The Trajectory of Love
Copyright 2005 Ginger Henry Geyer
glazed porcelain, 2 parts
glove 4 3/4" x 9" x 10 1/4", ball 2 7/8" diameter
Adaptation of Fra Angelico's Sermon on the Mount
(fresco in San Marco monastery cell, Florence)
"To Carol from Don with Love informed by the Song of Solomon"
As any baseball player knows, the best way to break in a glove is to use it. Aside from that, one must buff the leather lovingly and repeatedly with some sort of oil (preferably while watching your favorite team on TV), and then fold the ball into the glove and tie them together. Getting that pocket just right is an earned art. The glove must hold the ball tightly, but not forever. Come spring, it is time to start the game again. It is said that baseball is a very "individual team sport", that it gives us a glimpse at immortality because the hope rests in the collective."
In the early days of baseball, around 1907, there was just the ball and the bat. The first gloves were lumpy, awkward things, but at least they protected a player's hand from hard-flung projectiles, and offered a field level of play. Young fielders are trained with an "open glove policy" that offers prepardness (one hopes such openness extends to minds and hearts!) Improvements in gloves took into account the need to scoop up a grounder and the need to extend the hand to snag a fly ball. A pitcher's glove is a particulary observed item, as the ball goes into play when he whips it out of the glove for a pitch, and play stops when the ball is whisked back into that glove. The pop of leather into leather is, thus, a part of the game.
The poet Donald Hall says that "baseball is a place where memory gathers." But it can be more than nostalgia for Little League. Objects like a mitt are bearers of memory and identity, not only for the ballplayer but also for those who know and love him, for the well-used ballglove is an extension of the hand and it bears the hand's imprint. It occured to me while molding the two parts--the glove out of solid clay and the hollow ball, that the two parts provide an apt metaphor for the person who commissioned it, Don Murdock, for his wife, Carol. Don and Carol are also a perfect fit. This piece celebrates their union for their seventh anniversary, one made more poignant by Don's surviving rigorous cancer treatment under Carol's faithful caregiving.
This porcelain glove is modelled after a well-worn favorite of Don's, who pitched for SMU in the 1960's. It is a Sears special, branded for Ted Williams, scuffed up, laced up, and with the requisite hollow spot for the ball.. Those laces are strong, even if broken. They hold it all together. The glove is bound by other rules too. For instance, it is an error to catch the ball barehanded. Yet baseball is the only sport that considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth. Played well, it teaches us how to deal with failure and imperfection--errors are tracked, they are not denied. They are just part of the deal. Don's favorite old ball is one he used in high school to win the pennant. As he says, "It was made for this."
Don has written about the Beatitudes, from Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount. All those "blessed are ye" statements are beautiful and puzzling, in the paradoxical teaching style of Jesus. They are as lofty as a homer soaring over center field, so far over our heads that we blink in wonder as it hangs up there, timeless in the clear blue sky. Don says that perhaps Jesus set the beatitudes' standard that high so that we are guaranteed to fail--and be thrown back into the very mercy and grace of God.
The painting adapted into the palm of the glove was chosen for its circular composition. The original is by Fra Angelico, a Renaissance monk and artist who was beatified. His Sermon on the Mount fresco shows Jesus with the twelve in a rocky landscape. While painting this, a title for the piece suddenly came to mind, "The Trajectory of Love." Trajectory is defined as "the path of a body in space, especially of a projectile", and "a curve or surface cutting at a constant angle; a system of curves or surfaces". And, "the route, flight path, course, a chosen or taken course". An online essay about the trajectory of a curve ball diagrammed the forces that affect it--the spin of the ball, its radius, the velocity of the pitch, the density of the air. Such a dive into physics is perhaps better understood by visiting with a pitcher about his grip and technique (and then you will really get more information than you can understand!) To my surprise, there was a hit for the phrase "trajectory of love". It is the title of a new reality TV show about dating, and the cut line said the trajectory of love is always a thud, an arc that ends at its apex, a lost cause as with Romeo and Juliet. With apologies to Shakespeare, that sort of love isn't love.
For in divine love, agape, the trajectory is not a one way curve. Just as the ball travels from pitcher to batter, catcher or baseman, it ultimately must return to the pitcher. Some of us miss the sermon on the pitcher's mound, but watch closely as he scratches and paws, spits, caresses the ball, tosses it back and forth into the glove as if to warm it up. The ball is treated with a sort of holiness, and it is somehow revived in the glove. Deep in the pocket, it takes on its blessings. And then it is delivered, and the game proceeds. Again, and again love is sent forth and returned. Thus, the trajectory is a cycle, renewed over and over by the source itself-- love, powerful, endless, unconditional.
"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave."
Song of Solomon 8:6.
