Authenticity

I note this week my disagreement with sports talk radio hosts I've heard who say they don't care whether Bonds used steroids or not. They say the excitement in baseball is centered around the homerun - that baseball is merely entertainment - if steroids produce more homeruns, it adds to the entertainment value; a greater degree of entertainment fills the seats; and that's good for baseball.

My baseball hero is Mickey Mantle; a person as flawed as I am. He said all the time, "if I knew I was going to live this long, I would've treated my body with much more care." Amen to that, brother. Sure, he was doing things off the field that weren't commendable. These things he did, however, never enhanced his abilities on the field; indeed, they detracted from them, and yet, he was still a great player in spite of the self-abuse.

There's something familiar in that which relates to my ordinary life; that despite my flaws, I do my best when it comes to what really counts - in the end, it's a matter of determining what's real and worth the effort, giving that all you've got, while not paying much attention to what doesn't count for much, or to that which may have unkind consequences.

At the end of his life, after he'd been criticized for allegedly jumping to the head of the line for a liver transplant on account of his fame, (I told my wife I had given him one of mine - she said, "you only have one liver, dummy, he's not asking for your one of your kidneys...), Mickey said to the world in a press conference from the hospital, just days from his death, "if you're looking for a role model, it aint me." Honesty, class, authenticity: can you say the same about Bonds and, for that matter, most of the rest of the sports world today?

Kids today have a hard time distinguishing between what's real and what isn't; they've not been conditioned to know the difference. The AP reports about a study where children were given identical carrots in McDonalds wrappers and plain wrappers. Fifty-four percent, to 23 percent, preferred the McDonalds wrapped carrots -- presumably, the other 23 percent, the normal kids, didn't like carrots at all...

My mom said to me once "only you could move from our small town in Florida to DC for work and still end up in a small town in Virginia." There's a story in our local hometown rag about a drug store down town that's been open for 138 years. There's still a soda fountain "where locals gather for malts, floats, and homemade chicken salad, and a pharmacy in the back where you can literally get your prescriptions made to order."

You could even find a place like that in the heart of DC until about 15 years ago - a small lunch counter in a drug store on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 21st Street. My friend Rob and I walked down to it once a week, for many years, for the best burgers and milk shakes in town - the counter gals were a grouchy lot, but you felt it was the same type of fuss your mother made when she wanted to make sure everything was taken care of around the house.

The sense of what really matters permeates our church struggle - when I read about a mega-church in Texas that cancelled a memorial service for a Navy vet 24 hours before it was to start when they found out he was gay; a 93-year old elder of our Diocese who's now worried she won't have a funeral because a majority of local congregants, with whom she's gone to church for 50 years, decided she isn't in communion with them anymore; or the 18 men in Nigeria, including 5 from the human rights advocacy group, Changing Attitude Nigeria, that have just been arrested on trumped up charges of sodomy, and now face the death penalty, I know what's truly at stake.

When the newly re-elected Bishop designate of South Carolina says, when asked point blank, if he will leave the Episcopal Church, if consecrated, and responds, "I don't intend to leave," I know he's not being authentic.

When one of the 21 deposed priests of the Diocese of Virginia, after having told the search committee of the parish that interviewed him, and the Diocesan office, that if called, he would not leave TEC, then proceeded to leave, and led his church out as well, claiming rights to the property, says, "this [deposition] news does bring great sorrow to my heart," I know he's not being authentic.

This is what it means to be authentic: you honor our veterans; you don't cause a beloved elder of the parish worry, sufferng and undue pain at the end of her life; you speak clearly and keep your word; you recognize and accept that the things you say, and the groups you join, can mean life or death, even for people you don't know, on the other side of the globe.


P.S. In the past few weeks, I've seen references to the yahoo I've been writing about in Garrison Keilor's book on why he's a Democrat with also a passing reference that the originator of the designation is H.L. Mencken. I've read some Mencken, at the local library, finding much of it appalling and dated, but if anyone has a direct citation to the founding of the original yahoo label, I'd be appreciative if you'd pass it on.