Near Death Experience

Driving 70 mph, at mile 86 southbound on I-95 on my way back from AC, my right front tire blew out.

Giant tractor-trailer rigs had been blowing by me at 90 mph for hours. Crazy guys in souped up Acuras and Beemers were weaving in and out of the traffic that had — finally — been liberated after the hour-long Delaware toll plaza slog (unbelievable, really). It was just about midnight.

The wheel suddenly became unresponsive and there was a godawful grinding noise. I knew I was going to die. I had a vision of twisted wreckage, a fiery explosion, a charred and unidentifiable corpse.

Obviously, since I'm writing this, that didn't happen. I managed to wrestle the wheel enough to cross two lanes of traffic to the shoulder. I brought the car to a halt and hyperventilated for a few minutes while I waited for the adrenaline surge to subside and the shaking to die down a bit.

The rest was a long saga of inconvenience, expense, and exhaustion, featuring my crappy and unreliable cell phone, a polite but not particularly warm and fuzzy state trouper, and a kind and helpful tow truck guy nicknamed "Shrek."

My thanks to friend L. for being so good to me when I called her in a panic, feeling horribly lonely, vulnerable, and scared while waiting in the dark for the tow truck to arrive. I now realize that not only did I wake her up, which was bad enough, but it was on the night before she was heading out to a marathon week of her organization's annual conference.

My thanks to VW for providing a full-size spare tire.

My thanks to God for providing another reason to remember that if you're alive, you're already ahead of the game.

Note to self and others: when stranded on the side of the road at night, if your car is not damaged, leave it running while you keep your hazards and/or headlights on. Otherwise you wlll run down the battery and add substantially to your inconvenience. Trust me on this.

Other note to self: run, do not walk, to get an iPhone the moment they are available. You must get a cell phone that actually works reliably in an emergency.

On retreat

I'm at St. Mary's Seminary & University in Baltimore on my diocese's mandated vocational retreat. So far, so good, although I have really no idea what to expect from the experience.

I do know that I have to get up at 7:30am tomorrow morning, which will definitely be a shock to my system. Mornings are not my strong suit.

Then, when this is over at 5pm tomorrow, I have to decide if I want to make a dash for Atlantic City and the Borgata Open Ladies Tournament on Sunday. If I do, I have to figure out where to stay for cheap somewhere between here and there, as AC is way too expensive on a Saturday night.

God? Poker?
Both/and?
Poker? God?
Either/or?

What the hell am I doing with my life, anyway?

Groundhog Day: Pascale's Adventure in Atlantic City

Somewhat belatedly, here's how things went for me in AC. Probably comes under the heading of TMI for those of you without any interest in poker!

So I packed my bag and headed off to visit Las Vegas's poor cousin who lives down by the bridge in a trailer: Atlantic City.

And on Friday at high noon I sat down to play my first high-stakes (by my lights) poker tournament at Harrah's Poker Open, a $300+40 event, with starting stacks of 4000 and 45 minute blind levels. I was very nervous.

About three hours later I was out. I misplayed one hand, bluffing into someone I read as weak pre-flop (correct), but who flopped a hard-to-detect straight. I didn't get out of the hand quickly enough, and my stack took a big hit.

I dialed back, and played smart after that. I had truly appalling cards and no opportunity to make a move. Finally, as I was very low on chips, I woke up with JJ, made a big bet pre-flop and got one caller. The flop came 9 8 2 rainbow. I pushed all in, and the other guy called. He turned over 10s. I was relieved. Until he caught runner-runner 7 6 for the low straight to the 10. That was the end for me.

I then bought into a $50 SNG satellite to try and make another buy in. In the big blind I had 9 4 os. The only person who called was the small blind. Flop came 9 4 J. I confess I saw an opportunity to trap, and didn't bet hard. Next card 2. River 10. Of course all my chips were in at this point and the small blind... yep, made a straight with 7 8. What are you going to do?

That evening, I played in an $85+15 8 table tourney. Completely card dead. I didn't last long. Someone from my poker league was there, and he won the whole thing, for about $3000.

Okay, so as you can imagine, I'm now pretty frustrated and cranky. I've already paid for my second night at the hotel. I'm down to my last $200 of playing money. What to do?

