NAME:

Grace [√]

Nice, upstanding Christian name—lucked out on that one. Must remember to answer to it.

APPEARANCE:

Monochrome hair [√]

I flip down the visor mirror and peer at the “Marilyn Monroe” blond hair that waves off of my oval face. I so miss my stripes. But under my present circumstances, it’s not as if I can afford to keep up the multiple-shade “do.” Back to the list.

Minimal make-up [√]

Do I feel naked! Another peek in the mirror confirms the feeling. As I passed on foundation and blush, applying only a light powder to even out my tone, I look pale. The overall effect is that my hazel eyes practically jump off my face from beneath perfectly plucked eyebrows (the stragglers made me do it).

Below-knee skirt [√]

Button-up collar [√]

One-inch heels [√]

Almost wish I were naked.

Cross necklace and earrings [√]

WWJD bracelet [√]

I scrunch up my nose. “WWJD? Where would Jesus…? Why would Jesus…?” I tap the bracelet. “Ah! What would Jesus do?”

“Love Waits” ring [√]

Oh no, it doesn’t. Still, it’s a nice thought, especially considering the guy I left behind. But best not to go there.

ACCESSORIES:

Bible [√]

Bible Cover [√]

And, I must say, it’s a nice cover. I look to where it sits on the passenger seat with the “KJV” (whatever that means) Bible tucked inside—intensely spiritual with a tapestry print of a country church. And the faux tortoiseshell handles! Nice touch.

Twist pen with 7 different scriptures [√]

One for every day of the week.

“Footprints in the Sand” bookmark [√]

Touching poem. And a surprise ending too!

Fish emblem [√]

“Oops!” I open the ashtray, dig out the emblem, and drop it in my lap. “Check!”

“Jesus is my pilot” bumper sticker [√]

Crown of thorns air freshener [√]

I glance at the scented disk that hangs from my rearview mirror. Stinks, but nicely visible—practically screams “This is one serious Christian.”

CHRISTIAN SPEAK:

“Jesus is my savior.” [√]

“Jesus died for my sins.” [√]

I close my eyes and run the lingo through my mind. “Got it!”

“I’m praying for you.” [√]

I wonder how many Christians really do.

“I need to pray about that.” [√]

Otherwise known as “No way, Jose’!” Or, in these parts, the “Nashville no.”

“Bless his/her heart.” [√]

Sympathetic aside tacked to a derogatory remark about someone to make it acceptable (possibly exclusive to the South, as I’d never heard it before moving to Nashville four months ago).

“My brother/sister in Christ.” [√]

“God’s timing.” [√]

“Have a blessed day.” [√]

“Yours in Christ.” [√]

Must remember to use that last one for note cards and such.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Church [√]

That one on West End should do—respectable-looking and big enough to allow me to slip in and out undetected should I need to place myself in that setting. Of course, I hope the need does not arise. Not that I’m not a believer. I am. Sort of. I mean, I was “saved” years ago. Even went through the dunking process—the whole water up the nose thing (should not have panicked). But the truth is that, other than occasionally attending church with my grandmother before and after I was saved, my faith is relatively green. Hence, the need for a checklist.

Testimony [ ]

“Uh! Just had to leave that one for last, Maizy. Yes, “Maizy,” as in “Maizy Grace.” Courtesy of one Grandma Maizy, one Grandma Grace, and one mother with a penchant for wordplay. Amazing grace! And Mom is not even a Christian. But Dad’s mom is. According to Grace Stewart, the only thing my parents did right was to name me after her. I beg to differ. I mean…Maizy Grace? Though growing up I did my best to keep it under wraps, my mom blew it during a three-girl sleepover when she trilled upstairs, “Oh, Maizy Grace! How sweet the sound. Won’t you girls come on down?” Fodder for girlhood enemies like Cynthia Sircy who beat me out for student council representative by making an issue of my “goody two shoes” name. And that’s why I never use “Grace.” Of course, it could prove useful today.

I return to my checklist. “Testimony…” I glance at the dashboard clock that reveals I’ve blown ten of my twenty minutes leeway. Guess I’ll have to think up a testimony on my way in to the interview. Not that I don’t have a story of how I came to know Jesus. It’s just boring. Hmm. Maybe I could expand on my Christian summer camp experience—throw in an encounter with a bear or some other woodland creature with big teeth. Speaking of which…

I check my teeth in the mirror. Pale pink lipstick is so boring. Glaringly chaste. Borderline anti-sexual. Of course, that is the effect I’m after. All good.

“All right, Maizy—er, Grr-ace—get in there and get that job.” A job I badly need if I’m to survive starting over in Nashville, as my part-time position as a lifestyle reporter at the paper has yet to translate into the full-time position I was led to believe it would after three months. Funds are getting low.

I fold my checklist and stick it in the book I picked up at Borders the day I surfed the classified ads and hit on “Seeking editorial assistant for Christian company.” Editorial assistant—a far cry from reporter. In fact, beneath me, but what’s a girl to do?

Closing the book, I smile at the title: The Dumb Blonde’s Guide to Christianity. Not that I’m blond—leastwise, not naturally. Another glance in the mirror confirms that although the $7.99 over-the-counter bottle of blond is no $75 salon experience, it lives up to its claim. Not brassy at all. Still, maybe I should have gone back to basic brown so I wouldn’t have to worry about roots. But talk about boring.

I toss the book on the passenger seat, retrieve the fish emblem and my purse, and swing my legs out the car door. After “hipping” the door closed, I hurry to the back. Unfortunately, unlike the bumper sticker, there seems no non-permanent way to apply the emblem. Thus, I have no choice but to pull off the backing and slap the fish on the trunk lid. Not sure what it symbolizes, but I can figure that out later—if I get the job.

I lower my gaze to the “Jesus is my pilot” bumper sticker. Nice statement, especially with the addition of the fish. Honestly, who wouldn’t believe I’m a deeply committed Christian? And if someone should call me on it, I could be forgiven—it is April 1st—as in April Fools’ Day.

As I start to look away, the peeling lower edge of the bumper sticker catches my eye. Should have used more Scotch tape. I reach down.

“It’s crooked.”

The accented matter-of-fact voice makes me freeze. I’m certain it was directed at me, but did he say “It’s crooked” or “She’s crooked”? Surely the latter is merely a Freudian slip of my mind. And even if it isn’t, I’m not crooked. Just desperate.

As the man behind me could be an employee of Steeple Side Christian Resources, I muster a smile and turn. The first thing I notice where he stands six feet back is his fashionably distressed jeans. Meaning he can’t be an employee. And certainly isn’t looking for a hand out—even better (though I sympathize with the plight of the homeless, they make me very uncomfortable). So he’s probably just passing through the parking lot. Perhaps heading for Steeple Side’s retail store that occupies a portion of the lower floor of their corporate offices.

The next item of note is his shirt—a nice cream linen button up that allows a glimpse of tanned collarbone. I like it. What I don’t like is his face—rather, expression. If not for his narrowed eyes and flat-lined mouth, he’d be halfway attractive with that sweep of dark blond hair, matching eyebrows, and decent cheekbones. Maybe even three-quarters, but that would be pushing it, as his two-day shadow can’t hide a lightly scarred jaw. Teenage acne?

I gesture behind. “My bumper sticker seems to be coming off.”

He lowers his green eyes over me, and though I may simply be paranoid, I’m certain he gives my cross earrings and necklace, button-up collar, and below-knee skirt more attention than is warranted. He glances at the bumper sticker before returning his regard to me. “Yes, it is coming off.”

British. I’m certain of it. Nowhere near the Southern drawl one more often encounters in Nashville.

“Of course…” He crosses his arms over his chest. “…that’s because you’re using tape.”

That obvious? “Well, doesn’t everyone?” Ugh! Can’t believe I said that. Maybe there is something to the warning that you are what you read, as I could not have sounded more like the stereotypical dumb blonde if I had tried.

He raises an eyebrow. “Everyone? Not if they want it to adhere permanently. You do, don’t you?”

Guilt flushes me, and is followed by panic even though I have no reason to fear that this stranger with the gorgeously clipped accent might expose me as a fake. “Of course I do!”

Is that a smile? “Splendid, then I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

Delicious accent or not, that doesn’t sound good. It isn’t, as evidenced by his advance. I step aside, and he drops to his haunches and begins peeling away the tape. “You see…” Holding up the sticker, he looks over his shoulder and squints against the sunlight at my back. “…self adhesive.” He peels off the backing, positions the sticker, and presses it onto my bumper—my previously adhesive-free bumper.

He straightens. That is a smile—one that makes him look a bit like that new James Bond actor. What’s his name?

“You’d be surprised at how much technology has advanced over the last few years,” he says.

I nearly miss his sarcasm, genteelly embedded as it is in that accent. “Well, who would have thought?” Be nice, Maizy—er, Grace. My smile feels tight. In fact, my whole face feels as if lathered by Lava soap. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to affix my bumper sticker properly.”

He inclines his head. “If you’d like, I’ll try to straighten your fish.”

My…? It’s crooked, he said. Not the bumper sticker—my fish. Meaning he probably saw me stick it on. Were he more than a passerby, I’d be deeply embarrassed. “No, thank you. I like my fish slightly crooked.” I glance at the emblem that appears to have its nose stuck in the air. “It makes him look as if he’s fighting the current. You know, like a good Christian.”

Very good, Ma—Grr-ace! Were he a Steeple Side employee, you would have won him over.

“So you’re a Christian?”

So much for my self-congratulatory pat on the back. Of course, maybe his question is academic. I mean, it’s obvious I’m a Christian. “Of course! A Christian. And proud of it.” Good practice. Unfortunately, if his frown is anything to go by, I’m in need of more. “Er, Jesus is my savior.” Knew Christian speak would come in handy.

His frown deepens.

