Speed, Friction, and the Myth of Power

 

The classic military strategist, Karl Von Clausewitz, speaks of the necessity of focus in war. For him, the thing to do is determine the single most basic source of the enemy’s power and then apply all of one’s resources to the destruction of that source. Everything else becomes second to the destruction of the enemy in one single rapid action. If we want an image to represent this approach, we might think of a wedge being driven into a block of wood. The goal is to apply enough resources to split the wood in one blow. When this is accomplished, the enemy is broken and obliged to submit to the victor’s will. This approach works very well for a few things. Mostly, it works for splitting wood. It might, might, work well in war when leaving a wake of carnage and destruction is an acceptable route to your goal, but it is a terrible way to do almost anything else.

            When we speak of leading organizations, we need to make some adjustments to Clausewitz. We all ultimately rely on other humans to help us achieve our goals. The person who experiences life at the end of the wedge – the one who is labeled as an obstacle – and subsequently feels the crush of the leader’s unrelenting will, never actually goes away. These humans do not die. They do not disappear. In many instances they continue to live in the same region and continue to work, perhaps even in the same field, as they did before. The leader has exerted enormous resources on an objective which is little more than a mirage.

A few years ago I worked for the subsidiary of a large corporation. Our small branch received a new leader who applied the Clausewitz approach to some staff members he found lacking. They were shown the door. The problem was that these people had been born and raised in the town where the entire corporation was based. They had friends and family to support them. They quickly found other work and were successful. Fast-forward three years and two of the dismissed individuals had become extremely successful, to the point of being appointed to the board of the corporation. Guess what then happened to Colonel Von Clausewitz?

No, if we want an image for leading an organization, smashing a wedge into wood isn’t it. Perhaps a better image is an automobile driving along the highway. Certainly, an automobile was made to move forward. To allow it to sit still is to rob it of its purpose, but as it moves forward it must deal with the realities of physics. It experiences friction as it pushes through the atmosphere, and the harder it pushes the more friction it encounters. In other words, the harder the car pushes, the harder the world pushes back. The automobile needs power to overcome this friction. It needs an engine and that engine needs fuel. The faster the automobile wants to go, the larger the engine it needs and the more fuel it will consume. The range is vast. There are few cars on the road which cannot reach 90 mph, but they can typically drive amazingly long distances before they exhaust their fuel. Only a handful can surpass 210 mph and these elite automobiles are wedge-shaped machines with massive engines that exhaust their fuel in a matter of minutes. Clausewitz would be proud.

As leaders, what kind of a car do we want to be driving? The answer lies in understanding the dynamics of friction and fuel and the myth of power. Let me propose to you that people are the resistance we encounter in the world. They are also the fuel which drives the engine of our organization. The harder we slam into one, the more we exhaust the other. We want to move sufficiently slowly so as to preserve our fuel and encounter minimal resistance. However, this approach literally doesn’t get us anywhere. We are left piddling about on a side street while only marginally getting closer to our goal. We need to find the ideal speed to responsibly use our resources while still making progress. Science tells us that speed is somewhere around 55 mph. Not exactly inspiring, but I think we can push that number up a bit if we acknowledge that friction doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, friction is good. Friction says that our organization has presented something new and unfamiliar to the world and the world is reacting to it. Is not that a large part of our goal? However, where we fail is when we view friction as the enemy. We believe it, and the people who cause it, must be conquered and eliminated. This is a lie. Unlike an automobile, it is possible for an organization to turn friction into fuel. . . if we aren’t moving too quickly.

When a person comes into contact with our organization, when they slam into the front grill of our car and go sliding along the body, we have a moment of contact in which to show them who we are. We can tell them why we are pushing through their space, where we are going, and what we are all about. If our cause is worthy, we have the chance to convert that person to fuel. Obviously, we can’t turn every opponent into an employee, but we can build relationships and partnerships. We can convince others that our travel is a benefit to all. We can show them that they have a place in our journey. At the very least, we can do our best to make sure that the next time we encounter their resistance they don’t bring friends. But we cannot do anything if we are moving at full speed. If we put achieving the goal above people we will never achieve the goal, because people are the thing which will get us there and people are the thing which will ultimately stop us. With this in mind, it is obvious that we only need enough power to cause these encounters to happen. Anything more is a waste. In fact, the pursuit of power and manipulation of systems to obtain power is another mirage. It does nothing for us and its application will work against us. A large engine exhausts our fuel and makes it more difficult to get more.

