Archives for October, 2007
Bush
While in the Bahamas, I was having a debate with Mike DeVries about Reggie Bush and how he was on the take so to speak at USC. I was asked where the evidence was and as Dan Wetzel points out, it is piling up against Bush.
The case against USC, like all similar cases involving players and agents, will revolve around two basic lines of questioning, according to three athletic directors and one former NCAA investigator with whom Yahoo! Sports discussed the generalities.
1. Did Bush receive extra benefits that would make him ineligible for competition? And if so, when did they begin?
2. Did or should have USC officials and coaches known about the extra benefits.
We’ll start with the first one, where a mountain of evidence, both in direct accounts, paper documents and even admissions from Bush make it seemingly implausible that this is all a lie.
Where previously all the NCAA had were third-party accounts and the direct testimony of memorabilia dealer Bob DeMartino claiming Ornstein asked him for cash to make a payment to Bush’s relatives (another vein of this investigation), this lawsuit opens up many problems for USC.
Once Lake meets with investigators, his testimony coupled with the paper trail involved, makes it almost unfathomable for the NCAA not to determine Bush received extra benefits starting in his sophomore year.
2. It is not so much a matter of if USC knew, but if it should have?
The NCAAs key phrase is “institutional control” which demands schools do everything possible to protect and monitor the actions of its student-athletes. Carroll used to run a loose ship in Los Angeles, a place where agents regularly attended open practices and had been spotted inside the football facility.
In the case of New Era, while they operated out of San Diego, their ties to USC are possibly significant.
Yahoo! Sports previously reported Lake and Michaels didn’t just attend USC games, but after two games even went into the Trojan locker room. That’s a place most schools severely limit access to and would investigate the background of any non-relative who gains such access.
“Two guys don’t just walk into your postgame locker room,” said one athletic director. “You confront them immediately and find out. That’s basic stuff.”
Yahoo! Sports also previously reported that sources claim USC assistant Todd McNair knew of Bush’s relationship with both Michaels and Lake. Moreover he spent a night out in San Diego with Bush, Michaels and Lake and knew Bush was staying the night in a $500-a-night suite at the city’s Manchester Hyatt.
Yahoo! Sports obtained a receipt for the stay that was paid for by Michaels’ credit card. USC refused to allow Yahoo! Sports to interview McNair.
Those bits alone, especially if Lake provides details, could prove to be damning blows for the Trojan program.
The potential for greater trouble looms in what USC hasn’t released publicly.
That includes phone records, emails and internal correspondence of all USC athletic department staffers from athletic director Mike Garrett on down. It would also include all compliance department files on Bush plus the Trojans complimentary ticket lists, gate passes and locker room/sideline access lists. USC refused to turn over those items to Yahoo! Sports on a Freedom of Information Act request citing its status of a private school.
But as a member of the NCAA, USC must (and may already have) provided all of that information and anything else the NCAA thinks up. Again, it isn’t just what USC was suspicious of, but what the NCAA believes it should have been suspicious of.
“The NCAA defines due diligence,” said one AD.
Where it goes from here, how deep it winds up, remains to be seen.
But for USC, Tuesday’s lawsuit was a terrible development, the kind that can blow open the doors on Heritage Hall, imperil both the past and future and send Carroll scurrying back to the NFL.
I think it is becoming easier and easier to see USC forfeiting it’s NCAA title and Pete Carrol making a comeback with Miami (Ohio) in the near future.
Home
I got home to Saskatoon on Tuesday morning after spending Monday night at the Dash family compound in Toronto. While in T.O. I finally met Brian Mullins and Bill Kinnon over supper at Montana’s (that’s right, I got home to Canada and promptly went out to an American restaurant). After some mechanical problems in Toronto, I was happy to touch down in Saskatoon and see Mark, Wendy and the dog. Wendy took Mark out of school Tuesday morning so Mark could meet me at the airport and we went back home so I could give out some gifts (I went out on a limb and bought Wendy a dress and to my surprise, it fit — Of course I also bought a backup gift for her as well because like most men, buying a dress for our wives is a little out of the comfort zone.)
