Why I Love "Field of Dreams"

Why I love Field of Dreams

A Lenten blog – because I forgot opening day

Written by Dan McDonald

 

Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella

 

            I planned on writing no blogs during Lent.  I was thinking of withdrawing from the debates, issues, and discussions which so easily grab all our attention.  Or to put it more honestly had grabbed too much of my own until little life remained within me.  Lent seemed like a good time to let it go.  But I forgot about baseball season starting during Lent.  I wrote about this film years ago, but don't think it ever made it to my blog.  This is a nice blog for opening day.  I think of my favorite baseball movies this might be the one.  Now I admit I think “42” is a better historical movie and better drama, okay it is probably a better movie, but still “Field of Dreams” has a special place in my heart.  I also love the Gary Cooper movie with Teresa Wright “Pride of the Yankees”.  Even if I could never hit, catch, or pitch a baseball and make it to the majors like Lou Gehrig, there was this thing that every boy who grew up watching "Pride of the Yankees" could make it his goal to show up ready for the starting lineup in your job day after day for years on end.  Yeah, everybody with a little luck could do what Lou Gehrig did.  There was also that heartbreaking movie “Eight Men Out” that touched upon John Kinsella’s hero, “Shoeless Joe Jackson.”  But there is a special place in my heart for "Field of Dreams."

            Why do I like, no … why do I LOVE “Field of Dreams”?  I love this movie because it is a story of redemption that reflects the Gospel in its which I have learned sets forth the pathway to my redemption with God the Father from whom I was separated so many years ago.

            The movie stars Kevin Costner as Ray Kinsella who got into farming the second of two ways it is usually done.  You likely get into farming, first if you are a child of a farmer.  Ray Kinsella got into farming the second way, by marrying a farmer’s daughter, a role played by Amy Madigan.  Ah the spirit of that wonderful redhead in this movie, what ever happened to her?  She lit up the screen in this movie and was so wonderfully fiery and alive.  The supporting cast was wonderful.  Tim Busfield, whom some of us vaguely remember from the television series “Thirty-something” played the role of Ray Kinsella’s brother-in-law, the guy who could never see the miracle in the Iowa cornfield, and what a moment when he sees what is before him.  Burt Lancaster played the older version of Archie “Moonlight” Graham a rookie who got to play in a Major League Game for the New York Giants in 1922 in the movie, but in 1902 in actual history.  He never got to bat and the next season he traded his baseball career in for a medical practice.  Then there is of course, someone who perhaps stole the entire movie and made it his own, James Earl Jones who played the role of Terrence Mann, a writer in the 1960’s that had disappeared from the limelight.  Also there was Ray Liotta, who played the role of the famous Shoeless Joe Jackson.

            I love this movie because it is a movie about redemption.  I love this particular story of redemption because like the Gospel itself it is a multi-layered story of redemption.  Three times revelations are made to Ray Kinsella.  He has a bitter spot in his life.  He and his father had an argument that was never reconciled before Ray Kinsella’s dad John Kinsella died.  They were separated by death and redemption had to overcome the finality of death.  The separation was caused by the brashness of the son who told his father he couldn't respect a man whose hero was a crook.  His father was originally from near Chicago and his hero was Shoeless Joe Jackson.

            The movie shows clearly that the separation between Ray Kinsella and his dad had lasting effects on the son.  There is a hole in his life, a wound not easily healed.  Then he hears the first voice.  He hears a voice in the cornfield and sees a baseball field and the voice tells him "Build it and he will come."  Ray believes he is meant to build a baseball field and Shoeless Joe Jackson will somehow come to his field and place baseball.  Later he hears another voice and it says “Ease his pain.” He understands that he is meant to go and ease 60's writer Terrence Mann's pain.  In his last revelation he hears and senses that he is to “Go the distance” which means he is to go to Minnesota to pick up Archie “Moonlight” Graham.  In each instance as he gets involved with these persons he is brought to face connections between these various persons and the life of his father, John Kinsella.