I sat down at a $1-2 ring game. I played for six hours... again completely card dead. Unbelievable. I must have folded 99% of my hands. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, I looked down at my hand and saw A 3 suited. Seriously, and I am NOT kidding, this was the best hand I'd seen in hours. I was in late middle position, and I decided I was going to play.

A new player had sat down recently and was under the gun. She hadn't seen me muck cards for three hours. She raised. I called. Only one other guy called, everyone else folded (I would have too! I had a total rock reputation at this point).

Flop comes A 9 A, two hearts. Ding ding ding ding! Raiser bets out. I wring my hands for half a minute and call. Guy behind me folds like a pup tent in a high wind. Next card is 5, not a heart. Raiser bets again. More hollywood from me. Call.

Last card: the case A. (Internal happy dance!)

Raiser bet outs again. I think again. Scowl. Pause long time as if assessing odds, trying to put opponent on hand. Previous folder makes comment indicating he suspects hollywood (totally uncalled-for, he apologized later). Finally, I raise.

And she called! She called! I probably should have bet more. She turns over pocket 10s.

Big score for me. Although I managed to lose a chunk of it in the next hour or so, I eventually saw sense and cashed out. I now faced a new dilemma: lick my wounds, get a good night's sleep, and play it safe on Saturday (either go home or play more ring) or... buy in to the same tournament at noon on Saturday. I mulled it over.

In the end, I realized I came to AC to play a big stakes tournament. So I went back and registered for the game. Here's where it gets a little weird.

I looked down at my ticket to find I was seated in EXACTLY THE SAME SEAT AT THE SAME TABLE AS ON FRIDAY. Out of more than 350 seats... how bizarre is that?

I go and try and get six hours of sleep.

So at noon I find my seat, again. I sit down, the cards hit the felt, and already things are different. I am not nervous and I am determined to play my very best game. I glance down at my watch when the blinds go up the first time...

My watch has stopped at 12:15. It is Groundhog Day, and this is my do-over.

I will spare you all the blow-by-blow. I had one pro at my table who was nearly out, down to a few chips, but caught a miracle card on the river all-in to survive, and clawed his way back ten hours later to an average stack. I watched him watch me, which was fun. I played well, and the cards were not cruel to me.

When we hit the bubble (36 out of 366 were paid), at about 10 at night, I was chip leader. I had a very large stack, and only one or two others were in the same league.

The bubble took a big toll on my stack. I didn't play it aggressively enough, and I lost about a third of it to blinds and antes. After we hit the money I didn't loosen up enough. I made it through to the next pay level (3 tables), but by that point my cards totally dried up, and I was at a table with one huge stack and 8 other desperate people. It became a fold-fest punctuated by occasional all-ins.

I folded a lot too, when I probably should have pushed. Finally I looked down and saw A J clubs, the best I'd seen in a couple of hours. A short stack ahead of me pushed all-in -- he'd done it before and could have had anything. I called, and he turned over A K spades. Needless to say, I was not happy. The flop gave me two more clubs, but that was it. I was out 19th, just before the next payout bump. The pro from my table was still going strong.

On the drive back in the small hours of Saturday night, I took stock. I lost money on the trip for lodging, food, and the two smaller tourney buy-ins. On the other hand, I proved conclusively to myself that I have the discipline to grind out a profit at ring, and that, with a smidgeon of decent luck, I can get to the money in a big tournament.

Lessons from this experience:

1. Stamina is key. Twelve hours of tournament poker is HARD WORK, physically as well as psychologically. You have to stay focussed all the time. All. The. Time.


2. I am a stubborn person. I don't like to give up. This is, on balance, a good thing. But sometimes I don't release a hand soon enough.


3. Some people talk too much at the table. I learned a lot about their play that way. (I do not. Despite my reputation as a talker in general.)


4. Some people care more about people thinking they're smart than winning. That's something I have to watch out for. If I beat them, who cares if they respect my game or not?


5. My first read is usually right. But sometimes I don't watch closely enough to determine whether things have changed as the hand progresses.