We had some bad news while I was gone but I didn’t blog about the good news and that was that I have a new job at the Centre which is will be a big challenge but I am looking forward to it.
I have some rough notes from Soularize and some more photos to upload but that will come in time.
Soularize + 1 :: Father Richard Rohr
I am spending the day at a private home in the Bahamas with the lads from the Soularize HQ, Father Richard Rohr, and other invited friends and guests for a workshop and day of learning. (Todd has some photos)
Before that Todd, Jim, and I managed to escape to downtown Nassau for some touristy sightseeing and buy Nassau branded things made in China. While I was downtown, I saw the ugliest shirt while in a market. The storekeeper saw me and grabbed my arm and she told me I needed it. After saying it was something that a crazy member of royalty would wear, she named me Earl of Nassau III. We weren’t sure that she was able to bestow me that honor but I did get a good deal on the ugliest shirt on the planet. How ugly was it? When I put it on, a couple of guys had seizures, three whales beached themselves, and one container transport ship set itself on fire. It isn’t so much a shirt but a weapon of violence.
After wolfing down some food, we ended up on the other side of the island in the same gated community as Sean Connery (he lives across the street) and am listening to Father Richard Rohr who is talking about…
- You can be an extrovert and be a contemplative. It is about controlling your chatter. The mind is only capable about reprocessing the past and worrying about the future. The mind can not be present and this is a substitute for life.
Father Richard talked a little longer and then we were set out to find a quiet spot for a while to listen to God and quiet the chatter. More about that later. More Father Richard
- When you don’t have an experiential faith, you rely on dogma.
- 83% of human thought is repetitive and useless. We have compulsive addictive ways of capturing reality (the Enneagram helps one realize this - I am a Type 5)
- Romans 8:16
- We have to detach and go to a new place to abide to observe ourselves and discern our patterns. This is deeply humiliating and most people stop.
- Small minds can’t see anything because they are too self absorbed.
- Liberal politicians is not that much different that conservative politicians - it is still all about winning and still about their ego.
- Contemplation should not be taught to monks if they are still slamming doors - Thomas Merton
- The ego is the unobserved self
- Any addiction (good or bad) is horrible for you.
- Contemplation teaches you to be a holding cylinder and not an exhaust valve. Hold on and learn from it.
- Judgmental mind is not seeking truth but rather seeking control.
- Most Christians are split people. Torn internally.
- Father Rohr gave me a handout that I need to post later - Jordon
- Merton told his own community because he said, “You aren’t contemplatives, just introverts”
Shark Diving
Yesterday I plopped down $35 for the right to be eaten by many, many man eating sharks in the Bahamas at Stuart’s Cove. I wasn’t going to go but after seeing Bishop Tom and many of my friends deciding they thought it may be cool to die at the teeth of some sharks, I went (apparently I am part lemming). We drove across the island to a cove, were assigned some flippers (so the sharks don’t think our feet are food) and boarded a boat to meet our deaths. Once we got out there, they lower some chum below you in the water while you snorkel and watch the action. Sounds kind of safe right? Not really. First of all the liability form states that if you may not be rescued and there will be no medical assistance offered if something does go wrong. Secondly there are not just a couple of large sharks but about 50 of them. One just about knocked Spencer’s underwater camera out of his hand and one ran into my foot. I have never experienced physical fear in my life until yesterday when I was terrified when we got in and I looked down and saw not only sharks but some of the largest fish I have ever seen.
As time went on, the sharks came up higher in the water as they know the chum gets fed to them later. Once we were out of the water, the feeding frenzy began and it was unreal as well. I took some photos with Todd Littleton’s SLR so when he uploads them to Flickr, I will offer up some links. Would I go again? I would go in a heartbeat. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done. The underwater video footage that Spencer took was amazing and I will post the link to Google Video once he uploads it.
One of the 100 Most Informative Blogs
jordoncooper.com is one of the 100 most informative blogs according to a Carnegie Melon University study. All of those contextless links have finally paid off.
Soularize 2007 :: Day One
Day one of Soularize started out way too early in my humble opinion. Either that or the night before was too short. I woke up covered in bites from the sea lice the night before.
