Tomorrow and tomorrows

Tomorrow is the last day of class in Family Therapy I for my first year students. They've spent the semester reading and writing about various models and theories of family therapy: structural, strategic, cognitive behavioral, and internal family systems. We'll gather at my house to eat my wife's world renowned breakfast casserole, fruit salad, blueberry muffins, and some brand of gourmet coffee.

Then, after breakfast, we'll gather in the living room and watch some videos that capture the themes that we've worked on this semester. We've done enough serious work, and now I want us to watch a view clips and think out loud with them about these important matters that can impact how we help people move out of their pain into some healthy way of living. It's a time of consolidating and integrating and making sense once more of important ideas for those who want to do family therapy.

Somewhere in the midst of the morning's conversation I'll show a clip from "Soul of the Game," one of my favorite baseball movies. Why baseball? Why a movie about Satchel, Josh, and Jackie? Good questions. A part of the passion that turns my crank about working with students is that we get to apply these curious marriage and family theories to larger systems. By "larger systems" we mean institutions of power and privilege, those that make or break folks, those that need not just reforming but transforming. Major league baseball was one of those powerful institutions.

This particular movie describes life in the Negro Leagues in 1945 when only one, yes, only one, Black baseball player will make the move to the major leagues. Satchel, Josh, and Jackie are three of the most popular of the massive number of gifted athletes stymied by Jim Crow and the will of powerful baseball owners. The movie shows the relationships between these men as each is convinced that he needs to get the call up to the bigs.

The scene I'll show is at the end of the movie. Josh has just gotten out of the hospital, an all-star game is about to be played against white players, and everyone knows that this is the one last chance to impress the scouts. Then the skies open, rain pours down, thunder cracks, and lightening dances across the sky.

There will be no game. As the rain pelts against his agonizing face, Josh Gibson screams a scream from the bottom of his soul, unleashing upon the viewer the agony of being so close to his dream, and knowing that the dream was now gone forever. His dream was ripped from his heart. He would never play baseball in the major leagues.

That brutal moment speaks volumes. It is the rageful, anguished cry of a man who had been put in his place by institutions of power and privilege. He knew how good he was. He also knew how powerless he was in the face of the powerful institution of white major league baseball.

There were no more tomorrows for Josh Gibson. He wouldn't live much longer.

Tomorrow morning I hope my students get it, that they live in a world where people, politics, and institutions of power still hold sway over people's lives. My prayer is that they get it, that there's much to be done, and so little time to do it in, and that one can make a difference in that one, small corner of the universe to which she or he is called.

My prayer is that they'll work to bring about tomorrows that Josh Gibson didn't have.