Calling Audibles Part XXIII: The Anatomy of the Asterisk

iStock asterisk

“White people are accountable for the ways in which we fail to hear and understand the needs and claims that other communities make upon us… white learning [often] comes at the expense of those already multiply harmed by white interpersonal and structural failures in perception, sensitivity, and justice.” –Aana Marie Vigen, “To Hear and to Be Accountable” in disrupting White Supremacy From Within:  White People on What We Need to Do” UNC just can’t seem to help itself. They keep worsting themselves with the football fiasco.  Now Hakeem Nicks, the all time best receiver ever to put on the Carolina blue… Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XVIII: Bright Lights, Small Shadows

American Football

…truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me… ~Matthew 25: 45 My seven year old daughter woke up this morning and said, “It’s Super Bowl Eve!”  Indeed it is.  And as a football family we are, of course, looking forward to the biggest game of the year, the pinnacle of football’s yearly NFL season.  And we are especially excited for players like Hakeem Nicks, who we know from John’s years coaching at UNC.  And we’re pulling for friends coaching in the Big Game… Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XVII: Game Plan

Game strategy drawn on blackboard

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts ~Isaiah 55: 8-9 Lots of people ask me what football coaches do while they are working all those long hours.  “What could they possibly be doing in there for all that time?”  Early on in our marriage, I use to ask my husband, John, the exact same question periodically.  During his years in the NFL the answer was mostly “watching film”… Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XVI: American Idol(atry)

iStock football idol

Strive at first to meditate Upon the sameness of yourself and others, In joy and sorrow all are equal Thus be guardian of all, as of yourself ~Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva …the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols. ~John Calvin, The Institutes An idol is anything we excessively adore.  That something may well be worth our love and affection, but it becomes an idol when that affection gives way to a distorted adoration.  Idols become everything—more than they could ever really be.  They embody our fantasies, our hopes and dreams.  And even more… Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XIV: Touchdowns for Jesus

iStock football and sky

What is impossible for us is possible for God. ~Luke 18:27 “Tell John Kasay that God doesn’t care about football.  She’s a baseball fan.” This was the witty retort of a minister friend of mine back in the late 1990s when my husband, John, was coaching for the Carolina Panthers.  We had lost a big game to Tampa Bay.  Kicker John Kasay had missed a field goal that could have won the game in the last few seconds. When asked about the missed kick in a post game press conference, Kasay suggested that the wind suddenly changed and that God… Read the full post