The Pastor’s Pen
I’ve mentioned before how much I love the Winter Olympics. Somewhere in a box tucked away – probably in the attic alongside old photos and yellowing newspaper clippings – I still have a copy of Sports Illustrated from the 1980 Lake Placid games, the one with the U.S. Hockey team on the cover. But what stayed with me all these years wasn’t the hockey story, as great as it was. It was a quieter one, about figure skater Linda Fratianne.
Fratianne won the silver medal that year – no small achievement, though it was treated as something less because so many expected gold from her. What I remember most vividly from the article was a small, almost throwaway detail: the night before her performance, she ate a slice of cheesecake. Forbidden, apparently. There was even a picture of her alone on the ice, and I remember thinking how lonely that must have felt – standing there under the lights, carrying not just the weight of competition, but the quiet judgment of others. As if a single slice of cheesecake could somehow explain the difference between silver and gold.
It struck me then, even as a young middle school boy, how harshly we can treat one another – how quickly we move from admiration to disappointment when someone fails to meet expectations we may have set for them without ever asking.
I found myself thinking about that recently while watching another figure skater, Alysa Liu.
In 2024, at just 18, Liu stepped away from the sport. She had reached the highest levels, but something about the system – the pressure, the expectations, the loss of joy – led her to hang up her skates. Later, encouraged by family and friends, she decided to return. But this time, it would be different.
She would choose her own music.
She would choose her own costume.
She would have a say in her choreography.
And – perhaps most wonderfully of all – she would eat what she wanted.
No forbidden cheesecake. No quiet shame.
And then she went out and skated – not cautiously, not fearfully, but exuberantly. Freely. And in doing so, she found herself at the top of the podium.
I couldn’t help but think about the distance between those two moments – forty-six years apart. One young woman quietly judged for a small act of humanity. Another insisting, gently but firmly, that the way things have always been is not the way they must always be.
Every generation, it seems, has its habits, its assumptions, its unspoken rules. And every generation that follows comes along and asks, “But why?”
Why must it be this way? Why do we accept what diminishes us? Why not something more life-giving, more joyful, more whole?
Sometimes those questions make us uncomfortable. Sometimes they sound like resistance or even rebellion. But sometimes – if we listen closely – they sound like the Spirit stirring.
Scripture is full of moments like that. People who step out of what has always been done and discover, sometimes to their own surprise, that God is already ahead of them.
I thought about this as I watched Liu skate in the exhibition at the end of the Olympics. The competition was over. The scores had been settled. The pressure was gone. And what remained was simply the joy of skating.
It was lighthearted. Playful. Free.
And somewhere in that freedom, I found myself smiling.
Not because everything is perfect. Not because every change is easy or every new way is better. But because there is something hopeful about a generation that is willing to ask hard questions and seek a more gracious way of living.
“The kids are going to be alright,” I thought.
And maybe more than that – maybe they will help the rest of us be a little more alright, too.
See you Sunday!
Pastor Greg
pastorgreg@lawrencevillepresbyterian.org
Fratianne won the silver medal that year – no small achievement, though it was treated as something less because so many expected gold from her. What I remember most vividly from the article was a small, almost throwaway detail: the night before her performance, she ate a slice of cheesecake. Forbidden, apparently. There was even a picture of her alone on the ice, and I remember thinking how lonely that must have felt – standing there under the lights, carrying not just the weight of competition, but the quiet judgment of others. As if a single slice of cheesecake could somehow explain the difference between silver and gold.
It struck me then, even as a young middle school boy, how harshly we can treat one another – how quickly we move from admiration to disappointment when someone fails to meet expectations we may have set for them without ever asking.
I found myself thinking about that recently while watching another figure skater, Alysa Liu.
In 2024, at just 18, Liu stepped away from the sport. She had reached the highest levels, but something about the system – the pressure, the expectations, the loss of joy – led her to hang up her skates. Later, encouraged by family and friends, she decided to return. But this time, it would be different.
She would choose her own music.
She would choose her own costume.
She would have a say in her choreography.
And – perhaps most wonderfully of all – she would eat what she wanted.
No forbidden cheesecake. No quiet shame.
And then she went out and skated – not cautiously, not fearfully, but exuberantly. Freely. And in doing so, she found herself at the top of the podium.
I couldn’t help but think about the distance between those two moments – forty-six years apart. One young woman quietly judged for a small act of humanity. Another insisting, gently but firmly, that the way things have always been is not the way they must always be.
Every generation, it seems, has its habits, its assumptions, its unspoken rules. And every generation that follows comes along and asks, “But why?”
Why must it be this way? Why do we accept what diminishes us? Why not something more life-giving, more joyful, more whole?
Sometimes those questions make us uncomfortable. Sometimes they sound like resistance or even rebellion. But sometimes – if we listen closely – they sound like the Spirit stirring.
Scripture is full of moments like that. People who step out of what has always been done and discover, sometimes to their own surprise, that God is already ahead of them.
I thought about this as I watched Liu skate in the exhibition at the end of the Olympics. The competition was over. The scores had been settled. The pressure was gone. And what remained was simply the joy of skating.
It was lighthearted. Playful. Free.
And somewhere in that freedom, I found myself smiling.
Not because everything is perfect. Not because every change is easy or every new way is better. But because there is something hopeful about a generation that is willing to ask hard questions and seek a more gracious way of living.
“The kids are going to be alright,” I thought.
And maybe more than that – maybe they will help the rest of us be a little more alright, too.
See you Sunday!
Pastor Greg
pastorgreg@lawrencevillepresbyterian.org
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