Leadership isn’t the ability to make and follow a plan. Anyone can do that. I teach people how to do that. Leadership is the ability to bring others along for the journey. It is the ability to move the organization forward while keeping the tank full. So, yes. By all means, move forward. But don’t move forward resenting friction. Look for it. Welcome it. The one questioning you is not an opponent to be conquered. She is not an annoyance to be dismissed. He may be the very person you need to accomplish the next step of the journey, but that does not happen if the leader does not take the time to listen, hear, know, and communicate. Certainly, you can ignore this. You can move forward as fast as possible pushing aside every objection and individual in pursuit of the goal. In the end, you will find yourself sitting alone in a cloud of smoke by the side of the highway wondering if you should have been a lumberjack.

On Not Screwing Up Communion

I was ready. I needed this. It had been a long, stressful week, events racing by faster than I could react to, much less control. As I lowered myself into my seat on Sunday morning, my chest tense, packed with stress, I noticed the elements of communion, the bread and the cup, setting on a table beside the pastor’s podium.

                I haven’t always looked forward to communion. For part of my life it seemed an empty tradition, repeated over and over until the meaning had worn away. Yet, as years went by, that meaning began to fill up again. Now communion is among the most powerful practices of worship for me. I love the quiet moments, waiting for the bread and drink to make their way through the rows to my seat, taking that time to come to grips with the week past, to own the fact that I had been as raging and uncontrolled as the events racing around me, to own my sin. At the end of that reflection, to receive the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ broken for me, the tangible evidence of my sins forgiven, and then to not just celebrate my salvation, but to partake in it, internalize it, put God’s sacrifice and forgiveness into my body, physically receiving his grace. That is a celebration that can never wear thin. This day, as much as any other, I needed it.

                I waited as the basket wove back and forth the through the rows toward me, but then, in the row before mine, there was confusion. The ushers had each sent a basket down the same row. The baskets met at two older women, who jostled and juggled them in the confusion. The same thing happened the last time we had communion, I thought. I wondered why. I knew the ushers; they were no fools. Yet, they’d somehow managed to make the exact same mistake twice in a row. There must be something systematic about it, something about the rhythm of the baskets and the layout of the rows that causes this kerfuffle to repeat. My thoughts were interrupted when one of the women passed her basket over her shoulder to me. I took it from her, reached in for the bread, but instead found. . . an oyster cracker.

                There’s nothing inherently wrong with oyster crackers. No one will speak more strongly in their favor than me, when they are generously spread across the top of a thick clam chowder, but with communion they always seem easy, like the minimum necessary effort. I remembered when I was a child, the women of the church would gather together one weekend each year and bake communion bread, special unleavened bread from a special recipe used only for that purpose. We children would attempt to sneak into the kitchen and steal a piece or two, for it was not only delicious, but forbidden. The women would bake and freeze enough communion bread for the whole year. Why couldn’t our communion bread be like that? Then I realized that as much as I would love to have that bread, you couldn’t get me to sign-up for a full weekend of baking it. Oyster crackers suddenly seemed just fine.

                Someone bumped my elbow, and I looked over to see my wife holding the tray with the communion juice. I quickly grabbed one of the small cups, passed the tray along, dumped the juice into my mouth, felt that distinct bittersweet flavor for a second, then swallowed. Just like that, communion was over, and I had wasted it. I took the one moment of the week when I most tangibly feel God’s salvation, and filled it with petty judgments and speculations. I had screwed up communion.

                I suppose that would be possible, for me to screw up communion, if communion had been about me in the first place. Fortunately, it isn’t. Communion isn’t about me. The best way to understand this is to think of a sentence. Most sentences are built with a subject (the one doing the action), a verb (the action), and an object (the one receiving the action). Bob loves Jane. We usually view ourselves as the subjects of our lives. We are the ones creating and completing the action. This is true of our attitude toward worship. We come to church to offer worship to God. People with long rows of fancy letters behind their names still argue whether or not this is a healthy way to view worship. However, one thing is clear. When it comes to communion, we are not the subjects.