Or maybe not. Making a show of checking my watch, I gasp. Nothing at all fake about that, as most of my leeway has been gobbled up. Thankfully, I was lucky to—

No, blessed. Must think as well as speak “Christian.” Thankfully, I was blessed to snag a parking space at the front of the building—the only one, as the dozen marked VISITOR spaces were taken, and the remaining spaces on either side of mine are reserved for upper management, as evidenced by personalized signs.

I fix a smile. “Thank you again for your help. If you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.”

“Certainly.”

I step forward and, as I pass within two feet of him, take a whiff. Some type of citrus-y cologne. Nice. Not sharp or cloying. Unlike Ben whose cologne of choice made my nasal passages burn. And the Brit is nearly six feet tall to my five foot six. Not so tall I couldn’t wear three-inch heels for fear of shooting up past him. Unlike Ben who’d limited me to one-inch heels—

Go away! Another reason to leave Seattle. With his liberal application of cologne and compact height and build, Ben was nowhere near the man for me. Not that his scent and size was the worst of him. Far from it. And am I glad to be far from him.

As I step to the sidewalk, I’m tempted to glance behind at the nicely-proportioned, bumper-sticker happy Brit. Temptation wins out.

Thumbs hooked in his pockets, he stands alongside my passenger door. Watching me.

Feeling as if caught doing something wrong, I jerk a hand up and scroll through my “Christian speak” for something to reinforce my claim of being a Christian. “Yours in Christ!” I flash a smile that instantly falters.

At the rumpling of his brow, I jerk around and head for the smoked glass doors of Steeple Side Christian Resources. Cannot believe I used a written salutation! Dumb blonde alert! Speaking of which….

The Dumb Blonde’s Guide to Christianity is on the passenger seat. Fortunately, if the man is nosey enough to scope out the interior of my car, it’s not as if I’ll see him again. That scrumptious accent and citrus cologne was a one-time thing. Unless he does work at Steeple Side and I do get the job. Fat chance.

As I pull open one of several sets of glass doors, I glance behind. He’s on the sidewalk now, head back as he peers up the twenty-some floors of the building. Definitely not an employee.

The lobby is bright and sparsely furnished, but what stops me is the backlit thirty-foot cross on the far wall. Fashioned out of what appears to be brushed aluminum, it’s glaringly simple. And yet I can’t imagine it having more presence.

Crossing to the information desk at the center of the lobby, I scope out the men and women who are entering and exiting the elevators. All nicely dressed. All conservative. I’ll fit right in—

I zoom in on a woman who’s stepping into the nearest elevator. Her skirt is above the knee by a couple inches. And that guy who just stepped out of another elevator? His hair brushes his shoulders.

I shift my gaze back to the towering cross. I’m at the right place, meaning those two are probably visitors. Same goes for the young woman who sweeps past and reaches the information desk ahead of me. Not only is she wearing ruched capris, but she has my hair. Rather, the hair I had. Ha! If she’s after my job, I’ve got her beat.

She drops a jingly purse on the desk and points past me where I’ve halted behind. “Jack is so hot!”

“Really?” The chubby-faced receptionist bounds out of her chair, only to falter at the sight of me.

“Yes, hot!” The “ruched” young woman jabs the air again, looks around, and startles. “Er, not ‘hot hot.’ ‘Hot,’ as in under the collar…ticked off.”

That’s my cue to appear relieved that she didn’t mean “hot,” as in “carnal,” as she’s obviously connected to this company—at least, the receptionist. I nod. “That’s a relief.”

She smiles, then puts her forearms on the desk and leans in to whisper in a not too whisper-y voice, “This time they stole his assigned parking sign.”

It would make me “hot” too if someone stole mine. Doubtless, some visitor would snap up my space and I’d have to park—

Oh no. The front parking space I snagged… The only unmarked space in the middle of dozens of marked spaces…

I look around and peer out the bank of glass windows. The Brit whose parking space I took, and who does work here, is striding toward the doors. And he does look hot, though I can’t be sure whether it’s more in the carnal way or the angry way. Regardless, I am not getting this job.

“So,” he said, staring at her intently. “You think you can be a maze monster for Scare?”

She nodded. Scare was what they called the annual Halloween event at The Zone. Aside from putting frightening elements in traditional rides, during Scare there were a dozen mazes where monsters did their best to scare park guests as they wound their way through dark and creepy corridors.

“Then show me something scary.”

It was eleven in the morning in a brightly lit office. What on earth did he expect of her? She wanted to say something smart. She wanted to say something funny. With horror she realized she didn’t have anything to say.

“Come on, come on,” he said. “Be a monster, jump around, growl, something.”

She got out of her seat and did the best growl she could. Unfortunately, she sounded less like a monster and more like a frightened Chihuahua.

“Threaten me!”

She got closer to him than she would have liked, jumped up and down, swung her arms, and pounded her fist firmly on his desk. She could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t impressed.

She growled again and yelled, “I’m going to get you!” She felt like the world’s biggest idiot. No one would be scared of a teenage girl, especially not one wearing a gray business suit and sensible shoes.

“Scream!” he ordered.

She threw back her head and screamed her loudest, shrillest scream. That, at least, was easy. It was a game her best friend, Tamara, and she had played when they were little. They had competitions to see who could scream louder or longer or higher.

She screamed for ten seconds and then sat back down in her chair. She expected Lloyd to laugh; she expected him to say something derisive. Instead, he looked at her thoughtfully.

“I have the perfect role for you to play,” he said. He wrote something on an orange slip of paper. “You’re going to be Candy in the Candy Craze maze.”

“Candy?” she asked questioningly. “Am I going to be dressed up like a giant Twix bar or something?”

He shook his head. “Nothing like that. You should be proud; it’s our latest maze. The lines for it will wrap halfway through the park.”

He handed her a stack of papers. “You can go fill these out. Then Saturday at nine a.m. report to the costume warehouse for your fitting and orientation. At that time you’ll also be able to pick up your badge, ID, and parking pass.”

“Saturday at nine,” she confirmed as she took the stack

from him.

“There’s a table — ”

“Out in the courtyard,” she finished for him.

Since she was a returning referee — which was the The Zone’s name for an employee — there was slightly less paperwork this time. There was, however, an entire book of rules and policies regarding Scare. She had to sign several forms stating that she had received it, she had read it, she had understood it, and she promised to abide by it. It seemed like the golden rule of Scare was “thou shalt have no physical contact of any kind with players.” Players was what they called the customers. Touching a player during Scare apparently was grounds for immediate dismissal.

Once she finished filling out and signing all her paperwork, she returned it to Lloyd Peterson.

Checking her watch, she discovered that she still had an hour before she had to meet Tamara for a late lunch. She decided to head into the theme park to see a few friends.

The first thing she noticed when she entered the park was that the Holiday Zone was closed. Temporary walls set up around the area prevented players from going inside or even getting a peek at what was going on.

The Holiday Zone was one of nine themed areas inside The Zone theme park. The theme of the Holiday Zone changed throughout the year to reflect different holidays. It was the day after Labor Day so all the Fourth of July themes from summer were now being replaced with Halloween themes for fall. The transformation would take about ten days, and then the Holiday Zone would be open again for business.

Several key attractions throughout the rest of the park were also closed, getting their Scare overlay. The Muffin Mansion was one of them, she discovered when she went there looking for her friend Becca. The Muffin Mansion was unique in the park because half of it was in the Exploration Zone and half of it was in the History Zone. The Exploration Zone half was located near most of the kitchens, which looked a lot more like laboratories. There was a small counter where they sold the muffins. The side that was in the History Zone looked like an old-fashioned mansion, and guests could eat their muffins at one of the tables scattered around the parlor. It was from the History side that it got its name. It was from the Exploration side that it got its wild concoctions of muffins and its ever-expanding menu.

She stared for a moment at the construction walls around the building and wondered what the Muffin Mansion would look like when the walls came down. She also wondered where Becca was working while the mansion was getting its Halloween makeover. She glanced at her watch and thought about who else she might be able to track down to chat with.

She knew that two of her other friends, Josh and Roger, had ended their summer jobs and weren’t there. Fortunately, both of them were going to be working Scare. They had managed to talk her into joining them. Spending time with them was one of the best perks of working the event. One of the others was that it paid slightly more than her summer job had.

Martha, her former supervisor, spent a lot of time off field in the employee-only areas. Candace wasn’t sure if Sue, one of her other friends, had already quit her summer job as a janitor or not. That left Kurt. So Candace made her way to the History Zone.

Kurt was her boyfriend. The word was still exciting and new to Candace. He worked as a mascot, a costumed character. They had met the day she first became a Zone referee and, after some rocky moments, had ended the summer as a -couple. She found him dressed like Robin Hood in the medieval area of the History Zone. She had gotten good at recognizing his dark hair and brilliant blue eyes no matter what costume or mask he was wearing.

“Hey, gorgeous!” he said, when he saw her, and he gave her a quick kiss.

“Eeeww!” a little boy holding an autograph book said.

“She’s not Maid Marion,” the boy’s sister protested.

“She’s not?” Kurt asked, feigning surprise.

“I don’t think Maid Marion has red hair,” another little girl commented.

Kurt turned back to Candace, “Away lady, for you are not my dearest love.”

Candace pretended to be crushed and put her hand to her forehead as though she might faint. The children laughed at that. “But I am! I am wearing this disguise to hide from the evil Prince John.”

“Robin will protect you!” the little girl said excitedly.

The little boy handed Candace his autograph book with great solemnity. She signed Maid Marion’s name, and he seemed immensely pleased.

After the children left, Kurt smiled at her. “Nice job.”

“Thank you. I’m practicing my acting skills for Scare.”

“You signed up?”

“Just now.”

“That’s great! What did you get?”

“Apparently it’s the new maze. I’m playing Candy.”

Kurt looked startled, but before he could say anything, he was besieged by several more children wanting pictures and autographs. Soon a line formed. Candace glanced at her watch, and Kurt shrugged and gave her a smile. She waved good-bye and headed for the front of the park.

