15. The Basketball Diaries

What means this noise?
Fellow, what miracle dost thou proclaim?
——Henry VI, Part II, II.i

Haply I see a friend will save my life
And pay the sum that may deliver me.
——The Comedy of Errors, V.i

Monday, August 23, was probably the most eventful day of my sojourn in Athens. So this promises to be the mother of all blog entries.

I'd like to begin, however, with ...

Today's Pearl of Wisdom. It comes from a little essay called "Faith and Basketball," which Q. published under his pseudonym. I won't reproduce the entire essay, but I'll summarize: During Q.'s junior-high days, an atheist classmate named Nigel challenges him to a game of HORSE to prove the existence of God. If Q. wins, there's a God; if Nigel wins, there isn't. (I'll offer two scriptural precedents. The first is Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings. The second is the devil's temptation of Jesus in Matthew. You might recall that Jesus won round 2 of that contest by telling the devil: "It is written, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'" But where's the fun in that?)

Anyhow, Q. accepts the challenge — Jesus' example notwithstanding. Nigel soon has him on the ropes; the score is Nigel H, Q. HORS. Q. prays for help, and "instantly," he writes, "I heard God say, 'Go for the impossible shots.'" So he starts flinging up the most ridiculous shots he can think of; they go in; he wins; and Nigel concedes the existence of God.

And that's our Pearl of Wisdom: "Go for the impossible shots." Believe it or not, I've actually found this phrase quite helpful as I've tried to make sense of what happened in Greece. I'll explain at the proper time, dear reader. For now, just try and keep this little lesson at the back of your mind.

A few blocks up Ermou Street from Monastiraki Square lies Syntagma Square, the grandest public space in modern Athens. It faces the Parliament building, known for its patrol of high-stepping guards in red fezzes and white kilts. Halfway between the two squares is a third, Mitropoleos, which lies in front of Athens' main Orthodox cathedral. (I wanted to have a look inside, but they won't let you in with shorts on, and I kept forgetting to wear my long trousers. Have I mentioned how hot it was in Athens?)

Across from the cathedral stands the edifice to which I owe my sanity. If Athens Christian Center was our home away from home, then the Mitropoleos Starbucks became our home away from Athens Christian Center during the ensuing week. Accompanied by Logan and Sarah, four band members — me, Holly, Brian, and Ben Dally — made our way there early Monday morning. (We invited Ben Paris and B., but they didn't come.) We drank coffee, ate pastries (including salty Greek cheese pies — yum!), complained, compared notes, prayed, strategized, and arrived at the following conclusions:

• We wanted to have band meetings. Q.'s private chats with individual band members not only disrupted rehearsals, they created confusion because he said different things to different people. It amounted to a "divide and conquer" method of leadership.
• We would request more practice time to try to nail down our eight strongest songs, which would constitute our set for the rest of our gigs. Michalis from Logos Music had invited us to audition that afternoon for a Tuesday showcase at an official Olympic venue — and more practice was the only way to prepare for that audition.
• We'd already wasted loads of time because Q. seemed to be inventing our schedule as we went along — keeping us in limbo, sometimes for hours, until he told us what was next. If I was going to waste time, I wanted to do it out and about in Athens, not sitting around the courtyard waiting for Q. to make up his mind. So I was going to ask him for a daily schedule, or at least a time and place to meet for each day's gig.
• I would play no more gigs without a bass player. Ben was miserable in his exile, and I thought it was time to show a little solidarity with him. We also needed him for the showcase. So if Q. kept him off the stage, I would stay off too.
• We sounded better with just a djembe than a full trap set. It's easier to listen to each other that way.

Sarah was still helping Holly take care of Logan, but a funny thing happened that morning: We began to see childcare duty as something more than an onerous task. No one's more vulnerable than a baby, and here he was at 7 months old, in unfamiliar surroundings, sleeping in a wooden bureau drawer on a classroom floor (the promised crib having failed to materialize), and dependent on a mother who was completely stressed out. Yet he was happy — as long as he wasn't left in the classroom. He was also darn cute. Over the next two weeks, caring for Logan became a welcome distraction from all our woes, and served to remind us that some things are even more important than show business. We never could please Q., but Logan was in seventh heaven if I gave him an empty plastic water cup from Starbucks.

We worked our way back through the Plaka, Athens' famous flea market, to the church in time for morning worship. When we got back, (1) we learned that Ben Paris would rejoin the band that day; (2) Q. agreed to a meeting after worship to hear our Starbucks agenda. We felt downright encouraged as we gathered in the sanctuary for worship. Only Loudmouth and U4ic were present — the Youth in Action team having gone on a road trip to Corinth and points beyond.

This morning was, I think, our first exposure to Q.'s version of intercessory prayer. He solicits prayer requests through a page on his Web site, which promises that his "staff" will pray for them. So after we sang a few songs, Q. shuffled around distributing printed requests to four or five team members, who read them aloud and then offered prayers. I guess Sarah and I weren't deemed worthy of this honor, because neither of us ever got a request from Q.

