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mytwilightimagines13 · 3 years

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Amnesia (Book Two)(Part Eight)(Alec Volturi)

Immortal Child

Three months passed when a letter came. Bianca, the new human secretary, walked into the throneroom, a silver platter in her hands and a note on top of it. The three masters where sitting onto their thrones, dressed in the deepest black. Jane, Alec and Maeryn where standing on the right side of the throneroom, by Caius. Demetri and Felix where standing near Marcus, on the left side of the throneroom, and Santiago guarded the door and closed it once Bianca had entered the room. Bianca was quite a pretty human. Her golden hair was curled and fell over her shoulder, he body was very slim. She wore a blood red dress with black high-heels. Her face was flawless and slightly tanned and her green eyes, her green eyes showed fear as every vampire in the room could hear her heart beat franticly. Bianca went up the stairs and presented Aro the silver platter with the note on top of it. Aro took it and Bianca took a few steps back, shaking slightly. Aro read the note. “Oh, it is from Carlisle. Which is spelled with an s, sweet Bianca.” He said while he lengthen the s. Aro mentioned for Felix and Demetri whom sped and stood behind her. “He has added a new member to his coven.” Aro continued. “Ah.” Marcus said, almost joyful. “Increasing his power.” Caius said, clearly satisfied with the news. Maeryn was also glad. At least now the Volturi no longer had anything to do with the Cullens, well at least for a while. Aro slightly laughed at Caius’ comment and looked at Felix and Demetri. They grabbed Bianca by her arms and dragged her out while she dropped the platter and screamed for mercy. Aro shook his head and looked at the girl pitifully. “First it’s the spelling, then the grammar.” He said while handing the note to Marcus. Maeryn watched Bianca being dragged away. Not the she truly cared. Bianca was only a human after all with no gift. The only thing she was good for was providing blood, nothing more. “At least our dispute with the Cullens is over.” Marcus said, once more with a slight joyfulness in his voice. “Over?” Aro asked. “Hm hm.” Marcus said agreeing. “Goodness no.” Aro said, to which the remaining vampires looked at him questionably. “Our dispute goes far beyond the fate of a mere human.” Marcus lowered the note and seemed slightly disappointed. “And what might that be?” Caius asked. “My brother, I thought you understood. They have something I want.” So, Bella and Edward where married and Bella was changed into a vampire. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful again in the vampireworld. That is until a certain immortal entered the castle with grave news that would change everything. It had been a peaceful afternoon. Alec, Maeryn and Jane accompanied their masters while reading through some history books, when a blond, female vampire with blond hair walked through the throneroom doors. Felix and Demetri stepped close by, to prevent the blond vampire from attacking. “What a pleasant surprise.” Aro said, seemingly not very interested. Caius closed his book with a loud thud and turned towards the vampire. “What do you want?” he asked. The vampire didn’t answer. “Hm?” he asked once more, tilting his head slightly to the left. The vampire took a few steps forward, followed by Santiago, Felix and Demetri. “I have to report a crime. The Cullens, they have done something… terrible.” The vampire said. Once the name Cullens fell from her lips, Aro’s red eyes grew wide. He slammed the book shut and rushed towards the vampire while Caius had a small smirk playing around his lips. “Allow me, my dear?” Aro asked as he took the vampire’s hand. As Aro read her thoughts, the others gathered behind Aro, very curious to what he had seen. Aro let go of her hand and was seemingly shocked. “Oh my.” Was all he said. Aro gathered everyone to the throneroom to share what the crime was. “Dear ones, it saddens me to tell you this that our dear friends, the Cullens have committed one of the worse crimes our law knows. The Cullens, have created an immortal child.” And with that, the whispering started. Whispers of fury, and disbelief. “I

know how shocking this betrayal is, and I promise my friends, that justice will triumph! So let us make our preparations, bring our dear friends so they can let the world know, the world of vampires will soon be peaceful again!” Aro said and the lower guard all left to gather other vampire’s. However, the higher guard remained and trained for the fight that would come. However, at night when training was over, and Maeryn was playing with Alec’s necklace once more while he stroked her bare back, she did wonder. What where immortal children precisely? “Alec?” Maeryn asked looking up, just in time to see Alec open his eyes and look at her. “Yes, amore mio?” “What are immortal children precisely, and why are they forbidden?” Maeryn asked. “I am sorry I haven’t informed you sooner. As your creator I should have.” He said and kissed her forehead before explaining. “Immortal children are human children who have been turned into vampires at a very early age. Creating immortal children has long been outlawed by the Volturi due to their inability to remain concealed from the human world. There is no absolute age limit set as to what constituted an immortal child; it was a subjective definition, based on the child's ability to behave himself in a way consistent with vampire law. Like all vampires, immortal children are frozen at the mental and physical age at which they were transformed. Post-transformation, these small children continued to exhibit childish behaviours, including impulsive acts, tantrums, irresponsible activities, and a general lack of circumspection. It is said that an immortal child's tantrum can kill people, since restraint is basically impossible for someone so young. Another aspect was their appeal; they were both beautiful and endearing that any human or vampire would automatically love them. Carlisle described them as adorable little children with smiles and dimples that would destroy a village in one of their tantrums. It is presumed that while their mental maturity is frozen at the age they were transformed, they still have the vampiric gifts of enhanced strength and speed as well the supernatural gifts of certain vampires. The uncontrollable, childish behaviours of immortal children battled the vampire laws of secrecy, and these children often attracted the notice of humans. Because they were too young to be controlled, the Volturi killed all those who could be found. Under this law, anyone who knows about or stands by the child is also punishable. Countless humans and vampires were massacred because of these creations. The creators of immortal children and those who knew of them were utterly devoted to the children and opposed the Volturi at all costs to protect them, and were all destroyed in the process. The Volturi found themselves punishing individual covens for the behavior of their immortal children with a much greater frequency than other occurrences of lawlessness. Because of the devotion inspired by immortal children, the Volturi were forced to destroy full covens in order to destroy one immortal child. After some study into the matter, the Volturi decreed that immortal children were not capable of following the law, and therefore it was made illegal to create them. Creating one has since become the worst crime in the vampire world, under penalty of death for both the child and its creator, whether the child has broken the law or not. Even after the law was established, we kept two children to experiment on. A boy named James and a girl named Mandy. However, no matter how many centuries we'd spent teaching the children, they still could not be controlled or taught. After they determined that immortal children could not be tamed, they had the children destroyed. “ “hmm. I can see why now. They are indeed a threat to our safety.” Maeryn said. Alec nodded his head and pecked her lips. “Will there be a fight?” Maeryn asked, slightly worried. “Most likely, but don’t worry. We have never lost a battle, and we never will. I promise.” He said as he pulled her down and kissed her passionately,

continuing the love they had just taken a break from.

#alec volturi #volturi #volturi imagine #vampire #twilight imagine #twilight

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mychemicalficrecs · 4 years

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any good frerard fics that take place before the 2000s? so like anywhere from the 1990s-1600s or whatever it doesn’t matter to me :)

Hi Nonny!

There's a great variety of Historical AUs, have fun with these!

Frank/Gerard Historical AUs

You Sparkle Like My 6 Gun by jet6black6feeling6, 7k, Explicit. Gerard does drag at a prohibition era night club that mafia boss Frank owns. Duh.

The Heart I Left Behind by gloomboyz, 8k, Mature. Various scenes of how Gerard and Frank find each other throughout history.

Sincerely (Yours) by Tezy, 34k, Explicit. (Late 19th century AU) Frank is the son of a merchant, with no money, and no title. But he's smart, and he enjoys teaching, so when the opportunity arises for him to help with the two children of a particularly wealthy family, he decides it is worth the risk. The children are precocious, outspoken and they quickly become his favourite students. Their slightly peculiar uncle, however, is the real mystery for him.

timelines and sceneries by daydreamsago, 42k, Teen And Up Audiences. "My brain wants everything to be figured out so it can stop worrying about what life will be like in ten years or so," Frank admitted. "Time is such a weird thing, because one moment, you're young and dependent on your parents, then... boom. You're graduated and everything matters all at once. Time is consistent. It doesn't slow down, or speed up at all; our perception of it does."

Line-Crossing by orphan_account, 12k, Explicit. When Frank finally gets up on his feet, he finds a job taking care of the greenhouses in a manor house. He hopes this new beginning will help him forget and allow him to heal. Moving into the country, Gerard hopes he'll finally be left alone by all the people back home who can't seem to stop criticizing everything about him. He also hopes to find some peace and maybe even (yes, he actually dares to be that optimistic) happiness.

Shadows Fall Behind by anoceanmonster, 39k, Explicit. Just before the turn of the twentieth century, the Iero household experiences it’s second devastating loss. When Edward Iero, world renowned architect, replaces the recently deceased and much loved head of staff, Donald, with his eldest son, Gerard, no one knows if anything will work out. Frank is a book loving recluse who rarely sees the outside of his study, but when Gerard enters his house and his life, he gets a love story all of his own.

A Lovely Apparition (or, The One Where Gerard's A Crossdresser in the 1790s) by wordslinging, 22k, Mature. Michael didn’t seem particularly shocked when Gerard approached him with the idea, but then, Gerard had never seen his younger brother look particularly shocked at anything. He merely looked at Gerard, blinked once or twice, and repeated in a flat tone, “You want me to help you dress up like a woman.” “It’s the stays in particular I think I’ll need help with,” Gerard told him. “Well, and buttoning the dress, and perhaps the wig.”

A World So Small by wordslinging, 31k, Mature. When Frank, a sickly young man, is advised by his doctors to leave London for the country, he makes arrangements to stay with his friend Michael, who just so happens to be in possession of a large, old, and somewhat creepy manor house. What Frank has no idea of at the time is that Michael has an older brother, whose presence in the house he conceals. Gerard is an eccentric recluse who spends most of his time hiding in the attic and avoiding any kind of interaction with people, but he finds himself fascinated with Frank, who in turn realizes that the house has secrets, and becomes determined to uncover them. When he finally does discover Gerard, their first meeting is only the beginning of their story.

Vampire AU by Andromedas_Void, 26k, Explicit. Mister Francis Anthony Iero, Junior, Your presence is requested this evening at 221 Upper Birch Lane, North London. A carriage will be awaiting you at 3:00 pm sharp. Cordially yours, Gerard Arthur Way, Esq.

Riot Grrrl!Gee by my99centdreams, 7k, Explicit. It’s the fourth party she’s been to this week if the one Taylor Kennick threw for herself while her parents stayed in their room counts (it probably doesn’t but whatever, the point is she’s been far too social lately and is just about ready to revert back to her hermit ways). Seriously, if it gets to the point where Mikey breaks out the password they created for emergency situations, and by emergency situations she means their lives have turned into a body snatchers movie, then she knows it's time to put on her pajamas, lock herself in her room, and eat ice cream straight from the carton.

This Tornado Loves You by theopteryx, 44k, Mature. 1933. Frank's been on the run a long time and he's forced to stop in his old hometown. At first things are about what he expects - old friends, unpleasant memories, and a less-than-desirable home life. Everything changes one night when he stumbles on an old hedge maze hidden in the woods. It's not the hedge maze that intrigues him the most, though, but the secrets of the house hidden inside.

NASAverse by fleurdeliser, 22k, Explicit. The second basement of Building Six at the Kennedy Space Center is not, Frank reminds himself, straightening his shoulders and stepping out of the elevator, one of the more intimidating offices in the NASA compound. It is, in fact, just one workshop out of many, where fabricators test out designs that come from the engineers upstairs--where Frank works.

Variations on a Fugue by mrsronweasley, 36k, Explicit. Frank Iero is a young nobleman currently living with his parents in the Lake District, where he plans on leading a quiet life away from London and its temptations. However, temptation moves into his neighbourhood in the face of one Gerard Way. (Early Edwardian AU.)

Public Enemy by tabulaxrasa, 21k, Explicit. In 1932, Gerard Way has been making a name for himself robbing banks up and down New Jersey. Frank Iero, analyst for J. Edgar Hoover's Division of Investigation, is determined to catch him.

Against the Wind by theopteryx, 21k, Explicit. Frank is the tutor for the two young children of Michael and Alicia Way. He has always been sickly, but when he begins to fall seriously ill he tries to hide it from his employers, terrified he will lose his position and have nothing. When Michael’s older brother Gerard unexpectedly returns from the continent, however, his problems only grow.

Can Never Wrong this Right by theopteryx, 24k, Explicit. Written for the hc_bingo challenge, for the square of 'forced soul-bonding.' It's 1949 and Dr. Way is a professor of Archeology and Frank is his constantly exasperated (and secretly pining) assistant. When their latest trek takes them to South America to locate the fabled Blood Stone, however, they both find more than they bargained for.