Twenty minutes later she was sitting with Tamara in their favorite ice cream parlor.

“Want to split the turkey sandwich and a banana split?” Tamara asked.

“Split the split? You took the words right out of my mouth,” Candace said.

After the waitress took their order, they discussed the fact that they had only a few hours of freedom left before school started up in the morning.

“I can’t believe we only have two classes together this year,” Tamara complained.

“At least one of them is homeroom,” Candace said.

“Drama should be fun though,” Tamara said.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into signing up for that.”

“Come on, you’re going to be a maze monster. What’s a little acting to you?” Tamara teased.

Candace smiled. “I am pretty jazzed about that,” she admitted. “I just hope I do a good job. I totally couldn’t pull off ‘scary’ in front of the recruiter today. I should thank you, though. I got a position based on my ability to scream.”

“You’re welcome,” Tamara said. “See, all those hours in the garage paid off.”

“You’re going to come see me in the maze, right?”

Tamara was adventurous, but she hated anything that

resembled a monster or something that went bump in the night. She couldn’t stand horror films and hadn’t even been able to make it through the old movie Jaws the year before without freaking out and vowing never to go swimming in the ocean again.

“I guess if you’re going to overcome your fear of mazes enough to work in one, the least I can do is come see you in it,” Tamara said with a heavy sigh.

“You’re the best.”

“I know.”

After lunch they did some last-minute school shopping, and each of them ended up with pencils, paper, and three pairs of shoes.

“Seriously, I don’t think I can wear these to school,” Candace said, pulling a pair of three-inch black heels out of one of the bags.

“Then you can wear them after school when you go out with Kurt,” Tamara said. “That officially makes them ‘school adjacent’ and so, school shoes.”

“You have messed-up logic, Tam, but I love it.”

“Knew you would.”

They headed back to Candace’s house so she could change clothes before youth group. While Tamara unpacked her shoes for her, Candace threw on a pair of jeans and a Zone sweatshirt she had borrowed from Kurt.

“You’re never giving him back that sweatshirt, are you?” Tamara said.

“Not if I can help it,” Candace laughed. “Besides, it’s the duty of a girlfriend to swipe some article of clothing from her boyfriend. It’s like a sacred trust. The guy carries around a picture of the girl, and the girl snags his sweatshirt.”

“You weren’t even cold the other night at the theater when you got that, were you?”

“I’ll never tell,” Candace said with a laugh.

When they left the house and headed for church, Candace was both excited and a little nervous. Because of her summer job, she had missed out on youth group all summer. Now she was returning and she was officially a senior. It would be her first senior-y thing.

Once they arrived and entered the familiar building, though, she began to relax. The youth building was large and furnished with old beat-up couches, chairs, and plenty of pillows for sprawling on the floor. Almost a hundred -people were in attendance. The freshmen were easy to spot with their wide-eyed looks of excitement. They had finally entered the major leagues, and it was a big night for them too.

Candace and Tamara staked their claim to one of the smaller couches just before the youth pastor, Bobby, called everyone together. They prayed and then sang a -couple of praise songs.

“Okay, welcome, everyone, to a new year. We’re glad to see all you freshers out there. And seniors, congratulations on being the top dogs.”

There was a weak yell from the freshmen, which was dwarfed by the shout of the seniors. The sophomores looked relieved that they were no longer freshmen, while the juniors looked enviously at the seniors.

“Make sure you take a fall schedule home tonight. We’ve got a lot of great events coming up in the next -couple of months. There’s the girls’ all-night party next Friday night. Don’t forget the annual all-church marathon the following Sunday. We’ll have a guest band at the end of the month, which I know you won’t want to miss. We’re also doing something brand new this year. The first Friday in October we’ll get on buses and head on over to Scare at The Zone!”

Cheers went up from almost everyone in the room. Candace was stunned. She knew a lot of church youth groups went to Scare, but this was the first year her youth group was planning on it. She began to rethink her employment options. It was going to be weird enough playing a monster on display in a maze without her entire youth group there to see her. Slowly, she sank down lower on the couch, willing herself to be unseen.

Tamara waved her hand in the air, and, before Candace could stop her, Bobby called, “What is it Tamara?”

“I just thought everyone would like to know that Candace is going to be a monster in one of the mazes.”

Candace could feel her cheeks burning as she glared at Tamara.

“Hear that everyone? Make sure you come with us to Scare, and you can see Candace at work!”

There were more cheers as Candace sat there in dismay.

A freshman girl raised her hand.

“Yes, what’s your name?” Bobby asked.

“Jen. How much will Scare cost?” she asked, clearly concerned.

“Well, Jen, that’s the best part. This is the perfect time to invite out all your friends — Chris-tians and non-Chris-tians. The entire event, including entrance ticket, transportation, food, and a souvenir T-shirt, is completely sponsored. So it’s free!”

And now, with the exception of Candace, there was a standing ovation. Candace just glared up at Tamara. “This is your fault, isn’t it?” she asked.

Tamara just smiled innocently. “I have to support my best friend, don’t I?”

Candace thought that maybe she could use a little less support and a lot more privacy, but she didn’t say so. Tamara’s entire family was beyond rich. Tamara and Candace had been friends before either of them even understood what was up with money. Most of the time Tamara played it casual, but every once in a while she did something generous and outrageous. This time her generosity was going to put Candace fully in the spotlight. As cool as it often was to have a friend with money, there was a downside.

“How could you do that to me?” Candace asked when she and Tamara were back in the car after youth group was over.

“I love you, Cand, but if you think I’m going through those mazes by myself, you’re crazy. I plan on putting as many bodies between me and the guys in the scary masks as possible.”

“But I’m one of the guys in the scary masks! Besides, it’s perfectly safe. They’re not allowed to touch players at all.”

“That’s what you say.”

“It’s true. It says so in the handbook.”

Tamara rolled her eyes. “Sure, and how many -people aside from you bothered to read it?”

“That’s not fair. It’s in the pamphlet too,” Candace protested.

“Oh, and because it says so in the pamphlet it must be true,” Tamara said. “Maybe if they posted it on the Web it would be doubly true.”

“Knock it off,” Candace said, still irritated and in no mood to play.

“Seriously, you’re not worried are you?” Tamara asked, doing her best to stop smiling.

“No, I love being in the spotlight,” Candace said, letting the sarcasm flow freely. “Hello! Remember me? Your best friend? I hang around with you so I can be spotlight adjacent, as in, not in but nearby.”

“Well you need the drama class worse than I thought,” Tamara said.

“I don’t want to be in the spotlight.”

Tamara pulled up in front of Candace’s house and parked. “You know,” she said, her voice suddenly very thoughtful, “for someone who doesn’t want to be in the spotlight, you seem to spend a lot of time in it lately.”

“Hello? Not my fault,” Candace said.

“I’m not saying it is,” Tamara answered, putting her hand on Candace’s shoulder. “I just think you seem to end up there no matter what you do. I mean you were a cotton candy operator all summer, and how many times did you name something at the park or win some competition or otherwise draw everyone’s attention your way?”

“Too many,” Candace muttered.

“Exactly. Stuff like that doesn’t just happen. I think maybe God’s trying to tell you something.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe you’re not meant to live your life spotlight adjacent. Maybe you’re meant to be front and center.”

Candace was quiet for a moment while she thought about that. It seemed like such a crazy idea. She had always lived in a way that ensured she blended into the background. The thought of standing apart from it was intimidating. Yet, hadn’t she done exactly that when she and her team won The Zone Scavenger Hunt? Or the time she stood up for her rights when she was falsely accused at work? That hadn’t exactly been blending in.

She shook her head. It was a lot to think about, and the part of her brain that was already freaked out so didn’t want to go there. “Maybe it’s just coincidence,” she said.

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Tamara said. “I believe in plans God makes and doesn’t tell you about until later.”

Candace smiled. “Any chance God plans to make it snow or something so we don’t have to go to school tomorrow?”

Tamara looked at the readout on her dashboard. “It’s nine thirty at night, and it’s still eighty-seven degrees outside. Besides, this is Southern California. When God makes it snow here, it’s not a plan; it’s a miracle.”

Candace couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Thanks, Tam,” she said after a minute.

“Hey, that’s what friends are for,” she said with a shrug. “Wanna carpool tomorrow?”

Candace nodded. “You driving or me?”

“I will. See you in the morning.”

Once in her room Candace thought about calling Kurt or her friend Josh. Reason won out, though, since she had school in the morning, and calling either of them could result in her being up way too late.

“Morning’s going to come awfully early,” she confided in Mr. Huggles, her stuffed bear.

I was practicing with my brother Jason’s team, like I always did. The team, made up of eleven- and twelveyear- olds, was coached by our father, Tony Hamilton. I was six at the time, almost seven. I ran around shagging balls and getting to hit at the end of practice. Jason — whom I always called “Bro” — was always encouraging to me when he probably could have told me to stay home or at least stay out of the way.

The day the man sat in the stands, I made a diving catch in the outfield that nobody could believe. I was running from right- center toward center field and diving till my body was parallel to the ground as I caught a ball about six inches off the ground.

I was six years younger than most of the players on Jason’s team, but I could do things on the field they couldn’t do. I lived to play ball, and I had precocious ability from the time I picked up a ball. Bro and I would play in the yard or across the street at the cemetery, and I refused to accept our age difference as a valid reason for his superiority. I couldn’t beat him — he’s four years older than I am, and four years is a huge age difference for a long, long time — but I always thought I could. Whatever we played, whether it was basketball or wiffle ball, I went into every game convinced this was going to be the day.

The time I spent practicing with Jason’s team was my favorite time of the week. My team, at the coach- pitch level, was not a challenge. When the season started, I was the typical little boy, thrilled to put on his baseball clothes and get to the season’s first practice. Once I got there, though, I was disappointed that my teammates couldn’t keep up.