            Sometimes we forget how similar this is to the plan of the Gospel we are taught by the Church and in the Scriptures.  We are taught about how we have been separated from God the Father by sin and sin leads to death.  How can we overcome death if that is our ultimate lot in life?  But a way of reconciliation with the Father has been announced.  But this way of reconciliation isn't a direct, but an indirect path to the Father.  We are taught to love God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength; but to also love our neighbors as ourselves.  We are taught that Christ is the way to salvation and that he is fully God and fully man.  When we follow Christ we are in the company of our neighbor and brother as well as our God.  We are taught that to make our way to the altar to worship God we must be reconciled to our brother if we have any offense.  That is really what Ray Kinsella learns as he builds a field where both Shoeless Joe Jackson and John Kinsella will play.  That is what Ray Kinsella learns when he eases Terrence Mann's pain as he pursues healing for the pain of his separation from his father.  That is what he learns when he goes the distance to find Archie Graham and hears Archie Graham tell about earning money with pickup games just like John Kinsella had once played baseball in his younger days.  Every part of "Field of Dreams" had two layers.  One layer was the stranger who had needs and the other was the Father from whom we had been separated.  But in reality they were inseparable because they were somehow linked to the father with whom we were pursuing reconciliation.

            I’m not sure why, but somehow I imagine a piece of heaven in an Iowa cornfield.  It is a field where miracles take place, where an old doctor crosses a foul ball line and gets the hot dog unstuck from Annie's throat and knows baseball was a dream but being a doctor was the one thing he was called to do.  It is a place where people will come, if only in their imaginations for an hour or two because they have many things, money even if they think they haven't enough, but peace it is elusive.  Not ordinary forms of peace mind you, but peace the world cannot give.  There is a place maybe in an Iowa cornfield somewhere a son or daughter is coming to learn to overcome death to be reconciled to the Father of us all, of creation and who awaits us to see once and for all the completed building of faith unto which he will come, the easing of pain, and the going of the distance. Yes I love this movie.

In honor of one who has influenced me - John Boonzaaijer on Sanctifying Time - the Book of Common Prayer Perspective

In Honor of those who have Influenced Me:

Rev. John Boonzaaijer

            Father John Boonzaaijer is the rector of Chapel of the Cross Reformed Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas.  I have known Father Boonzaaijer for more than twenty years.  He was my pastor for a number of years and as a close friend I have always been in admiration of his ability to squeeze the most out of a day’s hours so as to be a priest and servant-leader in the church, a husband to his wife, a father to his children, a neighbor to his neighbors, and to lift all these things up to God.  I was greatly blessed a couple of years ago to hear him speak to my church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma on how the church calendar used in the Anglican Book of Prayer reflects a view of time that shaped the early Church calendar.  Father Boonzaaijer shows us how the ancient Church calendar reflects a history of God’s appointing of seasons and times from the beginning of creation that is reflected in the Christian calendar.  I believe his work will be edifying to everyone who uses the Christian calendar, and will help believers from other traditions to at least understand if not consider the values of a church calendar.  It is my privilege to present to you Father Boonzaaijer’s article on “Sanctifying Time.”

 

 

SANCTIFYING TIME

 

We may cherish a “holy minute,” but will the minute make us holy? God not only sanctifies time, He uses time to sanctify the Church—and the Christian.  The Book of Common Prayer orders life and worship by refracting the life of Christ onto the Church’s daily, weekly, annual, and lifetime calendars.
 

 At the Creation of the world, God placed the lights in the sky—some to rule the day, and some to rule the night. But they are placed in the sky for a greater reason: for “signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14). They divide the day from the night and lighten the earth during both. But what else are they for?

 The Book of Numbers explains. God is teaching Israel a “Grammar of Worship” by using time. Taking Israel out of Egypt, God first stops at Mt. Sinai and spends two years to teach the newly redeemed how He wishes to be worshiped. In addition to the moral code of the Ten Commandments Israel becomes schooled into the protocol of approach that God wishes them to use. How, When, Where, and Why are they to come into His presence? Sincerity is not enough.

 Numbers 28 instructs Israel to use the lights of the sky for worship. When should a godly Israelite pray? As the sun comes up and and as it goes down, a lamb is offered, along with the morning and evening prayer. On the seventh day, the sacrifice is doubled. At the first sliver of the new moon, other sacrifices are offered.
 

 After arranging daily, weekly, and monthly worship with the sun’s rising and setting, and the moon’s waxing and waning, God uses the stars to arrange an annual calendar. Three Spring feasts and three Fall feasts move Israel semi-annually through cycles of repentance, redemption, and rejoicing. In the Spring, Passover on the full moon of Nisan (repentance) is followed by the Feast of the First Fruits (redemption), and then the Feast of Weeks (rejoicing). In the Fall, the Feast of Trumpets (repentance) culminates the agricultural season, which is followed by the Day of Atonement (redemption), and the Feast of Tabernacles (rejoicing).

