lay, lead her


i am glad i was at the bama game yesterday. outside of the terrible piped in music that played during any significant pause in the action, yesterday was everything that you could ask for out of a college football game if your college football team ended up on the winning end of things. if i were joe tennessee fan, i would be upset with my kicker. upset with the officials that didn't call a penalty after cody ripped his helmet off. i would forget about the pass interference non-call that went "our" way late in the second quarter. and i would call bama overrated as often as i saw fit over the next two weeks and tell all my friends how lsu is going to beat "that team" in tuscaloosa in two weeks.

thank god i am not joe tennessee fan.

i am fan of the university of alabama. more specifically and less conditionally, i am a fan of the football team. the football team that lost their starting tight end during warm-ups. the football team with the defense that would have gone three consecutive games without giving up a touchdown if eric berry (props to that guy, seriously) didn't go and do what eric berry does and rip the ball from mark ingram. the football team that yesterday had terrence cody and your team didn't. the team with the fans (or at least the guy behind me yesterday) that now think any play not involving mark ingram running the ball is "stupid", "idiotic" and "we've lost our minds" all at the same time. (funny how a few heisman mentions can change one's way of thinking. silly.) the last time i went to a tennessee game, sarah and i left before the end of the fourth quarter and got home before the overtime extravaganza ended in a tide loss. yesterday left a better taste than that. the last time i was as excited at the end of a football game as i was yesterday afternoon, i was nine and looking at van tiffin's back and not fully grasping that i witnessed, in person, one of "those moments" that were going to end up in a pre-game montage. i witnessed, in person, another one of "those moments" yesterday, twenty-three years later. pretty cool stuff. i haven't had time to process it fully yet, but my morning after memories have already sketched the outline of what will be a fairly terrific painting years down the road. thanks, amy and katie. a good day. the best of friends. alabama football. a dramatic win. hear, hear.

and so, the sun brought with it a sunday morning. a sunday morning that i find myself at the store and not the church. the story will be the same next sunday too. but next sunday will have followed what will be our halloween carnival. not a "halloween carnival" or a fall festival. not some poor excuse for a party on the 25th or the 28th or some morning during next week that's not so scary because it isn't dark yet that you are throwing on some day that is not october 31st. and no one knows what to expect. isn't that the best and most terrifying feeling ever? the unknown? the uncertainty that our community could come out in droves and prove to us, once and for all, why we shouldn't have done the carnival without more support from the church on the whole. to me, it is. because for me, i want there to be 500 or more people in our parking lot next saturday night. i want us to be overwhelmed. i want us to regret our decision in as good a way as possible. i want it to be a tipping point. i want it to be so big and so bad (like, michael jackson bad) that we must and we should recalculate what our church in the middle of huffman needs and looks to be. and i want to thank the few of you that have stuck your neck out and said that you think it's as important as it is and should be.

at the universtiy of alabama, they don't play football, they live it.

at humc, do we go to church, or do we live it?