Carl-Martin Nelson

April 10, 2012

Carl-Martin Nelson

Hockey Mom Joke and Inadequacy:

A young, struggling hockey coach called a 9 year-old player over to the bench during a time out and spoke rather sternly to him:   Do you understand that when you knock another player to the ice when the puck is nowhere near you that the referee will call a penalty and that it is not OK to call the referee names, start fights, swear loudly, or threaten retaliation?

Yessir, I understand, said the player.

And do you understand that when you are playing poorly or sloppily that I might have to bench you for a period and get you thinking straight about the game and that it isn’t OK then to abuse me or the other coaches, throw things around, or scream angrily?

Yessir, I understand, said the player.

Great.  Now would you please go over there and explain this all to your mother.

Like this coach we all feel inadequate, lost or maybe even like imposters sometimes.  We find ourselves in situations – often self-inflicted – where we are truly in over our heads.  I can point to three times in my life when I was almost completely at a loss for what to do:

·        1st day as dean: After being on staff for a number of years I took a few summers off to work on a masters degree and returned as dean when a position opened.  I didn’t know that many of the staff and very few of the campers.  I remember waking up on the first morning ready to face and hopefully inspire my staff of sixty counselors and teachers for the first time and having a complete moment of panic.  I thought to myself: “One day very soon they will discover that I have no idea what I’m doing and that I am in no way qualified for this job and they will assemble with pitchforks and cudgels and drive me from the Village.”

·        1st day teaching:

·        Driving home from hospital with my first child:  The nurses took such great care of us and helped with the first diaper changes, figuring out the feedings, and how to take care of ourselves and the baby.  On the morning that we were discharged, I remember riding down the elevator with the nurse, watching her teach us how to strap the car seat in safely, and then waving good-by as we drove away.  I almost broke into a cold sweat wondering what on earth we would do next and convinced that there was no way we weren’t going to mess this up completely.

The Psalm:

When Tim and Tessa sent me the readings for today I immediately recognized a whisper of the same sense of inadequacy though maybe not the panic that the hockey coach and I felt.  The Psalmist praises God for the power and love that help him conquer his enemies – God’s love that demands that justice and righteousness prevail.

 1 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
   his love endures forever.

 2 Let Israel say:
   “His love endures forever.”

14 The LORD is my strength and my defense;
   he has become my salvation.

19 Open for me the gates of the righteous;
   I will enter and give thanks to the LORD.
20 This is the gate of the LORD
   through which the righteous may enter.
21 I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
   you have become my salvation.

 22 The stone the builders rejected
   has become the cornerstone;
23 the LORD has done this,
   and it is marvelous in our eyes.
24 The LORD has done it this very day;
   let us rejoice today and be glad.

Understanding the importance of humility is critical to understanding this passage and the Psalmist’s acknowledgement of God’s greatness and power.  The Psalmist recognizes his need for salvation – stemming from his own failings – and this recognition helps him understand and access God’s power.  This same recognition of inadequacy is what makes great teachers great.  As a veteran high school teacher I believe firmly that every great teacher I have ever known feels incomplete and that sense of incompleteness creates a compelling desire to learn more – more about her students, more about his discipline, more about learning, more about teaching.  In contrast, the very weakest teachers I have ever encountered feel they pretty much know everything there is to know.

Salvation, power and justice come to the Psalmist through acknowledgement and praise of God’s love and the recognition of his own shortcomings.  He gets it: The Lord is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.  As Paul says to the Corinthians, flesh and blood alone cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

MLK:

46 years ago Dr. MLK struggled with these concepts of power, love, humility and justice in his speech “Where do we go from here?” delivered at the SCLC in August of 1967.

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

King’s historical context was challenging and may have had more to do with the historically conflict-ridden world of the Psalms.  He wanted to share a message of non-violence and love in contrast to the message of violence and hate espoused by some of his contemporaries but he didn’t want to preach about a trite or hackneyed love.  In Old Testament Biblical terms, God’s love was not necessarily divorced from violence or power.  Case in point would be the verses left out of today’s reading of Psalm 118:

 8 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
   than to trust in humans.
9 It is better to take refuge in the LORD
   than to trust in princes.
10 All the nations surrounded me,
   but in the name of the LORD I cut them down.
11 They surrounded me on every side,
   but in the name of the LORD I cut them down.
12 They swarmed around me like bees,
   but they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns;
   in the name of the LORD I cut them down.
13 I was pushed back and about to fall,
   but the LORD helped me.
Now there are plenty of verses in the Old Testament that can make a liberal, main-stream Christian like myself a little uneasy.  And there are ways to explain these sorts of passages to help them go down a little better.  But at the end of the day we may need to realize that God’s love – and the fullness of God’s love that comes with surrender – is not a saccharine slogan on a greeting card.  As King seems to be saying, we can’t understand or realize God’s love without understanding its relationship to power and justice.

Lost in Vienna:

My father was a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Arizona and I grew up in Tucson in the 70’s and 80’s.  In 1978 he applied for and got a two year position with the United Nations in Vienna, Austria training the nuclear inspectors that travel around the world inspecting nuclear facilities in countries that have signed the non-proliferation treaty.  With almost no German language proficiency I found myself in a German-speaking school surrounded by Austrian students on the first day of what would have been my 7th grade year.  There are four children in my family – I’m the third –  and we all have our stories to tell about learning a new language from scratch, acclimating to a new culture, making friends in a strange setting and grieving for our lost friends and home back in Tucson.  Our stories all reveal, however what we know to be true at the Language Villages:  language and cultural immersion work.  Within a remarkably short time I was much more comfortable, made lots of friends, was getting by in the language and was starting to feel very much at home.  In fact my younger brother and I began to feel so much at home that we began what seems to me today to be a strange tradition on Sunday afternoons.  Children under the age of 18 could ride public transportation (subways, streetcars and busses) for free in Vienna at that time, and we would often leave the apartment on a Sunday afternoon after church and try as hard as we could to simply get lost in the city.  We would get on one of the subway lines near our apartment in the sixth district of Mariahilf and get off at what looked like a busy station.  We would then ride the escalator up to the street and get on the very first streetcar or bus that came by taking great pains to look only at each other and trying not to peek at the signs as we rode through the city.  We would then jump onto a few more busses or streetcars and when we felt we had gone far enough we would get off and try to figure out a) where we were and then b) the most efficient way home.  I don’t think my parents were terrible parents even though I don’t know that I would allow my 13 and 9 year sons embark on adventures like this today.  Now my hero Garrison Keillor would weave into this story the amazing things we discovered along the way: maybe a beautiful Eden-like garden or park in the 19th district, a magic shop in Meidling, maybe a very wise old woman on the steps of the old church on the Dorotheergasse – but that wouldn’t be very honest.  While we may have discovered a great little Konditorei that serves fantastic pastries or Krapfen, I think what’s more important is that we simply discovered and developed the ability to get ourselves lost and to get ourselves found.

Conclusion:

Unlike these adventures in Vienna where my brother and I would get out of a self-imposed jam with wits, experience, and cooperation, both the Psalmist and Paul in his letter to the Corinthians exult and revel in the help that they need, the salvation they get, from God.  As a 13 year old boy I felt like I was the answer to my problems; as an adult I know that is simply not true.  I became a respected teacher by learning from my colleagues, learning from my students, and being part of a progressive community of educators.  God’s love and power are evident to me every day in the mission of the Language Villages and the College, the excellent work of my colleagues and co-workers, and the help and support I get from the wider Concordia community.  

 

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