Love and Other Cliches by two_ravens, xaritomene, 29k, Not Rated. Bob Bryar is the best witch in the whole damn scene, even if he does say so himself. Which is just as well, because he's got responsibilities, most of which involve his charge, Gerard. Mainly, Bob's supposed to keep Gerard from falling down a well, or losing his sketchpad - little things, but Bob is a conscientious guardian. But when it becomes obvious that Gerard and Frank are hopelessly, silently in love with each other, Bob suddenly has bigger things to worry about. Nothing he's tried has ended in the declarations of love he'd been aiming for (not the fireworks, not the sunsets, not even the four hours they'd spent in locked in a closet). In a last, ditch attempt, he resorts to real spellwork, the epic, Cinderella kind, and now Frank and Gerard are stuck in a romance novel... with only one way out.

What Ships Are For by mwestbelle, 22k, Explicit. A ship is safe in a harbor, but that's not what ships are for. -William Shedd Gerard is most concerned when he finds that, while away at university, his father has taken in a new ward of his own brother's age. But upon his return home, he finds the young man to be particularly enchanting; unfortunately, according to the High Society he lives in, not only is Frank entirely too poor to be considered, but they might as well be brothers.

Like a Horse and Carriage by mwestbelle, 9k, Mature. Frank was raised wild, on a merchant vessel that sailed all around the world. When he returns home, an orphan, he is wed to a man with money and name that he has never met. A Victorian AU.

Illyria (King and Country) by tabulaxrasa, 57k, Explicit. Today, they'd woken up and Gerard was King of Illyria. Frank hasn't really been a stable boy since he ended up in the archduke's bed, but now Gerard's exile is over and he's king. Frank has to survive court, politics, and scheming nobles to figure out exactly what he is now.

#frank/gerard #frerard #fic rec list #alternate universe #historical au

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blackkudos · 4 years

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Bob Marley

Robert Nesta Marley, (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter and musician. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements of reggae, ska, and rocksteady, as well as his distinctive vocal and songwriting style. Marley's contributions to music increased the visibility of Jamaican music worldwide, and made him a global figure in popular culture for over a decade. Over the course of his career Marley became known as a Rastafari icon, and he infused his music with a sense of spirituality. He is also considered a global symbol of Jamaican music and culture and identity, and was controversial in his outspoken support for the legalization of marijuana, while he also advocated for Pan-Africanism.

Born in Nine Mile, British Jamaica, Marley began his professional musical career in 1963, after forming Bob Marley and the Wailers. The group released its debut studio album The Wailing Wailers in 1965, which contained the single "One Love/People Get Ready"; the song was popular worldwide, and established the group as a rising figure in reggae. The Wailers subsequently released eleven further studio albums; while initially employing louder instrumentation and singing, the group began engaging in rhythmic-based song construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which coincided with the singer's conversion to Rastafarianism. During this period Marley relocated to London, and the group typified their musical shift with the release of the album The Best of The Wailers (1971).

The group attained international success after the release of the albums Catch a Fire and Burnin' (both 1973), and forged a reputation as touring artists. Following the disbandment of the Wailers a year later, Marley went on to release his solo material under the band's name. His debut studio album Natty Dread (1974) received positive reception, as did its follow-up Rastaman Vibration (1976). A few months after the album's release Marley survived an assassination attempt at his home in Jamaica, which prompted him to permanently relocate to London. During his time in London he recorded the album Exodus (1977); it incorporated elements of blues, soul, and British rock, enjoyed widespread commercial and critical success.

In 1977, Marley was diagnosed with acral lentiginous melanoma; he died as a result of the illness in 1981. His fans around the world expressed their grief, and he received a state funeral in Jamaica. The greatest hits album Legend was released in 1984, and became the best-selling reggae album of all time. Marley also ranks as one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of more than 75 million records worldwide. He was posthumously honored by Jamaica soon after his death with a designated Order of Merit by his nation. In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone ranked him No. 11 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Early life and career

Bob Marley was born on 6 February 1945 at the farm of his maternal grandfather in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, to Norval Sinclair Marley and Cedella Malcolm. Norval Marley was a white Jamaican originally from Sussex, whose family claimed to have Syrian Jewish origins. Norval claimed to have been a captain in the Royal Marines; at the time of his marriage to Cedella Malcolm, an Afro-Jamaican then 18 years old, he was employed as a plantation overseer. Bob Marley's full name is Robert Nesta Marley, though some sources give his birth name as Nesta Robert Marley, with a story that when Marley was still a boy a Jamaican passport official reversed his first and middle names because Nesta sounded like a girl's name. Norval provided financial support for his wife and child but seldom saw them as he was often away. Bob Marley attended Stepney Primary and Junior High School which serves the catchment area of Saint Ann. In 1955, when Bob Marley was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at the age of 70. Marley's mother went on later to marry Edward Booker, a civil servant from the United States, giving Marley two half-brothers: Richard and Anthony.

Bob Marley and Neville Livingston (later known as Bunny Wailer) had been childhood friends in Nine Mile. They had started to play music together while at Stepney Primary and Junior High School. Marley left Nine Mile with his mother when he was 12 and moved to Trenchtown, Kingston. She and Thadeus Livingston (Bunny Wailer's father) had a daughter together whom they named Claudette Pearl, who was a younger sister to both Bob and Bunny. Now that Marley and Livingston were living together in the same house in Trenchtown, their musical explorations deepened to include the latest R&B from United States radio stations whose broadcasts reached Jamaica, and the new ska music. The move to Trenchtown was proving to be fortuitous, and Marley soon found himself in a vocal group with Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Beverley Kelso and Junior Braithwaite. Joe Higgs, who was part of the successful vocal act Higgs and Wilson, resided on 3rd St., and his singing partner Roy Wilson had been raised by the grandmother of Junior Braithwaite. Higgs and Wilson would rehearse at the back of the houses between 2nd and 3rd Streets, and soon, Marley (now residing on 2nd St.), Junior Braithwaite and the others were congregating around this successful duo. Marley and the others did not play any instruments at this time, and were more interested in being a vocal harmony group. Higgs was glad to help them develop their vocal harmonies, although more importantly, he had started to teach Marley how to play guitar—thereby creating the bedrock that would later allow Marley to construct some of the biggest-selling reggae songs in the history of the genre.

Musical career

1962–72: Early years

In February 1962, Marley recorded four songs, "Judge Not", "One Cup of Coffee", "Do You Still Love Me?" and "Terror", at Federal Studios for local music producer Leslie Kong. Three of the songs were released on Beverley's with "One Cup of Coffee" being released under the pseudonym Bobby Martell.

In 1963, Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, and Cherry Smith were called the Teenagers. They later changed the name to the Wailing Rudeboys, then to the Wailing Wailers, at which point they were discovered by record producer Coxsone Dodd, and finally to the Wailers. Their single "Simmer Down" for the Coxsone label became a Jamaican No. 1 in February 1964 selling an estimated 70,000 copies. The Wailers, now regularly recording for Studio One, found themselves working with established Jamaican musicians such as Ernest Ranglin (arranger "It Hurts To Be Alone"), the keyboardist Jackie Mittoo and saxophonist Roland Alphonso. By 1966, Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith had left the Wailers, leaving the core trio of Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh.

In 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, and moved near his mother's residence in Wilmington, Delaware in the United States for a short time, during which he worked as a DuPont lab assistant and on the assembly line at a Chrysler plant in nearby Newark, under the alias Donald Marley.

Though raised as a Catholic, Marley became interested in Rastafari beliefs in the 1960s, when away from his mother's influence. After returning to Jamaica, Marley formally converted to Rastafari and began to grow dreadlocks.

After a financial disagreement with Dodd, Marley and his band teamed up with Lee "Scratch" Perry and his studio band, the Upsetters. Although the alliance lasted less than a year, they recorded what many consider the Wailers' finest work. Marley and Perry split after a dispute regarding the assignment of recording rights, but they would continue to work together.

1969 brought another change to Jamaican popular music in which the beat slowed down even further. The new beat was a slow, steady, ticking rhythm that was first heard on The Maytals song "Do the Reggay." Marley approached producer Leslie Kong, who was regarded as one of the major developers of the reggae sound. For the recordings, Kong combined the Wailers with his studio musicians called Beverley's All-Stars, which consisted of the bassists Lloyd Parks and Jackie Jackson, the drummer Paul Douglas, the keyboard players Gladstone Anderson and Winston Wright, and the guitarists Rad Bryan, Lynn Taitt, and Hux Brown. As David Moskowitz writes, "The tracks recorded in this session illustrated the Wailers' earliest efforts in the new reggae style. Gone are the ska trumpets and saxophones of the earlier songs, with instrumental breaks now being played by the electric guitar." The songs recorded would be released as the album The Best of The Wailers, including tracks "Soul Shakedown Party," "Stop That Train," "Caution," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," "Soon Come," "Can't You See," "Soul Captives," "Cheer Up," "Back Out," and "Do It Twice".

Between 1968 and 1972, Bob and Rita Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer re-cut some old tracks with JAD Records in Kingston and London in an attempt to commercialise the Wailers' sound. Bunny later asserted that these songs "should never be released on an album ... they were just demos for record companies to listen to". In 1968, Bob and Rita visited songwriter Jimmy Norman at his apartment in the Bronx. Norman had written the extended lyrics for Kai Winding's "Time Is on My Side" (covered by the Rolling Stones) and had also written for Johnny Nash and Jimi Hendrix. A three-day jam session with Norman and others, including Norman's co-writer Al Pyfrom, resulted in a 24-minute tape of Marley performing several of his own and Norman-Pyfrom's compositions. This tape is, according to Reggae archivist Roger Steffens, rare in that it was influenced by pop rather than reggae, as part of an effort to break Marley into the US charts. According to an article in The New York Times, Marley experimented on the tape with different sounds, adopting a doo-wop style on "Stay With Me" and "the slow love song style of 1960s artists" on "Splish for My Splash". An artist yet to establish himself outside his native Jamaica, Marley lived in Ridgmount Gardens, Bloomsbury, during 1972.

1972–74: Move to Island Records

In 1972, Bob Marley signed with CBS Records in London and embarked on a UK tour with soul singer Johnny Nash. While in London the Wailers asked their road manager Brent Clarke to introduce them to Chris Blackwell, who had licensed some of their Coxsone releases for his Island Records. The Wailers intended to discuss the royalties associated with these releases; instead, the meeting resulted in the offer of an advance of £4,000 to record an album. Since Jimmy Cliff, Island's top reggae star, had recently left the label, Blackwell was primed for a replacement. In Marley, Blackwell recognised the elements needed to snare the rock audience: "I was dealing with rock music, which was really rebel music. I felt that would really be the way to break Jamaican music. But you needed someone who could be that image. When Bob walked in he really was that image." The Wailers returned to Jamaica to record at Harry J's in Kingston, which resulted in the album Catch a Fire.

Primarily recorded on an eight-track, Catch a Fire marked the first time a reggae band had access to a state-of-the-art studio and were accorded the same care as their rock 'n' roll peers. Blackwell desired to create "more of a drifting, hypnotic-type feel than a reggae rhythm", and restructured Marley's mixes and arrangements. Marley travelled to London to supervise Blackwell's overdubbing of the album which included tempering the mix from the bass-heavy sound of Jamaican music and omitting two tracks.

The Wailers' first album for Island, Catch a Fire, was released worldwide in April 1973, packaged like a rock record with a unique Zippo lighter lift-top. Initially selling 14,000 units, it received a positive critical reception. It was followed later that year by the album Burnin' which included the song "I Shot the Sheriff". Eric Clapton was given the album by his guitarist George Terry in the hope that he would enjoy it. Clapton was impressed and chose to record a cover version of "I Shot the Sheriff" which became his first US hit since "Layla" two years earlier and reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 14 September 1974. Many Jamaicans were not keen on the new reggae sound on Catch a Fire, but the Trenchtown style of Burnin found fans across both reggae and rock audiences.

During this period, Blackwell gifted his Kingston residence and company headquarters at 56 Hope Road (then known as Island House) to Marley. Housing Tuff Gong Studios, the property became not only Marley's office but also his home.

The Wailers were scheduled to open 17 shows in the US for Sly and the Family Stone. After four shows, the band was fired because they were more popular than the acts they were opening for. The Wailers disbanded in 1974, with each of the three main members pursuing a solo career.

1974–76: Line-up changes and shooting

Despite the break-up, Marley continued recording as "Bob Marley & The Wailers". His new backing band included brothers Carlton and Aston "Family Man" Barrett on drums and bass respectively, Junior Marvin and Al Anderson on lead guitar, Tyrone Downie and Earl "Wya" Lindo on keyboards, and Alvin "Seeco" Patterson on percussion. The "I Threes", consisting of Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths, and Marley's wife, Rita, provided backing vocals. In 1975, Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, with a live version of "No Woman, No Cry", from the Live! album. This was followed by his breakthrough album in the United States, Rastaman Vibration (1976), which reached the Top 50 of the Billboard Soul Charts.