Thus, by God’s design, the celestial creation provides the calendrical mechanics for proper worship. God not only sanctifies time, He uses time to sanctify His people, newly redeemed from slavery in Egypt. The prescribed worship calendar derives order from God’s signs in the sky, and is arranged around agriculture. The Creator of heaven and earth, not the pagan fertility gods, rules all the world: earth, sea, and sky.

What do Jesus and the early Church do with this revelation? Jesus lives under the Law, is shaped by the calendar’s spiritual direction, and completely fulfills the Old Covenant. But destroy them He does not! Moreover, since Jesus promised the eleven that He would be with the Church to the end of the age, and that He would send His Holy Spirit to them to lead them into all truth, the Church does well carefully to observe the calendars developing in the early centuries of Church History. A study of history reveals the Apostles leading the Church to use God’s order of time from the Hebrew calendar as they themselves were led into all truth by the Holy Spirit of Jesus.

Could any forget the Passover, now marked by crucifixion and resurrection? Jesus ascending into heaven? The Gospels keep the life of Jesus at the center of the Church’s worship, and the epistles build all doctrine upon the same. Readers of the New Testament are expected to know that when “the trumpet shall sound,” the last harvest has begun, and the year is now fully “the year of our Lord.” As it took several centuries for God to gift Israel with the Psalms for their daily prayers, so it required several centuries for the Holy Spirit to develop the Church’s annual worship around the life of Christ. But the beginnings are immediate: the Passover is henceforth, and forever, about the Lamb of God.

As a prism refracts one beam of sunshine into the full and glorious spectrum of the rainbow, so the Church quickly began to refract the life of Christ into its annual worship and prayers. Repentance, redemption, and rejoicing were still ordered with days, weeks, seasons, and years, but now circling the life of Christ rather than agriculture. The shape of the Christian calendar continues the Hebrew ellipse with two foci, now Christmas and Easter (incarnation and atonement).
 

 Maintaining these ancient and biblical foundations, the Book of Common Prayer weaves them together into one book for the individuals, families, and parishes of the Church. Advent, Christmas and Epiphany focus spiritual life through the liturgy of the incarnation of the Word made flesh. The Creator God and the Redeemer God are one and the same! Salvation is brought to this world, and is not removed from this world. Creation will be saved.
 

 Next, as Mother, the Church takes her children through (pre) Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, again in the order of repentance, redemption, and rejoicing. In Christ, God conquers sin, Satan, evil, and wickedness by way of the cross. The Church prays with Jesus on His way to Jerusalem, weeps and wonders atop Golgotha, believes at the tomb, and bows before His exalted throne at the right hand of the Father, going on to “walk in the Spirit” and “disciple all nations.”

 During the octave of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, the calendar proceeds to ruminate on what this all means, applying the completed work of Christ to the faithful believer, that he may also “thither ascend” (Ascension Day). The Roman Church counts her remaining Sundays from Pentecost, but Episcopalians (until recently) and Anglicans, have always counted their remaining weeks of the year from Trinity, following the ancient British custom. One advantage of this tradition is further protection from Modalism: Christian pilgrimage is not simply life in the Spirit; rather, life in the Spirit is union with one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (And it is interesting that “fresh words from the Spirit” tend to come from those who now count their Sundays from Pentecost.)

 This calendar is an unspeakable gift for Christian discipleship, teaching repentance, redemption, and rejoicing through annual prayer around the life of Christ. But much remains. Sins entangle our confused souls, hearts are divided, lives are broken, and hopes torn.

 Trinitytide begins and ends in heaven. Families must be rebuilt, vocations clarified, chastity cherished, and sins mortified. The seven deadly sins or passions of the soul are indeed deadly!  Again the Trinitytide calendar orders the Christian soul by cycling through the traditional disorders and passions of the soul, in the order of Purgation, Illumination, and Union with God. The sins of the mind (Pride and Vainglory), the heart (Despair, Sloth, and Wrath), and the appetites (Lust and Covetousness), are brought to the throne of grace in heaven through the kindly order of Trinitytide Sunday Propers.

 Around the life of Christ, the Church is sanctified through God’s ordering of her time: a daily calendar, a weekly calendar, and an annual calendar. It is no mere coincidence that the Prayer Book begins Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, continuing to weekly Sundays, arranged by the Propers for Holy Communion, from year to year. Following the daily, weekly, and annual calendars a final calendar appears: Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Childbirth, Sickness, and Burial.
 