So Thursday we all woke up being with small chunks of flesh missing and headed to the Wynham Resorts to board some buses and head to Paradise Island so we could get to the docks and head out a private island. The boat was three stories and like an idiot I headed to the top deck. The first part was calm. We saw Tiger Woods house, Eddie Murray’s private island and headed to open waters where the water got rough. On the top deck, a bunch of us got tossed around for a bit before we got to the private island. Many us, including N.T. Wright here when snorkeling. I had never gone before and after Mike DeVries gave some important tips on how not to swallow sea water (global sea levels actually went down that afternoon), it was a lot of fun and not something that one can easily do in Saskatchewan, even in the summer (algae and too cold). It did rain several times but the way I looked at it, I wasn’t going to get any wetter whatever we did and that rain was tropical rain after all. By the time we had left the island, I was pretty much sun burn free but on the way back, I got burnt nicely.
After another swim in the ocean, it was time for a reception at New Providence Community Church. The church features an elaborate art garden with sculptures showing the Bahamas history of slavery and oppression. While the reception at the church was supposed to be held in the garden, the day’s rains forced it onto the church porch where wine, Kalik beer, and soda.
After the wine tasting and the reception, Bishop Tom spoke for an hour. I am pretty familiar with N.T. Wright’s work and Kingdom theology but he said some things about eschatology and the kingdom that kept me up thinking for a bit after his session and challenged me because according to his talk, I tend to separate church and state too much and perhaps give to Caesar more than what Caesar deserves. I hope to talk some more with him about this.
Perhaps the highlight of the day was that later in the day, I was relaxing on the deck (and my bedroom this week) feeling the sea spray when Todd walks right into the sliding door hard enough to cut his forehead open.
Some more on Soularize from Alan, Kyle, and Mike. Here is my Flickr set of Rose Island
Wednesday
Today was spent setting up for Soularize. After breakfast we headed to New Providence Community Church and took a tour around. NPCC has the most innovative church campus I have ever seen. The photos on Flickr tell the story better than I could but as a church they have a better understanding of metaphor than most congregations that I have ever seen. They also have a Sunday school where 1/3 of the year is spent in art classes, 1/3 of the year is beach reconstruction, and 1/3 of the year is spent gardening to help reduce the financial impact of living on an island that must import 99% of their food. Their commitment to people suffering with HIV/Aids goes beyond what I have seen anywhere else as well.
We were supposed to be there by 2 and I wanted to connect up with the Pedersons who are staying 4 or 5 miles away. Not only that but wild dogs attacked Mark Scandrette and Jim Palmer (they ran away and I later joked, became the first two humans to record a 3 minute mile) while jogging this morning between here and there. Back at the condo, we got stuff for supper and went for a swim in the ocean. As I entered into the water I felt like something was stinging me all over and mentioned a tingling feeling. I was laughed at and mocked and then everyone else started screaming in pain. These small bug like things were biting all of us all over. We moved into deeper water (I know, I know, the correct course of action would have been to leave) and were freaked out by a glowing thing near us, so we had to go shallow which meant more biting and screaming. The phrase “Ahhhhhhhh!” and “What are these things”?” we said at a great volume by many of us as we retreated to the pool.
To say the Internet connection is flaky at the condo would be an understatement. We have some radio transmission towers nearby which we think may be part of the problem. Even Apple Support hasn’t been able to help and it cuts in and out, often as I want to send an e-mail.
Tomorrow we are joining Bishop Tom and his wife on a private island with a main session with the Bishop at night. I will blog the main session and enjoy some more reliable Internet tomorrow night.
In the Bahamas
I got to the Bahamas late last night and am staying in a great beach front condo with Spencer, Mark Scandrette, Adam Klein, Jim Palmer, Todd Littleton, and Mike DeVries. We dropped off our gear and wandered down one of the two beaches surrounding the beach and floated outside falling over shells and into holes in the dark. Not that I swallowed a lot of water but the ocean is a lot lower today. Will find some time to post later but the morning will be spent in staff meetings and setup.
The Soularize old school webcam is now online and at the moment was capturing Mark Scandrette trying to set some rum soaked bananas on fire.