On 3 December 1976, two days before "Smile Jamaica", a free concert organised by the Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in an attempt to ease tension between two warring political groups, Marley, his wife, and manager Don Taylor were wounded in an assault by unknown gunmen inside Marley's home. Taylor and Marley's wife sustained serious injuries but later made full recoveries. Bob Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm. The attempt on his life was thought to have been politically motivated, as many felt the concert was really a support rally for Manley. Nonetheless, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt. When asked why, Marley responded, "The people who are trying to make this world worse aren't taking a day off. How can I?" The members of the group Zap Pow played as Bob Marley's backup band before a festival crowd of 80,000 while members of The Wailers were still missing or in hiding.

1976–79: Relocation to England

Marley left Jamaica at the end of 1976, and after a month-long "recovery and writing" sojourn at the site of Chris Blackwell's Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, arrived in England, where he spent two years in self-imposed exile.

Whilst in England, he recorded the albums Exodus and Kaya. Exodus stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks. It included four UK hit singles: "Exodus", "Waiting in Vain", "Jamming", and "One Love" (a rendition of Curtis Mayfield's hit, "People Get Ready"). During his time in London, he was arrested and received a conviction for possession of a small quantity of cannabis. In 1978, Marley returned to Jamaica and performed at another political concert, the One Love Peace Concert, again in an effort to calm warring parties. Near the end of the performance, by Marley's request, Michael Manley (leader of then-ruling People's National Party) and his political rival Edward Seaga (leader of the opposing Jamaica Labour Party) joined each other on stage and shook hands.

Under the name Bob Marley and the Wailers 11 albums were released, four live albums and seven studio albums. The releases included Babylon by Bus, a double live album with 13 tracks, were released in 1978 and received critical acclaim. This album, and specifically the final track "Jamming" with the audience in a frenzy captured the intensity of Marley's live performances.

1979–81: Later years

Survival, a defiant and politically charged album, was released in 1979. Tracks such as "Zimbabwe", "Africa Unite", "Wake Up and Live", and "Survival" reflected Marley's support for the struggles of Africans. His appearance at the Amandla Festival in Boston in July 1979 showed his strong opposition to South African apartheid, which he already had shown in his song "War" in 1976. In early 1980, he was invited to perform at 17 April celebration of Zimbabwe's Independence Day.

Uprising (1980) was Bob Marley's final studio album, and is one of his most religious productions; it includes "Redemption Song" and "Forever Loving Jah". Confrontation, released posthumously in 1983, contained unreleased material recorded during Marley's lifetime, including the hit "Buffalo Soldier" and new mixes of singles previously only available in Jamaica.

Illness and death

In July 1977, Marley was found to have a type of malignant melanoma under the nail of a toe. Contrary to urban legend, this lesion was not primarily caused by an injury during a football match that year but was instead a symptom of already-existing cancer. Marley turned down his doctors' advice to have his toe amputated (which would have hindered his performing career), citing his religious beliefs, and instead, the nail and nail bed were removed and a skin graft was taken from his thigh to cover the area. Despite his illness, he continued touring and was in the process of scheduling a world tour in 1980.

The album Uprising was released in May 1980. The band completed a major tour of Europe, where it played its biggest concert to 100,000 people in Milan. After the tour, Marley went to the United States, where he performed two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City as part of the Uprising Tour.

Marley's last concert occurred at the Stanley Theater (now called The Benedum Center For The Performing Arts) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 23 September 1980. Just two days earlier he had collapsed during a jogging tour in Central Park and was brought to the hospital where he learned that his cancer had spread to his brain.

The only known photographs from the show were featured in Kevin Macdonald's documentary film Marley.

Shortly afterward, Marley's health deteriorated as his cancer had spread throughout his body. The rest of the tour was canceled and Marley sought treatment at the Bavarian clinic of Josef Issels, where he received an alternative cancer treatment called Issels treatment partly based on avoidance of certain foods, drinks, and other substances. After eight months of effectively failing to treat his advancing cancer Marley boarded a plane for his home in Jamaica.

While Marley was flying home from Germany to Jamaica, his vital functions worsened. After landing in Miami, Florida, he was taken to the hospital for immediate medical attention. Marley died on 11 May 1981 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami Hospital), aged 36. The spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death. His final words to his son Ziggy were "Money can't buy life."

Marley received a state funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981, which combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Rastafari tradition. He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace with his guitar.

On 21 May 1981, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga delivered the final funeral eulogy to Marley, declaring:

His voice was an omnipresent cry in our electronic world. His sharp features, majestic looks, and prancing style a vivid etching on the landscape of our minds. Bob Marley was never seen. He was an experience which left an indelible imprint with each encounter. Such a man cannot be erased from the mind. He is part of the collective consciousness of the nation.

Legacy

Awards and honours

1976: Rolling Stone Band of the Year

June 1978: Awarded the Peace Medal of the Third World from the United Nations.

February 1981: Awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit, then the nation's third highest honour, .

March 1994: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

1999: Album of the Century for Exodus by Time Magazine.

February 2001: A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

February 2001: Awarded Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

2004: Rolling Stone ranked him No. 11 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

2004: Among the first inductees into the UK Music Hall of Fame

"One Love" named song of the millennium by BBC.

Voted as one of the greatest lyricists of all time by a BBC poll.

2006: A blue plaque was unveiled at his first UK residence in Ridgmount Gardens, London, dedicated to him by the Nubian Jak Community Trust and supported by Her Majesty's Foreign Office.

2010: Catch a Fire inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame (Reggae Album).

Other tributes

A statue was inaugurated, next to the national stadium on Arthur Wint Drive in Kingston to commemorate him. In 2006, the New York City Department of Education co-named a portion of Church Avenue from Remsen Avenue to East 98th Street in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn as "Bob Marley Boulevard". In 2008, a statue of Marley was inaugurated in Banatski Sokolac, Serbia.

Internationally, Marley's message also continues to reverberate among various indigenous communities. For instance, the Australian Aboriginal people continue to burn a sacred flame to honour his memory in Sydney's Victoria Park, while members of the Native American Hopi and Havasupai tribes revere his work. There are also many tributes to Bob Marley throughout India, including restaurants, hotels, and cultural festivals.

Marley evolved into a global symbol, which has been endlessly merchandised through a variety of mediums. In light of this, author Dave Thompson in his book Reggae and Caribbean Music, laments what he perceives to be the commercialised pacification of Marley's more militant edge, stating:

Bob Marley ranks among both the most popular and the most misunderstood figures in modern culture ... That the machine has utterly emasculated Marley is beyond doubt. Gone from the public record is the ghetto kid who dreamed of Che Guevara and the Black Panthers, and pinned their posters up in the Wailers Soul Shack record store; who believed in freedom; and the fighting which it necessitated, and dressed the part on an early album sleeve; whose heroes were James Brown and Muhammad Ali; whose God was Ras Tafari and whose sacrament was marijuana. Instead, the Bob Marley who surveys his kingdom today is smiling benevolence, a shining sun, a waving palm tree, and a string of hits which tumble out of polite radio like candy from a gumball machine. Of course it has assured his immortality. But it has also demeaned him beyond recognition. Bob Marley was worth far more.

Several film adaptations have evolved as well. For instance, a feature-length documentary about his life, Rebel Music, won various awards at the Grammys. With contributions from Rita, The Wailers, and Marley's lovers and children, it also tells much of the story in his own words. In February 2008, director Martin Scorsese announced his intention to produce a documentary movie on Marley. The film was set to be released on 6 February 2010, on what would have been Marley's 65th birthday. However, Scorsese dropped out due to scheduling problems. He was replaced by Jonathan Demme, who dropped out due to creative differences with producer Steve Bing during the beginning of editing. Kevin Macdonald replaced Demme and the film, Marley, was released on 20 April 2012. In 2011, ex-girlfriend and filmmaker Esther Anderson, along with Gian Godoy, made the documentary Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend, which premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

In October 2015, Jamaican author Marlon James' novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, a fictional account of the attempted assassination of Marley, won the 2015 Man Booker Prize at a ceremony in London.

In February 2020, the musical Get Up Stand Up!, the Bob Marley Story was announced by writer Lee Hall and director Dominic Cooke, starring Arinzé Kene as Bob Marley. It will open at London's Lyric Theatre in February 2021.

Personal life

Religion

Bob Marley was a member for some years of the Rastafari movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae. He became an ardent proponent of Rastafari, taking its music out of the socially deprived areas of Jamaica and onto the international music scene. He once gave the following response, which was typical, to a question put to him during a recorded interview:

Interviewer: "Can you tell the people what it means being a Rastafarian?"

Marley: "I would say to the people, Be still, and know that His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is the Almighty. Now, the Bible seh so, Babylon newspaper seh so, and I and I the children seh so. Yunno? So I don't see how much more reveal our people want. Wha' dem want? a white god, well God come black. True true."

Archbishop Abuna Yesehaq baptised Marley into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, giving him the name Berhane Selassie, on 4 November 1980, shortly before his death.

Family

Bob Marley married Alpharita Constantia "Rita" Anderson in Kingston, Jamaica, on 10 February 1966. Marley had many children: four with his wife Rita, two adopted from Rita's previous relationships, and several others with different women. The official Bob Marley website acknowledges 11 children.

Those listed on the official site are:

Sharon, born 23 November 1964, daughter of Rita from a previous relationship but then adopted by Marley after his marriage with Rita

Cedella born 23 August 1967, to Rita

David "Ziggy", born 17 October 1968, to Rita

Stephen, born 20 April 1972, to Rita

Robert "Robbie", born 16 May 1972, to Pat Williams

Rohan, born 19 May 1972, to Janet Hunt

Karen, born 1973 to Janet Bowen

Stephanie, born 17 August 1974; according to Cedella Booker she was the daughter of Rita and a man called Ital with whom Rita had an affair, nonetheless, she was acknowledged as Bob's daughter

Julian, born 4 June 1975, to Lucy Pounder

Ky-Mani, born 26 February 1976, to Anita Belnavis

Damian, born 21 July 1978, to Cindy Breakspeare

Other sites have noted additional individuals who claim to be family members, as noted below:

Makeda was born on 30 May 1981, to Yvette Crichton, after Marley's death. Meredith Dixon's book lists her as Marley's child, but she is not listed as such on the Bob Marley official website.

Various websites, for example, also list Imani Carole, born 22 May 1963 to Cheryl Murray; but she does not appear on the official Bob Marley website.

Marley also has two notable grandsons, musician Skip Marley and American football player Nico Marley.

Association football

Aside from music, association football played a major role throughout his life. As well as playing the game, in parking lots, fields, and even inside recording studios, growing up he followed the Brazilian club Santos and its star player Pelé. Marley surrounded himself with people from the sport, and in the 1970s made the Jamaican international footballer Allan "Skill" Cole his tour manager. He told a journalist, "If you want to get to know me, you will have to play football against me and the Wailers."

Personal viewsPan-Africanism

Marley was a Pan-Africanist and believed in the unity of African people worldwide. His beliefs were rooted in his Rastafari religious beliefs. He was substantially inspired by Marcus Garvey, and had anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist themes in many of his songs, such as "Zimbabwe", "Exodus", "Survival", "Blackman Redemption", and "Redemption Song". "Redemption Song" draws influence from a speech given by Marcus Garvey in Nova Scotia, 1937. Marley held that independence of African countries from European domination was a victory for all those in the African diaspora. In the song "Africa Unite", he sings of a desire for all peoples of the African diaspora to come together and fight against "Babylon"; similarly, in the song "Zimbabwe", he marks the liberation of the whole continent of Africa, and evokes calls for unity between all Africans, both within and outside Africa.

Cannabis

Marley considered cannabis a healing herb, a "sacrament", and an "aid to medication"; he supported the legalisation of the drug. He thought that marijuana use was prevalent in the Bible, reading passages such as Psalms 104:14 as showing approval of its usage. Marley began to use cannabis when he converted to the Rastafari faith from Catholicism in 1966. He was arrested in 1968 after being caught with cannabis but continued to use marijuana in accordance with his religious beliefs. Of his marijuana usage, he said, "When you smoke herb, herb reveal yourself to you. All the wickedness you do, the herb reveal itself to yourself, your conscience, show up yourself clear, because herb make you meditate. Is only a natural t'ing and it grow like a tree." Marley saw marijuana usage as a vital factor in religious growth and connection with Jah, and as a way to philosophise and become wiser.

Discography

Studio albums

The Wailing Wailers (1965)

Soul Rebels (1970)

Soul Revolution (1971)

The Best of The Wailers (1971)

Catch a Fire (1973)

Burnin' (1973)

Natty Dread (1974)

Rastaman Vibration (1976)

Exodus (1977)

Kaya (1978)

Survival (1979)

Uprising (1980)

Confrontation (1983)

Live albums

Live! (1975)

Babylon by Bus (1978)

See also

Outline of Bob Marley

List of peace activists

Fabian Marley

Desis bobmarleyi – an underwater spider species named in honor of Marley

#02/06 #05/11

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/queens-achievement-world-news-group/

Queen’s achievement | WORLD News Group

Irina Krush, the only American female to achieve the title of chess grandmaster, lives an unassuming life for someone who has won the U.S. women’s championship eight times.