In Luke 22, the first communion, Jesus describes the bread as “my body given for you,” and the cup as, “my blood poured out for you.” We aren’t subjects in those sentences. We don’t make the action happen. We receive it. The subject, the acting agent, is Jesus, and the action he is completing is giving up his life for us. We are the objects. We receive the sacrifice that has been completed for us.

When it comes to communion, working as a symbol of what Jesus did for us, it’s important to remember that he did that. We did not. There is nothing we have done, or could do, to convince Jesus to die for us. He did it because he wanted to. As Romans 5:8 says, God showed his love for us by dying for us while we were still sinners. God did not wait for us to become perfect, or even just a little bit better, to die for us. He took the action on his own. All we do is receive it.

Despite my petty speculations – in the middle of my petty speculations – Christ died for me. In the middle of my petty speculations, the bread and cup are offered to me. The only way I can screw that up is to refuse to be the object who receives it. As long as I remain willing to not be the hero of the story, communion will be just fine. Thank the Lord for that. 

A Meditation for the Post-Christmas Slump

 

“All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” So says the Questioner of Ecclesiastes and so we have come to the end of yet another Christmas. The family has left once again, and once again the house is a mess and you realize that the days you will spend in repair will match those you spent to prepare. You navigate the mess of crumpled wrapping paper and dirty dishes, and find among the rubble that present you so carefully selected for another, now so quickly forgotten. Perhaps you are sitting in the car, having finally wrestled the children from the arms of aunts and uncles and grandparents and are now trapped in a steel box with screaming toddlers and a spouse who wanted to leave an hour ago. The magic of Christmas has done nothing to diminish the length or the darkness of the drive ahead. Maybe you are awake in the wee hours of the morning as your spouse sleeps in, and are slogging through the constant bickering-fighting-complaining of children for whom the mountain of toys they just received simply isn’t enough. Maybe you are alone, and all the promise of tags and tinsel and trimmings and trappings has come and gone leaving you by yourself yet again. In the end, you had a Christmas that was everything you have come to expect, but still not quite the Christmas you had hoped for. Whether you are five or fifty, aware of it or not, you begin to make your mental Christmas list for next year. Next year will be the year, when you have a new house, or a new job. . . next year there will be no tension as the family sits to eat. . . next year you will find just the right balance of love and toys. But, next year comes and you do the same dance and leave with the same mixed feelings and Christmas goes round and round again. “All things are wearisome, more than one can say.”

                Indeed, all things are wearisome. Everything is tired. It has all been done over and over again. There is nothing new. It has all been done to the point of being worn out. And so, everything is tiresome, boring, wearing. Nothing refreshes. Nothing fills. Life is an endless cycle of stuff and things to be done and had, so tired and worn beyond even what the Questioner can describe.

                Do you think you can change this? Does your arrogance extend to the point at which you believe you can change the cycle of life since the beginning? Do you believe that Christmas will change because you do it differently? Maybe you can forgo all the holiday trappings and spend every Christmas day feeding the poor. Will that not also become wearisome? The never ending parade of weary faces year after year with no reprieve, the realization that you are doing - and can do - nothing to change it? That will not wear on your soul? It has been done before. You think that going to church this one time will somehow bring meaning to this day? Look at the masses gathered here year after year. Has the world changed because of it? Have these people become kinder and more honest over the years? Will the ritual platitudes stop them from greeting you with “Let’s go Brandon” at the grocery store? Perhaps you will stop going, make room in the schedule to do. . . what? A football team will win the Super Bowl this year, and then go back to the beginning to try again, and again, and again. There is nothing new. Everything is wearisome.

                Pray this prayer with me: “Father, I confess that I have put my hope in events and things. These cannot fill. They have all been done before and will be done again. You are not in them. I confess that I have been surprised and angry when this new thing has not filled me, for I gave it an expectation it could not meet.”