Mark Dowd, Jim and Tammy Schoch, Shayna Metzker, and Dwight Friesen have come by for breakfast.
Saskatoon to Toronto
I am writing this from the floor of the departure gate “G” in Toronto in the middle of the morning. For some reason I had thought that with Toronto being the centre of the universe ™ and all that there would be some late night flights to somewhere in the US and I would be able to get into the departure gates and relax. I wasn’t so lucky, this airport seems to be as quiet as Moose Jaw’s in the middle of the night and on top of that has no outlets near seats so to pass some time I am sitting on polished marble floors with a metal bar hurting my back. None of that is that bad except I can’t find a pop machine anywhere in this place and it isn’t as if they let you carry water bottles on planes anymore. In all of my wandering around through the airport, I did manage to take some photos, find some wifi that is too weak to pay for, and see an airport cleaning employee stealing. Sans airport employees, I have counted 12 passengers on my floor of Terminal One, it is like being in a steel, glass, and polished steel ghost town. This would be how he rapture could be like if I believed that the end times were like that.
The flight was good which is kind of a shock considering it was on Air Canada (CR-700) Like Warren Kinsella, Wendy and I have our own list of Air Canada disasters dating back to Ray Hnatyshyn’s installation as Governor General. This time the Air Canada Jazz crew was not only polite but helpful and energetic. It was like I was flying on WestJet and not like too many experiences I have had with Air Canada in the past. (update: ran into the same old surly Air Canada employees this morning. The more things change, the more they stay the same)
It was my first Air Canada flight with the video on demand service on the back of each chair. I was able to watch Live Free or Die Hard (the movie was based on this article) with only a little bit of fast forwarding (I had more movie than flight) and while a 7 inch screen isn’t the best to watch any movie on it, it was a pretty good movie and a nice way to pass some time.
Somewhat Related Link: What Will Air Travel Look Like in Five Years
I can’t see myself blogging until tonight when I get to Nassau. I’ll be blogging and vidcasting from Soularize starting Wednesday.
What If?
Cultivate Missional Living [CML] is a six month training course for people who want to learn how to engage in mission in an urban community.
[CML] takes place in the Beasley neighbourhood in downtown Hamilton, Ontario - one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada - and is hosted by The Freeway.
[CML] is supported by Allelon, Resonate, and The Salvation Army.
For more information about [CML] or to receive an application form, please contact the [CML] director, Jordan Donald, by e-mail [jordan@frwy.ca] or by phone: 905-929-0890.
Soularize Old School
Because absolutely no one has asked for it and I will be in front my laptop for part of Soularize, I thought I would set up an old school webcam that updates every 60 seconds or so while we are at the main sessions. Of course you can watch a live feed but you can now check in and see if anything is going on via cutting edge 1984 technology… the webcam. If by fluke it captures anything really great, I will post it to the blog as well.
Is Canada becoming a country of bigots?
Claude Bazinet, a tall man with a wild wisp of white hair, stood on nervous legs and, to a packed room with television cameras rolling, spewed forth his feelings on the immigrants coming to his native Quebec. He spoke of Quebec’s tiny Hasidic Jewish population who have “built houses on our land” and surrounded them with fences; he castigated those new arrivals who, because of their skin colour, were favoured by his former employer; he suggested the Muslim faith was endangering Christmas.
“We receive them here, we feed them, we house them, we give them an education, and they don’t integrate at all,” Bazinet said into the microphone. “What do they do to accommodate? Nothing.” As he sat down, many in the audience winced. But many others clapped. Bazinet, a former Bell Canada employee who grew up in Montreal, is one of roughly 340 people who have spoken their mind so far at Quebec’s hearings on “reasonable accommodations,” a travelling commission chaired by two academics attempting to gauge the province’s feelings on immigrants and Quebec society. Premier Jean Charest called it into action last February during an election campaign dominated by issues of immigration and Quebec identity, and in the wake of an embarrassing controversy over the town of Hérouxville’s infamous bylaws, the early versions of which outlawed stoning and female circumcision. The commission has been dismissed, sometimes by those testifying before it, as a puff of political expediency. But it has proven to be more revealing, even disturbing than that.