Krush, 36, lives in a modest apartment in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, the neighborhood she grew up in after her Jewish parents immigrated from the Soviet Union when she was a child. As she did her daily walk in November around the bay where swans patrol the waters, she ran into her landlady, who was also her high-school French teacher.

When Krush was playing the U.S. championship at home last month, her landlady tried to keep the internet working, Krush explained with a laugh. In the penultimate championship game, her connection fritzed, and she had to disconnect and reconnect. “If I had only five seconds left, I would have lost,” she said. (In online chess tournaments the clock keeps running even if a player loses her internet connection.)

Krush won the championship. Her landlady bought her flowers.

Netflix’s popular show, The Queen’s Gambit, follows a fictitious American women’s chess champion. But Krush is the real thing: As a little girl she used to beat grown men in chess in New York City parks.

Krush played the championship, which kicked off online in October, from her small Brooklyn apartment that consists of a kitchen, a bedroom, bathroom, and an alcove where her computer and chess board sit (her “workspace,” she says). She sees her tiny apartment as an advantage for bathroom breaks in games: “Five seconds and I’m back! Everything is very nearby.”

Krush describes herself as a “Christian Jew,” having converted to Christianity in 2011. She and Alex Lenderman, another grandmaster in Brooklyn, attend the same Russian Orthodox church. She and Alex also went to the same public high school in Brooklyn, Edward R. Murrow High School, famous for its chess teams. Elite chess teams don’t typically come from public schools.

She had never been interested in Christianity, but after a year of reading spiritual books, she decided she wanted to see what a church service was like. At her first service, she says, “it was immediate: There was no more thinking or choosing. … I felt like, ‘Oh yes, this is where the truth is.’”

She remembered the sermon: “‘Faith is a gift from God’… those words went into my heart.” Three months later she was baptized, and she has now joined the choir even though she describes herself as “the least talented person you can imagine … but I’m learning to sing.”

“This is one of the unexpected moments of my life,” she said.

Another unexpected moment: In early March Krush contracted COVID-19. At the time, doctors knew little about the symptoms of the disease or how to treat it. Krush recalled suddenly struggling to breathe and feeling like a truck had run over her chest. At first, she didn’t even think about the coronavirus—she just thought she might be dying.

She went to a hospital in Brooklyn, tested positive for COVID-19, and was admitted for several days by herself. She would go to sleep with Psalm 90 playing on her phone: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place, for all generations.”

That early in the outbreak, medical workers didn’t know how to treat the virus, and after a few days the hospital discharged her as it grew overwhelmed with patients who needed to go on ventilators.

She got a pulse oximeter for herself, and doctors told her to go to the emergency room if she found she couldn’t breathe again. She did go to the ER several more times and was in a lot of pain, but her blood oxygen remained high enough that she didn’t have to be readmitted.

She’s now a COVID-19 “long hauler,” and her inflamed lungs are taking months to heal. Given her cerebral profession, she was thankful to have been spared the neurological damage that often comes with some cases.

“Brain fog or loss of memory or concentration would be very impactful on what I do, but I think that’s bypassed me,” she said.

Krush resents the idea of being a strong enough “fighter” to beat the disease. But she does think chess helped her face COVID-19.

“Chess is a character shaper,” she said. “Chess players know the experience of being in bad positions, right? It’s not pleasant, and you’ve got to defend them. … You don’t know how long it’s going to take, and you don’t know what the result is going to be. You don’t know if … after playing for six hours, you’re going to lose.”

Krush wrote health updates on Facebook to the chess community, and encouragement poured in from other top chess players: “Krush it!” one said. Through her recovery she played and coached chess. She had to call off one lesson after 15 minutes because she suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe again. She realized that talking inflamed her lungs.

In recent years she had focused more on teaching than competing. The pandemic gave her a break from her normally frenetic commutes and travel schedule. Now she takes walks by the bay, which she previously never had time for. And she plays chess.

She thinks the healthier pace helped her during this year’s championship. During the tournament, she would play a game, walk out to her backyard and have a moment of sunshine, then go back and play more chess. Playing chess at this level is physically draining, studies have shown: The world champion in 2004 lost 17 pounds during the championship match.

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#achievement #queen #World

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truthlives4ever · 4 years

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Righteous Rebellion or Political Power?

It would be ungrateful of me if I didn’t first mention that my spiritual life has greatly benefited from John MacArthur’s bible teaching over the years. Many of his sermons helped carry me through one of the most challenging times of my life as a young man moving across the country and transitioning into independent manhood. And I suppose the truth of those statements is the very reason I’ve wrestled with the way this story has unfolded. For decades, MacArthur has been a controversial figure in Christianity who is known for facing adversity head-on. Nevertheless, he’s also a man who is widely regarded for his firm faithfulness to Scripture and his intentional avoidance of political entanglements.

However, in his recent responses to COVID-19-related restrictions on in-person church gatherings of larger congregations, he has now taken a stand against the California government which seems to have created a conflict between his politics and his sermons on biblical submission to government. As someone who has always known MacArthur to be fairly consistent with aligning his words with his deeds, his recent political zeal and resistance came as somewhat of a surprise to me, which led me to discuss it with my pastor. The challenge for me hasn’t been in my ability to view him as a flawed human being who is prone to blind-spots and error like the rest of us. Instead, the challenge has been in my attempts to reconcile what appears to be contradictory positions, while also seeing him encourage many other pastors to follow his lead in defiance of adhering to COVID-19 restrictions that are put in place for people's safety.

In order to make sure I was doing my due diligence, I read the California COVID-19 Guidelines for Places of Worship issued by Governor Gavin Newsome. Upon reading the guidelines, I discovered that they still allow for in-person church gatherings. The guidelines limit indoor attendees to a maximum of 100 people and encourage outdoor attendance that observes physical distancing, face coverings, and other safety measures that make sense for a mega church with thousands of members. Despite MacArthur describing the restrictions as "utterly impossible" to follow, another mega church in Riverside, CA (Harvest Christian Fellowship) is complying successfully. Given the fact that conditional provisions exist in the guidelines that actually do allow MacArthur to lawfully have in-person service, it begs the question, “is this really about the suppression of religious freedom or something else?”

Considering the fact that MacArthur is refusing to comply with government guidelines not because there are no accommodations for in-person church gathering but because he doesn’t personally consider the restrictions to be fair enough, according to his sermon transcripts, the biblical basis for breaking the law doesn’t appear to exist. What adds more room for speculation about this potentially centering around a political power struggle is the fact that Donald Trump has personally told MacArthur that he’ll have presidential backing and access to his personal attorney—which harkens back to a 2016 speech Trump gave in Iowa where he stated:

“Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country and yet we don’t exert the power that we should have. Christianity will have power. If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”

Thus far, keeping that promise has won Trump deep loyalty from White Evangelicals. Does that mean we should view MacArthur’s new political posture and powerful allegiance with President Trump as a move that discredits his 50+ year legacy of prioritizing gospel preaching? I don’t think so. Nevertheless, I do think it’s important that the church continue to have broader conversation around how healthy this kind of political alliance for “Christian Power” is for the body of Christ—particularly for those who may now feel somewhat confused/uncertain about what biblical submission to government looks like and what the valid exceptions truly are. Am I writing this this because I seek to cast aspersions or assign ill motives to MacArthur and his elders? Not at all. I’m writing this for the sake of pursuing clarity as someone who desires to help protect the church’s witness to the world.

Ultimately, my concern with this issue for the church is that if we don’t closely examine this controversy with honesty and transparency (which is often difficult for us to do when someone as prolific and impactful as John MacArthur is involved), we could potentially repeat some of the same mistakes we’ve made as a church historically when we allow our deference for those we consider heroes to prevent us from examining whether their words and actions are aligned in the same ways they encourage ours to be. Unfortunately, this then perpetuates the narrative that Christian orthodoxy fails to match its orthopraxy. In repeating these problematic patterns, we also run the risk of subconsciously training ourselves to be partial and selective about other inconvenient/uncomfortable truths we aren’t ready to deal with (i.e. Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and other Reformers in Christian history who rationalized, justified, or overlooked the prevalent racism in their congregations and societies).

All that said, I hope I’ve made my intentions clear. These observations are in no way meant to disparage or harshly condemn John MacArthur or his elders. On the contrary, they’re meant to share the things I’ve been closely considering regarding the perceptual challenges of the case while also expressing a loving concern about an issue that I believe has massive implications. We’re in a time where politics are infiltrating the church in ways that are causing confusion, division, and anger. Lord knows I’ve been prayerfully trying to guard my heart from bitterness towards those I see as encouraging and condoning injustice. My hope is that through open and respectful discourse around this issue, we can sort through the more troublesome aspects of these trends rather than remaining distant, tribal, passive-aggressive, condescending, and judgmental. May we all increase in patience, grace, and love toward one another in these tense times.

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thejokersenigma · 7 years

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Nygma x Reader Opposites Attract Part 2

Hello - anyone that reads this series! Its been a long time since I posted the first one, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue it, but I fancied writing something different to my usual so I thought I’d attempt to pick this back up again!

Not much happens in this chapter I’m afraid - I’m just trying to get back into my head space for this story and trying to figure out where I am going with it as well as keeping it relatively short!

Hope you Enjoy! (if anyone reads it!) :)

I love comments and feedback!

Masterlist

OA MASTERLIST

Although Edward Nygma still did not voluntary put his name for coffee duty, he no longer avoided it like the plague and never regretted going. Everyone had enjoyed the coffee he had delivered and so the new Coffee spot for the GCPD had become The Cup n’ Saucer – much to [Y/N]’s delight.

Edward was not as thrilled. As much as he was glad he was contributing to the increase in customers for the young lady, he didn’t like it when he watched one of the younger, handsome interns doing a coffee run. For whatever reason this jealousy was occurring for, he couldn’t figure out – his eyes still firmly set on Miss Kringle – none the less he made a point of trying not to find out whose turn it was.

His whooing of Miss Kringle had, of course, been postponed whilst she was with Officer Dougherty. But that hadn’t stopped him trying to spend as much time around her as possible in the records annex – making up excuses just to get files in the hopes of her being in there. This now meaning he had a large pile of unneeded folders sat on his desk which he needed to return discretely.

For now though, he an actual information he needed to get from the archives. He headed to the room of files, carrying his a small card of handwritten names in one hand and a spare watermelon he had left over from more of his experiments. He had sliced it in half and removed chunks decoratively so it had the appearance of a basket. Inside he had arranged the fruit’s chopped flesh in cubes, some of which were impaled with small coloured plastic swords.

As he sung the door open he stopped abruptly in the doorway when he was faced with Miss Kringle and Officer Dougherty stood barely an inch apart, locked in a kiss. The smile of greeting he had on his face dropped and he turned so that he pressed his back to the doorframe.

The couple had pulled away at his entry, Kristen appearing self-conscious at the situation and, not meeting Dougherty’s eyes as she nodded in response to his words, attempting to hurry him along, whilst he seemed unfazed by the interruption.

Ed stared his annoyance into the wooden frame opposite him as he waited for them to finish their conversation, rolling the watermelon ball between his hands as he fidgeted uncomfortably. He could Miss Kringle murmuring affirmations at Dougherty about meeting up later and he could feel his brow pull even lower as he frowned. He didn’t want to know that.

Finally they parted and Officer Dougherty picked up his police cap he had left on top of one of the filing cabinets, it hung by his side as he strolled nonchalantly towards Ed, “How’s it hangin’ riddle man?” he asked, and Ed glanced at him quickly before returning his attention back to the wall in front of him. He was a bit taken aback at the casual vernacular and not entirely sure how to answer correctly to the phrase

“Uh, it’s hanging –“ he paused - his eyes still firmly fixed in front of him - as Dougherty reached into the watermelon in his hands without invitation, picking up one of the small plastic swords and popping a cube of fruit into his mouth. He continued out the door without a pause, not waiting to hear the rest of Ed’s sentence, clearly not caring for the answer. “fine.” Finished Ed quietly.

He remained in the door way as the officer walked away, hesitating as to what to do now.

“Mr Nygma,” came Kristen from within the room, and he turned his head in her direction. Did he notice a slight wobble in her voice? “Did you need something?” she asked bluntly – any trace of a waver in her voice now gone.

He turned so that he faced into the room, taking in the beautiful red head before him. She was in a simple long-sleeved green dress that fell to her knees and had a pair of dark heels on that he had memorised the signature click of from the times she walked past his office.

“Oh, yes.” He said quickly, breaking out of his study of her, “Uh, Detective Gordon wanted me to go through the forensic evidence of these old murders.” He explained, handing her the card in his hand with a list of names.

“Ok.” She breathed, reading through the list. Then he noticed the exposed skin of her left upper arm where she had rolled up the sleeves of her dress.