Judging from the texts of the requests, the people sending them in were somewhere between tight spots and desperate straits. (Personally, when I have prayer requests I'd rather entrust them to friends or acquaintances than to an anonymous Web form — but maybe that's just me.) Most of them concerned medical or financial needs (or both, since the former tend to beget the latter) — my husband has Alzheimer's, my son has ADD, I need to buy a car, I'm afraid I can't make the rent, etc. Maybe it's just because I hang out with social workers all week, but I kept thinking, "Gee, what these people need is to be hooked up with some community resources."

Do I believe in the power of prayer? Absolutely. I don't think our prayers for those people were wasted, and I'll unequivocally state that I trust God to meet their needs. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: Prayer is no substitute for action. I have prayed for financial and medical needs as well, and so far, with one notable exception (see below), God has answered those prayers in the form of work opportunities, generous friends, and good doctors, not by effecting a miraculous healing or dropping a briefcase full of cash from the sky. And if we expect God to perform all the work of answering people's prayers, we thereby absolve ourselves from having to do anything to meet the needs of people around us.

Come to think of it, maybe that was the reason Q. never asked us — the people sitting right in front of him — what prayer requests we had. He expected us to pray for people we'd never met and weren't accountable to, but he didn't seem interested in our concerns. What would it take to get him to actually pray for one of us?

More later about that. Speaking of not being interested in our concerns, the next thing to happen was the band meeting. Instead of asking to hear our Starbucks agenda, Q. just began lecturing. He seemed to think our primary concern was about the venues we had played or were going to play (a topic that hadn't even come up at Starbucks). So he told us a story: In 2002, he'd taken Loudmouth to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and had bookings fall through. But then, miraculously, at the last minute, there was a cancellation on some enormous stage right across from the Mormon Tabernacle, and Q. somehow managed to get Loudmouth into the open slot. So he, Q., was going to work just as hard in Athens as he had in Salt Lake, in the expectation that something was going to open up for us.

Well, that was my first clue that there had been any problems with bookings in Athens, or that we weren't booked us into the corporate-sponsored, Olympic-venue, thousands-of-people gigs Q. had promised. (I've mentioned that he sent Gilbert and Christian around Athens to beg for bookings — but at this point in my narrative I didn't know that.)*

Which brings me back to our Pearl of Wisdom. (The essay it comes from, by the way, was published a few months after the Salt Lake City Olympics.) You see, gentle reader, "Go for the impossible shots" was Q.'s approach to bookings as well as basketball. Apparently he'd either lost some of the fantastic bookings he claimed to have, or hadn't made the connections, paid the fees, submitted the applications, or whatever it is you do to get booked at the Olympics in the first place. But he still thought he could get us into those venues, merely because he wanted to. He seemed to think that whatever happened in Salt Lake City would happen again.**

Now the Salt Lake City tale is true according to B. and Holly, both of whom were there. I'm even willing to believe the basketball story. (I might have won a game or two of HORSE in that fashion myself as a lad, although none of them were burdened with such weighty theistic propositions.) But when you move from "I have experienced miracles" to "I expect a miracle to happen every time I think I need one," you have crossed a line, a phrase which here means that you now think the occurrence of miracles depends on you. Which is another way of saying you think you can work miracles.*** (Maybe that's why Q. brought Ken and Barbie along. More than once he introduced them with the phrase, "When they pray, miracles happen.")

I guess now would be the time to admit that I too have experienced miracles while doing music ministry. In Part 3 of this essay I mentioned how my tour with Continental Singers brought me back from the brink of suicide. As if that weren't miraculous enough, two other things happened that summer that I can't fully explain:

1. Continentals accepted me apparently in spite of my audition tape, which I hadn't approached very seriously. It included not only my viola playing but some Monty Python–style narration: "And now for something completely different — a C major scale."
2. I had to raise about $4,000 in support for that tour, and by the time we got to Washington, D.C., only $800 had come in. I was a few days away from being left behind; Continentals wouldn't take me to Europe with the deficit I had. But then the new choir director back at my home church — a woman I had never met — donated $2,500 from her late husband's estate in my support.

I do not, I cannot deny those miracles, gentle reader. They happened when I needed them most. But to think I could bottle such lightning and produce it on demand would amount to inconceivable hubris, not to mention heresy and blasphemy — at least to my way of thinking.

You know something? We're not even finished with Q.'s lecture yet. But we are finished with this entry. I'll pick up the thread in Part 16.

*In an earlier chapter I described how my trip to Greece almost didn't happen because of a quota on non-EU performers allegedly imposed by one of Q.'s concert sponsors. And I mentioned that money became an issue (all of a sudden I was expected to pay Sarah's airfare) shortly after the quota became a non-issue. Here's a hypothesis: Q. is negotiating a concert with a sponsor who's willing to pay but wants to impose a quota. But then the deal falls through (a fact Q. neglects to mention). Goodbye quota, but now Q. has to hit up the fiddle player for more money. It's just a hypothesis, but have you got a better one?

**I must admit that there is some support in Scripture for "Go for the impossible shots" in certain situations. The best example I can think of is Matthew 10:18–20:

You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear testimony before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Which will be a comfort to me next time I'm dragged before a governor or king. But I still don't know how you get from this verse to "Bring three bands to Athens; promise them the moon and hope they'll be satisfied when all they get is green cheese."

***Someone might say, "You're limiting God because you're not open to the possibility of him doing miracles." I'd reply, "No, you're limiting God because you're not open to the possibility of him doing anything but miracles."