                So what are all of these things? What are these traditions and routines worn thin by repetition? Where is there meaning? It is hidden and dulled by the repetition, but found in the child in the manger who entered a world as tired and worn as yours. But listen, this child had the power to turn rocks into bread and water into wine. He, he alone, holds the power to make old things new. This child sometimes honored traditions and other times mocked them. He created traditions of his own, which would also go round and round again. For him, the traditions did not matter, they were merely a vehicle to get to me and you. At the heart of Christmas lays a child, and because of that child the heart of Christmas is us. There is nothing new under the sun, except for every human being. Each one an image of the Creator. Each one a complete destruction of any pattern which came before. Each one in desperate need to be loved to the extent that one would die for them. What are all these patterns for if not to bring us all together again and again? Each gift, each toy, is a statement of love. One person telling another that they are more valuable than any plan the giver may have had for the time and resources wrapped up in the paper. Each meal made is a sacrifice by the preparer to meet and exceed the basic needs of everyone in attendance. Every person at every gathering is a new creation. The loud and foolish, the angry, the judgmental, the frivolous, the ungrateful, the tired, the fearful, each one is a gift. Each one is given the gift of Jesus. Each person is loved to that extent. At the heart of all these meaningless repetitions lies the baby. And at the heart of the child lies each one of us. If we can sit together at the Christmas meal and celebrate the newness born in each person and the gift each one of us has been given in the Son of God, then we have begun the journey to finding the meaning of Christmas.

A Time to Heal

 

Our minivan stereo has had a CD stuck in it for longer than some of my children have been alive. As an anniversary present to Nicole, I replaced the stereo with a new one. This first communal working CD player in years has prompted a joyous rustling through old boxes to pull out dusty CD collections. In this rummage, I uncovered an old black disc titled “The Faratos Jazz Band.” In 1996, my eldest sister lived in Barcelona. My parents and I spent three weeks visiting her there. We stayed in a second story room, not a far walk from the palace where Queen Isabella received Christopher Columbus upon his return from the New World. Our room overlooked a medium-sized public courtyard below. On weekends, the plaza would fill with local artists selling their work. In the evenings, a small jazz band would play, accompanied by a tap dancer. I remember laying in bed and listening to the trumpet and tap bounce up from the stone pavement, off the plaster walls, and to my ears. One of my souvenirs from that trip to Barcelona was a CD of that band. Perhaps to the chagrin of my children, the first CD to enter the new car stereo was The Faratos Jazz Band.

                The day before I installed the new stereo, I returned from a camping trip. It marked the resumption of a family tradition. Each June, the men in our family make a pilgrimage to the race track in Watkins Glen, New York, where we park our campers as close to the racing circuit as permissible, and cheer the roaring Corvettes, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis in a six-hour sports car race. After a hiatus during the pandemic, the trip marked a return to normal. As I bustled among the crowd of thousands to make a path for a son or nephew to get a driver’s autograph, or a photo with a favorite car, I said goodbye to the days of being uncomfortable when there were more than three people in the same grocery aisle. I reveled in the humanity of the crowd, delighted to bunch so close with others that I could smell their sweat. It was a shunning of isolation, and a celebration of life returned to normal again.

                While the pandemic was a time of separation from others, with strong feelings of isolation for many, for me it was a time of almost constant human contact. I thrive on solitude, but for nearly 18 months I was almost never alone. Those months carried a great deal of stress. Not just the stress we all shared, but significant health issues in our family. One child underwent surgery, leaving him bed-ridden for nearly two months. Another had chronic, often extreme, stomach pain for almost eight months. It was a time of high demand, and little replenishment, supercharged amidst pandemic life. When my in-laws began to offer to watch the children again, I eagerly took them up on it; and the day after installing the new stereo, I drove across town to drop all of my children off.