“Are those bruises?” he questioned, his face clouding over as he took in the dark patches of purple that marred her smooth pale skin.

“Uh,” She hesitated, pulling her arm closer to her and rolling down the sleeve to cover the marks.

A realisation hit him from the words he had overheard a moment ago from Dougherty – So you forgive me? He could feel the anger forming inside him, “Did Officer Dougherty do this to you?” he asked in disbelief.

“Uh, he was upset and he didn’t mean to, I said something’s I shouldn’t have and-“

“Miss Kringle this isn’t right,” Ed cried out shaking his head, “He can’t just-

“Mr Nygma,” Kristen broke in, “it is none of your concern.” She told him, a strong steely look in her eye. She seemed so confident, but he didn’t want her to have to handle this – she shouldn’t have to. Then teach the man some lessons.

“Now I need to get start on these files so.” She trailed off as opened one filing cabinet, only to realised it was the wrong one move to the next one, forcing Ed to move out of the way as she pulled it open.

Ed could tell she didn’t want to say anymore on the subject so he reluctantly dropped it. He heard her sigh and shake her head slight as he turned and his heart went out to her, wishing he could comfort her, save her. Then do it. She clearly didn’t want his help though. She just doesn’t know it.

He fought down the voice in his head and he walked out the annex in defeat, watermelon basket still in hand. You could be her hero… sang the voice in his head. He could.

Y/N had been thrilled by the sudden increase of business, not only did she have the usual GCPD coffee round every day around midmorning, but she also had the odd officer at lunch and after their shift now as well. Plus some had even gone on to tell others how good the café was so she was seeing quite an increase in customers.

She had the lanky forensic man to thank for that. Whoever he was.

She regretted now not asking for his name – she owed him a lot and wanted to thank him but she felt awkward not knowing who he actually was. He had returned to the café only once since then and she’d been too busy to hold a conversation with him – for the first time ever actually run off her feet with customers!

He hadn’t returned after that, young men and women - who she assumed were assistants or interns – instead of her tall forensic scientist. Now she was worrying that she had done something wrong which meant he wouldn’t ever come back – he had after all hated the fact that he had to get the coffee. Maybe he didn’t want to come back. Maybe she had been too forward giving him that coffee on the house. After all he was bound to have a girlfriend. Just because her love life consisted of books and her old family dog didn’t mean everyone’s did. Maybe she’d scared him off, she thought as she wiped down the empty refrigerated display shelves with a ragged cloth. It was the final hour before she closed for the night and a few customers loitered around enjoying the relaxing atmosphere and late night caffeine hit.

Who was she to flirt with a guy after only knowing him for a few minutes? She had never been that bold before – and clearly for a good reason! She let out a loud sigh, bending over so she could rest her elbow on the counter and her head in her hand. She looked out the front café windows at the head lights that flew past in the darkening evening wishing she could just be in bed and wrapped up in her duvet and embarrassment.

But instead she was here. There was no good moping around when there was work to do. So she pulled herself together and busied herself with the rest of the cleanup and prep she needed to do for tomorrow.

But even as she stood in the small kitchen, beating away at ingredients in bowls and chopping veg for the next day, her mind could still travel - and did - to the mysterious riddle man.

Having only seen him twice, and for short periods of time, his face was not clear in her memories and she doubted any image she had of him was accurate. She wanted to see him again. Needed to see him again. Just once. That would do her. Then she’d never have the need to think or see him again.

It sounded weird, obsessive and downright ridiculous, but thinking about it now – as she washed and dried plates and cups - she realised it was exactly what she wanted.

The problem was she, didn’t know who he was. She had no name to go on. She could pay the GCPD a visit and find out, but that felt a bit stalker-ish and creepy. No. She couldn’t do that, she thought, accidentally splashing soapy water over her apron. No, a sensible, normal person would just leave it to fate. They would wait here, doing their job, living their own life and just wait to see if he ever appeared again. If he didn’t, then he clearly didn’t want to see her again and that would just have to be that. She would just have to fine and live with it.

And so she made up her mind to wait - sighing at the loud thoughts in her head that told her there was no chance she’d seem him again - as she grabbed a tea towel and began to dry the dishes.

#nygma x reader #opposites attract #opposites attract part 2 #opposites attract fanfic #opposites attract fan fiction #ed nygma #ed nygma fanfic #nygma fan fic #nygma fan fiction #nygma x reader fan fiction #jokersenigma #jokersenigma fan fiction

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jmyers104 · 5 years

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Calvin and Edwards as Educators

John Calvin

Student

John Calvin’s parents placed a high premium on education. “Calvin received education through his father’s efforts to secure aristocratic patronage.” As a young boy (around 11 or 12), Calvin was sent to College la Marche, where he was greatly influenced by humanist Mathurin Cordier, who stressed to Calvin the importance of learning to read and write proficiently. However. because he desired a more conservative education, Calvin soon transferred to College de Montaigu – “a place that combined rigorous academics with an austere lifestyle.” Every morning, Calvin would wake up at four and commence with a day full of prayer and rigorous study. This became a habit that he would follow for the rest of his life. Calvin would eventually find himself studying at College Royal, where Calvin would immerse himself in the study of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages.

Though Calvin was demonstrating that he was gifted with a great mind, he was not at this time using it for God’s glory. That would change quite suddenly in 1533. In Calvin’s own words, “God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame…Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that although I did not leave off other studies, I pursued them with less ardour.” The following year, Calvin moved to Basel, where he continued his rigorous study of the languages, but his focus was now on God’s kingdom.

Pastor

Calvin desired to live a quiet life as a scholar, but God had other plans for him – and so did a man named Guillaume Farel. While Calvin was traveling through Geneva one night, Farel found him and strongly urged him to stay in Geneva to help with the reformation cause. Calvin declined the offer, but Farel was not willing to accept “no” for an answer. In no uncertain terms, Farel cursed Calvin’s studies, which troubled Calvin to the point that he conceded and moved to Geneva. He became a preacher, and under the tutelage of Farel and Pierre Vinet, Calvin learned to do the work of a pastor. Unfortunately, he was forced out of the church after two years there, though they would ask for him to return three years later. Those three years away from Geneva proved to be a great time of spiritual formation for Calvin. He stayed in Strasbourg and was mentored by a man named Martin Bucer. Calvin did not return with hard feelings toward his congregation. In fact, rather than dwell on the situation, he picked up where he left off, preaching from the passage of Scripture where he had left off three years prior.

Given that this was the time of the Reformation, the church was still in theological and doctrinal darkness. Calvin’s solution was to centralize God’s Word in the life of the church and emphasize the teaching of Scripture as the foundation of theological education. The church, as Calvin viewed it, was the “school of Christ,” and Christianity is a religion founded on the knowledge of God.

Author

Throughout his life Calvin would write several books. Prior to his conversion, he wrote “a critical edition with commentary of Seneca’s De Clementia.” Though it was an impressive work (especially for a 23 year-old), it was not as successful as he had hoped. Still, God certainly used this time to shape and prepare Calvin to write his most notable work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. In 1536, the first edition of Institutes was published. It provided “an overview of biblical doctrine for French protestants” that proved to be rather popular. It would see eight Latin revisions before its final edition was published in 1559. What started as something of a catechism ended up representing “a sum of religion in all its parts.”

Though comprehensive, Institutes was not written to replace biblical exposition, but rather to supplement it. Calvin thus wrote a series of commentaries that was “Meant to work hand in hand with his Institutes.” Like his Institutes, these commentaries are thorough without forsaking brevity. An important note on these commentaries is that Calvin steered clear of unnecessarily allegorizing the biblical text, but rather sought to interpret Scripture in a natural, literal sense.

Teacher

Towards the end of his life, Calvin became involved with the Geneva Academy, a school opened by a friend of his. Here, Calvin would give lectures on various books of the Bible three times a week. Unfortunately, Calvin passed away not too long after he began working with the Geneva Academy, but his legacy as an educator has far outlasted many of his contemporaries.

Jonathan Edwards

Student

It seems that there was never a time when Christian education was not a part of Jonathan Edwards’ life. His father Timothy was a pastor, as well as a schoolmaster who headed up a college preparatory school in the church parsonage. His mother Esther was the daughter of prominent pastor Solomon Stoddard. Before he even went to college he could read Latin and Greek. Edwards went on to be a student at what is now Yale University, where he graduated at the top of his class. Three years later, he graduated with an M.A.

Pastor and Teacher

Following the completion of his formal education, Edwards began pastoring the church at Northampton. The people in his area were spiritually malnourished. Edwards’ remedy was to preach a series on the doctrine of justification by faith alone. He affirmed that justification is “the way of the gospel…the true and only way.” This is a doctrine that was critical in transforming the hearts and lives of people during Reformation times. Now, with an ocean and two centuries between Edwards and the Reformation, God was once again using this crucial doctrine to spiritually awaken people. His teachings on justification served as a catalyst for both spiritual and numerical growth for years to come. This gospel transformation was not confined within the four walls of the Northampton church. Just like in Philippians 1:12-18, where an imprisoned Paul was crucial in spreading the gospel, so God used this one man to minister to one congregation who served as a witness to the surrounding communities. As a result, revival would soon break out in the surrounding areas.

Edwards would certainly not take all the credit for this growth. He viewed education as critical, but he also knew it has its limitations. Edwards depended on the Holy Spirit to change the hearts of men. He observed how the Spirit would use his sermons as a vehicle to work “wonderfully” and “suddenly” among the congregation. Thus, education was not discounted just because the Holy Spirit was at work, but was rather viewed as the means through which He would work. According to Edwards, “Reason can demonstrate that something is true, but only the Spirit of God can create an affectionate desire or delight to it.” With this foundation in place – Edwards’ devotion to Christian and his dependence on the Holy Spirit – the stage was set for the Great Awakening. Edwards became pastor of the Northampton church in 1729. In 1734, a great revival broke out in his church and the surrounding areas. In 1740, a more widespread revival took place that is now known as the Great Awakening, and at the center of that movement was a man devoted to theology and dependent on the Holy Spirit.

Shortly after the Great Awakening, Edwards had to leave the church due to a doctrinal disagreement. He moved to Stockbridge, MA, where he pastored a church and ministered to Mohawk, Mohican, and Iroquois Indians. Contrary to what some believed in his day, Edwards was convinced that the Indians had the “right to a proper education by qualified teachers” and fought to make this a reality. About seven years later, he accepted a position as the president of what is now Princeton University, where he remained until his death.

Author

While it is undeniable that the Holy Spirit was transforming lives during the Great Awakening, there were also many false works; where true conversion is taking place, Satan will seek to produce counterfeits. Thus, it was important for Edwards to educate people on how to differentiate between a work of the Spirit and a work of false spirits. He therefore penned The Distinguishing Marks of the Spirit of God, which centered around 1 John 4:1. This book contained three parts: First, Edwards discussed nine “negative signs” to look for concerning false spirits. Second, he described five “positive evidences” of the true Spirit’s work. Third, he made a contemporary application based on the text.

Another one of Edwards’ most notable works is A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. It is rather easy to fall into one of two theological ditches. The first is that one can become consumed with the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake and become rather cold in their disposition. There other is that one can become consumed with emotionalism, forsaking theology and advocating what “feels good.” Edwards shows that there is not to be such a divorcing of head and heart. “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections,” and our affections are informed by sound theology.

Teacher

Edwards employed a method of teaching that worked for children just as well as it did for college students. This method stemmed from a problem that Edwards recognized: children were memorizing facts, but they were not learning. Put another way, they were not internalizing the information. Therefore, Edwards employed a dialogical approach: he would ask questions, and the students were encouraged to ask questions in return. For the child, learning would “cease to be a dull, wearisome task, without any suitable pleasure or benefit.” Edwards also saw positive results at the collegiate level using this method. Edwards also realized that the children were seeing the biblical narrative as a series of disconnected stories and sought to remedy this problem by exposing them to the larger narrative. This would ensure that they would not lose the forest through the trees.

Comparison

There are many striking similarities between Calvin and Edwards. Both men were taught the value of education from an early age. Both men spent a great deal of time learning other languages. Both were wounded and sent away by their congregations. Both had careers in academia that were, from a human standpoint, cut short. However, the similarities go much deeper. These were men who were profoundly dedicated to Christian education, and sought to expose them to the glory of God through preaching, teaching, and writing. God blessed their ministries with spiritual and numerical growth, and even today God is using their publications to bless His people. Though Edwards was not a reformer in the sense that Calvin was, he nevertheless carried on in the spirit of reformation as he educated the people under the sound of his voice. In his own words, the “easiest way of reforming a people in the world is by education.”

Interestingly, it was not until after Edwards completed his undergraduate studies that he got saved. During his undergraduate studies, he would have been exposed to the theological writings of John Calvin and the like. Perhaps God used those writings to work in the heart of Edwards and move him towards conversion. Christian education is never complete. God raised up Calvin to do His work, and he used Calvin’s work to bless Edwards and shape his thinking. As we continue to study men like Calvin and Edwards, may our affections for the knowledge of God be stirred, and may we continue their dual work of reformation and education.

