How clapping can translate into enormous love, a foundation of affirmation
At the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Sherri Coale transformed the world of women’s basketball.
Growing up in Healdton then attending Oklahoma Christian, she became a remarkable coach. She’s also an amazing motivator and a strong believer.
Now that she’s retired from that hundred-mile-an-hour job, Coale has a blog that is refreshing and positive. Here is a portion of the latest entry, called “Clapping School”:
Every year it would happen. Every year. Without fail.
We’d gather as teams do at center court to ceremoniously begin a practice and it would happen. Everybody would be clapping — players, coaches, maybe even managers — but only three or four will actually be making sound come out.
It was like some sort of limp hand disease. People’s palms connect (though sometimes in severe cases, only their fingers!), but it didn’t make a pop. There was no force of air being smacked out of the middle. The sound, or lack thereof, being more like two clouds bumping into one another making the air go “shhhh.”
Thank you, but no thank you. Nonclappers can’t imagine that anybody noticed or that it matters in the least. The attentive know nothing ever mattered more.
People always say you can hear a healthy church. Noisy auditoriums that the preacher has to quell before the service begins are the ones you want to be a part of. You can hear the blood running through the veins.
Practice gyms aren’t entirely different. You can feel and hear the thriving ones. They literally pulse with life. And while clapping doesn’t ensure anything, not clapping while clapping almost always does.
What a great point. Coale actually conducted a “clapping school.”
Because clapping matters. Putting hands together, with intention to make sound, means we are “present and undistracted.” It’s also a picture of how we think of our role within the team — or is it all about self ?
The most important point Coale makes is that clapping is about “giving your energy away.” She urges us to recall being in an arena or a stadium. Remember that thrilling sense of the unity of thousands of hearts — and hands — beating as one?
Coale concludes: “The ability to give energy to others is one of the all-time most underrated skills of living, regardless of one’s chosen land of life.”
That resonates with me. I’ve often wondered why people like Coale and so many others who grew up in small
towns, with relatively little exposure to the world, have the gumption to think they can compete on large stages. Perhaps one reason is the huge opportunity in small, tight-knit communities to be the recipient and provider of robust applause.
When you play sports, march in the band, sing in church, lead cheers at a pep assembly or game, speak at Girls or Boys State, serve as class officer or lead other organizations like FFA/FHA, there’s a lot of opportunity for clapping. That affirmation soaks into you and grows you up with a strong and resilient identity.
A foundation of faith provides the same thing.
From the love stories at Sunday School early in life from the small groups of young people who go out together to help their communities, from circles of friends who hold hands to pray or sing of God’s love — there develops a sense of belonging to God’s family of life-altering love. If we have ears to hear, heavenly clapping accompanies our successes, our efforts, our joy for God, and our desire to love our neighbors, no exceptions.
If you take that clapping concept to a deeper level, it reveals the reason we long to share the energy we’ve received. It’s the fruit from the seed of God’s enormous love and mercy. And it’s extended to us.
At church recently we’ve been hearing about the story of the Prodigal Son told in the Book of Luke. It’s a familiar story. The younger son is a mess and asks his dad for all his inheritance — right now. Then he goes and wastes it and hits the bottom of the barrel. In terrible shape, he realizes that his best option is to go home.
Being a servant at his father’s place is better than anything he has going elsewhere.
Don’t you feel his despair? Yes, he was stupid. But who hasn’t been? As he approaches home, the father sees him from a distance and, knowing only that his lost son is coming home, runs out to greet him.
Tears well in my eyes when I get to this part of the story. Jesus is telling us how God loves us. That much and without question. Kill the fattened calf, dress the lost-and-found son in the finest robe and put a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet.
Can’t you imagine the wild clapping in heaven, too?
For that depth of compassion is at the very heart of our faith. Regardless of our sin or stupid behavior, if we just turn for home, nobody will run faster to embrace us than our heavenly Father. And nobody will clap louder than His chorus of angels.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. (Luke 15 20-24).”