Getting the Right Fit

Haltlet #2 had a birthday last week and all he wanted was a new basketball backboard.  So, of course, he received one.  However, his father, channeling his inner Scot, decided that all we needed was the backboard. The current pole system was just fine, so why not buy a backboard and rim with a "universal bracket" to replace the broken one?  I saved a $100 and felt good about not adding to the local landfill and getting the boy what he really wanted, a "win-win".  (He also was fully outfitted for the baseball season).

The good feelings did not last long, yesterday, when I put the thing together.  Besides the directions reading like they had gone from Mandarin to English through  a bad version of Google Translate, they were just wrong.  I put the bracket together, per directions, and found that the support brace, could not be attached as it would cause the bracket to be too short to fit the attachment points on the backboard.  So, the solution was to improvise, and I did it well, if I say so myself. As an added bonus, there were no injuries, but my patience was taxed.

Then, the magical time arrived to attach the board to the pole.  I had 30 minutes before he came home, and I thought what a great surprise to have it up for him when he exited the bus.  I dutifully attached the top with the U bolt, and lo and behold, if I attached the bottom, the backboard would have followed the angle of the pole and looked goofy, let alone be non-functional.  You see, the pole is on one of those portable bases and angles out from it, and the original bracket is what was broken. I know, I should have seen it coming, but I'm a priest, not a physicist, and Haltet #1 was not there to help me do the math.

What to do, what to do?  Having grown up on the farm, I engineered a good farmer's fix.  I measured the gap necessary to make the basket parallel to the ground then attached the U bolt to a section of 1x3 and added 2x4s to the bracket to make up the gap and attached these to the 1x3.  It took me a bit longer, but actually worked. Admittedly, it looks a little redneckish, but hey, the max height on the current post is 8' and I expect to replace it again in the next two years, since he will grow and inevitably the wind will blow the thing over again.

Of course, it would have been easier if I had just thought through the problem when I bought the thing, and had not decided I did not need an integral system, but that after-market backboards could just be hung on anything like an afterthought.  It also would have saved me a lot of frustration.

I wonder how often it is that I/we treat our faith the same way, like an after-market addition.  We try to take it and hang it on our previously built infrastructure, then when it doesn't fit we find all sorts of ways to "jury-rig" the system for "the time being" until we have time to add it properly, or replace it when it does not quite match our "self-made/pre-made" identity.  Christianity, then, becomes one more consumer product to make us happy and decorate our pre-fab existence.

However, like the Haltlet's backboard, the problem is not with the faith, but with trying to hang it on a structure that is faulty.  Christianity is an integrated system, it is supposed to change us, to make us new, to rebuild and restore us, to make us who we are truly meant to be.  It is not an aftermarket addition, but a radically different life that should influence all we are, all we do, and every aspect of our lives.