Do you know what faith really is? It is standing in your backyard as a baseball heads towards you without you actually seeing it. You know that your daughter’s strength is growing faster than your ability to track a baseball at dusk. You know that the ball has left her hand, but you can no longer see it. You know that you have instructed her to throw the ball to your glove side- well away from your beautiful mug, but you must have faith that the ball is not headed to your blind side. Or nose.

Which flashes me back to the warm summer day when my best buddy from Stilwell Circle hurled a ball that bloodied my nose and sent me home with tears and blood streaming down my face faster than even my pride was disappearing. Alas, I survived. Even our friendship has survived. Heck, we played wiffleball well into our late teens with more rules and structure than we were faced with from the nuns at our good old St. Matthew’s School. And if I recall correctly, we even succeeded in driving Mrs. Gural and Sister Miriam and Sister Bernard crazy with our faith that humor was more important than grammar. Does anyone recall when the wacky wall walker slimy sticky toy from the 80’s was thrown up on the ceiling before Mrs. Gural entered the class and we waited for it to fall on someone’s unsuspecting head? We had faith that it would stick to the ceiling…but naturally they were made to fall. So naturally there were consequences. And as I dust off my memory bank- I think yours truly was wrongly accused of the crime only because I was the one laughing the hardest when the slimy sticky toy succumbed to gravity. But I digress.

That faith that the ball will land in my glove and not my teeth doesn’t just apply to the actual catching of the ball. No, the faith must be extended to the fact that throwing the ball back will not result in my elbow swelling to the size of a grapefruit and ending my spring training with Tommy John surgery. But, the pay off in having faith is that the academy’s student body and assistant principal feel empowered to reach their potential. See, if you are leading a school- or family, or anyone, you should have faith in them. Faith that they will follow your lead. If you are grounded in faith, they will reward you with extra effort, supreme dedication and amazing results. Because when people believe in you, you have that super charged motivation to excel. Like when Wally believes that I will take him for a walk to drop his nooner deuce. He knows he can count on me to release his bowels and bound after ducks to his heart’s content. I believe in him, and he reaches his potential as a duck hunter at Sandy Beach. Or something like that. Perhaps I have gone on too long. But you get the point for today. Have faith in someone. And maybe the ball won’t hit you in the nose. But you will catch it and catch fire to do what you set out to do.

Thanks for Coming!