The Globe and Mail has this op-ed as well.
The Parti Québécois is proposing to create two classes of Canadian citizens in Quebec: those who speak French up to a government-imposed standard, and those who do not. Those who do not meet the standard would be denied the right to run for political office, contribute to political parties or sign a petition to the province’s National Assembly. Those who meet the standard would be so-called Quebec citizens, with full rights. (Anyone living in Quebec now or born in future to Quebec citizens would be counted as citizens.) The PQ’s notion that Quebec has the power to disenfranchise Canadian citizens is ludicrous in a legal sense and repugnant in a moral one.
Consider a banker from Vancouver, either native-born or from abroad. She’s a Canadian citizen. Her bank transfers her to Montreal. After three months (under the PQ’s proposed “Quebec identity act”), she is eligible for Quebec citizenship. To obtain that citizenship, she needs to meet the provincial standard for speaking French and for knowledge of Quebec. If she’s not up to standard, the PQ would bar her from contributing to, say, the Liberal Party of Canada if she so chose. If she wishes to express her objections to this law, she cannot sign a petition being put before the Quebec legislature. If she plans to stay, she cannot run for office, not even for a local school board.
One person, one vote is at the core of any democracy. The PQ would diminish the principle by chipping away the political rights that go with having a vote. The party claims to have constitutional advice that its proposal would be considered reasonable in a free and democratic society under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Nonsense. To carve up the core principle of a democracy would require proof of a devastating and imminent threat to that democracy’s survival. And what is that threat?
What do you think? Are Canadians bigots? I know a lot of people who think like Claude Bazinet in Saskatchewan but there are some everywhere. I have blogged before about the “concern” people had when Mark was born, being that he was going to have a tougher time being from a “mixed” family.
I agree with the Globe that this is about sovereignty and while I don’t know Quebec politics that well, a lot of Karl Rove lead GOP races over the years were won on wedge issues like this.
So what do you about it? Democracy isn’t just majority rule, it is protecting minority rights as well and good people will have to stand up and challenge the words of people like Claude Bazinet.
Discipleship
Willow Creek admits to getting it wrong.
In the Hawkins’ video he says, “Participation is a big deal. We believe the more people participating in these sets of activities, with higher levels of frequency, it will produce disciples of Christ.” This has been Willow’s philosophy of ministry in a nutshell. The church creates programs/activities. People participate in these activities. The outcome is spiritual maturity. In a moment of stinging honesty Hawkins says, “I know it might sound crazy but that’s how we do it in churches. We measure levels of participation.”Having put all of their eggs into the program-driven church basket you can understand their shock when the research revealed that “Increasing levels of participation in these sets of activities does NOT predict whether someone’s becoming more of a disciple of Christ. It does NOT predict whether they love God more or they love people more.”
People like Dallas Willard have been saying this for years, increased level of church activities do not produce disciples, it just produces people who spend more time at the church (and out of their communities where they could be making a redemptive difference). The reason we default to activities can be explained by Lyle Schaller in his book, Reflections of a Contrarian where he talks about the kind of statistics churches and denominations count. Because it is easy to count participation in activities, we count that and therefore do things to increase those stats. On the other hand it is really hard to quantify a person becoming a better disciple of Christ which in turn gets put aside. Especially when almost every snake oil salesmen church growth consultant is selling churches on the idea of church programs (again, see what Darryl has to say about that). Good for Willow Creek to come to grips and their mistakes and for sharing them with the rest of the church. I think the problem runs deeper than teaching more Bible reading and spiritual disciplines but at least the discussion is happening.
Mediocre Ministry
Bob Carlton is calling out postmodern preaching on his blog.
I am a quant geek - I really, really like the patterns that numbers indicate. A few years ago, as I sat in my pew, I ran the numbers and discovered I had listened to at least 2,000 sermons in my adult life. This does not include any of the street preachers that I have walked past. This is at least 2,000 sermons from “professionals”, folks who spent the majority of the week preceding that sermon doing what is called in the business “sermon prep” or the more clinical term “exegesis”. Not only have I somehow survived these 2,000 sermons, homilies & messages - I’ve actually taken a class from a wonderful set of instructors on the art of homiletics.