My daddy coached my team, too, and my momma always came to our practices. After the second or third practice of my coach- pitch team, once we were in the car and nobody could hear, they told me they could tell I was easing up on my throws and maybe not swinging as hard as I could when I was taking batting practice.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” I told them.

They shook their heads. “You play the way you know how to play,” Daddy said. “Those other boys need to get used to catching balls that are thrown hard, and if you start trying to hit the ball so it won’t hurt anybody, you’re going to get into bad habits that’ll be hard to break. You need to be a leader and they’ll catch up.”

When I thought about it, I realized that Jason didn’t let up on me when we were playing together, and he was four years older. These guys were my age, so maybe they would get better and learn to react the way I did.

The next practice I threw as hard as I could, and it resulted in some missed throws and some tears. I got up there and hit the way I would if I was playing in the cemetery with Bro, and my teammates kept moving back till there was nobody in the infield. The parents watching shook their heads and started talking and laughing among themselves. They’d never seen such a little person do the things I could do.

As we got closer to the start of the coach- pitch season, the parents started to wonder whether I could be moved up to a more advanced level. There was nothing malicious about their concern; a move would help everybody involved. They were equal parts amazed and afraid — amazed at the speed at which I could throw the ball and the power with which I could hit it, afraid that their lessadvanced sons might find themselves unprepared and in the way of one of my throws or hits.

I could hear them up there, telling grandparents and friends, “That kid’s going to hurt somebody.” By the time I was six, I could throw the ball about 50 mph, probably twice as fast as most of the kids my age. The parents’ concerns were legitimate, and they were never malicious or angry. In fact, they were very supportive of my quest to leave the team sponsored by Hamilton Machine — a business owned by my dad’s cousin — and move up to play with my brother. The sooner the better, as far as they were concerned, since they believed it was just a matter of time before one of their boys lost a few teeth or got a concussion.

Their fears became real in our first game, when I fielded a ball at shortstop and threw it across the infield as hard as I could to get the runner. There was a problem, though — the first baseman either never saw the ball or didn’t react fast enough to catch it. He stood there with his glove turned the wrong way as the ball smacked into his chest. He went down like a sniper got him, and I think he started crying before he hit the ground. I felt terrible.

* * *

The mystery
man in the concrete bleachers stayed till the end of practice. Afterward, he came down and talked to my daddy. They walked off to where no one could hear them and spoke for a few minutes. There was some talk among the older kids in the dugout that he was there to see me, but I couldn’t tell whether they were fooling with me.

When the discussion was over, my daddy and the man shook hands and the man walked to his car. We carried the equipment to the truck and waited. When Daddy climbed into the cab he looked straight ahead and said, “Well, Josh, that man I was talking to is the president of the whole Tar Heel League. He drove all the way from Charlotte to watch you play. He heard about you and needed to see for himself. And, well, you’re on Jason’s team now.”

I guess you could say that was the first time I’d been scouted. I was six years old, closing in on seven, and Bro was eleven. In the Tar Heel League, his team was the equivalent of majors in Little League, and everyone on Bro’s team was somewhere between fifth and seventh grade.

Until I showed up. When that happened, the team had acquired a first- grader.

I later learned the Tar Heel League had never done something like this before. The local board couldn’t decide to do something that drastic, and the parents’ complaints had traveled all the way to the top. The president decided he needed to see me before he made a ruling, and his decision made everyone in our pickup truck happy. I got to play on the same team with my Bro, and my daddy had to coach only one team.

I think it made everyone on my old Hamilton Machine team happy, too. They thought it was cool someone from their team got moved up, and they didn’t have to worry about catching one in the teeth.

It wasn’t all perfect, as my daddy found out soon enough. At our first game, after the lineup was posted in the dugout, I had a question.

“Daddy, why you battin’ me last?” I asked in my sixyear- old southern accent.

“‘Cuz you’re the youngest one, that’s why.”

I didn’t like that answer, and every game I said something when I saw my name in the ninth spot in the order. “Come on, Daddy, what are you batting me last for?” He never budged, though. That nine spot always had the same name: J. Hamilton.

In my mind, the team’s worst hitter hits last, and I wasn’t the worst hitter on the team. I turned seven in May and two weeks later, I hit my first real home run. A twelve-year-old named Larry Trantham was pitching, and he threw me a fat one over the middle of the plate. The ball hit the bat square, right on the sweet spot of the barrel, and I drove it over the fence in left- center. It’s hard to explain, but on contact, I felt nothing. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

* * *

Life in the Hamilton household revolved around family and baseball. You couldn’t tell where one started and the other stopped — not on a dare.

I wasn’t a bad student, but given the choice between playing ball and memorizing parts of speech, I wanted the ball.

It was a family tradition. My parents, Linda and Tony, met at a ballpark. My daddy was warming up for a softball game on one diamond while my momma was playing a game on a field next to him. He looked over once and saw her hit a ball about fifty feet beyond the left-field fence, and everyone on his team just shook their heads and pointed to the spot where the ball landed. The next time up, the same thing happened, except the ball went even farther.

At this point, my daddy had seen enough. He walked over to her field and told someone, “I’ve got to meet that girl.” He did, and within weeks they were dating and before long they were married.

My father grew up on his family’s hog and chicken farm in Oxford, North Carolina, about forty miles north of our house in a rural area west of Raleigh. Momma grew up in the house next door to us, on the same piece of property about fifty yards away from our front door.

Like everyone in this part of the world, we were surrounded by pine forests. To this day, I know I’m home more by the smell of those trees than anything else. Across the street there’s an old, small cemetery where we used to run around and hit baseballs or golf balls, maybe shoot our BB guns. Five or six years ago someone was buried in an old family plot, but when I was growing up there wasn’t much action there. Down the road a huge piece of land is owned by North Carolina State University, and our favorite fishing hole was on it, not more than a threeminute walk from the house.

We were never more than a mile from a good fishing hole.

It was a good childhood. We weren’t rich, but I don’t think we knew that. I don’t think Jason and I knew what rich was. We played ball and went to school and pretty much had the run of the place. We hung out as a family and didn’t see much need to go out, even as we reached high school age. We were pretty content in our little corner of the world. We had everything we needed.

My grandmother on my mother’s side lived right next door to us, in the same house my momma grew up in. This was the place Bro and I went to be spoiled with cookies and ice cream and grilled- cheese sandwiches. Mary Holt is an old- fashioned southern lady, more of a friend than an authority figure. My nickname from the time I started playing baseball was “Hambone” and I called Granny “Grambone.” If we got in trouble at home, we’d always find our way over to Granny’s house to escape. Whatever we had done to get in trouble didn’t seem like such a big deal to her. She was the safe haven, and it was a role she enjoyed. I think she had a soft spot for me because I was the youngest and I shared her name — Joshua Holt Hamilton.

Granny never missed a ballgame. We didn’t make a conscious effort to invite her to the games; it was just understood that she would be ready to come with us when it was time to go. My games, Jason’s games — it didn’t matter. She was there. Before every game, for good luck, I would walk over to where Granny and my momma were sitting and give each of them a kiss on the cheek.

From the time we started playing baseball, one of the major lessons we learned in our family was to respect the game. And a big part of respecting the game was respecting the people you play with and against. My daddy went out of his way to make sure he wasn’t favoring his sons on the baseball field, and since I always wanted to please him and my teammates, I usually packed up all the gear after practices and cleaned the dugout after games.

My ability drew more attention to me, but I always put pressure on myself to go beyond people’s expectations. I didn’t want to be treated differently because I was a good player; I loved to play the game, but it didn’t mean anything beyond that.

My parents taught us to be humble. My mom was an awesome slow- pitch softball player, one of the best in the area. She played first base and pitched, and the tales of her hitting exploits are repeated to this day. People around Raleigh who watched her play swear she could hit a softball four hundred feet.

Our parents raised us on the idea that a ballfield was the best place to be. They believed that sports keep kids out of trouble and headed in the right direction, whether they pick up a ball after high school or not. My daddy loved sports and played baseball, but he grew up in a family that felt it was much more important to work on the farm than to do something frivolous like playing ball. The demands of work limited his opportunities to play sports, but he played whatever he could whenever he could — baseball, softball, football, martial arts.

My daddy is big and strong, country strong, with forearms like pillars and shoulders wide as a doorway. He never had any formal strength training, but he set the unofficial YMCA bench press record in Raleigh with a lift of 540 pounds.

His limited opportunity to play sports made him determined t
o make sure we were able to take advantage of every possible opportunity.

My daddy coached Jason and me until we got to high school, and he wasn’t the type of dad/coach who let us do whatever we wanted. His teams were disciplined. He made us keep our shirts tucked in, and he preached accountability, making sure we never left our bats or any other equipment for someone else to pick up.

We rarely crossed him, but once when I was eleven I didn’t run hard enough to first base on a popup and he got all over me. We were playing some kind of championship game, and he told me I embarrassed him on the field. He never stayed mad, but I knew better than to do it again. From then on, I ran out every ground ball and every popup like my hair was on fire.

I was never pressured to play ball. The perception of my parents as hard-driving stage parents was never accurate. I played because I loved to play, and because I was good at it. If I had told my parents that I didn’t want to play baseball, I honestly think they would have been fine with that. They would have been surprised, but they would have thrown themselves into whatever activity I chose to replace it.

They made sacrifices for us. Jason and I knew it at the time, but I don’t think we completely understood the level of sacrifice until we got older. Daddy was, and is, a hard worker who got up early in the morning to go to his job as a supervisor for the Wonder Bread factory in town. Momma worked for the North Carolina Department of Transportation. She washed our clothes after dark, when the utility rates were lowest, so we could save money to spend on gas and food for our baseball trips.

My daddy always made sure he had a flexible enough schedule to work around my baseball games. To do this, sometimes he had to go to work at some ungodly hour so he could get his work finished in time to leave for the game. I would hear him leaving the house at three or four in the morning during the summer after we had gotten home after midnight from an AAU baseball tournament somewhere in the state. His bosses, in general, were understanding and appreciated his devotion to both his job and his family.

