Bruins are Going to the Stanley Cup Finals!!!!

I'm not going to lie, the best thing about today is knowing that my beloved Boston Bruins are going to the Stanley Cup Finals.  In my lifetime Boston sports have been rather fantastic: the Red Sox ended their long World Series drought, twice; the Celtics have been fairly dominant for the second half of my life; the Patriots have been arguably the best team in the last decade; Boston University and Boston College have both notched NCAA hockey championships; and even the Boston lacrosse team (the Cannons) has been pretty darn good.  All the while the Boston Bruins have not been bad either, but they have been the one team that as of yet has failed to break through.  No matter how often I say, "It's ok, they're a young team, they'll be better next year," it has still been a frustratingly long five or six seasons.  Of course, the Bruins haven't won yet, but I am already elated because they are back in the spotlight where they belong.

Today was another short day by Thomas's standards.  A little over 40 miles from Akron to Lakewood (a suburb just to the west of Cleveland, on the lake wouldn't ya know).  Perhaps it was the fact that the Bruins won combined with knowing that I have a rest day tomorrow that pumped a little extra blood into my legs to help me ride quite a bit faster than I have been.  Whatever it was, I was riding at speeds that really made me feel good so my joy over the Bruins was only heightened.

The next question is, "How appropriate is it to spend three hours on a bike thinking about the Bruins when you're supposed to be thinking about the 27 million slaves?"  First of all, I'd like to comment that based on my mother's calculations, we are ten days in and have pedaled approximately 2 million revolutions, or something, I forget what she said.  More to the point, I'm read the book, Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World, by Gary A. Hauden, while I ride.  I'm using the book sort of as a foundation for my reflection.  There are a lot of good things in it that I've read so far, but I'm only going to use the book for the blog when we have a totally uneventful day, when I have no other thoughts or reflections, or when it's perfectly relevant.

Now is one of those times that something I read in the book is perfectly relevant.  I will quote part of what Mr. Haugen wrote in chapter 2, "Preparing the Mind and Spirit Through Scripture,":

"[Young babies] have not yet developed the mental capacity for object permanence, that is, the understanding that objects exist even when they are out of sight.  It is truly a case of out of sight, out of mind.

I must confess that this is very much the way my mind often works when it comes to maintaining an interest in the reality of injustice in our world.  I read about innocent people being slaughtered in the Congo on page A1 of the Washington Post, and I am appalled.  But my mind moves on to other things with amazing speed and thoroughness when I read on page D15 that the movie my wife and I were hoping to see actually starts a half hour earlier than we thought.  When I read about the way abandoned orphan girls in China are tied to their bed rails and left to starve and die in state-run orphanages, I am very nearly moved to tears.  But a year later when a conversation with a friend reminds me of the article, I realize that I have not shed a tear, uttered a prayer or even given it thought since the day I put down that newspaper article.  I can move from torture on the evening news to touchdowns on Monday Night Football with almost the same mental and emotional ease as my channel changer....

Christians, of course, are meant to be particularly gifted in sustaining a commitment to what is true and important though unseen....

Admittedly, this calling strikes me as burdensome.  On any given day I am so busy trying to order the stress and vulnerability out of my own life that the notion of remembering a child prostitute in India, a torture victim in Indonesia or a child laborer in Honduras seems beyond the core of my Christian calling.  But what is the core of my Christian calling?  Every Christian who knows his or her Bible has a ready answer: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves... Accordingly, the call to remember the oppressed is couched in the logic of love... Surely it is God's job to remember all the victims of injustice in our world, but might there not be one child, one prisoner, one widow, one refugee that I can remember?"

My hunch is that I am not the only one who can relate to feeling guilty about celebrating a Bruins win and forgetting what our mission or purpose to our oppressed brothers and sisters is or not putting into action our outrage from reading or watching the news.  Haugen touches on something we all know very well and experience every day.  We think to ourselves how awful the various and widespread injustices in the world are and oftentimes think that we or someone should do something about it... and then nothing happens.

It's ok.  It really is.  We have lives that we need to live and it would be entirely unhealthy if all we did were think about all the problems needing solving.  I'm continually amazed at people who can work for more than three hours straight without taking a break.  Life is not very enjoyable if all we do is work.  We need breaks.  In fact, I'd even argue that the breaks of life are the reason why we live, all this working stuff just gets in the way.  So go ahead, celebrate the Bruins first trip to the Stanley Cup finals in thirty years (if you're a Bruins fan, of course... if you're not a Bruins fan, then, you should be).  Enjoy it, revel in it even.

But let's keep our priorities straight, yeah?  I can celebrate the Bruins, but it would be irresponsible and unloving of me if cheering for the Bruins gets in the way of loving others.  Love should always be our first priority.  Life doesn't need to be about loving others all the time, but it does need to be our first priority at all times.  Nothing should get in the way of our loving.  We need not feel guilty about not doing more as long as we live our lives in the attitude of love.  So let's be always in the attitude of love for the sake of the 27 million slaves that need our love, and for whom Thomas and I are speeding towards 27 million revolutions.