                My in-laws live along one of my favorite stretches of road. It winds and bends up and down hills, round and about through dense forest. When I was 16 or 17 my best friend and I would borrow his brother’s Volkswagen GTI and in the middle of the night drive that section of town as fast as we could, one at the wheel, the other anxiously keeping lookout for deer. One evening, I had a white-knuckled grip on the passenger door when my friend lost control on a right-hand hairpin. The car spun in circles across the road, eventually coming to rest astride the double-yellow lines, headlights shining into the forest, highlighted by the smoke from abused tires, pointing to the hundred trees which could have smashed the car and our bodies to oblivion. That was perhaps the first time I fully understood that the grace of God is not getting what you deserve.

                It was only a few years later that I came to love the road slowly. At the wheel of a police vehicle, I would patrol the town for hours, and one day noticed the beautiful damp green of the forest overstretching the pavement as the sun filtered down through the leaves in shafts of light hanging thick in the summer air, creating splotches of yellow on the gray road below. There was peace in it, driving slow and quiet through the waves of sun and shade, climbing up the hills away from town.  And so, as I left my children with their grandparents, I drove home slow and silent, rolling through the splotchy light, the smooth jazz of an ancient band lulling my memories.

                The pandemic paid a wage of chaos we heeded not. It would always be so, but we did ourselves no favors. It was a thing which should have been nothing more than an adjustment for a time, but became a beast beyond our control, because we are beasts beyond our control. I drove and pondered life turned upside-down, as some of the people and institutions I had come to love and trust acted in the most petty and childish ways; and those which my cultural cocktail had taught me to fear proved the most reliable. I pondered those who used to shake my hand and call me brother, yet would not return a simple phone call when I felt fragmented and alone; and those who once seemed distant, yet took risks, made sacrifices, and created marvelous innovations to care for us all.  I pondered the terrified frustration of watching society dismantle itself over such a simple thing; the disappointment as some of the self-proclaimed purveyors of faith, hope, and love reduce those noble proclamations to parody, becoming the prophets of rumor, conspiracy, and fear; the quiet background of the dead, occasionally breaking through in the sharp pain of a name too familiar; the harsh truth that I carry equal guilt for the division; the harder reality that we know no other way.

                I drove through the forests of an old patrol beat, listening to a band in Spain play the tunes of black America’s wonderful invention and wondered at the bizarre cocktail that is life. My story is a strange patchwork of unexpected pieces, thrown together to somehow make a cohesive, beautiful whole. As I drove and listened and thought, I came to realize that there is room in that puzzle to fit at least one more odd-shaped piece. And in that moment, I moved the chaos from the category of “is” to that of “was.” The time will come to make meaning, to reconcile some relationships, to mourn others. For now, we have a time to say goodbye, a time to hope and dream of a new building amidst the rubble, and a time to heal.

An Overdue Goodbye

 There was no reason why Pat and I should have been friends. He was well into is sixties when I met him. I was only nineteen. He had “retired” from three careers. I had only ever had part-time jobs. I fancied myself pretty special. His life story could have been a best-seller, but you’d never know it from the way he treated others. As a child, Pat lived through Hitler’s blitz on England. Coming of age just after the war, he joined the Royal Navy, eventually becoming an electronics expert in the Special Boat Service (Britain’s version of the Navy SEALs). He served his country for twenty years, and then retired for the first time, becoming an engineer for a variety of electronics and communications companies around the world. After a few years, he “retired” again, opening his own SCUBA school in the Florida Keys. This was the retirement he had always dreamed of. Yet, when tragedy struck his son’s family, up in the frigid north of Hershey, Pennsylvania, Pat and his wife sold the business and moved closer to family.

                I first met Pat when I was told I would be training a new employee on the “Rover” shift. Things have changed significantly in the last twenty years, but in those days one security officer patrolled the vastness of Hersheypark, often on foot, all night. As the winter months approached, the days got shorter, and the park closed earlier, a second foot patrol was added from five to eleven in the evenings. This was the “Rover,” my sweet spot in the department over the dark, cold months. So, even though I could barely pay my bills, or get my college assignments done on time, I found myself “training” a much older man with twenty years of special operations experience. He handled that rather well.