It was a long, long sermon - it meandered thru the New Yorker & Girard and the inner child - so I had plenty of time to reflect on this mathematical fact. I was sad to realize this simple reality:
listening to these sermons no more made me a Jesus follower than sitting in a garage for a long time made me a car
I had outsourced meaning-making to someone else during these sermons, treating these gifted, messed-up fellow travellers on the Jesus journey as some sort of concierge, some oracle, some expert in the wizardry of life. These women & men are just like me and you, but somehow I had asked them to stand on a platform and make meaning for me, like the idea of Tang - instant, just stirred and - BAM - it’s just like orange juice.
My seminary experience was brutal for me - it was like the reality of TANG, all gritty & quasi-fake and ultimately far too unlike juice from a real orange (or any other fruit). During seminary, I flailed and spewed and bullied - I wanted to learn of this wizardry. Instead of Harry Potter-like lessons at some theological Hogwarts, I saw my own wizard’s tent empty, the curtains pulled back to show me and all others as creatures of God depending on grace just to see another sunrise, no shamans or miracle workers who could conjure meaning in 12 minutes or 30 minutes riffs.
Bob Carlton names a serious problem — though I’d argue that the problem isn’t “postmodern preaching” so much as “mediocre preaching.” Modernity itself conceived and gave birth to the meaning-impaired mode of preaching that Bob has had enough of; if someone preaches in the unconvicted manner that Bob finds appalling, it’s not Derrida’s or Foucault’s or Lyotard’s fault.
My point is that of all of the things that happen in a Christian community, preaching seems to be the most ephemeral and yet it dominates so much resources and time I have to wonder if the church is missing the point with it somehow. I agree with Bob, after a couple thousand sermons listened to, have those sermons made an impact? I don’t know if many did and many, many surveys show a sermon shelf life is really, really, short (a couple of days). So why do we keep preaching this way and why are churches happy with it?
Darryl Dash may part of the answer in blogging about pastoral ethics and quotes The Art of Pastoring.
After many years of trying to sell programs to churches and watching others attempt the same, I am convinced that once the members of the group believe in the program, the process is over. For all intents and purposes, church members are perfectly satisfied…if they can simply come to believe that a program exists which will deliver them from their problems and usher in a new era of fulfilling the mission of the church. I don’t think that anyone really wants to follow the programs. People just want to believe in programs. This is why pastors and laypeople love going to seminars and convocations so much. They really have no serious intention of implementing anything they learn. They just want to experience learning about a new program.
Otherwise how can it be that our churches are analyzed over and over, we are presented with program after program, none of which works, and yet we want more and more programs?…We simply want to experience believing that they work, so that we can live our lives together without risking a thing, without repenting of a single sin.
A short road trip…
On Monday I am off to the Bahamas via Toronto and Miami for Soularize. Until yesterday, I had never looked at where the Bahamas were on a map (or in my case, Google Earth) which is a good thing because it wasn’t where I thought it was in the Caribbean. I will be blogging and Twittering the conference and helping facilitate some Soularize Feedlive (if you can’t make it live, you also get access to the content in the archives). I also hope to have a Soularize cam going but we will see how it goes. My laptop is wounded so we will see if it survives the trip.
On my way back to Saskatoon, I am spending a long layover in Toronto on October 29th. I should be free from customs at 5:00 p.m. so if you want to grab a bite to eat or a beverage, e-mail me at coop AT resonate.ca. If I don’t respond to your e-mail, check YouTube for “jordon cooper” and “shark attack”.
Our Cabin Weblog- Recently listened to music
- David Gray – Be Mine October 19, 2008
- David Gray – December October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Knowhere October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Real Love October 19, 2008
- David Gray – Last Boat To America October 19, 2008
- Recently additions to my library
- Rediscovering Church: The Story and Vision of Willow Creek Community Church by Lynne Hybels October 26, 2008
- The Teeth of the Tiger, A Novel by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
- The Agenda Inside the Clinton White House by Woodward Bob October 26, 2008
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell October 26, 2008
- The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy October 26, 2008
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