SAMSON and the PIRATE MONKS Calling Men to Authentic Brotherhood INTRODUCTION My Name Is Nate, but You Can Call Me Samson
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SAMSON AND THE PIRATE MONKS Calling Men to Authentic Brotherhood INTRODUCTION My name is Nate, but you can call me Samson. That’s the code name my friends have given me, and for reasons you’ll eventually understand, I’ve given the same symbolic name to each of them. Together, we are the Samson Society. These are my best friends, the men of the Samson Society. Real men. Real Christian men. Real screwed-up Christian men. Separately we can act like complete morons, but together -- together we are a formidable force for good, an alliance to be reckoned with. I haven’t always had friends. When I was little I had playmates, mostly my brothers and sisters. In school I had classmates. I am a congenial sort of guy, usually pretty well known around town and fairly well liked. In business and at church I have always had plenty of “hello-friends,” but not real friends, not the kind you can count on to carry your casket and look after your wife and kids when you die. Whenever anyone offered that kind of friendship, I disappeared. During most of the last 28 years I had only one real friend, my wife, Allie. As far as I knew, she was the only person who saw my crap and loved me anyway. It was hard on Allie, being my only friend. Sure, she wanted me all to herself sometimes. She liked the feeling of togetherness we experienced when my head was actually at home. But she got tired of being the only one who could confront me when I was wrong, advise me when I was confused, and cheer me up when I was depressed. I piled the weight of all my missing friendships onto her and then got mad when she acted like a girl. What I needed was friends. Comrades. And now I have them. This is the story of how it happened, presented with random commentary about subjects like Linux, the Bible, baseball, and the killing of Julius Caesar. I can promise you one thing. The story isn’t boring. PART ONE CONFESSIONS OF A PREACHER’S KID Chapter One RIGHT FIELD, UPPER DECK I love baseball. I don’t play the game very well, you understand. When I tried out for the Harmonsburg Little League team, the coach looked me over and sent me into right field. “Where’s right field?” I asked. He pointed. I ran toward the far fence, proudly carrying the new baseball glove my father had given me the week before. When I turned around, the coach was standing at home plate with a bat, knocking ground balls at the infielders. Suddenly he called “Right field!” I heard a sharp crack! and saw the ball shoot into the sky. It climbed like a rocket, higher and higher, almost intercepting a passing bird, then finally -- majestically -- slowed, stalled, and began plummeting in my direction. I watched, fascinated, as the ball bore toward me. I should catch this, I thought. I should raise my glove. But for some reason, my arms would not work. If I don’t catch this ball, it might hit me. I tried again to raise my glove, but it was no use; I was completely paralyzed. Yes, the ball is going to hit me. It is definitely going to hit me. This is probably going to hur-- The ball struck me full in the face. Later, after my nose stopped bleeding and I had found my glasses, the coach suggested that I might want to spend some time playing catch before trying out for the team again. I never did play competitive baseball on a real team, but during my teenage years I followed the New York Yankees from Opening Day to their final out. I couldn’t watch them on television, of course, since we didn’t own a television, but I could listen to the games on my transistor radio, and I could read the box scores and check the standings in the Watertown Times every afternoon. During night games on the West Coast, when the first pitch wasn’t thrown until after our bedtime, I tucked the radio under my pillow and whispered developments to my brothers until they fell asleep. The Football Seats In the spring of 1993, when the brand-new Florida Marlins took the field at Joe Robbie Stadium for their very first major league baseball game, I was in the stands with my youngest son, Daniel. He was 12 years old at the time, morphing before my eyes, and I was hoping that baseball might give us a common language, a way to communicate during his teenage years. It did. Daniel soon loved the game as much as I did, and we followed the team together while both Daniel and the Marlins suffered through adolescence. By their fifth season, when the Marlins had become genuine World Series contenders and Daniel had become a young man, we owned a pair of season tickets at the ballpark. Actually, “ballpark” is a charitable term. Joe Robbie Stadium was built for football, not baseball. Our seats, a few rows above the rail on the upper deck, held a commanding view of the 50-yard line. They were great football seats. We told ourselves that they were good-enough baseball seats, since they gave us an overview of the entire playing field from high above the action. We loved it when the Marlins were in town. After leaving our car in a five-dollar parking spot somewhere beside the Florida Turnpike, we’d hike to the stadium, ride a tall escalator to the third level, and stand in line for hot dogs and cokes. Then, with both hands full and our tickets in our teeth, we’d make the tightrope walk to our seats. After we’d settled in, I’d prop a transistor radio on the armrest between us. For the next three hours or so, we’d watch the game unfold on the field far below while listening to the play-by-play on the radio. We didn’t bother bringing our baseball mitts, since no foul balls ever reached our section. We would talk about the players and speculate about strategy. Sometimes, when there was a dispute on the infield, other fans sitting around us who didn’t have radios would ask us what was going on. At other times, when the game got very slow, our section would invent diversions of its own to pass the time. We were watching baseball from the football seats, and we were happy. The Baseball Seats One morning I received a phone call at work, a call that forever changed my life as a baseball fan. It was an invitation to a birthday party for an acquaintance, a wonderful old man named Harry. Harry’s son was the majority owner of the Marlins, and he was planning a small celebration for his dad in his luxury box during an upcoming ballgame. I accepted immediately. A couple days later, a ticket and a VIP parking pass appeared on my desk. This time when I arrived at the ballpark, the parking lot attendant spotted the purple pass dangling from the rearview mirror of my decrepit Mazda and directed me toward a special gate, where a guard smiled and waved me through. I drove right up to the stadium, parking a few feet away from a canopy-covered walkway that led to an elegant entrance. As I approached the entrance, the doors opened and a blonde usher welcomed me inside. She glanced at my ticket, then guided me through a lush lobby, past paintings and trophy cases, to a brass elevator. A moment later we stepped out into a carpeted corridor populated by white-jacketed waiters pushing linen-covered carts. I could hear the soft clink of glassware. The usher led me to an oak door and opened it, revealing a sight that took my breath away. There, right there, just beyond some sofas and theater seats, lay the infield. It was beautiful beyond words. The red clay diamond, cut neatly into the manicured grass and buttoned in place with immaculate bases, appeared almost close enough to touch. I took a seat at the front of the box and watched, enthralled, as the groundskeepers misted the base paths and chalked the foul lines. Below me, the expensive seats behind the backstop slowly filled up, and the players took the field for warm-ups. Meanwhile, other guests filtered into the box behind me. When the guest of honor arrived, we all applauded and sang Happy Birthday. Then the owner directed us to a steaming buffet table that featured hot dogs -- not the foil-wrapped dogs with the soggy buns that I had been buying on the upper concourse, but steamed deli dogs with fresh rolls and all the fixings. They were fabulous, and they were free. I ate three. The drinks were also free. I drank three. I was considering a fourth when the owner of the team sat down beside me. “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked. I bubbled like a ten-year-old. “I’ve never been this close to a game before,” I said. “This is fantastic!” The owner grinned. “You like to be close? Follow me.” He led me back through the luxury box, out the oak door, down to the corridor and into the brass elevator. When it stopped, we were in a dim cavern somewhere beneath the stands. I followed him through a maze of concrete columns and into a tunnel, and when we came out of the tunnel ..