He got a new boss when I was twelve, the summer after I finished playing in the Tar Heel League and started playing traveling AAU ball in the summer for a team in Raleigh. One Friday my daddy did what he always did when the schedule got tight: He got to work at 2:00 a.m. so he could leave by noon and drive me three hours to a game.

As he walked to the time clock to clock out for the day, this boss stopped him.

“Tony, where are you going?”

“Got a ballgame,” my daddy said. “I’m done for the day.”

“You know, I need you here this afternoon. You need to stick around.”

My daddy explained the arrangement he had with the bosses at the factory. As long as he completed his work for the day and it didn’t cause any disruption — and it wouldn’t have in this case — then he was free to go. He was a dedicated worker and went out of his way not to cheat anybody.

The new boss wouldn’t hear any of it. He repeated his desire to have my daddy stick around for the rest of the afternoon. At this point, my daddy felt he was being tested, challenged just to see how he would react. This was not always a smart move for the person doing the challenging. My daddy just stood there with his timecard in his hand, waiting for his boss to make the next move.

“Tony, I’ve got a question for you: What’s more important, the ballgame or your job?”

My daddy didn’t hesitate at all. He didn’t answer him directly, but he looked this new boss right in the eye and slid his timecard into the clock until it clicked. He put the card back in the slot, calmly walked out of the factory and never worked another day for Wonder Bread.

* * *

We went to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, one year for an all-star tournament, and I pitched the first game. Early in the game I threw a pitch behind a little kid on the other team. When it was his turn to hit the next time through the batting order, he dragged his bat to the batter’s box with tears running down his cheeks. He stood outside the box, crying and looking at the third- base coach to see if he might spare him this moment and send him back to the dugout.

Instead, the third- base coach walked toward him and said, “It’s okay, get up there and hit. He’s not going to hit you. Be a big boy.”

He looked at the coach and sobbed, “It’s too fast.” By now everyone in the stands was trying not to laugh at this poor kid, who probably should have been allowed to walk back to the dugout and put his bat down rather than be scarred for life by his behavior in a Tar Heel League game.

Finally, he agreed to get in the box. Everyone cheered and told him he could do it. He stood as far from the plate as possible and looked ready to bail at any moment. He held his bat on his shoulder, showing no intention of even thinking of swinging.

And so I wound up, and threw.

I was eleven years old, and I threw the ball about seventy miles per hour. The problem was, I didn’t always have any idea where it was going. Pinpoint control was not part of my game. I don’t know whether hearing the coach promise that I wasn’t going to hit him messed with my head, but I wound up and threw a fastball that thumped into the kid’s back, right between his shoulder blades.

I felt terrible. This was the last thing I wanted to do, and maybe I tried so hard not to do it that I guaranteed that I would. I don’t know, but if you thought he was crying before he got into the box, you can’t imagine what he was doing now.

He was lying there perfectly still and screaming at the top of his lungs. “He hit me! He hit me!” It was like the ball stunned him or something, hit him right in the spine. The coaches and the umpire ran out to him, trying to convince him to get up and take his base, and he kept screaming: “I can’t move! I can’t move!” The only body part undamaged, it seemed, was his mouth.

In the course of all this screaming and crying, someone decided it would be a good idea to call an ambulance. I stayed on the mound, flipping the ball to myself repeatedly. It was a habit I had, part of my inability to be still, and also something I did when I was nervous or embarrassed. I didn’t go down to the plate and get involved with the kid, though, because I was always taught to just throw the ball and not worry about hitting someone. I felt bad for him, but at the same time, it was his job to get out of the way of a bad pitch.

He stayed on the ground for what seemed like forever, long enough for the ambulance to arrive and the paramedics to get out to the batter’s box. When they lifted up his shirt they saw the stitch marks from the baseball on his back. Eventually the paramedics and coaches convinced him that he could stand up and go on living, that he had indeed survived his encounter with this left- handed freak of nature and his wild fastball.

Years later, when I had been out of baseball and somewhat forgotten, my daddy was on a jobsite and he got to talking with some of the men there about baseball. He mentioned that he coached in West Raleigh, and this one guy said, “Do you remember that kid named Josh Hamilton who threw the ball a hundred miles an hour when he was eleven?”

My daddy said, “Yes, I do.”

“Is that guy still around?”

“Yeah, he’s still around. Somewhere.”

“Well, one time I was playing against him and I didn’t want to bat but they made me anyway, and he hit me right in the back. That hurt worse than anything in the world. I’ll never forget that.”

“Nope,” my daddy said. “Neither will I.”

“What do you mean? You were there?”

“Josh is my son.”

The guy started laughing and shaking his head.

“You tell your son I never played past Little League after he hit me. That boy scared me to death.” r />
* * *

There was a game in my last year in the Tar Heel League, when I was twelve years old, that I came to the plate five times and hit five home runs. I think after the third one the coaches and pitchers for the other team kept pitching to me just to see what would happen.

People saw me as different, something special, but they wanted me to succeed. I was always encouraged by other parents and coaches, and I attribute this to the way my parents taught us to behave. I never pimped a home run, not then or now, and I always went out of my way to praise my teammates for their achievements. I understood my talent for what it was — the ability to excel on the baseball field. It didn’t deserve special treatment or a different set of rules.

During that summer, when I was twelve, I made my parents a promise. I said, “If I get drafted and get some money, I want you guys to retire. We’ll use the money to pay off all your bills and you guys can come with me.”

At twelve years old, I was good enough to dream. I could look around at the kids I was playing against and see that it wasn’t a ridiculous leap to think that I could someday make money playing this game. My idea — to free my parents from all their hard work and repay them for their devotion — was a fantasy life as expressed by a twelveyear- old. Playing baseball for a living was the greatest thing I could ever imagine. My parents were always happiest when they were watching me play ball, so this seemed like the perfect solution for all three of us.

My parents tried to dismiss my comment.

“That sure is a nice thought, Josh,” my momma said. “We’ll see about that when the time comes.”

I played basketball, too, and some soccer. When I was twelve, I played on a basketball team with Johnny Narron Jr., whose father was a major-league scout and a former minor-league ballplayer. Johnny Narron Sr.’s brother, Jerry, was a former big-league backup catcher who played eight seasons for the Yankees, Mariners, and Angels. At the time I started playing basketball with his nephew, Jerry was the third-base coach for the Texas Rangers.

The Narrons were a famous baseball family from Goldsboro, North Carolina, not far from Raleigh. Jerry and Johnny had an uncle named Sam who played in the major leagues for only twenty-four games —four in 1935 and ten each in 1942 and 1943. One of their cousins, also named Sam, pitched in one game for the Rangers in 2004. There were Narrons all over baseball.

The first time Johnny came to watch me play basketball with his son, he told someone in the stands he couldn’t believe what a good athlete I was. As someone who was trained to evaluate athletic ability, his eye was drawn to me immediately.

“Those boys better be ready when he throws them a pass,” Johnny said to some of the other parents. “I’ve never seen a twelve- year- old with that kind of strength.”

One of the other dads told Johnny, “Well, if you think he’s good at basketball, you ought to see him play baseball. He just plays this sport for fun. He plays baseball for keeps.”

The parents proceeded to tell Johnny the stories about the Tar Heel League putting me on a majors team when I was six years old. They told him about my no- hitters on the mound and my four-and five-homer games at the plate. As a professional, he was used to hearing exaggerated stories from parents and friends, but these people had no reason to make bloated claims. He didn’t let on that he was an associate scout for the Atlanta Braves at the time, but he filed it away and made a note to take the time to watch this Josh Hamilton kid play baseball before everybody knew who he was.

* * *

I played football my freshman year in high school, but after that my parents and I made the decision to concentrate on baseball. I was becoming strong, and the skills I picked up playing soccer (footwork) and running track (speed) would serve me well on the baseball field. My daddy started working with me on strength, buying a ten-pound medicine ball and giving me exercises to beef up my wrists and forearms to increase my bat speed.

Jason was out of the house by now, off at UNC Greensboro going to college and playing baseball. Jason was a power-hitting catcher who was a heck of a ballplayer — and a tough high school quarterback — but never quite good enough to be considered a pro prospect.

With Jason out of the house, my parents were free to direct all their attention toward me and my baseball career. I played varsity as a freshman at Athens Drive High School, and during that summer I started using a wood bat along with the standard aluminum high school bats. Without saying it, my daddy and I were pretty sure I was going to have the opportunity to play professional baseball directly following high school — that was the goal, anyway — and anything that helped me get there faster was worth the effort. And since professional scouts said their toughest job was projecting how well an amateur player could make the transition from metal to wood bats, we decided we would remove the mystery as best we could.

We thought of everything, or at least tried to. And if it sounds like pressure, it really wasn’t. We were preparing for pro ball by the time I was fifteen, but the only pressure I felt was the pressure I put on myself. Baseball is a game of failure. You can’t expect to succeed every time you go to the plate, or strike out every hitter, or throw out every baserunner. Accepting failure was the toughest lesson I had to learn. I was so hard on myself I had to fight the urge to expect perfection.

Johnny Narron returned to my life when I was fifteen years old. He asked me to play for a fall prospect team he was coaching. Johnny, who was still scouting for the Braves at the time, hand- picked the team based on ability. Johnny’s son was on the team, and so was Matt Robertson, whose father, Jax, is an assistant general manager with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Johnny couldn’t wait for his brother Jerry to come home after the big- league season so he could watch me play. He told Jerry, “You’ve got to come see this kid; you’re not going to believe him.” I was playing anywhere — pitcher, first base, outfield, catcher, shortstop. I didn’t care, as long as I was in the lineup and having fun. I loved to catch. Johnny would tell me, “You know, Josh, there aren’t any left- handed catchers,” and I would say, “I don’t care, it’s a lot of fun.”