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imhwendy6489-blog · 7 years

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Health and wellness.

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flauntpage · 7 years

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What Life Is Like at 'Disneyland for Athletes'

Over the next two months VICE Sports will be profiling 16 athletes as they evolve into national superstars. Keep checking back here to find them all.

In the western Florida summer, you have two, three hours max after sunrise before the heat and humidity makes outdoor activity a dangerous proposition. 9 AM in mid-July is pushing it. In that sense, Nico Mejia is running late. On the courts of the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, Mejia takes his warm-ups with his doubles partner, Sebastian Korda. The pair try their best to rally with ease, keeping their competitive spirits at bay for as long as possible. But that never lasts long with tennis players, especially teenage boys. Soon enough, their shots increase in intensity and sweat soaks their backs.

Korda and Mejia both have tennis in their blood. Korda's father and coach, Petr Korda, won the 1998 Australian Open and 1996 Australian Open doubles with Stefan Edberg. Mejia's father, Gustavo, was an avid amateur player in Colombia, and his sister Gabriela was an All-American at the University of Miami and competed professionally. His uncle Juan Mateus—another Miami alum—is also his coach at IMG. In a sense, the question was never whether Nico Mejia would play tennis at some level but rather for how long. Still, he never felt any pressure to take up the family sport. Instead, his family stressed that whatever he chose to do in life, he needed to commit to it.

Edward Linsmier

So at the age of 12, he moved from his home in Cali, Colombia, to the tennis hotbed that is the Miami area to seriously pursue a career. "I mean, yeah it was hard," Mejia says of moving away from his family, "because I'm a person who likes to be with family. But since I moved when I was 12 years old, I kind of got used to not being with my family as much as I would like."

Mejia spent a couple years training in South Florida, beginning in 2012, but he soon outgrew the competition. There were only a few other kids his age, and they treated tennis more as a hobby than a future. Mejia, from a young age, regarded the tennis court as an arena. "On the court, he's a gladiator," Mateus said. "If he can chew you alive, he's going to do it."

At the end of 2014, Mejia reached the Junior Eddie Herr, a prestigious youth competition. He got knocked out in the Round of 32, but he had caught the attention of IMG Academy coaches, who recruited him for their tennis program. When Mejia toured the campus for the first time, he realized it was everything he had ever dreamed of. He enrolled the next year.

Edward Linsmier

For teenagers ready and able to commit completely to the rigorous lifestyle of a high-level junior athlete, there is perhaps no better place in the world than the IMG Academy. Founded in 1978 by the legendary coach Nick Bollettieri, the then eponymously named Academy was the first major tennis boarding school and fundamentally changed how elite young players trained and prepared for professional tennis careers. In 1987, the year Bollettieri sold the Academy to IMG, 27 of his former and current students played in the U.S. Open, while 32 made it to Wimbledon's main draw. As of now, the tennis program has trained ten worldwide No. 1-ranked players, including Andre Agassi, Maria Sharapova, Serena and Venus Williams, Monica Seles, and Jim Courier. In many ways, the Academy left a permanent mark on the tennis world.

Recently, the focus of the academy has shifted slightly, in line with the Academy's overall expansion, to accommodate teenagers seeking college scholarships in addition to aspiring pros. Over the past 15 years, the IMG Academy has spread its roots far beyond tennis to include football, baseball, golf, basketball, soccer, as well as track and field. Now it's fundamentally a boarding school where each of its 1,100 students is on a sports team. The Academy's physical footprint has grown accordingly, from Bollettieri's original 40 acres to a 450-acre campus lined with gleaming, glass-enclosed structures, modern dorms for the 70 percent of students who live on-campus, a nature reserve complete with a fishing pond, and countless pristine sport fields. The entire setup conjures a European soccer academy mixed with a Division I athletic program, and in fact, the Academy's amenities outclass those found at many D-I programs: fitness facilities and uniforms sponsored by Gatorade and Under Armour respectively, hydrotherapy for injury recovery, hyperbaric chambers for increasing lung capacity, nutrition coaches, leadership training, and vision and visual cognitive training. Golf carts, the preferred mode of transportation for IMG staff, constantly hum around the campus, which has grown so much that it's now dotted with oversized maps telling you that "YOU ARE HERE."

All in all, tuition and expenses cost upwards of $70,000 per year (the Academy offers limited need-based financial aid; a spokesperson for the Academy declined to offer specifics such as how many students receive financial aid or how much the average aid package is). While IMG also runs a massive sports management agency that looms large over professional tennis, it seems that more than anything else, the Academy functions as a standalone enterprise to create a sporting oasis for whomever is willing to pay for it. In addition to the school, the Academy hosts professional athletes for off-season training programs, pro teams passing through, and some international youth tournaments.

Of course, there are academic facilities on campus, too, tailored to fit the athletes' needs and future career goals. For elite high-school-age athletes, this offers a huge advantage over traditional schooling. In addition to aiding its students in qualifying for NCAA scholarships, the Academy equips students with the skills necessary to balance the unique social and academic pressures facing college athletes, while also teaching them to deal with issues that often trip up the pros. To that end, students receive media training in addition to a heavy core emphasis on the visual and creative arts.

Edward Linsmier

A few weeks shy of 40 years old and sporting a blue IMG Academy baseball cap, Mateus describes himself as a specific kind of coach. His job is to usher teenagers through what he alternately calls "the last mile" or "the point of break." In other words, it's his job to find out if they have what it takes to become professionals, both from a talent and maturity perspective.

Mateus believes the traveling tennis lifestyle is its own form of education, albeit a very different one from a traditional high school. Young players experience a wide variety of cultures, and have to learn to be responsible in many different foreign countries. They learn a lot about their own bodies, the human anatomy, about nutrition and chemistry to ensure they adhere to the strict and confusing anti-doping guidelines of high-level tennis. Mateus also teaches his athletes to manage their finances, file expense reports, enact time-management techniques, and other practical lessons most kids are lucky to master by the time they graduate college, to say nothing of high school.

Even with all of these resources, the transition to IMG can be a tough one. For the first six months, Mejia lived in the dorms on campus while his uncle still lived in Miami. Although it was the environment he always wanted—consistently facing high-level competition and access to professional-caliber training facilities—when he wasn't playing, practicing, or training, he was bored. To kill time, he'd play FIFA with his friends. But soon after he arrived at IMG, Mejia moved in with Mateus and he rediscovered the family life he had been missing.

Edward Linsmier

"Usually, 16 is very difficult for these boys and girls," Mateus says as Mejia jokes with Korda on the court. When kids upend their lives, and by extension, their families' lives, to accomplish such a lofty goal, they can get impatient. If a kid is used to winning every tournament without much difficulty and suddenly starts losing at the Academy, he or she might think something is wrong. They start making changes to their game, to their lifestyle, to themselves. They focus on the results on the court rather than, as Mateus puts it, "the process."

According to Mateus, only one to 1.5 percent of junior tennis players go straight to the pros. The rest go to college, which Mateus emphasizes is a good thing for most kids, who need a few years of stability. Maybe their bodies or minds need to fully mature. Perhaps they can't, or don't want to, cope with the nomadic life of a pro—or, understandably enough, they might not be ready to act like an adult all of the time.

But not Mejia. Mateus lauds his nephew for having a natural instinct on the court while maintaining a healthy attitude off it. "We were able to prolong the great times until he was almost 16," Mateus tells me. In the autumn of 2016, he adds, Mejia went through an attitudinal funk, an obstacle for developing tennis players that is something of an inevitability, according to Mateus. "He had a period of two, three months," says Mateus. Last December, his nephew crossed over to what Mateus terms "the real side," the point where a young player redoubles their dedication to focus on the sport. "Now, he sees what we see as an adult. We're very happy about it. Happy for him," he adds. As Mateus describes all of this in vague terms to respect his nephew's privacy, it almost sounds like like Mejia dealt with nothing more than a rough bout of almost becoming a teenager.

Edward Linsmier

Shortly after Mejia cleared this critical hurdle, however, tragedy struck. His parents had been working towards relocating from Colombia to Florida, where they could watch their son play, develop as a player, and emerge from IMG as both a professional and a fully formed adult. But, in April of this year, Mejia's father had a heart attack and died while playing tennis at his home in Colombia.

After his father's death, Mateus noticed a further change in Mejia. While it's been a tough time for both of them, he says, the hardship "actually fueled him to actually be a little bit more [focused on] what he's doing. He's filling a gap of whatever was left of his maturity. This helped him to realize that he has a lot more to live." For his part, Mejia discusses the impact of his father's death with a steely gaze. The last few months have been hard for him, he says, but he's doing his best to remember what his father taught him, to always be fighting, always be improving, always be competing, and, of course, to never give up. Sticking to platitudes while discussing a turbulent time in his life, Mejia already sounds like a seasoned professional.

Though the other top players at the Academy are expected to grow up quickly, they're still kids who need the companionship and support that only friends and family can offer. In this sense, Mejia's family is trying to adapt: in addition to having his uncle on campus, his mother is still planning to move up to Florida to join him. And he's made friends, too. That weekend, he had plans to go mini-golfing with Emiliana Arango, another Academy tennis player also from Colombia. I spoke to her mother, Juliana Restrepo, shortly before Mejia and Mateus as Arango practiced on an adjacent court. For Restrepo, who rents a house five minutes away from IMG, sending her daughter to IMG was "one of the best moves I've made because here she has everything that she needs." In her eyes, the place is like "Disneyland for athletes."

Unlike Mejia, Arango doesn't come from a tennis family. Instead, she grew up on a ranch in Medellin, where her family kept horses and cows. Her first love was horseback riding, but all that changed the first time she picked up a tennis racket, at five and a half years old. Arango loved playing on the clay courts. Restrepo recalls that her daughter would be "orange from head to toe" by the time they got home. At first, she played tennis once a week. Then twice a week. Soon, she was taking tennis lessons every day. By the time she was six, Arango was playing in organized competitions.

Edward Linsmier

As Restrepo tells it, it wasn't long after her first tournament that her daughter, while watching the French Open on television, made a prediction: "Mom, I'm going to play there, I'm going to win that, and I'm going to win it many times, and I'm going to be there, and I want to be sponsored by Nike." She stopped horseback riding and hanging out with friends as much. Instead of going to birthday parties, she preferred to play tennis.

By the time she was 12 years old, Arango was winning nearly every junior competition in Colombia that she entered. The family had already moved to Bogota to train at Colombia's best tennis academy, but it was clear Arango needed another step up. At that point, her mother faced a decision: Should she stop working as an architect for a multinational company, move to Florida with Arango to pursue her dream, and break up the family? Or should she keep the family and their lives intact, even if it meant ending any serious prospects for her daughter's tennis career?

"I decided it was a chance I had to take with her," Restrepo says as we watch Arango practice on the IMG courts. She viewed not moving to Florida as taking something away from her daughter, something she could never give back. She couldn't bring herself to do that. Not with the way Arango treated tennis. But, before they moved, she made a deal with her daughter: "Whenever I want this more than you do, that's the moment when I'm going to stop supporting you."

Edward Linsmier

This conundrum is not unique to Arango and her mother. For every teenage tennis player trying to make the jump from the youth circuit to the professional level, there is a family that must give up any semblance of a typical life. That athlete, in turn, must give up any semblance of being a normal kid.

A decade later, Arango's dream hasn't wavered, and some of it has even come true––she's sponsored by Nike these days. Now entering what would be her junior year, she spends her mornings at the Academy on the court and with the physical therapist doing recovery work before heading home to eat lunch. In the afternoon, she rests for a few hours, maybe takes a nap, before going to fitness training for two and a half hours. After dinner around 7 PM, she does schoolwork with her tutor—who she used before IMG and decided to stick with—via Skype until 9:30 or 10:30.

In tennis, even youth players spend a tremendous amount of time on the road. Arango travels for approximately half the year, with her mother accompanying her and handling all the arrangements. After practice, Arango tells me that when heading from tournament to tournament, "sometimes my mom makes me go sightseeing. You just want to, like, stay in bed a little bit more and mom's like, 'Come on!' We're like in, say, Barcelona, [and my mom says,] 'You're seriously going to stay in bed?'" To maximize her sleeping time, Arango has developed a very specific packing routine, organizing her clothes by outfit rather than by article of clothing. "So I just get there and just have to get it out and put it on."

To fend off boredom during the long flights or nights in the hotel when she's too exhausted to go explore, she likes to watch Grey's Anatomy on Netflix. While she often comes off as an old soul, Arango communicates from the road in the same ways that everyone else her age does. "I'll text and Snapchat or whatever" when she wants to keep up with friends, she says. "I'm not, like, 'Hey, let's call and talk to each other,'" she adds, citing generational differences between her and Restrepo. "Like, my mom doesn't Snapchat and doesn't understand. 'Why would you take selfies and send them to someone else?'," she says, good-naturedly mimicking her mother. "She'll text her sister and say, 'Hey I've got something to tell you,' and her sister answers 'OK' and then they'll call. But it's, like, why would you call me?"

