Physically Distanced but Spiritually Connected
The Music Goes On

Well friends, I doubt you thought you would see the day when a picture of Wrigley Field would be at the top of a web note written by me.  No, I haven’t switched allegiance from the Cardinals to the Cubs, but I needed a MLB park, and I can walk to Wrigley.

Dear Mayfield,
My parents weren’t participants in sports or even sports fans. We played badminton in the backyard and miniature golf out and about. That was it. My brother became an excellent golfer on his own. However I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s in upstate New York when the Yankees dominated major league baseball. I was born in the latter part of the 1952 baseball season. Between then and the fall I turned 12, the Yankees were in the World Series eleven out of thirteen years.  Even at my house we knew the names of Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, and Roger Maris.  The Blairs lived next door to us on the north side and had a large radio on their screened porch at the back of the house. One Yankees game after another played loudly from that radio all summer long.  Out on my own, I followed the Red Sox the four years I was in seminary in Boston. But once I moved to Saint Louis, I was captivated by the incredibly strong ties between the city and the Cardinals.

This year parts of the country including northern Illinois went into a serious stay-at-home mode to help contain the raging coronavirus within sight of opening day for major league baseball. Josh Kantor, the musician who plays the organ at Fenway Park in Boston, received a request from a friend on March 26 when Fenway and all the other baseball parks and stadiums were silent. His friend simply asked Josh if he would play a few songs on his organ at home and broadcast them. He did broadcast on opening day and on every day since then via a live streamed Facebook concert from his Cambridge, Massachusetts home. His repertoire includes a combination of songs, stories, and comedy pieces.  And his living room where he plays is filled to the brim with all manner of baseball memorabilia and a large sign promoting feedingamerica.org. Feeding America, a network of over two hundred food banks around the country, includes the Northern Illinois Food Bank and the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Josh’s concerts are a gift to help relieve stress related to Covid-19 and to pesky questions about when baseball might be back.  Twice in each concert he invites listeners to make contributions to area food banks too. A one time request from his friend has turned into two rich streams — a long-running series of daily concerts to lift the spirits of baseball fans and a regular reminder to his listeners to support the food banks that are critically important for a large number of our neighbors now.

One of my favorites among the pandemic pieces Jen has recorded for us is “One Voice,” which she sings with Ellen and Nelle. That song like Josh Kantor’s one request from a friend that becomes tens of concerts, and then many donations to food banks reminds us to do, to start, to offer, to respond with, even one single thing. There is no telling the blaze that might ignite from that initial spark of an idea, a thought, a generosity, or a sharing.  On Sunday our gospel text, Matthew 10:40-42, mentions the refreshment of just one cup of cold water. Multiply that smallish start in hearts and hands across the globe and who we are transforms and makes possible what wasn’t even imagined before. It isn’t the same as the sound of the crack of bat and ball that you know is the joy of a homerun, but I hear there’s some mighty fine daily music with stories and comedy stirred in from Josh Kantor. His live streaming on Facebook is at 3 pm eastern time Monday-Saturday, and at 4 pm eastern on Sunday.
Peace, Martha