I don’t know whether Jerry Narron got sick of hearing about this fifteen- year- old kid in Raleigh, but Johnny didn’t get sick of telling him about me. The big- league season ended, and Johnny got right back to telling Jerry that he needed to come see me play.

“I’m coming out to see your son Johnny play,” Jerry insisted.

“Oh, yeah, come see Johnny play,” Big Johnny said. “But you’ve got to see this kid Josh Hamilton.”

Johnny tells stories about what I did when I played on that team. Once we were running first-and-third plays in practice while I was catching and Matt Robertson was playing shortstop. I came up and threw the ball to Matt, who was cutting the ball off behind the mound, and it got on him so fast he either never saw it or couldn’t react in time. It hit him right in the neck, and he went down like he might never get back up.

Another time I threw a ball from first to the shortstop to start a double play during infield practice and the ball tailed off just as it reached Johnny Narron. I threw it hard — probably too hard — and he couldn’t stay with it. It caught him square in the ankle, and he walked with a limp for about a week.

This was a fifteen-year-old prospect team, and everybody on the team was identified as a potential star player in high school. I was part of the first wave of the specialized baseball teams — the travel teams, prospect teams, AAU teams — that are now a huge part of youth baseball. There weren’t many rules; coaches
or local scouts put together teams and then tried to find similar teams in the area to build a schedule. I probably could have been playing with the eighteen- year- old prospect team, but I was with my friends and besides, it was another example of people not wanting to set a precedent by advancing a player beyond his age group.

As Johnny Narron Sr., said, “A lot of times you see a twelve- year- old who is physically advanced, and eventually the other kids catch up to them. The strong kid matures earlier and is stronger, but he tops out. Things even out by the time he reaches high school. But in Josh’s case, nobody ever caught up with him.”

* * *

Ever since I was twelve, when I dreamed out loud about signing for enough money to pay off my parents’ debts and bring them to the pros with me, I had my sights set on being a professional baseball player. I wanted to make sure I took care of the details, and decisions such as hitting with a wood bat were calculated to maximize my chances.

This was a family thing. Everything I did was a family thing, baseball foremost among them. My daddy was part of the decisions I made, from using a wood bat to choosing the right summer team. But what some people perceived as pushing was simply supporting. The issue of hard- driving parents pushing their kids to earn a scholarship or get a contract is a serious one, but that wasn’t what Tony and Linda Hamilton were all about.

Yes, we were preparing for the day when I could reach the level I wanted to reach. And yes, they were part of it. But they weren’t stage parents, or helicopter parents, or whatever other negative descriptions you want to use. My parents never berated a coach or forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do. I honestly think I could have decided to quit baseball and they would have been fine with it. They would have been disappointed, and they would have reminded me that I was wasting my God-given talent, but in the end they would have said, “Well, if that’s what you want to do,” and that would have been it.

That wasn’t a factor, though, since my whole life revolved around the game. I developed routines the way big- leaguers did. I would park my ‘89 Camaro in the tree- lined parking lot behind the baseball field at Athens Drive and get dressed out of the trunk. I always blasted the same two songs: “Double Trouble” by Lynyrd Skynyrd and “Brand New Key” by Melanie. They were my baseball songs, and I never got sick of them. And I continued to kiss my momma and my granny before every game.

My daddy stopped coaching me before high school, and I brought the values he instilled in me to high school baseball. I always made sure to be respectful to the other team and the umpires. I always made sure to clean up the dugout after the game.

There were a lot of people who helped me improve, by giving me either instruction or opportunity. One of the men I always admired was Clay Council, who helped run the American Legion program in Cary. My brother played Cary Legion, and Coach Council was an assistant coach on that team. Whenever I didn’t have practice or a game, I would go to Jason’s practices and shag balls and hope to get in a few swings at the end of practice. That’s how I met Clay — he would always have time to throw a few to the thirteen-year-old who was hanging around with his older brother. And he’d always smile and talk to me at the games when I was chasing down foul balls so I could get the free hot dog that came with every ball you returned to the concession stand.

Coach Council was a quiet, friendly man with a deep North Carolina drawl. He was about sixty years old when I met him, and he had already devoted a good part of his life to helping local teenagers become better ballplayers. He was a great batting- practice pitcher, and it seemed he could throw for hours and hours. As long as someone wanted to hit, Coach Council was there to throw.

He became part of the landscape of amateur baseball around Raleigh, and even though I played on the Fuquay- Varina Legion team, I would occasionally see Coach Council at the various high school fields, always throwing to whoever wanted to hit. Because my daddy was someone who volunteered his time to coach youth baseball, I was always aware of the sacrifices other coaches were making for me and my teammates. I noticed that ballplayers didn’t always thank him for his time, and it made me more conscious of thanking him or any other coach.

Clay was one of those men who get forgotten when the boys pass through high school and move on to college or the pros. He worked at the Raleigh- Durham airport and spent much of his free time helping kids. He kind of blended in, never demanding anything, giving only instruction and encouragement. He and I both loved baseball more than anything in the world. I never felt as happy as I did when I was on the ballfield, and he looked like he felt the same way.

After I got drafted, I saw Clay at one of the fields during a Legion game and I told him right there, “If I ever get asked to be in the Home Run Derby, I’m going to ask you to throw to me.”

I told him that every time I saw him after that, and he always had the same answer, “That’s nice, Josh. I’d sure like that.”

Copyright © 2008 by Josh Hamilton

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

How did the culture war begin? Was there a clear winner? Or did it devolve into a long, costly stalemate? What can we learn from the battle? Perhaps we are not as polarized as we presume. Political parties and pundits strive to distinguish themselves from the competition in the starkest possible terms. We use rhetoric to rail against one another while our core positions may involve only a slight divergence. We may be hardly separated rather than deeply divided. Can we move from an adolescent mind-set, shouting across the religious and political divide, into something more thoughtful, productive, and mature?

As a witness to the sixties and seventies, I’ve seen how destructive we can be—even toward ourselves. I’ve also lived through the comparative comfort of the Reagan era in the eighties. He turned back the clock to a prosperous vision of America before the social upheavals of the sixties. Can we uphold the vigorous freedom of the sixties alongside the rigorous responsibility of the fifties?

A purple state of mind pushes past the either/or squabbles of an earlier era. It adopts a both/and approach to following God and interacting with the world. It builds bridges rather than burning them. It seeks common ground rather than points of division. A purple state of mind attains maturity by knowing when and where to apply biblical truths to our blind spots.

John: I think this should be a candid discussion.

Craig: I want it to be first and foremost an honest conversation. Straightforward. Tell the truth. Nothing held back.

Were you alive when President John F. Kennedy was shot? While the world wailed, I was warm in my mother’s womb. She was in the doctor’s office, awaiting a checkup on my status. I was born two months after Kennedy was assassinated. I arrived after the initial shockwave, the outpouring of grief, and the confusion as to why such tragedy happens. But we all continue to wrestle with the conflicts that erupted in the wake of Kennedy’s death.

I entered a world on fire. Throughout my childhood, there were riots in the streets, protests on campuses, scenes from Vietnam in the news. My parents attempted to shield me from much of the conflict, turning me on to Mr. Rogers rather than Walter Cronkite. Yet the palpable conflicts over civil rights, free speech, and the war draft spilled into newspapers, televisions, and casual conversations. The struggle for civil rights was more than a century in the making. Leaders like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were as patient as possible, given their long walk to freedom. Yet the positive steps created by the Civil Rights Act still moved too slowly for those trapped in the inner city. Riots in Watts and Detroit set cities ablaze. The mistakes of the Vietnam War constitute their own painful book. As images of the war filtered into our living rooms, resentment toward our leaders grew. Chaos reigned among protestors inside and outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

I knew my dad hated the protestors, but I didn’t know why. Something about their appearance bugged him. It may have been their long hair, their scanty clothes, and their flagrant disregard of authority. The hippies seemed equally frustrated by people like my father. They were complaining about the man, the system, anyone over 30. Why were the protestors so angry? What was all the shouting about? A generation gap emerged over the war in Vietnam. The students were ostensibly resisting the draft. They did not want to serve in an endless, misguided war in Southeast Asia.

Behind the political policies were distinct lifestyle choices. The hippies were celebrating free love, plentiful drugs, and raucous rock music. My father was wondering what happened to hard work, paying taxes, and civic responsibility. Teenagers embraced freedom while adults trumpeted responsibility. These dueling notions of the American identity exploded into a full-blown culture war that has been raging ever since. Reporter Ronald Brownstein calls this second civil war “the great sorting out.”

A purple state of mind appreciates the competing ideals that launched the culture war. It recognizes the patriotism that resides behind both visions. It remembers how much capital was created by responsible citizenship in the fifties. It also celebrates the ingenuity unleashed in the freedom-loving sixties. We learned valuable lessons from both eras. A purple state of mind borrows from both, combining freedom and responsibility.

The Fifties Versus the Sixties

I have lived my entire life in the shadow of the 1960s. I’ve heard the stirring speeches of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I’ve mourned the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in Dion’s song, “Abraham, Martin, and John.” I’ve been taken to the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now. How many television specials have I seen that retrace the upheavals of 1968? Rolling Stone magazine commemorates Woodstock or the Summer of Love every single year! Was it the best of times or the worst of times? Forty years on, we’re still locked in an adolescent debate. We see it in the childish name-calling of Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter on the right or MoveOn.org and Daily Kos on the left.

Every American presidential election since the sixties has essentially been a referendum on that painful era. There were no clear winners in Vietnam. Like Rambo, we’re still fighting. It is a dark era in American history most of us would rather not review (even though we must learn those lessons so we stop repeating them). The fissure generated in Vietnam lies behind our conflicted feelings over the war in Iraq. We can’t talk rationally as a nation about important issues because of deep-seated, unresolved family dynamics. If you prefer the comparative calm of the fifties, then you know how to vote. If you uphold the progressive hopes of the sixties, then it is clear which candidate represents you. The only problem with this pattern is that many of us missed the fifties and the sixties. We’re ready to move on, to live in this moment, to meet today’s challenges rather than to relive yesterday’s news.