Edward Linsmier

Before meeting Arango and Mejia, I suspected they––or their relatives––might feel as if by pursuing a tennis career, they've missed out on the critical stage in every person's life where they're given the freedom to experiment, make mistakes, and come away from it all with a sense of identity. Instead, the two teenagers showed me that perhaps that stage is only critical for the many of us who have no idea what we want to be when we grow up. Those years of rebelliousness and experimentation are useless to someone who already has it all figured out. For better or worse, their identity is already set. They're tennis players.

"If you ask her, she feels awkward seeing all the other kids doing stuff she thinks is meaningless," Restrepo tells me. When I bring this up to Arango, it becomes clear how ensconced in the athletic life she has become. One of the things she gets most excited about is not seeing Notre Dame in Paris or going to the Floridian beach with friends, most of whom she knows through IMG or the tennis world. Instead, her face brightens the most when discussing getting her rackets strung. "I mean, other than coming here and going to the gym, the only other place I go during the day is to…string my rackets. Which I love! I love the guy that works there because he's like a neighbor. He'll drop off my rackets so I don't actually have to pick them up."

"I tell her all the time: this is the world you decided," Restrepo says as we watch her daughter, wearing her signature backwards hat, hit groundstrokes on the court. "There's no time for tantrums or [other] teenager things." Arango expresses some mild frustration as her return volley isn't quite how she wanted it. Her coach, with whom she's rallying, waves it off, and they continue. Reflecting on the path her daughter has chosen, Restrepo says, "Sometimes, this is a lonely, very lonely career."

Earlier in day, I asked Arango to imagine her life without tennis. She had a quick answer to all my other questions, but not this one. "I don't know," she said, cracking a smile and looking up into the distance. She has apparently never thought about it. Of course she hasn't, I realized immediately afterward: I asked her to reimagine her life starting from age six. To answer, she would have to go back to Colombia, back on the horses. And that's why her mom took the tremendous step to bring her to Florida and to the Academy. "She's passionate about it," her mother will tell me later. "I think she was born for this."

With all of the emphasis on the final word, Arango finally answered: "I mean, I wouldn't know. I mean, what I would do."

What Life Is Like at 'Disneyland for Athletes' published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 7 years

Text

What Life Is Like at ‘Disneyland for Athletes’

In the western Florida summer, you have two, three hours max after sunrise before the heat and humidity makes outdoor activity a dangerous proposition. 9 AM in mid-July is pushing it. In that sense, Nico Mejia is running late. On the courts of the IMG Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida, Mejia takes his warm-ups with his doubles partner, Sebastian Korda. The pair try their best to rally with ease, keeping their competitive spirits at bay for as long as possible. But that never lasts long with tennis players, especially teenage boys. Soon enough, their shots increase in intensity and sweat soaks their backs.

Korda and Mejia both have tennis in their blood. Korda’s father and coach, Petr Korda, won the 1998 Australian Open and 1996 Australian Open doubles with Stefan Edberg. Mejia’s father, Gustavo, was an avid amateur player in Colombia, and his sister Gabriela was an All-American at the University of Miami and competed professionally. His uncle Juan Mateus—another Miami alum—is also his coach at IMG. In a sense, the question was never whether Nico Mejia would play tennis at some level but rather for how long. Still, he never felt any pressure to take up the family sport. Instead, his family stressed that whatever he chose to do in life, he needed to commit to it.

Edward Linsmier

So at the age of 12, he moved from his home in Cali, Colombia, to the tennis hotbed that is the Miami area to seriously pursue a career. “I mean, yeah it was hard,” Mejia says of moving away from his family, “because I’m a person who likes to be with family. But since I moved when I was 12 years old, I kind of got used to not being with my family as much as I would like.”

Mejia spent a couple years training at Club Med Tennis Academy, beginning in 2012, but he soon outgrew the competition. There were only a few other kids his age, and they treated tennis more as a hobby than a future. Mejia, from a young age, regarded the tennis court as an arena. “On the court, he’s a gladiator,” Mateus said. “If he can chew you alive, he’s going to do it.”

At the end of 2014, Mejia reached the Junior Orange Bowl, a prestigious youth competition hosted in Miami. He got knocked out in the Round of 32, but he had caught the attention of IMG Academy coaches, who recruited him for their tennis program. When Mejia toured the campus for the first time, he realized it was everything he had ever dreamed of. He enrolled the next year.

Edward Linsmier

For teenagers ready and able to commit completely to the rigorous lifestyle of a high-level junior athlete, there is perhaps no better place in the world than the IMG Academy. Founded in 1978 by the legendary coach Nick Bollettieri, the then eponymously named Academy was the first major tennis boarding school and fundamentally changed how elite young players trained and prepared for professional tennis careers. In 1987, the year Bollettieri sold the Academy to IMG, 27 of his former and current students played in the U.S. Open, while 32 made it to Wimbledon’s main draw. As of now, the tennis program has trained ten worldwide No. 1-ranked players, including Andre Agassi, Maria Sharapova, Serena and Venus Williams, Monica Seles, and Jim Courier. In many ways, the Academy left a permanent mark on the tennis world.

Recently, the focus of the academy has shifted slightly, in line with the Academy’s overall expansion, to accommodate teenagers seeking college scholarships in addition to aspiring pros. Over the past 15 years, the IMG Academy has spread its roots far beyond tennis to include football, baseball, golf, basketball, soccer, as well as track and field. Now it’s fundamentally a boarding school where each of its 1,100 students is on a sports team. The Academy’s physical footprint has grown accordingly, from Bollettieri’s original 40 acres to a 450-acre campus lined with gleaming, glass-enclosed structures, modern dorms for the 70 percent of students who live on-campus, a nature reserve complete with a fishing pond, and countless pristine sport fields. The entire setup conjures a European soccer academy mixed with a Division I athletic program, and in fact, the Academy’s amenities outclass those found at many D-I programs: fitness facilities and uniforms sponsored by Gatorade and Under Armour respectively, hydrotherapy for injury recovery, hyperbaric chambers for increasing lung capacity, nutrition coaches, leadership training, and vision and visual cognitive training. Golf carts, the preferred mode of transportation for IMG staff, constantly hum around the campus, which has grown so much that it’s now dotted with oversized maps telling you that “YOU ARE HERE.”

Of course, there are academic facilities on campus, too, tailored to fit the athletes’ needs and future career goals. For elite high-school-age athletes, this offers a huge advantage over traditional schooling. In addition to aiding its students in qualifying for NCAA scholarships, the Academy equips students with the skills necessary to balance the unique social and academic pressures facing college athletes, while also teaching them to deal with issues that often trip up the pros. To that end, students receive media training in addition to a heavy core emphasis on the visual and creative arts.

Edward Linsmier

A few weeks shy of 40 years old and sporting a blue IMG Academy baseball cap, Mateus describes himself as a specific kind of coach. His job is to usher teenagers through what he alternately calls “the last mile” or “the point of break.” In other words, it’s his job to find out if they have what it takes to become professionals, both from a talent and maturity perspective.

Even with all of these resources, the transition to IMG can be a tough one. For the first six months, Mejia lived in the dorms on campus while his uncle still lived in Miami. Although it was the environment he always wanted—consistently facing high-level competition and access to professional-caliber training facilities—when he wasn’t playing, practicing, or training, he was bored. To kill time, he’d play FIFA with his friends. But soon after he arrived at IMG, Mejia moved in with Mateus and he rediscovered the family life he had been missing.

Edward Linsmier

“Usually, 16 is very difficult for these boys and girls,” Mateus says as Mejia jokes with Korda on the court. When kids upend their lives, and by extension, their families’ lives, to accomplish such a lofty goal, they can get impatient. If a kid is used to winning every tournament without much difficulty and suddenly starts losing at the Academy, he or she might think something is wrong. They start making changes to their game, to their lifestyle, to themselves. They focus on the results on the court rather than, as Mateus puts it, “the process.”

According to Mateus, only one to 1.5 percent of junior tennis players go straight to the pros. The rest go to college, which Mateus emphasizes is a good thing for most kids, who need a few years of stability. Maybe their bodies or minds need to fully mature. Perhaps they can’t, or don’t want to, cope with the nomadic life of a pro—or, understandably enough, they might not be ready to act like an adult all of the time.

But not Mejia. Mateus lauds his nephew for having a natural instinct on the court while maintaining a healthy attitude off it. “We were able to prolong the great times until he was almost 16,” Mateus tells me. In the autumn of 2016, he adds, Mejia went through an attitudinal funk, an obstacle for developing tennis players that is something of an inevitability, according to Mateus. “He had a period of two, three months,” says Mateus. Last December, his nephew crossed over to what Mateus terms “the real side,” the point where a young player redoubles their dedication to focus on the sport. “Now, he sees what we see as an adult. We’re very happy about it. Happy for him,” he adds. As Mateus describes all of this in vague terms to respect his nephew’s privacy, it almost sounds like like Mejia dealt with nothing more than a rough bout of almost becoming a teenager.

Edward Linsmier

Shortly after Mejia cleared this critical hurdle, however, tragedy struck. His parents had been working towards relocating from Colombia to Florida, where they could watch their son play, develop as a player, and emerge from IMG as both a professional and a fully formed adult. But, in April of this year, Mejia’s father had a heart attack and died while playing tennis at his home in Colombia.

After his father’s death, Mateus noticed a further change in Mejia. While it’s been a tough time for both of them, he says, the hardship “actually fueled him to actually be a little bit more [focused on] what he’s doing. He’s filling a gap of whatever was left of his maturity. This helped him to realize that he has a lot more to live.” For his part, Mejia discusses the impact of his father’s death with a steely gaze. The last few months have been hard for him, he says, but he’s doing his best to remember what his father taught him, to always be fighting, always be improving, always be competing, and, of course, to never give up. Sticking to platitudes while discussing a turbulent time in his life, Mejia already sounds like a seasoned professional.

Though the other top players at the Academy are expected to grow up quickly, they’re still kids who need the companionship and support that only friends and family can offer. In this sense, Mejia’s family is trying to adapt: in addition to having his uncle on campus, his mother is still planning to move up to Florida to join him. And he’s made friends, too. That weekend, he had plans to go mini-golfing with Emiliana Arango, another Academy tennis player also from Colombia. I spoke to her mother, Juliana Restrepo, shortly before Mejia and Mateus as Arango practiced on an adjacent court. For Restrepo, who rents a house five minutes away from IMG, sending her daughter to IMG was “one of the best moves I’ve made because here she has everything that she needs.” In her eyes, the place is like “Disneyland for athletes.”

Unlike Mejia, Arango doesn’t come from a tennis family. Instead, she grew up on a ranch in Medellin, where her family kept horses and cows. Her first love was horseback riding, but all that changed the first time she picked up a tennis racket, at five and a half years old. Arango loved playing on the clay courts. Restrepo recalls that her daughter would be “orange from head to toe” by the time they got home. At first, she played tennis once a week. Then twice a week. Soon, she was taking tennis lessons every day. By the time she was six, Arango was playing in organized competitions.

Edward Linsmier

As Restrepo tells it, it wasn’t long after her first tournament that her daughter, while watching the French Open on television, made a prediction: “Mom, I’m going to play there, I’m going to win that, and I’m going to win it many times, and I’m going to be there, and I want to be sponsored by Nike.” She stopped horseback riding and hanging out with friends as much. Instead of going to birthday parties, she preferred to play tennis.

By the time she was 12 years old, Arango was winning nearly every junior competition in Colombia that she entered. The family had already moved to Bogota to train at Colombia’s best tennis academy, but it was clear Arango needed another step up. At that point, her mother faced a decision: Should she stop working as an architect for a multinational company, move to Florida with Arango to pursue her dream, and break up the family? Or should she keep the family and their lives intact, even if it meant ending any serious prospects for her daughter’s tennis career?

“I decided it was a chance I had to take with her,” Restrepo says as we watch Arango practice on the IMG courts. She viewed not moving to Florida as taking something away from her daughter, something she could never give back. She couldn’t bring herself to do that. Not with the way Arango treated tennis. But, before they moved, she made a deal with her daughter: “Whenever I want this more than you do, that’s the moment when I’m going to stop supporting you.”

Edward Linsmier

A decade later, Arango’s dream hasn’t wavered, and some of it has even come true––she’s sponsored by Nike these days. Now entering what would be her junior year, she spends her mornings at the Academy on the court and with the physical therapist doing recovery work before heading home to eat lunch. In the afternoon, she rests for a few hours, maybe takes a nap, before going to fitness training for two and a half hours. After dinner around 7 PM, she does schoolwork with her tutor—who she used before IMG and decided to stick with—via Skype until 9:30 or 10:30.

