Eat, Pray, Love

I recently finished reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And I feel obliged to stop here and point out that this is definitely not the kind of book I would normally undertake. Staci asked me to read it so we could discuss it, and I agreed.

Anyway, Gilbert points out early on that she can’t call herself a Christian, which put me on my guard. And while there are spiritual aspects of her book that I simply can’t agree with, there are many others that challenge me.

Among them is a situation in which she describes herself as being completely desperate to hear from God, and she cries out to Him and demands an answer. Immediately, she gets one. In fact, she describes similar scenarios in other places in her book, where she calls on God, and He answers her.

Most of the conversations she describes with God are not examples of places where I can’t agree with her. The responses she describes seem very much in line with God’s character, as I understand it. However, reading her descriptions makes me feel (yeah, I know – I used the F word) simultaneously Pharisaical and jealous:

• Pharisaical because I think, "Hey, that’s not how you’re supposed to approach God." Part of me is indignant that she didn’t deliberately find a quiet place, clear her mind of its clutter, perhaps listen to some good Christian music, read a few Bible passages, and then, with all humility and meekness, politely ask God for His intervention in her life.


• Jealous because part of me says, "Wow, that’s more along the lines of the relationship I’d like to have with God." The steps I described above are more like the approach I take when I think about praying. It shouldn’t be hard to believe, then, that I don’t spend a lot of time praying.

There’s no doubt which approach is more Biblical. In Ephesians 3:12, Paul says, "Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God's presence." Come to think of it, it’s also Biblical for God to use someone who’s not in His "club" to teach lessons to those who are.

Baseball Beatdown

I figure all of us have been on a horrendously bad sports team at one time or another. My seventh-grade football team was so bad that before the last game, our coach offered to buy us all a beer if we won. He later insisted he meant root beer, but either way, he was pretty confident he wouldn’t have to pay up.

For all of us who’ve ever had to endure a crushing defeat, we can at least take heart that it wasn’t as bad as this story from Yahoo! Sports:

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TOKYO, April 17 (Reuters) - A Japanese high school pleaded for a regional game to be abandoned after surrendering 66 runs in less than two innings, local media reported on Thursday.

The coach of Kawamoto technical high school threw in the towel to spare his pitcher’s arm with his team losing 66-0 with just one batter out in the bottom of the second.

The hapless hurler had already sent down over 250 pitches, allowing 26 runs in the first inning and 40 in the second before Kawamoto asked for mercy.

“At that pace the pitcher would have thrown around 500 pitches in four innings,” Kawamoto’s coach was quoted as saying. “There was a danger he could get injured.”

Opponents Shunshukan were officially credited with a 9-0 victory, giving the line score a tinge of respectability for the luckless Kawamoto school.

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Wow! Even my junior high football team wasn’t that bad!

Sinus Mess

So I’m in the midst of yet another sinus infection. It has occurred to me that I’ve been averaging about three sinus infections a year for the past 6 years, and this is my fourth one since December. It’s really frustrating, especially since training for a triathlon is difficult when you’re sick all the time. Thus, I went to my doctor yesterday armed with the attitude that “if what you’re doing isn’t working, do something else.”

He reviewed my records, and he agreed that something different is, in fact, called for. He mentioned something called a sinus ablation. It’s a relatively new procedure in which the sinuses are removed and replaced with a balloon-like device (kind of like an angioplasty). I had preliminary X-rays done yesterday, and assuming those show that I’m a good candidate, I’m supposed to have the procedure done on May 6. You can read more about the procedure at www.sinusablation.info.