Living with this conflict is comparable to listening to our parents argue. We’ve heard all the lines, all the rhetoric, and all the old grudges. We can recite them from memory, and we’ve been exhausted by the gridlock. We haven’t bothered to speak up because we know our parents were too busy arguing to listen. The shouting match showed no signs of abating, so we let the circus pass us by. Instead of joining the conversation, we elected to start our own companies, clubs, and churches. The creative brain drain from civic activities has been well documented. Those who were turned off by the partisan rancor eventually turned off the pundits on TV. We are on the Internet instead, arguing about the minutia that remains distinctly ours—music, movies, television, shopping. We don’t want to be superficial. But with no creative political options, we opt out. If we hope to engage the next generation in public life, then this culture war, rooted in bitter recriminations, must stop. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must call a cease-fire.

Those of us who’ve inherited this war have seen enough casualties. John Marks and I were born at the end of the baby boom and the beginning of Generation X. We understand the majority position and empathize with the minorities who’ve been sidelined by the sheer size of the opposition. Consider this book an effort to bridge the generation gap. I’m here to help those over fifty understand what is coming. I stand between the baby boomers and their children, brokering a truce. As a professor, I’ve invested heavily in Generation Y, hoping that they will enact enough changes to make room for my children—Generation Z!

Seeking Wisdom

Seek wisdom, not knowledge.

Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future.

Native American PROVERB

I recount our recent history in an effort to fill in gaps in our understanding. We must comprehend where we’ve been if we hope to figure out where we’re going. I’ve seen the abuses of power represented by Watergate. The special prosecutor’s hearings interrupted hours of my favorite TV cartoons. (Did you realize that Hillary Clinton was part of the legal team investigating Nixon’s White House? Republicans have struggled with her for a looooong time!) I watched Nixon’s sad wave goodbye on the White House lawn. I also understand the faith embodied by the first “born again” president, Jimmy Carter. His Southern Baptist beliefs led him to broker peace in the Middle East. Yet I also endured the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis that accompanied his peaceful negotiations. After such international embarrassment, Americans desperately wanted to return to the fifties era of strength and power. Ronald Reagan played the part of forceful leader resisting the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism was a victory for freedom around the world.

Unresolved tensions about Vietnam, drugs, and the sixties fueled the vitriol hurled at the Clintons and the Bushes. Bill Clinton strapped on the mantle of President Kennedy, declaring himself “A Man from Hope.” His appearance playing saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show sent a clear signal that he embraced civil rights. As “entertainer in chief,” Clinton demonstrated a mastery of the electronic medium. His obfuscations about inhaling marijuana and dalliances with White House intern Monica Lewinsky also sparked latent fears of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. (Did you realize that Monica’s famous blue dress was found in her mother’s apartment—in the Watergate complex?) To his detractors, Clinton represented too much freedom and not enough presidential responsibility. The impeachment proceedings against him were a recapitulation and payback for the embarrassment borne by the Nixon administration.

George W. Bush represented a return to the fifties. He may have engaged in alcohol abuse or cocaine use, but Bush confessed his sins and seemed genuinely contrite. He experienced the dangers of too much personal freedom and welcomed the responsibility he found in his newfound faith. While Clinton parsed verbs, Bush offered plain-spoken surety. He distanced himself from his patrician upbringing, adopting a Texas rancher lifestyle as a populist alternative. To those tired of Clinton’s libertinism and excess, Bush offered a down-home throwback: cowboy boots and pickup trucks.

Yet all the tough talk in the world seemed insufficient in dealing with a nearly unseen enemy. How could a band of terrorists bring down the World Trade Center? They used our strengths against us, hijacking our own planes. They crashed into our most impressive symbols of financial prowess and military might. September 11, 2001, humbled and angered us. We marched into the Middle East with unprecedented firepower. Afghanistan fell almost without resistance. We submitted Iraq to “shock and awe.” Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda proved they could not only run but also hide. We attacked nations, but our enemies were individuals. American technology ended up undermined by insurgents with homemade bombs. We terrorized others with torture at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. We operated like a powerful empire but proved incapable of ferreting out an ideology. We desperately need leaders who can protect freedoms while serving as responsible world citizens. Such nuance has been lost in our prolonged and pointless culture war.

The next generation admires the civic responsibility of the fifties and the progressive art and music of the sixties. They have embraced a both/and view but have been alienated by either/or debates. A purple state of mind embraces freedom and responsibility. It takes the best of history but leaves the worst excesses (on both sides) behind. It blows away the purple haze hanging over our past. This chapter highlights key moments that got us into this mess. It will offer tangible proposals for moving on with maturity.

Nixon Versus Kennedy

For almost 50 years, we have been sorting out the choices represented by the first televised presidential debate, Republican Richard M. Nixon versus Democrat John F. Kennedy. On September 26, 1960, Vice President Nixon and Senator Kennedy squared off under the moderation of ABC’s Howard K. Smith. Over 80 million viewers tuned into the debate, which pitted Nixon’s experience (eight years as Eisenhower’s vice-president) against Kennedy’s comparative youth (one term as a U.S. senator). Both candidates offered hawkish opposition to the Communist threat represented by the Soviet Union. They debated issues of national debt, farm subsidies, welfare, and health care that continue to be unresolved. They drew distinctions about the role of government to stimulate economic growth. But Nixon and Kennedy diverged most significantly in style rather than substance.

Kennedy arrived at the debates looking tan, rested, and energetic. Nixon looked haggard, having recently fought off the flu. He refused to don makeup, figuring his forceful words would rule the day. Those who listened to the debate on the radio found Nixon the victor. Yet those watching the debate on tiny black-and-white televisions saw something else. They saw Nixon sweat while Kennedy smiled. Although Nixon was only five years older than Kennedy, his demeanor seemed comparatively ancient in outlook and energy. Nixon’s noticeable five-o’clock shadow didn’t help either.

Nixon learned the connections between style and substance too late in the campaign. Makeup covered his beard in three subsequent television debates. But Kennedy gained just enough confidence and votes to capture the closest general election of the twentieth century. Just one-tenth of 1 percent of votes separated Kennedy from Nixon. Americans have remained almost equally divided ever since.

The legacy of John F. Kennedy remains remarkably hopeful and progressive. Consider the optimism behind his war on poverty. Having watched the Russians beat Americans into orbit, Kennedy redefined the terms of the space race. How much chutzpah did it take to engage in a race to the moon? His version of American government looks almost absurdly hopeful in hindsight.

When Richard Nixon campaigned for president in 1968 (and for reelection in 1972), he promised an alternative to the vexing Vietnam War. Nixon expanded the Cold War efforts to include Cambodia and Laos. He presented a stronger America that refused to be intimidated. At the same time, Nixon engaged in a remarkable array of diplomatic missions to China and the Soviet Union. He met his adversaries face-to-face, winning surprising concessions and forging unexpected alliances.

Behind their policies, presidents Kennedy and Nixon represented divergent attitudes toward profound social change within America. The Kennedy years brought glamour to the White House. Entertainers like Marilyn Monroe sang sultry birthday greetings to President Kennedy. An air of celebration could also be read as a reign of permissiveness. A Democratic administration presided over the explosion of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Progressive politics coincided with experimentation and unrest. The Nixon presidency offered a return to law and order. Freedom took a backseat to responsibility. In 1971, President Nixon identified drug abuse as public enemy number one in the United States. He created the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (it became the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973). We’ve been fighting America’s longest war, the war on drugs, ever since.

Purple Haze

Jimi Hendrix’ song “Purple Haze” epitomizes the fuzzy grasp of reality that accompanied drug experimentation in the sixties. The title allegedly arose from a powerful batch of LSD served to Hendrix by Owsley Stanley. Some have also attributed it to a strain of purple marijuana. Hendrix said the inspiration arrived in a dream. Whatever the derivation, “Purple Haze” is rooted in altered states of consciousness. Released in 1967, “Purple Haze” served as the psychedelic anthem for San Francisco’s summer of love. The key to the song’s eerie sound is harmonic dissonance. Jimi’s guitar is tuned in B-flat, while Noel Redding’s bass plays E octaves. Such discordant sounds matched the era perfectly. A clash of cultures resulted in something jarring and new. Jimi didn’t just play rock music, he offered the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Consider the transcendent promises contained in his phrase, “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.” Some heard it as a sexual provocation, a pledge to kiss a guy. But the sound made it clear that his sights were set in the great beyond. At his seminal appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, Jimi transported the crowd to a higher state of consciousness. He demonstrated the otherworldly power of raw feedback, playing his guitar behind, above, and beyond himself. Hendrix stepped into the role of sexual shaman, licking, caressing, and stroking guttural sounds from his Stratocaster. In setting his guitar on fire during “Wild Thing,” Hendrix offered his gifts to the rock gods. It is an incantation, sacrificing his most precious possessions to the altar of altered states.

Unfortunately, Jimi’s life ended up in a similar state of self-immolation, falling to pieces just as suddenly and tragically. The Experience Music Project in Seattle serves as a permanent archive for all things Hendrix. EMP founder Paul Allen spent part of his Microsoft millions acquiring Hendrix memorabilia, bringing it back to Jimi’s hometown of Seattle. It is a memorial to a musical messiah. The hall dedicated to Jimi is fittingly called “Sky Church.”

To others, “Purple Haze” demonstrated a world utterly adrift. The idyllic visions of Woodstock were undercut by the horrific murder at Altamont. With Hell’s Angels serving as security, 1969’s other free concert (at Altamont Speedway in Northern California) ended in death rather than musical bliss. Every time Rolling Stone magazine presents another rosy retrospective of the sixties, I wonder why it refuses to acknowledge the dark side of psychedelia. How can it hold up Hendrix, Joplin, and Jim Morrison as departed saints, when they are also exhibits A, B, and C in the perils of drug abuse? They were amazing and stupid at the same time. Great talents squandered by excess. So when parents who lived through the worst of the sixties attempt to spare their children the same amount of destructive experimentation, I applaud. “Just say no” arose from painful, lived experience. It may have been simplistic, but it was preferable to self-destruction.

