I’m a day late, but I have continued my long tradition of filling out an NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket based on which team’s mascot I think would win in a fight. Let’s break some rules and get going:

• One-on-one fights unless plurality is indicated by the singular form of the nickname (e.g. Wolfpack or Pride)

• Mascots have to engage with one another, you can’t just hide and wait it out

• Specificity typically bests generality (e.g. Grizzlies defeat Bears)

I should also state that although my Furman Paladins are in the Tournament for the second time in my life and I will be staying up way past my bedtime to watch them tonight, I tried to not give them an unfair advantage (though you will see that they go far for what I believe to be legitimate reasons). Any questions? Don’t know what you’d do with them because this is a blog. Let’s go!

There are days when words flow easily. And there are days when well just seems dry. Today is the latter day and I will simply let it be.

Our oldest son has spent the last two months serving on the crew of his high school’s spring musical that culminated this past weekend. This group of teenagers and adult volunteers put on a production of Hello Dolly that punched way above its weight. The set, choreography, orchestra, singing, acting, and all the things was so impressive and the show was a delight in spite of some dated gender politics.

It is special to see over a hundred students harness a myriad of talents into such a cohesive end result. Even better was witnessing the real community that grew over the production’s formation. I could see it in the hugs and tears on closing night and I heard it for weeks in the stories that Jim would tell me when I picked him up from school. These kids are alright and that is good news for the world.

John Mulaney had a bit about seeing a gazebo that was erected during the middle of the Civil War and compared it to the absurdity of doing stand-up comedy during the fraught and, in retrospect, quaint days of the first administration of the White House’s current occupant. The same logic could apply to putting on a song-and-dance musical in the midst of our current upheaval of violent ICE overreach, the thick corruption surrounding the Epstein Files, bombing of ships near Venezuela, and now another way in the Middle East. Is it absurd to put on a musical in this kind of world? Maybe. Is it essential? Absolutely.

I wish I had the confidence
to say what I knew to be true
that the perceived limp
was that hitch in a step as
a runner hits their stride
or that maybe the hobble
was akin to Jacob’s affliction
a sure and steady sign of
a holy tussle with the Almighty
Those words did not come
so I walked away with a limp
that was not there
a limp that has healed
but still sometimes hurts

While I have never described it as one of my favorite television shows, I have always enjoyed and appreciated Scrubs. It is simultaneously smart and goofy while similarly balancing the weight and levity needed to survive in the life and death world of healthcare. Because everything is being rebooted right now, Scrubs just debuted their first two episodes of Season 10 nearly 16 years after its last episode aired. So far I really liked what I saw. I laughed and there were a few moments that made me reflect.

In the second episode, there is a plot in which a young doctor becomes disillusioned when he finds that out that his patient keeps having to come back to the hospital because his medication is so expensive that he must parcel it out rather than taking it daily as needed. J.D., now the Chief of Medicine at Sacred Heart and this young doctor’s teacher, witnesses the slow death of the practitioner’s hope. Hope is the worst death of them all.

J.D. has to impart the difficult lesson that all doctors can do is the most good that they can while on their shift and then they need to leave it behind when they go home. Of course, J.D. also couples that message with doing the best he can via obtaining sample’s of the patient’s medicine and entering the labyrinthine beast that is the American health insurance system on the patient’s behalf.

A young person stands on the ledge of a tall building. Despair etches their face as they peer over the ledge. Before they can make a move, they hear a voice: “Your doctor really did get held up, Regan. It’s never as bad as it seems.”

Regan turns around and sees the Superman, more powerful than a locomotive, standing there. And the Man of Steel tells this overwhelmed kid, “You’re much stronger than you think you are. Trust me.” Then Superman pulls Regan into a hug.

That might be the greatest four panels in comic book history. It is certainly the best encapsulation of Superman as a character. It is true that he can leap tall buildings in a single bound and bullets bounce off of his chest. Yet this scene is what makes Superman who he is. A moment to stop and give hope to a hopeless person about to give up.

There was a stretch in Fall 2016 when I listened to the soundtrack for Hamilton constantly. I spent a lot of evenings going on runs because my wife and sons had not moved to Nashville yet. I found out that the first act of the musical roughly coincided with the time that it took me to run eight to ten miles (man, I miss the guy who could do that). Songs like “My Shot” and “Yorktown” gave me a shot of adrenaline to pick up the pace while the songs like “Helpless” and “Wait For It” let me settle into a more comfortable groove.

As such, I like the first act of Hamilton way more than the second. Granted some of that has to do with the fact that Act I is this ragtag group winning the Revolutionary War while Act II is Hamilton letting his ego and libido lead him to do dumb things and multiple characters being murdered because of antiquated ideas about honor. Plus there are not as many bangers in the back half (though “Room Where It Happened” and “What Did I Miss?” are fun; it’s a good musical!).

All of this is a long preamble to say that the most cringe moment, to borrow a phrase I generally don’t like from Gen Z, is at the end of “It’s Quiet Uptown.” The song finds Alexander Hamilton wandering the streets as his professional and personal life has come unraveled. Spoiler alerts from American history upcoming: a sex scandal has ruined his reputation and his son was killed in duel trying to defend Ham’s honor.

Leviticus begins with the clear goals and boundaries that are necessary for the sake of a moral and a religious society, and the tangent is set in motion with the final so-called “Golden Rule.” This all leads and develops to create the Jesus phenomenon, and what could well be called Jesus’ “commandments,” which go far beyond mere boundary-keeping to actually moving beyond all boundaries to take care of those who did not make it, do not fit in, the outsider, the criminal, the vulnerable, and the weak. It is quite a leap which, to be honest, many Christians have never made. You could obey the Ten Commandments perfectly all of your life and never come close to the mark that Jesus sets for the final judgment.
—Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, 26-27

And there it is. Ever since reading it this morning, I have had that paragraph and especially that last sentence rattling around in my head. Because of course that is the difference of actually following Jesus. It is not whether you can keep the commandments, it is whether you are doing what you can to care for those who do not make it, do not fit in, the outsider, the criminal, the vulnerable, and the weak (Rohr also points out that seed of what Jesus is talking about is right there in Leviticus’ admonishment to love your neighbor as yourself).

This last month is Minnesota, we witnessed ordinary people doing just this. There has been a movement to protect neighbors that have been targeted by ICE. Through grocery runs, carpools, Zoom calls, protests, whistles, and so much more.