K

I've been reading and liking The Brothers K, by David James Duncan. It's about the crazy family of a minor league pitching coach. Here's an interesting piece from the book (slightly edited):

K (kā) verb, K'ed, K'ing. 1. baseball: to strike out. 2. to fail, to flunk, to fizzle, or 3. to fall short, fall apart, fall flat, fall by the wayside, or on deaf ears, or hard times, or into disrepute or disrepair, or 4. to come unglued, come to grief, come to nothing, or 5. to blow your cover, blow your chances, blow your cool, buy the farm, bite the dust, only 6. to recollect an oddball notion you first heard as a crimeless and un-K'ed child but found so nonsensically paradoxical that you had to ignore it or defy it or betray it for decades before you could begin to believe that it might possibly be true, which is that 7. to lose your money, your virginity, your teeth, health or hair, 8. to lose your home, your balance, your friends, 9. to lose your happiness, your hopes, your leisure, your looks, and, yea, even your memories, your vision, your mind, your way,

10. in short (and as Jesus K. Rist once so uncompromisingly put it) to lose your very self,

11. for the sake of another, is

12. sweet irony, the only way you're ever going to save it.

Though, actually, Jesus didn't say "for the sake of another," but "for my sake" (Lk 9.24). A significant difference, I think...