 Such is the Hebrew year, given to the Church in her early centuries. Do not think of the Christian Year as a new idea; it is the pattern God first gave to Israel, teaching her how to worship Him according to His will, fulfilled by Christ, and cherished by the Church. Loathe to abandon such revelation given her in the Old Testament, the Church transposed this calendar through the finished work of the King of Glory.

 Without a calendar ordering my disordered soul, am I missing out on God’s way to bring His Son to His redeemed people? Could that include my sanctification? What better orders my soul: a cherished book with the complete calendar, or a pamphlet for one slice only, thrown away after service? Could this also be true for my curious pagan neighbor?

Written by Rev. John P. Boonzaaijer; Rector of Chapel of the Cross Reformed Episcopal Church, Dallas, Texas.

In Honor of . . . John Armstrong

In Honor of those who have Influenced Me

John Armstrong

 

            One of the interesting questions we ask in life is “Who am I?”  Ultimately that question from the Christian perspective is probably too complex to answer.  It is too complex, from a Christian perspective, because we are created in God’s image.  So it would seem likely that trying to understand ourselves reflects the difficulty of trying to fully comprehend God who is incomprehensible.  We know in part but are known in full is the perspective that so often drives us along in our journeys of faith.  As a writer, even as a blogger I am learning more and more that part of my obligation as a writer is to give credit to thoughts taken from someone else.  As I write today I am writing with a realization that if my person were a written book I would need to put footnotes all over my person like tattoos.  One footnote would say “this is something my dad contributed me”.  Then another would cite my mother.  Today I am writing an article about how part of my life should have an acknowledgement to John Armstrong for helping me desire to be connected to more of the diversity among Christians found within Christ’s church.

            I have known John Armstrong for slightly over thirty years.  We had lost track of one another, but reconnected through Facebook last year.  I discovered he was into something called missional-ecumenism.  He had written a book on it entitled Your Church is too Small. (Recommended reading)   I wasn’t sure what to make of missional-ecumenism.  The more I read and listened to him the more he made sense.  Christ prayed for church unity, that we would be one in Christ. (John 17:11)  John believed that this was something important enough that Christians should be seeking to bring it about.  He is realistic.  He knows that we can’t just sweep every issue that divides Christians under the rug.  But there is a need for us to be looking to grow together in Christ, and a need to quit easily accepting the multitudes of divisions that exist in the world of Christendom.  I recently read that there are now more than 10,000 Christian denominations in the world.  You don’t need me to list the reasons we have divisions.  You can write your own list.  We shouldn’t be so ready to accept them.  Jesus prayed for our unity and not our disunity.

            Maybe we can’t solve all our divisions in one generation.  I think John has ideas on how we can move towards the eventual goal of Christian unity.  John has worked with numerous church leaders from various denominations to encourage a greater sense of solidarity and shared mission between churches with their share of differences.  As a layman, it is my intent to build relationships with more Christians from a varied and diverse background within the Christian world.  I desire to be growing in my pursuit of Christian unity alongside my other obligations in seeking to grow in grace as I grow in age.

Perhaps if we can’t envision church unity among the tens of thousands of Christian denominations, we can envision reaching out to a Christian with whom we disagree about something.  Perhaps it will mean simply trying to learn why we disagree.  We may be tempted to think the worst of a person, when it might prove helpful to think better of the person.  A woman on Twitter asked in an insightful Tweet, “Can we believe that the person who disagrees with us may not be stupid or evil, but has simply looked at all the same things we have and reached a different conclusion?”  If when Christians argued we would begin with that assumption, instead of believing there must be something wrong with them when they disagree, might that not help us in the way we deal with our differences?  If I understand John, he wants to see us develop healthy responses to our divisions rather than unhelpful responses.  We can’t simply get rid of 10,000 denominations overnight, because in virtually all those denominations someone’s life is being nourished within that expression of Christianity and Jesus is the one who does not wish to break the bruised reed dependent on the care a young or old believer has found in the place where he exists.  But still we yearn for becoming more connected to more of Christ’s church and not to less of it.

            I can happily express that some of the most satisfying relationships I have discovered in the last year have been with people with whom I did not imagine I had much in common.  I thought they were too much my opposite in matters of the Christian faith.  But as I followed them on Twitter, where I have made some friendships with people with whom I probably differed most, I would find for every tweet where we disagreed there would be several where we would agree.  Some of these tweets have proved to be genuine blessings that added something to my life that I would never have known except I was willing to listen for a change to someone I was tempted to think was too different from me for me to have any basis of fellowship.  But if another is attracted to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, then we share an interest in Jesus Christ which makes discovery of our unity in Christ worth discovering and building upon.