Recent films like Drugstore Cowboy, Trainspotting, and Requiem for a Dream capture both the allure and the demolition of drugs. They provide an audio-visual approximation of a drug trip. Their images are intoxicating and attractive—the ultimate music videos. Yet their message is clear: Despite the attraction, do not be deceived—drugs will kill you. They serve as cautionary tales for a stylish era. Today’s students have largely learned from the painful past. Rates of teenage pregnancies, drug use, and violence have hit 40-year lows. The parents from a turbulent era raised remarkably respectful, well-behaved kids. Demographers Neil Howe and William Strauss noted the surprising generational shift:

Boomers started out as the objects of loosening child standards in an era of conformist adults. Millennials are starting out as the objects of tightening child standards in an era of non-conformists adults. By the time the last Millennials come of age, they could become…the cleanest-cut young adults in living memory.

To a large degree, Generation Y has embraced the family values of the 1950s. But its rebellion remains wrapped in the profane packages of the 1960s.

Consider the violent, R-rated film Fight Club (1999). It is a scathing critique of consumer culture and middle-class values. We follow Jack, the bored protagonist, on a brutal slide into an underworld of macho self-abuse. Jack longs for genuine feeling, even if he must shed blood to achieve it. So while Jack may be a mild-mannered bureaucrat by day, he rallies his friends for bare-knuckled bar fights at night. Fight Club unleashes the fragile postmodern male id with frightening results. What begins as an invigorating alternative devolves into Project Mayhem, a prescient precursor to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Schizophrenia leads to destructive nihilism.

This is contrasted by the diagnosis offered by the toughest puncher in the club, Tyler Durden. He summarizes the isolation of a generation raised in affluence rather than upheaval:

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s— we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war…our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very p— off.

When I showed Fight Club to a class of undergraduate students, they nodded in recognition. They connected with Tyler’s frustration. During a class discussion afterward, a student announced, “We’re rebels.” When I asked what they were rebelling against, he said, “Our parents.” is all sounded more than vaguely familiar, so I pushed further. “What does that look like?” The students answered, “We don’t want to be like our parents. Drinking. Doing drugs. Getting lots of divorces…we’re rebels!” e most rebellious behavior imaginable? Abstinence!

While baby boomers harrumph about presidential candidates’ ancient drug use, their children are begging for them to grow up. Parents complain to MTV about Britney Spears’ kiss with Madonna. Switchboards light up from viewers shocked by Janet Jackson’s nipple slip during the Super Bowl halftime show. Yet the next generation lets out a collective yawn. They’ve already seen it, done it, or dismissed it. They identify with the band Weezer, which recorded a song titled “Tired of Sex.” They are ready to move on, past the provocation to more substantive issues. Rivers Cuomo of Weezer asks, “Oh, why can’t I be making love come true?”

A New Conversation

Craig: My introduction to what it meant to follow Jesus was to be a laughingstock. It meant bad hair, bad makeup, and bad TV. Is this what I signed up for? This whole tension of red state and blue state, this is the tension that I live with—how do I own my own people who so make me cringe on a regular basis? This nomenclature of left and right, red and blue is not helpful right now.

John: It’s not meant to be helpful. It’s meant to do exactly what it does. I’m not happy with what people on the traditional left, or Democrats, say is their worldview. I honestly don’t know if they have one. I’m as weary as anybody in this country of the politically correct dialogue, which basically says, “I’m a victim and you’re not. No, I’m a victim and you’re not.” It’s useless. It’s done. It’s dead. Postmodernism is dead. All those answers on the secular side are basically dead.

John Marks and I stand between generations. We are old enough to understand the boomers’ intra-generational issues, yet we’re still young enough to identify with the discontent of those who followed. We embarked on a purple state of mind because we’re desperate for a new paradigm, hungering for a different set of talking points. We each risked alienating our constituencies. Coming from evangelical Christianity, I am part of the fifties tribe, which is struggling to protect home and hearth. As a journalist, John Marks identifies with the political left and their tattered ideals. We both find ourselves embarrassed by those we represent. I ask how God’s people could have turned Jesus into a hater. John questions why allegedly free-thinking people are so close-minded when it comes to religion. A purple state of mind tries the patience of both sides. It runs the risk of disloyalty for the sake of a larger goal.

We must put the past behind us. We can no longer afford to be divided over issues of sexuality and drug use when global crises demand our attention. To lead the world, we must get past our adolescent fixation on who did what to whom. The rumor mills that trumped up charges against the Clintons in Whitewater or George W. Bush with evasion of the Vietnam War have done nothing but distract us. How much negative energy has been expended on investigations that went nowhere? We’ve been busy digging up dirt when we should have been building roads and schools. We tore down a government in Iraq rather than solidifying our own ability to lead by example. Shame on us for obsessing over the past instead of investing in the future. No wonder voters in 2008 longed for change.

The Gospel According to Austin Powers

Our desperate need for freedom and responsibility rests in the seemingly contradictory letters of the apostle Paul. He applied his godly advice in a unique way for the audience he was addressing. To Corinthian Christians navigating a libertine culture, he preached caution. Corinth was noted for temples dedicated to Apollo and Aphrodite. Worship at these temples often included sex with temple prostitutes. They were thought to serve as conduits for the divine. An intimate sexual encounter on temple grounds was comparable to an experience with the gods. So imagine how confused early Corinthian Christians may have been about what constituted proper worship of Christ. Their understanding of Christian freedom knew no bounds. Paul urged the Corinthian church to exercise spiritual discipline, to get their house in order. He insisted they “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18). To those who claimed, “Everything is permissible,” Paul responded with a chastening, “Everything is not beneficial” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

In Corinth, even eating meat could involve idolatrous activity. The local cults of Apollo and Aphrodite controlled so much of the public consciousness and economy that new believers were encouraged to examine the sources of their food supply. Food sacrificed to idols may not be contaminated physically, but Paul challenged the Corinthian to demonstrate sensitivity toward those who may have confused or conflated eating with idolatry. Paul urges the Corinthian believers to take responsibility for their Christian brothers and sisters. To a chaotic church, he preaches order, propriety, and maturity.

Yet to the uptight church in Galatia, Paul preaches freedom. The new believers clung too closely to their Jewish roots. Perhaps out of fear of persecution, the local church leaders insisted that new Christians adopt the rigorous (old) rules of Hebraic law. Gentile converts were expected to get circumcised according to Jewish ritual. Paul considers such attempts to bind people to ancient purity laws as a threat to the gospel of grace. He insists, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). He begged the Galatian Christians to loosen up, to relax their standards in the name of Christ.

Was Paul contradicting himself? By no means! In each letter, he concludes with an appeal to love. To the legally minded Galatians, Paul summarizes the law in a single command, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Galatians 5:14). To the battling Corinthians who confused sex with love, Paul spells out the attitudes and actions that constitute love. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud” (1 Corinthians 13:4). He preaches freedom to Galatia and responsibility to Corinth because they each need to apply the message in a unique way.

Unfortunately, we often fail to identify our particular blind spots. Legalistic churches will often reiterate the call to purity given to the Corinthians. Lax churches will return to Paul’s letter to the Galatians to justify more license. Those who need freedom cling to responsibility. Christians who need to learn responsibility insist upon the freedom Paul grants to Galatia. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery urges us toward maturity. In the comedic conclusion, Austin gets the drop on a surprised Dr. Evil. But Evil remains unflappable and punches Austin’s buttons: “We’re not so different, you and I. However, isn’t it ironic that the very things that you stand for—free love, swinging parties—are all now, in the nineties, considered to be evil?” Austin retorts, “No, man, what we swingers were rebelling against is uptight squares like you whose bag was money and world domination. We were innocent, man. If we’d known the consequences of our sexual liberation we would have done things differently, but the spirit would have remained the same. It’s freedom, baby, yeah!” Austin Powers connects wisdom, experience, and the spirit all in one interrelated package. Dr. Evil offers a challenge: “Face it—freedom failed.” With the sounds of the sixties anthem “What the World Needs Now Is Love” playing in the background, Austin concludes, “No man, freedom didn’t fail. Right now we’ve got freedom and responsibility. It’s a very groovy time.” Even sassy movie stars can capture profound truths.

It is not freedom versus responsibility. It is not the law and order of the Republican Party or the liberal policies of the Democratic Party. We need a strong military to defend our freedoms. We need unregulated markets to encourage innovation. We need social agencies to check our greed and support “the least of these.” We must find freedom and responsibility between the parties. We must learn to listen to Paul’s competing calls. Christian maturity incorporates the whole of scripture and applies it to an integrated life. We must be aware of our history. We must recognize how we’ve become so divided. We must grow up as a nation, moving on to freedom and responsibility rather than dragging each other into ancient history. The radical claims of Paul continue to challenge us. Libertines may need to give up some freedoms for the health of others. Conservatives may need to unwind enough for the Spirit to enter in.

Adolescence is an experiment in self-governance. It is about identifying your own strengths and weaknesses, learning to moderate. Sometimes we fall on our faces from too much excess. At other times, we shrink back from opportunities we should have seized. Highly responsible people may sprint to early success and wake up 20 years later, wondering what all the compliance wrought. They will long for freedom. Those raised in a borderless environment will have to find a roadmap that shows where the blind curves and dangerous precipices are located. Maturity arises when those maps have been internalized, when familiarity with biblical wisdom coincides with personal experience. We appreciate the gift of freedom, but we also recognize when enough is enough. Only with our house in order can we begin to focus outwardly. We do not merely play thought police, checking and correcting others. Rather, we take on the deeper challenge of walking beside others, inviting them to join us on the journey. It’s a very groovy time.