                Pat was tiny, maybe just over five feet. He refused to wear his uniform in any sort of dignified, professional way. He never wore his badge on the outside of his winter jacket (a habit I picked up). He wore a brown fur trapper-style hat on his head, and a black and white checkered scarf, wrapped around his neck a few times and then stuffed down the front of his jacket. When he became too warm, he’d unzip the front of his jacket, letting the scarf spill out like a banner. He carried an old, green thermos, the kind your grandfather carried coffee in. Pat’s was always full of hot soup. After a cold round through the park, he’d find a quiet place to sit down, hook his hat on some corner, open his jacket, sip his soup, and tell tales from the old days.

                I “trained” Pat; Pat trained me. I remember one frigid evening, we were moving slowly and quietly through the park, when Pat suddenly grabbed my arm, whispering, “There’s a man there, in the trees.” I stopped and watched. I didn’t see anything. “Don’t look at the trees,” Pat’s whisper was almost silent. “Look beside them. Your eyes can’t see movement straight on in the dark.” I looked just to the side of the clump of trees he indicated, and sure enough, after a few seconds, I began to see small movements between two of the trunks. Someone was hiding there. It turned out to be an employee, who thought some night-time hijinks in the park sounded like fun, and had attempted to hide until after hours. He hadn’t planned on meeting the super retiree, who scolded the young man is if he were his own grand-child, and then chatted with him quietly as he walked him off of the property. It could have been a stroll along a scenic creek in the English country-side. By the end of the walk, the two were chums, even if one had probably just lost his job.

                Pat’s training period ended, and he was moved to the night-shift. I would meet him at shift change, and then not go home. I would walk in the dark with Pat for hours, talking, listening to him tell stories over his steaming soup. As different as we were, we also somehow just fit. I came to cherish our friendship. I suppose though, part-time night-shift at an amusement park was never going to work out for a man of Pat’s age and experience. The eleven-to-seven shift took its toll on a body approaching seventy. Our boss was a former Marine. He approached conflict with the delicacy of a sledge hammer. Pat was a scalpel. His words and actions were deliberately planned, and so efficient you seldom realized their impact until well after they had passed by. Pat’s skill and nuance were recognized, but not understood. Pat moved on.

                Employees at the park rotated pretty frequently. I was used to people moving along, but I don’t think I missed anyone quite like I missed Pat. I tried to make contact with him outside of work. This was before Google, and he wasn’t in the phone book. Short of subverting the lock on the supervisor’s office (thanks to Pat for that skill) and rummaging through the former employee files, I had no means of getting in touch with him. And, it occurred to me, maybe he wanted to be left alone.

                Almost a decade later, I was at a restaurant, now married with two children and a third on the way. My dinner was interrupted by a stuttered, “H-hallo, m-mate.” There by my table was a withered, aged, Pat. He had a stroke earlier in the year, and leaned on his wife’s arm for support. We chatted for a while, but it was a broken, disjointed affair: me trying to wrangle kids, him trying to stay erect. He told me the neighborhood he lived in. It was a short walk from my home. I knew that visits to Pat’s house would do both of us some good. I didn’t go. I had a wife and increasing number of kids. Life was too busy to spend sitting on a porch and chatting over hot soup. So, Pat was once again relegated to the world of once was.

                Last week I cracked open a light thriller for a quick vacation read. There, on page one, was a member of the British Special Boat Service. I immediately grabbed my phone and started Googling. Pat passed away just a short time after I last saw him. That wasn’t a surprise. There was a time when I would have grieved my failure to engage with Pat again, but at some point in life you begin to realize that there will always be things left undone. I stand eternally grateful for having known this odd, fascinating, magical, soup-bearing creature named Patrick Bishop. This is my belated farewell.

It's Not Hype: You Need To See Hamilton

Years ago, I saw Les Miserables for the first time. I’d never been a Broadway/musical fan before, but Les Mis was such a triumph of artistry and meaning that I thought maybe I was missing something. I wasn’t. I gave Broadway a try. What I found was a series of over-hyped, vapid productions. I’m still a Les Miserables fan, but not a Broadway guy. When the hype began to build around Hamilton a few years ago, it didn’t get me very excited. It didn’t even get me very interested. As the hype grew, my interest decreased. I figured it was a lot of people spending money to wait around for a year to watch some easy diversity points and cheap progressive wins against straw men, all wrapped up in a couple of catchy songs.

