family and friends, and I learned that life doesn’t have to be extravagant to be meaningful,” she added.
Gabrielle wrote a little “time travel” prayer to Spirit: “When I am disappointed and my expectations aren’t being met, remind me that Your plans are always better than my own.”
When I read Gabrielle’s article, I was reminded of the 2020 pandemic lockdown and how it affected my family and me. We just moved from Tulsa to Roanoke and I had started as the new minister at Unity of Roanoke Valley. It was such a wonderful congregation at the Unity Center of Tulsa and now here I was with an empty church and not really able to meet with the new congregation. At first I felt some of the same pangs that Gabrielle expressed over what seemed like it would be a crummy 40th birthday.
Fortunately, several members of the Roanoke congregation came up with an ingenious way to hold Sunday services. We started to hold them in the church’s parking lot, and we broadcast them into people’s cars via their automobiles’ FM radios. In a way it was like a drive-in movie theater, but because of the pandemic, we didn’t serve popcorn.
We also got really good at recording our services for YouTube. The net results were that, on many Sundays, we were serving the same number of eyeballs that we were serving prior to the pandemic. We also discovered other new ways to do church in a pandemic. So similar to Gabrielle, there was so much that was wonderful and provided for spiritual growth during the difficult pandemic times.
There were also other good things and great memories from this pandemic lockdown period. My two daughters and I drove and hiked through the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. We would eat dinners in our car, and we called our blue automobile restaurant Chez Honda.
I will also deeply treasure listening to podcasts and recorded books in the car with my daughter, Robin. It gave us a chance really to have some important and deeply meaningful conversations before she went away to college.
We have the power expressed by the old baseball umpire: “Them pitches ain't nothing until we call ‘em.”
I am also thinking about Winston Churchill and the Battle of Britain during World War II. in one sense it was a very difficult time for the British people as their beloved homeland was being viciously, attacked by the Nazis. And yet, despite it all Prime Minister Churchill could proudly say that this “was their finest hour.”
I see that there are also umpires in the British game of Cricket. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a similar story about young and old Cricket umpires. But I guess they wouldn’t be using the word “ain’t”— and they wouldn’t be carrying any chewing tobacco.
