This is what I am going to do for playtime(s). After Friday class ends at 2:30 I am going to The Posse East and hang out with whoever happens to be there for however long I care to stay. The Posse is a bar at the end of the street where major theological discussions are continued, started or ended beween students, faculty and staff. Then at 4:00 I am going to the park for flag football practice. SSW and the "Presby's" (Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is in the same neighborhood) have a friendly and long standing flag football game every November. It's called the Polity Bowl and we are the "Thundering Thuri-bulls" (play on thurible: a metal container used for incense in a procession on high holy days). We have shirts with numbers and everything! SSW won last year for the first time in many years and we (the Juniors) are determined to win again. I'm the snapper, because I can't catch a ball to save my life-not so great at blocking either but they have a no-cut policy, just like all good Christian schools! My teammates have said they are going to nominate me for "MVP Snapper" - I hope I win!!! Look for the results after November 20th.
Now I have a group of football buddies to hang out with and watch football-not anywhere close to being at Jordan-Hare on a fall Saturday but will have to do...We went down to the Posse to watch OU and AU but UT fans had swarmed the place after their embarassing loss to UCLA. I guess they were there nursing their loss. So off we went to the Weeks Center (student lounge) to watch the games. We watched the first half of OU, turned on Auburn and then headed to the Posse at halftime. My friend Jamie and I showed the Posse what AU fans do to support their team-and taught them all "War Eagle-Hey!" We will have them doing it and singing "it's great to be and Auburn Tiger" before the season is over! We need a care package of shakers if anyone is so inclined.
You might wonder where seminary fits into all of this...well it really does. I am learning about creating new life and new community and who I want to play with. I thought of this poem as I was finishing this up. It is a perfect reminder for how life is, how it will be and how it can be if we remember what we learned when we were so young.
"ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum.
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:
- Share everything.
- Play fair.
- Don't hit people.
- Put things back where you found them.
- Clean up your own mess.
- Don't take things that aren't yours.
- Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
- Wash your hands before you eat.
- Flush.
- Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
- Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
- Take a nap every afternoon.
- When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
- Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
- Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
- And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
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