Today's devotional reading is from W.P. Kinsella's 'Shoeless Joe', upon which the film "Field of Dreams' was based.
Eddie leans down and whacks his cane on the edge of the board, to attract Shoeless Joe's attention. He speaks briefly with Joe, who in turn calls the other players closer. Eventually, we all gather on the left-field grass, staring up at Eddie standing on the bleacher, wild and windblown, looking for all the world like an Old Testament prophet on the side of a mountain.
"I take the word of baseball and begin to talk it. I begin to speak it. I begin to live it. The word is baseball. Say it after me," says Eddie Scissons, and raises his arms.
"The word is baseball," we barely whisper.
"Say it out loud," exhorts Eddie.
"The word is baseball," we say louder, but still self-consciously. I look down at Annie, who shrugs her shoulders. Karin claps her hands as the rhythm of Eddie's voice flows into her blood. The baseball players exchange aggrieved glances.
"The word is what?"
"Baseball ..."
"Is what?"
"Baseball ..."
"Is what?" As his voice rises, so do ours.
"Baseball!"
He pauses dramatically. "Can you imagine? Can you imagine?" His voice is filled with evangelical fervor. "Can you imagine walking around with the very word of baseball enshrined inside you? Because the word of salvation is baseball. It gets inside you. Inside me. And the words that I speak are spirit, and are baseball."
Hi shakes his head like a fundamentalist who can quote chapter and verse for every occasion.
"The word healed them, and delivered them from destruction. The word makes the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still." He looks around wildly.
"Your mother should be here," I whisper to Annie. She digs her small, pointed elbow into my ribs.
"As you begin to speak the word of baseball, as you speak it to men and women, you are going to find that these men and women are going to be changed by that life-flow, by the loving word of baseball.
"Whenever the word of baseball is brought upon the scene, something happens. You can't go out under your own power, under your own light, your own strength, and expect to accomplish what baseball can accomplish.
"We have to have the word within us. I say you must get the word of baseball within you, and let it dwell within you richly. So that when you walk out in the world and meet a man or woman, you can speak the word of baseball, not because you've heard someone else speak it but because it is alive within you.
"When you speak the word, something will begin to happen. We underestimate the power of the word. We don't understand it. We underestimate all that it can accomplish. When you go out there and speak the word of baseball--the word of baseball is spirit and it is life.
"I've read the word, I've played it, I've digested it, it's in there! When you speak, there is going to be a change in those around you. This is the living word of baseball."
The players shuffle their feet. Some move away a little, but then it is as if Eddie's voice pulls them back in.
"As I look at you, I know that there are many who are troubled, anxious, worried, insecure. What is the cure? Is it to be found in doctors and pills and medicine? No. The answer is in the word, and baseball is the word. We must tell everyone we meet the true meaning of the word of baseball, and if we do, those we speak to will be changed by the power of that living word.
"Can you say the word?"
"Baseball," we chant, and our voices rise toward Eddie Scissons like doves on the warm Iowa wind.
"The word is what?"
"Baseball."
"Is what?"
"Baseball."
"Praise the name of baseball. The word will set captives free. The word will open the eyes of the blind. The word will raise the dead. Have you the word of baseball living inside you? Has the word of baseball become part of you? Do you live it, play it, digest it, forever? Let an old man tell you to make the word of baseball your life. Walk into the world and speak of baseball. Let the word flow through you like water, so that it may quicken the thirst of your fellow man."
Here endeth the lesson.
