Giving
Mind-Body Challenge Newsletter
Issue 5
From the Director’s Chair
By: Leo Pickens and Jerry Januszewski
I have a special treat for you this month. One of the best pieces of writing I've come across in a long time about the Temple and the spirit of our athletic program was written for the Gadfly by our own Jerry Januszewski. Jerry is now working at the College as one of our Counselors in our Health Center. Those of you who competed with Jerry at some time in the past 20 years will not be at all surprised to learn that he is still playing for the Greenwaves. Though his point production and glass cleaning is not what it was in his prime, and though he may have lost a step on defense, what has not in any way diminished over time is the love and enthusiasm he brings to each and every minute he is on the court. He is still the player EVERYONE wants on their team. Without further ado, I present, “Your Mother is Calling”, by Jerry Januszewski:
At birth we knock on the door of the world, requesting admission through our cries. We are met, hopefully, by the welcoming voices of our parents, the authors of our being, as we move from darkness to light and receive nurturance. Our parents model and mediate in a priestly fashion the tender loving care of God as they collaborate in this new creative endeavor.
The gymnasium at St. John’s College, known for 100 years as Iglehart Hall, is both a temple of the body and a wise and loving mother. We are enfolded in her loving embrace as we enter her halls, shoes reverently removed so that we may ingest her milk of athletic joy. We beckon her with our hungry cries in the form of squeaking sneakers and bouncing basketballs. We feel her benevolent downward gaze through the eyes of the scoreboard. Behold the light!
Temple Iglehart has a high priest who presides over worship activities and serves as mediator between the human and the Divine. The guiding masculine energy of Mr. Leo Pickens, the Holy See, stands in impeccable dynamic balance with the essential matriarchal energy of the Temple. Mr. Pickens trusts his acolytes to oversee the majority of Temple activities, but it is his ecclesiastical duty to officiate the most sacred worship activity of all, occurring in the Holy of Holies, that activity being basketball.
One of the wonders of sport is that every moment of every contest, unscripted as they are, contains the seeds of almost limitless beginnings. Sport, and basketball is a prime example, is a continuous creative effort, every moment giving birth to a new reality. In this activity, we are feeding others as well as being fed. Through our play we are at once newborn, parent and priest as we collaborate with the creative, nurturing impulse of the Divine.
Athletic joy lies not in the acquisition of success, narrowly defined as winning games or gaining the praise of men. The joy resides in the thrusting of one’s whole self into the unknown to experience the bursting of artificial boundaries. This requires trust, a faith. We must trust the game, trust our teammates, trust our competitors, and trust the rightness of the pursuit. As we do this with focused effort and self-abandon, we commune with a higher power which then redefines the self.
This requires courage which few possess. For the many, sport is entertainment - a fun diversion from other activities, or possibly a way to serve their vainglorious desires. But for the few, it becomes a revelation. Those valorous few are more likely seen on the men’s basketball “B” teams or as members of the Kunai, but let us all partake. In this we may all be Guardians, GreenWaves, Hustlers, Druids and Spartans: that is, Protectors, Nurturers, Providers, Priests and Warriors.
Any comments? Jerry and I would love to hear from you. Write us at jerry.januszewki@sjca.edu or leo.pickens@sjca.edu.
Love is In the Air at St. John’s:
It was during the 1996 winter tournament when Greenwave Paula Rubin (now Paula Swann) was first matched against Hustler John Swann. Paula (AGI97) was guarding John (AGI97) under the basket, and she couldn’t help but notice that he was taking advantage of their height difference (John: 6'4", Paula: 5'6"). He reached over her back and grabbed every rebound, despite her best efforts to box him out. She wasn't getting the over-the-back calls she was looking for from the refs, so finally she nudged him—just a bit—and he fell on the floor. The next semester, the two G.I.s started dating. Seven years later, they married in the Great Hall.
Matt C. (A00) and Tiffany J. (A02) met in the fall of 1998 when he was a junior and she was a freshman. “Matt was my orientation guide and by the end of the campus tour I was in love,” she says. The following week she saw him in the library and found the courage to ask him on a date, but after walking up to him, she froze, turned bright red, and ran away. Not long after, she saw him on front campus and managed to invite him to coffee at the Moon Café.
The two started playing sports together, having long conversations while kicking around the soccer field and shooting hoops in the gym. “Some of our favorite St. John’s memories include playing together in the spring soccer and 2-on-2 basketball tournaments,” Tiffany says.
The couple married on August 12, 2006 in Orkney Springs, Virginia, and is pleased to report that there were plenty of Johnnies in attendance to join them in pre-nuptial games of basketball, croquet, and soccer.
Do you have a similar story? Email Danielle Werner (Danielle.Werner@sjca.edu) and your story could be featured in the next newsletter.
L, is for the way you look at me…
Students and staff on the Annapolis campus were eager to express their thoughts on love, a perfect date, and their plans for Valentine’s Day. Watch our video to see if their opinions match yours.
Program Author’s Great Loves:
William Shakespeare married his love, Anne Hathaway, at the age of 18.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first fell in love Aloysia Weber. By the time Mozart moved to Vienna to be with her, she had already married. It was after this, that he then settled with and eventually married Aloysia’s sister, Constanze Weber.
Nikolai Lobachevsky and his bride, Varvara Alexeivna Moisieva, married in 1832. It is rumored the couple had an upward of 15 children.
Gustave Flaubert’s view on love was tainted after his eight year relationship with Louise Colet ended. After the break-up, he only sought after platonic relationships.
At the age of 28, Antoine Lavoisier chose his bride, 13 year old Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze.
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