The Not-So-Broken Bench, Rony, Magic, and our Preconceptions

"I'm not dead yet" says the bench

This past Monday, I shared a post that included a message about how sad I was to see that one of “my benches” had broken and was likely to go away. Well, to paraphrase the Mark Twain quote (which may not have been said by him at all)... “Reports of the bench’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

So this is the photo I posted on Monday

Here is what I saw on Wednesday morning

So I was wrong. And I’m very thankful to have been wrong.¹

There’s several things here that I’m thinking about.

First, in the Monday photo, the water was at just the right level to give the illusion that it had been broken. A bit deeper and I wouldn’t have thought it broken at all and a bit more shallow and the seating part would have been obvious.

Second, how many times have I walked past this bench? How many times have I photographed it? And even with that many times, I still was fooled by the illusion.

Third, if I really stopped to think through it, I would have remembered that the base of it is made up of three solid blocks of concrete - not going to break easily.

But again, I was wrong. I was fooled.

We can get so easily fooled especially when it comes to our pre-conceptions. With that Monday photograph, I didn’t stop to think through what it would have taken to break that bench and how it would have gotten broken anyhow. I just made the assumption that I had it correct and went from there. My assumptions (and my preconceptions) got in the way.

This connected to a podcast that I listened to on Thursday about two former NBA players - one of the most famous players of all time and one that was a solid player but far from a household name. It was the story of a one-on-one game between Magic Johnson and Rony Seikaly in 1992 - a few months after Magic announced that he was HIV+. I still clearly remember the day that Magic made his announcement in 1991 and the fears that arose and were publicly shared about whether he could share the virus by playing against others (sweat, cuts, etc) in a basketball game. I remember all the “stuff” that was circling around at that time about how Magic contracted it and all the mis-conceptions about HIV in general.

Full disclosure of my own misconceptions - I remember the first person I came in contact with who I knew was HIV+. I was a chaplain intern while in seminary in the mid-90s and was called by a patient who wanted to see a chaplain. He told me that he was HIV+ when we first began our visit and then a little while later asked if I could hold his hand to pray. I am sure he picked up on my initial reluctance but I did reach my hand out to his. But as soon as I left his room, I washed my hands more vigorously than I normally would have. Even though I knew I couldn’t contract it that way, I still did that. So I recognize my glass house as I share about others from that time.

The podcast shares the story of how Magic continued to work out at The Forum (Lakers’ arena at the time) but he did it all alone becuase no one would practice with him. That is, until the night the Miami Heat came to play the Lakers and Rony Seikaly went out to the court a few hours before the game. Upon seeing Magic practicing by himself, Seikaly went up to him and asked if he wanted to go one-on-one. Magic quickly accepted and, according the podcast, they played full out in that one-on-one matchup - full contact, posting up, no backing down. As he and Magic played, other players from both teams came out to watch - likely all of them having their pre- and mis-conceptions challenged by what they witnessed.

Why did Seikaly do that while so many others would not? Because his experiences had moved him beyond his pre- and mis-conceptions. The podcast shares of how Seikaly was friends with many gay men at the time because of his side passion of house music and DJing. He shared of how several of his friends were found to be HIV+ in the early spread of the epidemic (with several of them dying) and that he learned about what passes it on and what does not and he knew that Magic would need someone to treat him as a human being once again while so many others would not. And here’s the thing, he said nothing about it - no social media posts, no telling a reporter about it. It was only brought into this podcast because a reporter saw a one paragraph note about it in a book about Larry Bird and Magic.

Here’s a link to the podcast’s website and also to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

With all this shared, this is the week that Christians have begun the season of Lent. It is a time that followers of Jesus are invited into intentional practices to shape them to live more like Jesus. So maybe a practice for me and for all of us is to be open to having our preconceptions challenged and (gasp) even changed. We may think that we have it all figured out (the bench is broken! Magic Johnson will infect everyone in the NBA with HIV! and so forth) but we need moments (and people like Rony Seikaly) to show us that we still have a lot to learn and ways to grow.

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Speaking of growing in new ways…my next book recommendation for Black History Month is Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. This is a core text for learning about the African-American faith experience and about the reality of Jesus’ care for the poor, the outcast, and the persons on the margins of society. Thurman lived from 1899-1991 and was considered to be a spiritual mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. There is much to learn about Thurman’s life (summarized well here on his wikipedia page) but this book…it will challenge for sure. And that’s a good thing.

Jesus and the Disinherited - Howard Thurman

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Your Regular Scout Photo

Dog in the fog

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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1. I probably should have pondered that little piece sticking up above the water in the first photo, but clearly I did not.