Face plants, the Olympics, Passions, and the Holy Spirit (a longer post)

Because I had trouble embedding it, follow the link to watch this video from the 800-meter final at the Olympic Track Trials in Eugene, Oregon, first--watch about 15 seconds from about the 4:42 mark. I promise the reason I chose it has more to it than simply wanting to watch some poor runner land on his face in the Olympic Trials.

Now that you're back, what did you think? Did I choose it just for the face plant? Or is it an interesting view of what someone (Christian Smith) was willing to do (dive face first) to achieve their dream (making it to the Olympics in Beijing next month)?

When I first saw this video, I did laugh a little at Smith's faceplant. But then I read he was the 31st qualifier out of 30 invited to the Trials; he only got in when someone else dropped out. And he did it all 16 months after a burst appendix and pneumonia. His making the team is a story almost on par with Rocky or, as Bob Longino would point out, Chariots of Fire. As I thought about it, I realized Smith's faceplant was an excellent definition of passion and the Holy Spirit.

To be honest, whenever I think of passions, I think of my high school German teacher. In one of the oddest combinations I've experienced, our German teacher was a small, Japanese-American man, Herr Nakamatsu, who we all called Herr Naki. He was easily one of the best teachers I ever had, and he also happened to dream of being a professional pianist.

But he didn't just dream. Most days he practiced from 5-9am, went to school and taught until 3, graded papers until 5 or 6, then went home to practice until 11 pm. And he loved them both: he loved teaching and he loved playing the piano, even if he loved the latter a little more. At the end of my junior year, he won the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, jump-starting his new career as a pianist, complete with a record deal and two years of concert bookings.

Piano playing was Naki's passion, and he devoted himself fully to it even while devoting himself fully to teaching. In the documentary about that year's Van Cliburn Competition, the conductor said "Passions are what won't leave you alone." That's a good summary or passions, I think: the things that make you want to practice piano eight hours a day even while working full-time, or make you dive forward, landing on both your face and the Olympic team. Passions are the things that burn inside of you.

And that makes me think of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit tends to appear as a bird at times in the Bible, but the one that stands out to me is when He appears as tongues of flame on Pentecost, giving the Apostles a whole new life's passion. After following Jesus, they are lost after He has ascended to heaven, not doing anything really. That is until the Holy Spirit descends on them in a violent, stormy wind. This isn't the peaceful, dove-like Holy Spirit, but one that wants to get them moving. And off they go, spreading the Word, and creating Christianity as we know it (at the risk of a gross over-simplification.)

With the Spirit burning inside them, not leaving them to sit quietly anymore, I'm sure that some of them would have dove across a finish line if they ran a race at that moment. My money's on Peter: he seems crazy enough to do that.

External Links:

A good video summaryof the Cliburn Competition here, with some clips of Naki winning.

Naki on Wikipedia page and some video of him playing on YouTube

A great article on Christian Smith embodying the spirit of the Olympics from the Eugene Register-Guard .