I WAS WRONG.

Trust me on this. You need to see Hamilton. Here’s why.

The characters are authentically human.

One of the biggest problems with our media culture is that heroes are always heroes, and villains are always villains. I know, of late there’s been a “demythologizing” of heroes, but that just turns heroes into villains. Entertainment on the popular level seldom offers us human beings as they truly are. The correct response to this failure is to reject popular entertainment (why I don’t really watch TV anymore). Sadly, most people accept these fictional characters as “real,” and then attempt to fit real humans into the fictional mold. Sidenote: that’s how you divide a culture.

Hamilton doesn’t succumb to this failure. Alexander Hamilton, the protagonist (huge spoiler there), is a hero. He’s a good guy. You root for him, love him, and want him to win; but he’s also broken, misguided, and too often gives way to ruthless ambition in a way that's a little too much like you. He’s a human. Don’t get me wrong, at the end you still like him. You just wish he’d have figured some things out a little earlier.

Aaron Burr, the antagonist (if you know your history this shouldn’t be spoiler), is not a great guy. He’s slippery, greasy, untrustworthy. He’ll say whatever he needs to say to get what he wants. You don’t like him, but sometimes you really want to. As the story progresses, you begin to understand why he feels the way he does. You feel his frustration, grieve for his failures. While at the end you still dislike him, you are left feeling that a deep friendship between Hamilton and Burr was just one step too far for both, and you mourn that loss.

King George

If for no other reason, watch Hamilton for King George. He is the most entertaining, disturbing, laughable, and unsettling character I have seen in many years. He is perfectly psychopathic. It is a masterclass of acting, mostly accomplished through facial expressions alone, aided by the judicious use of spittle. King George. You won’t be disappointed.

It is respectful

We’ve got a real problem with our founding fathers. We don’t know what to do with them. They are “problematic.” If we really get down to it though, the “problem” is us. We don’t know how to accept humans as humans (see the discussion on popular culture above). We as a people do not know how to simultaneously celebrate a person’s accomplishments and mourn their sins. We are always forgetting one to highlight the other. Hamilton does not destroy the legacy of our founding fathers. If you love the flag and lay flowers at the graveyard on Memorial Day, you will not be offended by Hamilton. However, the founding fathers do not get a pass. Jefferson, and others, but mostly Jefferson, are called out for their complex and confusing attitudes towards freedom and slavery, equality and gender, in ways that do not undermine the truly amazing accomplishment of this nation. You can walk away from Hamilton proud of what these men did, and troubled by what they failed to do. It is as it should be.

It is a mastery of its form

I’m not a big painting person. I’ve tried, but there’s too much history, and technicality, and, honestly, pretense. However, whenever I get the chance I will sit and stare at a Van Gogh, Caravaggio, or any one of the Dutch landscape masters, simply because, even too my philistine’s eyes, they are masterpieces. There are levels of meaning in Hamilton, selections in the style of hip-hop used by each character which make connections to masters of that artform which inform the attitudes and outlooks of each individual character on stage, connections which I will never fully understand, and which I do not have the time or inclination to investigate. Still, even to my philistine’s ears, this is a triumph.

A Teaser

There is one more reason to see Hamilton. It is a moment of truth and heartbreak that made me hold each one of my sons more tightly for a week, and made me yearn to father them better. But, to share would be to give too much away. You will have to see it for yourself.

I’m not afraid to admit that I was wrong. I was wrong about Hamilton. I owe a huge shout-out to my sister-in-law, who was on the bandwagon long before me. She has seldom led me astray with recommendations. I should have listened. My life is richer for having seen Hamilton. I pray yours will be as well.

Play Ball

His stance was aggressive, maybe too aggressive. His knees were bent, feet planted wide, shoulders hunched, bat lifted back and high over his shoulder, giving his entire body the appearance of a rubber-band wound tight, ready to snap back in a moment. The kids sitting beside me noticed it as well, and began cheering loudly, “Woo, yeah! Look at that stance!” The cheering wasn’t sincere, but rather a mockery of a younger player who had committed the sin of loving the game too much. He was short for his age, and while his peers had long ago adopted the bean-pole look of late-childhood, he still carried some extra cushion around the waist and cheeks. He was Pakistani, or Indian, or Bengali – the mockers beside me didn’t care. They just knew that the time he spent displaying that stance in the batter’s box came nowhere near the time he spent practicing it in front of the mirror. This crime of caring too much made him a loser.

