Tag Archives: working through issues

Did You Have Fun? Soccer Haibun and Haiku

Soccer. Fussball. Futbol. The beautiful game. I started playing it my sophomore year in Nicolet High School, as a club sport, in gym and intramurals. I was on the BYU “C” team (you know: A, B, C) … or maybe the “Z” team … my freshman year, the same year a team I player/coached were crowned intramural champs.

In 1981 I started assisting coaching soccer in the Fond du Lac soccer league. With a few breaks, I continued assistant coaching nearly every year, especially in the Lake Washington Youth Soccer Association. I also became a referee, as did my two oldest kids. I also played in the Eastside adult “Co-Wreck” league.

da Blues LWYSA girls youth soccer team, Kirkland, WA Sept 1999, Coach KuhnsEventually, I became a head coach of several recreational teams, especially of da Blues girls team and the Tarantulas boys team. Sometime around 2005 or so, I stopped coaching, as my youngest grew into Select and Premier soccer, but I always went to their games, including their high school games.

In about 2010 a group of guys I’d coached since they were little came up to me and asked me to coach them one last time, the fall season of their senior year, in recreational soccer. They said, basically, “soccer has gotten too intense. We’re not going to play in college. We just want to have fun again.”

It was rewarding they’d learned at least one lesson from me. After every game, win, lose or draw, I would always ask the kids I coached the same question:
“Did you have FUN?” They would (almost always) smile and say “Yes.” Then I’d tell them how proud I was of them, we’d do some goofy cheer, and we’d go get snacks.

The Next Generation of Soccer Parents

I haven’t coached for a few years, although I still go watch on occassion (#CFC #ChattanoogaFC #EBFG #SeattleSounders #BYUCougars)  and I own one share of the #ChattanoogaFootballClub (#CFCowner). Now I see the next generation of soccer parents (and, really, all sports parents) coming along. These are kids of the same generation that I coached. Just like I was, they are all so earnest and excited. They all want their kids to do well. So, even though they are not asking me, I want to share a major lesson I learned from all those years coaching soccer:

“Did your child have fun?”

Here’s the haiku to go along with it.

One truth all soccer/
parents must grasp: Playing is/
never disaster.

When Truth Is Revealed: Mission Statement ImproVerse Haibun

She and I often sit in the throes of great deep philosophical and spiritual discussions about our life and lives, about existence and our place in it, about the purpose and meaning of life and how we fit and what we should do. How can we best serve our fellow men and women? What does God want us to do and can we do it and how should we do it?

Often, the Spirit teaches us great and grand truths. We put our hands over our hearts and exclaim: WOW! This is true truth! This is real.” And we smile and we feel motivated and inspired and we keep talking and we keep learning.

When this happens, hopefully a notepad and a pen or pencil will be handy and we’ll write down the truths that the Spirit is teaching us and we’ll take direction and inspiration and plans and dreams and we’ll capture them. And we only look at back at them later and maybe we will say “Yes!This is a great thing, a great truth!” And we’ll print them and put them up on our walls and use them as benchmarks and inspiration to what we should do and how we are doing.

What is Unwritten Truth?

Many times, too often really, we don’t take the time to write down the truth we’re learning. Sometimes the truths come so quickly that we can barely keep up in our own minds what they are, as they lap over on each other and grow and intertwine and intermingle and we see the visions and rejoice in what God is teaching us. So we don’t write them down. And sometimes we’re just too lazy to go find that piece of paper and pencil. We think to ourselves: “We will write it down later. This is so fantastic and so deep and so rich we will never forget it.”

But we do. Then, those truths and those heartfelt visions fade, fade,  fade away and are lost unless or until God sees fit to reprimand us, and maybe remind us of what we should have captured the first time and done the first time.

Vanishing Taught Truths Haiku

Socrates discussed,/
taught, learned. Did those truths vanish,/
too, the way ours do?

How Can I Help? Mission Statement Prose Stream-of-Thought

It’s as if God is saying “Dave, you’re the role model of somebody who left that corporate rat race. You are to build a life this way, more relaxed.”

People are thinking: “We don’t need six figure incomes. We can live simply and have everything we need. But we’re scared. We don’t know how.” What I’m thinking is that God is saying “I need somebody to show those people that they can be that way, that they don’t need all that stuff.”