6. Long blind levels are my friend. Big fields, not so much. What I want is a game with long blind levels and a smaller number of entrants. Unfortunately, I think the only way I'm going to get that is at significantly higher stakes. Which I can't afford. Not at the moment, anyway.

I also discovered some elements of my game that definitely need work. Now I have to figure out how to actually address them.

How do I learn how to play bigstack effectively when I rarely AM bigstack? How do I simulate the level of fatigue encountered after 10 straight hours of play? And at some point I'm going to have to stop playing to money (particularly at the tail end of the money) and start playing to WIN.

One last observation: at AC, the proportion of women players was, if anything, even lower than in Vegas. I saw very few female players at the ring tables, and in the second tournament I think maybe there were fewer than 10 of us (that's less than 3%). At the last three tables, however, there were 3 (that's more than 10%), and there were still two in when I went out.

Ladies... c'mon in, the water's fine. There are a LOT of dudes suffering from TPS (testosterone poisoning syndrome) and an excess of machismo. (The pro at my table was a classic counterexample... he couldn't have been more laid back, and it served him extremely well. The same for the guy who was bigstack when I went out.)

In sum: I love poker. But after those few days, even the obsessed addict that I am was a bit burnt out for awhile. By now, needless to say, I've made a complete recovery.

Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God

This is my final essay for the Spring Providence, Evil, and Suffering class at WTS. I found Marilyn McCord Adams's book (of the above cited title) a challenging if not entirely satisfactory read. The essay runs to about 14 pages, which is way too long for one post, so the jump link is to a complete PDF version.

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If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain…. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.—First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 14, v. 14,19

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote a sentence about evil that I believed to be true: “The persistence and prevalence of evil is the single greatest obstacle to faith, and the only answer to it is a witness to God’s love through human action, made possible by grace.” Reading Marilyn McCord Adams’s Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God has helped me to focus my thinking more closely on the problem of evil, and specifically on the issue of theodicy. The book advances arguments along a variety of fronts for the compossibility of an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good God alongside the indisputable existence and prevalence of horrendous evil in the world. I certainly cannot and do not seek to address them all in the scope of this paper. I will focus my discussion on just a few key points: how Adams frames the problem so that specific elements of Christian theology can provide a meaningful response; clarification of an essential element of her argument, which is surprisingly de-emphasized (one might go so far as to say “glossed-over”) despite its centrality to orthodox Christian doctrine; and a brief review of potential difficulties her analysis presents for the faithful Christian, a secular reader, or an adherent of another faith.

Let me begin, however, by emphasizing elements of Adams’s presentation that I find especially helpful and personally congenial. Her repeated insistence that the goodness of God must be such that “God is good to each created person, by insuring each a life that is a great good to him/her on the whole, and by defeating his/her participation in horrors within the context, not merely of the world as a whole, but of that individual’s life” (p. 55) is at the heart of the matter. Adams is not satisfied with grand utilitarian analyses that get God off the hook for creating the best-of-all-possible-worlds, if that world ends up crushing and destroying any number of individuals beyond all salvation. It has always seemed impossible to me that I could worship a God who permitted the desolate and unredeemed life of a child chained to a radiator, beaten, starved, sexually abused, alone except for her torturer, and ultimately abandoned to death; it is especially appalling to imagine a God worthy of adoration who would accept that as an inevitable price of creation. What in creation could possibly be worth the suffering of even one such child? For legions of people throughout human history whose unrelievedly horrendous life experiences legitimately make them wish they’d never been born, the notion that their suffering is an essential consequence of, say, human free-will merely adds insult to injury.

Adams is also quite serious about her demand that God be good to every created person in a way that person can accept and appreciate, and that therefore includes not just the victims of horrendous evil but also the perpetrators of that evil. This universalist element of her argument carries, as I shall discuss later, some challenges along with it, but it also points us again to a God worth worshipping. How can we respect and love a deity who creates individuals that are ineluctably doomed to go bad and fail, to become and remain beyond redemption? It is no coincidence that Julian of Norwich gets as much or more page-time in Adams’s book as any of the more canonical or academic theologians; Julian’s mystical declaration of the promise that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” is the gold standard by which God’s goodness is measured for Adams as well, and I appreciate the largeness of this vision.

[read the full essay]