In tennis, even youth players spend a tremendous amount of time on the road. Arango travels for approximately half the year, with her mother accompanying her and handling all the arrangements. After practice, Arango tells me that when heading from tournament to tournament, “sometimes my mom makes me go sightseeing. You just want to, like, stay in bed a little bit more and mom’s like, ‘Come on!’ We’re like in, say, Barcelona, [and my mom says,] ‘You’re seriously going to stay in bed?'” To maximize her sleeping time, Arango has developed a very specific packing routine, organizing her clothes by outfit rather than by article of clothing. “So I just get there and just have to get it out and put it on.”

To fend off boredom during the long flights or nights in the hotel when she’s too exhausted to go explore, she likes to watch Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix. While she often comes off as an old soul, Arango communicates from the road in the same ways that everyone else her age does. “I’ll text and Snapchat or whatever” when she wants to keep up with friends, she says. “I’m not, like, ‘Hey, let’s call and talk to each other,'” she adds, citing generational differences between her and Restrepo. “Like, my mom doesn’t Snapchat and doesn’t understand. ‘Why would you take selfies and send them to someone else?’,” she says, good-naturedly mimicking her mother. “She’ll text her sister and say, ‘Hey I’ve got something to tell you,’ and her sister answers ‘OK’ and then they’ll call. But it’s, like, why would you call me?”

Edward Linsmier

Before meeting Arango and Mejia, I suspected they––or their relatives––might feel as if by pursuing a tennis career, they’ve missed out on the critical stage in every person’s life where they’re given the freedom to experiment, make mistakes, and come away from it all with a sense of identity. Instead, the two teenagers showed me that perhaps that stage is only critical for the many of us who have no idea what we want to be when we grow up. Those years of rebelliousness and experimentation are useless to someone who already has it all figured out. For better or worse, their identity is already set. They’re tennis players.

“If you ask her, she feels awkward seeing all the other kids doing stuff she thinks is meaningless,” Restrepo tells me. When I bring this up to Arango, it becomes clear how ensconced in the athletic life she has become. One of the things she gets most excited about is not seeing Notre Dame in Paris or going to the Floridian beach with friends, most of whom she knows through IMG or the tennis world. Instead, her face brightens the most when discussing getting her rackets strung. “I mean, other than coming here and going to the gym, the only other place I go during the day is to…string my rackets. Which I love! I love the guy that works there because he’s like a neighbor. He’ll drop off my rackets so I don’t actually have to pick them up.”

“I tell her all the time: this is the world you decided,” Restrepo says as we watch her daughter, wearing her signature backwards hat, hit groundstrokes on the court. “There’s no time for tantrums or [other] teenager things.” Arango expresses some mild frustration as her return volley isn’t quite how she wanted it. Her coach, with whom she’s rallying, waves it off, and they continue. Reflecting on the path her daughter has chosen, Restrepo says, “Sometimes, this is a lonely, very lonely career.”

Earlier in day, I asked Arango to imagine her life without tennis. She had a quick answer to all my other questions, but not this one. “I don’t know,” she said, cracking a smile and looking up into the distance. She has apparently never thought about it. Of course she hasn’t, I realized immediately afterward: I asked her to reimagine her life starting from age six. To answer, she would have to go back to Colombia, back on the horses. And that’s why her mom took the tremendous step to bring her to Florida and to the Academy. “She’s passionate about it,” her mother will tell me later. “I think she was born for this.”

With all of the emphasis on the final word, Arango finally answered: “I mean, I wouldn’t know. I mean, what I would do.”

What Life Is Like at ‘Disneyland for Athletes’ syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

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firstumcschenectady · 7 years

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“Who Do We Feed First?” based on Acts 2:42-47 and Mark 7:24-30

There are times when I find it invigorating to engage in a robust debate. One of the joys of my childhood was being able to score points in verbal battles with my brother, and if I don't pay attention, I can still engage in conversation as a competitive sport.

On the basis of enjoying the capacity to play and sometimes WIN, if the opportunity presented itself, I would choose not to debate Jesus. He doesn't lose much. The gospels consistently describe him winning, scoring match points before his opponents have even started to play.

Today's gospel is one of the exceptions. I cannot yet say it definitively, but I believe the only people who ever score points on Jesus in competitive debate are women. Consequently, very few who beat Jesus are women. This is one of the stories where the woman is said to have won. Jesus himself declares that she has bested him, and gives her a prize for having done so.

Even so, this is one of the most uncomfortable stories in the gospels. Jesus is … well... um... super mean to this woman. He calls her and her people dogs! That is, he disparages their very humanity, and says that it is of less value than the humanity of his people.

I could tell you that the Jesus seminar doesn't think this story actually happened. Luckily that's true, but unfortunately it still requires us to consider why the early Christian community included it. We could tell ourselves that Jesus expressed explicit prejudice simply to show us that it was bad, but that doesn't truly fit the story. The story says he healed the woman's child because she beat him in oral combat, NOT because he realized her people were of equal value.

So, how do we deal with this horribly insulting, even racist, Jesus? We still have a few options left to us. The story does say that Jesus left Galilee to be in the land of the Gentiles and entered a house in secret. It would be reasonable to conclude that he was getting away for a bit of a reprieve, perhaps because he was tired and needed to catch his breath. Tired, burned out people often don't operate as their best selves. And being accosted in this home where he was trying to hide and regain his energy might have brought out the worst in him. I don't think this entirely explains the story, but I do point it out anyway for two reasons: 1. Because when we're tired we really do make mistakes and I urge you to get rest as an act of faithfulness to God's call on your life to be your best self and 2. Because when we're tired we really do make mistakes and some gentleness with ourselves is called for when those mistakes happen. Human beings in human bodies can't push on indefinitely through exhaustion.

Another pieces of the puzzle comes from a scholar who doesn't think it makes a lot of sense for the early Christian church to have remembered such a hostile response from Jesus UNLESS it reflects a larger reality. Gerd Theissen looked for a socio-economic explanation and discovered, “Upper Galilee exported produce through the coastal cities. The cities, in turn, depended on these regions for food. In periods of crisis or food shortage, the populace of the hinterlands may have resented producing goods for wealthy cities.”1 This idea continues, “Those who produced the food, Jewish peasant farmers, see their work consumed by others.”2 In this case, ethnic and religious differences are compounded by economic inequalities. Jesus might simply be suggesting that his people have a right to eat the food they produce.

It stands in interesting contrast to the food sharing on Acts 2, doesn't it? Jesus talking about the inappropriateness of sharing the food with the dogs contrasts with the people sharing all things in common, breaking bread together, and eating with glad and generous hearts?

Or does it?

This beautiful passage of the joy and communal support in the early church does not extend to ALL people. It extends WITHIN the community, not beyond it. I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm just saying that it is limited. Supporting the community of faith is not the same thing as supporting all of God's people. Supporting the community of faith, with firm boundaries around who that means, can actually look a lot like Jesus's response to the Syrophoenician woman in this story! Jesus, too, was advocating keeping resources within the family of faith.

The first summer I was on staff at Sky Lake the summer curriculum included Romans 12, which we tended to read from “The Message.” which I adored. I quoted it once in a secular setting and one of my high school friends asked if I was intentionally excluding her. It said:

9-10 Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

11-13 Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

Until she questioned me I hadn't heard “help needy CHRISTIANS” at all, but once she pointed it out, I squirmed a little bit every time I read it. I wondered if I was allowed to change it so that the command said, “Help needy people” and wondered why it wasn't written that way to begin with.

I think that human nature includes a tendency toward thinking in terms of groups, and defining “us” that excludes “them.” It happens too commonly not to be part of our nature, and I suspect that it happens for decent evolutionary reasons! In order to thrive, humans need each other, but we're finite in time and space. So we can't bond with everyone! I'm thinking our species developed this way: Close bonds form the basis of units, and units expand until they maximize the relationship with resources in an area, and then other groups are established further away, right? Then, because resources on earth aren't allocated with equal distribution, there are still some things that each group ends up competing with other groups. That would have helped establish the boundaries between the groups!

So, it isn't bad, and it is likely part of our nature, but it isn't the end goal either! The Syrophoenician woman reminds us of this. She was, in multiple ways, an outsider to the groups Jesus belonged to, and yet she came to him with a need. Her needed extended past her group identity!

The Syrophoenician woman is presented as the paradigm of committed parent! She crosses boundaries, takes insults, and argues with all her power in order to gain the care her child needs. She shouldn't have entered that house by laws of both communities. Her community would have preferred if she had refrained from “bowing down” at the feet of a Jewish teacher. She let him call her, her family, and her community DOGS and responded within his metaphor. She found a way to respond, without accepting his premise, without dismissing his premise, and while staying ON POINT. She kept asking for what her daughter needed, and requested that even if Jesus didn't see her as a fellow human being, he could still extend his power to help her!!!

And Jesus complements her! Going back to the idea that the city of Tyre was part of a problem within an economic system that was extracting wealth from the Galilean farmers – it is as if she points out that the Galilean farmers DO deserve to eat, but that Tyre is hungry too. She doesn't argue his premise, but she reminds him that hunger is universal.

While on our honeymoon, Kevin and I took some tours of the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It became clear quickly that many immigrant families survived ONLY because of the support of community – in that case communities based on their countries of origin. This is one of the ways that groups defining clear boundaries can be good – it lead to life not death. But then again, I'm sure it left some people unable to access any help.

In the days of overcrowding on the Lower East Side, the barriers that divided people were real. Resources were limited. In the days of food shortages in Galilee and Tyre, the barriers that divided people were real. Resources were limited. In the eras of needing access to limited water for our ancient ancestors, the barriers that divided people were real. Resources were limited.

There are good reasons to establish groups and boundaries. Those reasons apply today, and we see this sort of thinking ALL OVER the place today. However, in some ways, reality has changed! Technology has made it possible to grow enough food for everyone to be fed – well. At the moment we have enough clean water for all to drink (if we don't waste it). It may always have been true that if groups worked together there would have been enough, I don't know, but today it is FOR SURE. The world has produced enough for everyone.

And yet, maybe more than ever, people are trying to draw firm lines between those who get access to resources and those who don't, those we are worthy, and those who aren't, those who should become more wealthy and those who should become more impoverished, those who get to access health care and those who don't, … and so on.

I'm told one of my predecessors in this pulpit, J. Edward Carothers, talked about the purpose of church being “to establish and maintain connections of mutual support in an ever widening circle of concern.” I think that's the essence of the meaning of the kindom, the primary teaching of Jesus. As it has been described to me, the kindom is the Reign of God that will occur when EVERYONE treats EVERYONE else as kin. That is, everyone is IN the group and there is only one group and we are all working together for each other's good. That's how (at their best) kin treat each other, and that's an expression of the desire of God for the world.

So, who do we feed first? The children? The dogs? The Christians? The Jews?

Our church? Our city? Our country? Our race? Our class? Our political allies?

Or perhaps, whoever is most hungry?

Because if we all work together, there is enough for everyone! And once we remember that, we can distribute based on needs rather than fears. Holy God, may that day come SOON. Amen

1 R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke” in Leadner Keck, ed. , The New Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press: 1995) 610.

2 Culpepper, 610

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 7, 2017

#Thinking Church #Progressive Chrisitianity #Subversive Women of the Bible #Ever Widening Circles of Concern #J Edward Carothers #FUMC Schenectady #UMC #Schenectady #Rev Sara E Baron #Syrophoneian Woman #Beyond Tribes #Kindom #Who is Most Hungry?

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flauntpage · 7 years

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What Life Is Like at 'Disneyland for Athletes'

Over the next two months VICE Sports will be profiling 16 athletes as they evolve into national superstars. Keep checking back here to find them all.

Edward Linsmier

With all of the emphasis on the final word, Arango finally answered: "I mean, I wouldn't know. I mean, what I would do."

What Life Is Like at 'Disneyland for Athletes' published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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flauntpage · 7 years

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What Life Is Like at 'Disneyland for Athletes'

In the western Florida summer, you have two, three hours max after sunrise before the heat and humidity makes outdoor activity a dangerous proposition. 9 AM in mid-July is pushing it. In that sense, Nico Mejia is running late. On the courts of the IMG Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Florida, Mejia takes his warm-ups with his doubles partner, Sebastian Korda. The pair try their best to rally with ease, keeping their competitive spirits at bay for as long as possible. But that never lasts long with tennis players, especially teenage boys. Soon enough, their shots increase in intensity and sweat soaks their backs.

Edward Linsmier

Mejia spent a couple years training at Club Med Tennis Academy, beginning in 2012, but he soon outgrew the competition. There were only a few other kids his age, and they treated tennis more as a hobby than a future. Mejia, from a young age, regarded the tennis court as an arena. "On the court, he's a gladiator," Mateus said. "If he can chew you alive, he's going to do it."

Edward Linsmier

With all of the emphasis on the final word, Arango finally answered: "I mean, I wouldn't know. I mean, what I would do."

What Life Is Like at 'Disneyland for Athletes' published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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