            I close out my honoring of John Armstrong by linking you to a recent blog of his on the subject of dialogue and dogma.  I hope you will read this valuable part of his story where he looks from his Protestant perspective with what we all can learn from Pope Francis about how dialogue and dogma go together.

Please link here to John Armstrong’s blog on dialogue and dogma

 

 

Because Lent is near

Because Lent is near

I will retreat into the Wilderness

and Guests will share their stories here

The last blog written by Dan McDonald until following Easter Sunday

 

            I do not have a balanced soul.  I get sidetracked by desperate moods or preoccupied by latest whims.  Living alone probably magnifies these flaws.  So on occasion I must speak to my unbalanced and undisciplined ways.  I have been blogging for a little over one year.  I have followed the whims of the little feller in my head who says “we could write about this, this, that, and oh this here.  But now I know it is time to tell him, that he must be silent for a while.  It would be better if I listened to a different voice beckoning me and then when the time is right we will write.  But a voice beckons me to come into the wilderness, to be silent and to attend to the Rabbi I am to meet in the Wilderness.  I have been told that I must go to the mountain with him.  The Rabbi, who carries the wood, is beckoning me to make a part of the journey alongside him.  I am to be silent, to be like a child, to be as Isaac in this journey; for the wood the Rabbi carries is to be carried to a mountain where a sacrifice is to be made.  I am to walk, sit, kneel, and pray in silence until the appointed sacrifice on a dark Friday when the sun will shine not during the hour of sacrifice for the appointed lamb.

            I must put aside my pen and leave my keyboard behind, and blog no more.  I understood this without words.  I wondered if this meant that no blogs would appear for these forty days.  I heard no voice but it was as if I understood that it was time I was to treat my offer of a blog as if it were not really about me at all.  It could not be about me if I wished for a visitor to be granted a blessing for having visited the pages of a panhandling philosopher.  I felt hurt, but then it was if a burden was removed that I had carried far too long.  I thought of an icon of one known as John the Forerunner, and I prayed quietly "May I decrease that you may increase", may I be content in the Baptizer's prayer.

            I felt again though he spoke no words how God had blessed me through the lives of others, and intended me to learn from others and intended me to be in some moment a blessing for others.  I have been blessed by others, often the best thing to be seen in me is something written upon my soul by another who has imparted something from his life to mine.  I wish sometimes the good that one could see in me might be hidden for the better to have been able to be seen by him or her who taught it to me.  For so often the good they see in me is I think the better they could see in another whose life taught me.  Then I understood that while I traveled on my Lenten journey, I could ask those who taught me good to share the story of their better to those who come to my page for a small blessing. I began to think of people to ask who would share their story while I was away on my Lenten journey.  I am not sure how many of you might get my call.  Some of you from old and a few from new might get an email, a direct message, asking if you would share something of the story of something I have valued learning from you.  For I am sure that I would love to tell the story, but I am sure that you are the one to tell it better.  Please consider what I will ask of you.

            I want to complete this blog today with words I read expressed long ago by St. Bonaventure.  He said “God is the one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”  Think about those words, “God is the one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

I admit, as an ignorant Protestant, I don’t know his writings, but I know how these words have spoken to me and that they may be shared with you.  I know that God, infinite and beyond our comprehension so loved the world that he sent His Son into the world that He might bring us to God.  Because God’s center is everywhere, then if the love of God in the life of Jesus Christ has found you, then you are at the very center of God.  He has loved you as if you are the whole world, and he has loved me, and he has loved those for whom he came, and only those who would flee his presence and cry out for the rocks and mountains to fall upon them will not be there in his center, for he has placed each of us in the center in his only begotten son.  I know also that there is no circumference regarding God, no limiting boundary to his love shared with his people.  We fallible human beings draw circles beckoning one person to a special confidence and pushing a soul we do not favor to the fringes.  We know that sin abides in us, who would seek to do good and we draw circles, “O’ mighty God have mercy upon us.”  But with him there is no circumference and if you are his in Christ then you are in the center of his love and never on the fringes.  So I am sure now I can do this.  I can make a Lenten journey, and know that my guests will share a story and that God through our strengths and weaknesses, and they are both alike to him, will have each of you at the center of his love.