Not Completely Off-Grid Living

People need to understand that they don’t need to go from the big-city living to off-grid immediately. In fact, a simpler life doesn’t need to be going completely off-grid. It doesn’t need to be that deep. My audience are those people who are caught in the rat race, who are saying “There’s got to be something different, something better, something I can do, and somehow I can do it. But how?” It’s looking at a life that says “I’m so used to making $80, $90, $100, $120k, a year. Can I make $40k or $50k a year and live out in Winneconne or Ringgold or Panguitch or somewhere else and be happy?”

Part of my mission with NaturesGuy.com  and with this blog is to tell them “Yes, it’s possible!”and to give them the courage to do it. That doesn’t mean to do it like me, like our way of doing it, but to do it in their own way, the way they want to.

The biggest truth is that so many people are wanting to leave, but they simply don’t know how, and they think it’s too difficult.

What if it’s not?

Finding Orion And Ourselves – Blogging Free Verse

A young friend spoke today
a memory,
when he was lost and alone
in a strange and distant land.

Looking up,
far and away from home,
he saw thousands of stars.
And then, three.

Orion’s belt,
the Hunter,
just like in the sky
of his Georgia home.

Finding Orion,
no longer lost,
he felt safe,
secure,
protected,
and grateful
for the awareness.

His faithful memory
gave me
my own recollections
of finding Orion:
Diamonds hung
on a canyon wall.

That deep southern Utah night
was the first time
(at least that I recall),
but there have been many more
since then.

My first night
in my new Deep South home,
I stepped out
onto my back porch.
I was alone.

In this new place,
nervous and unfamiliar,
I breathed the gathering gloom,
sucked in the dank humors,
and looked heavenward.

There he was,
belt strongly girded,
Orion, the Hunter over me.
“Hello, old friend!” I shouted
and wept for gladness
and relief.

Next,
alone with family,
a celebration
in the South Pacific
with my son
and his new bride.

Late at night,
I waded into Moorea’s
unfamiliar warm waters,
leaned back
and looked up.

Surprise!
Orion the mighty Hunter
was there, but
standing on his head!
I still, again,
waved and shouted:
“Hello, old friend!”
and laughed for joy.

(I hadn’t yet heard
Moana: Aue, aue
Te fenua, te malie
Na heko hakilia, 
but when I did,
lost yet not
with my daughter
on our aue way
to a paradise waterfall,
I wept again,
just like now.)

As wisdom from the pulpit spoke,
I realized:
The bearded one
was right.
God is aware.
Always.
And He lets us know.

We might feel lost.
We might forget
who we are,
where we are going,
what we’re about.

But He who is mighty to save
will let us know,
always,
where we are,
always,
who we are,
always,
that we are watched over,
always,
if we look to the Heavens.

Consider Opportunity Cost: Revolutionary Blogging Sonnet

When I consider
all that may be gained or lost,
I far too seldom
think of the opportunity cost.

Playing soccer or baseball
was never a bad thing,
but I never once asked
what eternal growth they’d bring.

I can think of many times
I went to play in the sun.
But the more valuable games
were those with more than just fun.

It’s the eternal things which must be considered and weighed
to decide if time is well spent, or just frittered away.

Based on a April 2019 General Conference talk by Elder Dallin H. Oaks.

Guilty Of Less Love: IMprov Free Verse Lament

Deep in church,
that moment when
you realize:

Your heart is so filled
with frustration
and anger
and I-wanna-pull-my-hair-out!
toward the world
and those who might disagree
with you
that you forget
to love Jesus Christ
and you forget
to love others
and you forget
to share His love
with others.

Sadness.
Refocus.
Then resolve.
Then do.

Perfect God Is Not A Perfectionist: ConTEXTing Free Verse

My wife posted this on her Facebook yesterday:

‘I created something today and was grappling over whether it was good enough. . David responded, “It’s good enough… why do you think it has to be perfect? Do you think God is a perfectionist?”
“Probably,” I replied.
“No, He’s not. He can’t be… He created us.”
Touche!’

After I thought about it, I changed my mind and wrote this free verse:

Because God IS
just
perfect,
He made us
perfectly
imperfect,
so we can learn
and grow
and become.