So where’s the guy in the elevator at Midland who made fun of my picks now? 
I’ve got a buddy who shall remain nameless (Richard Beck) who insists that the NBA is great entertainment. He has the right to be wrong. March Madness: now that is basketball! Actually, my favorite basketball is Y-ball, where the coaches can go out on the courts to remind the kids which way to go.
As I think about my homes — and, by the way, thanks for those wonderful thoughts about home in the comments yesterday — I try putting together a “home” from all of them. If I could combine the hills and relatives from Neosho with the trees and friends from Searcy with the ocean and salty breeze from Wilmington with the church from Abilene, THAT would be quite a home!
Tonight I get to hear Tony Campolo speak at the “Just People” dinner. I never get tired of his stories. He’s one of my heroes for his constant insistance on a “whole-bodied gospel” — a gospel that turns outward toward the world that God loves in ways of love and justice.
So glad to have done “Stream in the Desert” again. (Lots of conversations there with folks from this blog community.)
But also SO GLAD to be home.
I talked yesterday morning about HOME. And it got me thinking on the way back to Abilene about the places that have been my home: Neosho, Missouri (for 16 of my first 18 years, including my place of birth and graduation), Austin (where we lived a couple years while my folks went to UT), Searcy (four years of college and seven years as minister), Memphis (three years of grad school), Wilmington, NC (two years of ministry), and Abilene (fourteen years).
Is “home” more place or people? Location or relationship?
In some ways, I carry a bit of at least four of those places in me as “home”: Neosho, Searcy, Wilmington, and Abilene. Plus, maybe, Memphis–especially since Matt was born there. Our kids were born in Memphis (1982), Wilmington (1984), and Abilene (1992).
I think I lean more toward home as people/relationship. Home is where Diane is. Home is being with Matt, Jenna, and Chris. Home is Megan’s grave. Home is sitting down over a meal with friends and being with family over holidays.
And as a believer, there is that other home that some days every cell in my body is crying out for.
I just got off an elevator at my motel in Midland, TX. A man getting on nodded to me and then said, “Your picks are all wrong.”
This blog thing is out of control.
By the way, he’s picking Louisville. No stinkin’ way. Pitino can coach, but he can’t play! They’ll be whipped by Illinois, who in turn will be whipped by the Heels.
Two of my six sessions at “Stream” are behind (the leadership conference part). I’m reminded again that Ken Young is one of the kindest men I’ve ever known. We make a pretty good team: I tend to be a “the-cup’s-half-empty” guy and he’s a “the-cup’s-half-full-and-after-one-or-two-more-songs-it’ll-be-overflowing” guy.