                I was tempted to inform them that this kid, who’s favorite athletes probably contained more cricket players than baseball stars, had become the surprise of his last-place team, going three for three at the plate the last time I saw him play, that in this game, especially at this level, heart often made the difference. In the end, I didn’t have to. He spoke for himself. His teamed trailed my son’s by nine runs in the bottom of the last inning. He strutted to the plate, forcefully smashed his bat into it a few times, endured the heckling, hit a single, stole second, then third, then scored his team’s first, and only, run.

                Weeks later, I sat in my folding chair again, watching the same two teams warm-up. . . for the championship game. Somewhere toward the end of the season the last-place misfits had found something, and strung together a series of surprise playoffs wins, advancing all the way to face my son’s team in the final. They finished their warm-ups, and my son took the field to do the same. I watched my Jacob scoop up a grounder at third, and launch a rocket. . . straight into the atmosphere four feet above the first baseman’s head. Listening to the ball whistle off into the parking lot, I realized that sometime in the last few months, the last-place team had developed some of the best fundamental skills in the league. It wasn’t just one or two kids driving the success. The skill had been written all over their warm-ups. Sure, there was some fumbling in right field, but our right fielders tended to pay more attention to the games next door and cars out on the highway. Someone had coached this team very well.

                There are two ways to coach a youth sports team. A team can be built around a few key players. That’s how my son’s team worked. The team existed to support three all-stars, who locked out three key positions in a rotating order. The rest of the team was a supporting cast. There’s nothing egregious about that. They won a lot of games and had a great time doing it, but I’d be hard pressed to say my son left the season a better ball player, or more in love with the game.

                The other approach is to coach the whole team. Finding a coach who does this is like winning the lottery. It means investing time in a kid who’s probably never going to hit a home run or strike out the side, and putting them into game situations which don’t seem likely to bring a win, but allow the child to develop in skill, character, and love of sport. It’s not coaching for the scorebook, or the parents, or one or two talented players, or for yourself. It is coaching for the kids, every single kid on the team. This formerly last-place team had been coached that way, and it showed not just in their skill, but in their attitude. They knew each one of them mattered.

                The field cleared, and the coaches met with the umpire as both teams began their pre-game cheers. Our side began with the borrowed World Cup, “I Believe.” I expected the other dugout to respond with something along the lines of the annoyingly catchy, “Scootch Ya Booty Back,” when the field was overcome with a haunting chant, no words, just the intro to a dated pop song repeated over and over as each opposing played wrapped his fingers around the chain link, and like an army refusing to yield, declared that they had come to play. Indeed, this last-placed team had found something.

                But, this was not going to be the game that rewrote Little League coaching philosophy for generations to come. Jacob’s team came out swinging, and the opposition couldn’t contain the onslaught. Our team won by. . . a lot of runs. I’ve seen my son’s team get blown out enough times to know how hard that can be for a nine-year-old to swallow. I’ve seen star players throw their gloves, blame their teammates, even scream at their coaches. While I don’t condone that behavior, I understand it. There’s a lot of pressure put on some of these kids. I expected to see a healthy representation of frowns across the way.

As Jacob and his teammates lined up for victory photos with their trophies, the eerie rhythmic chant of that same tired old pop song grew from right field and dominated the diamond. Out in the cold evening grass, arms around shoulders, second-place was a team for a few moments more. The huddle broke up, some of the boys headed for the parking lot, more stayed to give hugs to their coach. Eventually, the impressive little Pakistani player trotted past. I patted him on the shoulder and offered condolences on a tough loss. He looked up at me with a giant smile on his face, hands tightly wrapped around his small trophy, “Thanks Mr. Hackman. That was awesome! We’re totally gonna get you next year!” I believe he just might.