Hard Ball

[Something I forgot to publish a couple of weeks back!]

I got to watch Hard Ball with some young people from our senior youth club this week. Maybe not my choice but nevertheless we watched Keanu Reeves as an aimless gambling and drinking young man. As a condition of getting a loan from a friend he agrees to coach a Little League Baseball team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago.

You can guess the plot. It isn't difficult - the team that was rubbish that came good etc... Ok predictable but the director Brian Robbins did a great job of capturing the systematic failure of the inner city, the paralysis of inner city life for so many.

All the symptoms were there. The pain of fragmentation, brokeness that manifests itself in violence, anger - rage. The predictability of walk away 'do-gooders'. Fear. Suspicion. Inconsistency of people. Marginalisation. Escapism. Injustice.

But he also caught the joy of persistent investment. The joy of engagement. The building up of community; the building up of self-belief. Freedom. Hope. Trust. Confidence. Self-reliance.

A little while back Maggi has highlighted some thoughts as to ministry and asks is ministry bad for you? I got to watch Hard Ball with some young people that face the paralysis of inner city life every day. I watched and I saw and was reminded of the fulfilment that comes from being a partner in making freedom, hope and grace known.

Comments

joel.ivany said…
It is Keanu Reeves, but I will say that it's a great movie for showing the innercity in one of it's purer settings. It lets loose for sure.

big poppa joel
6:42 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play
Read more