Is Football a Pro-Life Sport? | Religion Dispatches

Is Football a Pro-Life Sport? | Religion Dispatches

Non-violence and the kingdom of God are growing at a snail's pace; what will become of football?

See: The Concussion Blog:
An Education and Communication Outpost from an Athletic Trainer's Perspective

The magnitude of mindfulness: Fellows Friday with David Gurman

The Nicholas Shadow — St Ignatius Church, San Francisco, 2009. A Russian-founded Orthodox church bell bearing the icon of St Nicholas tolled hourly registering the number of reported civilian deaths in Iraq on that day. Click to see larger size. Photo: David Gurman

The magnitude of mindfulness: Fellows Friday with David Gurman

Artist David Gurman’s installations use live data feeds from conflict zones to trigger lights, tolling bells, shadows and more, connecting us to the rhythms and intensity of far-away violence in real time.

Celebrating the Wise Fool

While completing residency training in a hospital providing pastoral care as a chaplain, I began to see how the role or image of a wise fool is helpful. The chaplain in the midst of the medical temple in some respect is a figure that can be understood through the caricature of the clown in the circus when juxtaposed with the overly objectifying medical diagnostic and treatment team (a relationship I also perceive as a counselor and social worker in terms of the hegemony of the mental health profession). In this brief focus, this is how the chaplain is perceived and operates no mater how serious or pious he or she might be. This relationship and tension is described by Heije Faber this way (Images of Pastoral Care: Classic Readings, Robert C. Dykstra, Ed. St Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2005, 88):

[T]here is an element of solidarity with the patient, but the role of the doctor towards the patient demands objectivity. Here lies the real difference in the role of the minister. His solidarity with the patient is peculiarly his own, different from that of the doctor; it springs from a familiarity with the boundary situation. The solidarity of the doctor and the patient is that of comrades-in-arms; that of the minister is that of standing with the patient in the difficulties and opportunities of boundary situations. In this solidarity the minister, like the clown, will seek to make himself small, but in doing he will point towards the great things, which can set the sick man free, show him the (divine) humor of the situation, so that in the midst of his suffering he will raise a smile.

This highlights the need for care verse cure which Stanley Hauerwas wisely argues, '[M]edicine has traditionally had a role in caring for the body, the development of ever increasing possibilities of "cure" has burdened medicine with expectations bordering on the idolatrous.' ("Salvation and Health: Why Medicine Needs the Church" in Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church, 1986)

Erasmus In Praise of Folly provides a contrast between the simpleton or “natural fool” (a term used in medieval times) and the “artificial fool” (i.e., the professional court jester). Like the natural fool, the chaplain may fail to completely understand the more complex aspects of the medical disciplines as well as a capacity to predict consequences in relation to the patient’s condition. However this lack of “sophistication” gives a refreshing directness to the simpler person’s manner of relation to the other. This is then a physical immediacy in responses of affection and anger and a lack of hypocrisy in the things said. One can understand how the “natural fool” was the precursor of the professional court fool, who had license to speak hard truths to the king. This force is well portrayed in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, e.g., when Prince Myshkin’s honesty and simplicity exposes the corruptions of those around him while through his gentle and perceptive manner offers people a way back to their true selves. This effect is summed up by Ganya this way, “What made me think this morning that you were an idiot? You notice things other people never notice. One could have a real talk to you, though, perhaps, one had better not.” [Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot]

Alastair Campbell, who finds the wise fool as a necessary figure for reflection and imitation, cites Paul’s advice, “If anyone among you thinks he is wise by this world’s standards, he should become a fool, in order to be really wise.” (1Co 3.18)

The major characteristics of a wise fool as described by Campbell are simplicity (reflected in a refreshing directness and refusal to put on personal airs or engage in professional gamesmanship), loyalty (reflected in an undramatic but persistent loyalty to others in disregard to self), and prophecy (reflected in a tendency to challenge the accepted norms, conventions, and authorities within the society).

The major function of “wise fool” is to help us to see ourselves in a clearer light, most dramatically in the prophetic role and less in the simplicity and loyalty. Through personal simplicity, the wise fool challenges us to conduct our professional lives with less self-serving distortion. Through personal loyalty, the wise fool challenges us to be more truthful in our interpersonal relationships. Within a revisionist model the wise fool challenges the preference for darkness, deception and illusions for light and truth, inviting us to view our/others situation from a higher/cosmological/universal/God’s perspective. It is no accident that Saint Francis of Assisi, a prototype of foolish wisdom, who regarded himself as a frater minor, a fool deserving nothing but contempt and dishonor, is also celebrated for his tender love for God and for God’s creatures, big and small.

Lily Tomlin in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, tells of such a figure. She witnessed Trudy, a bag lady, from whom there lived the “kind of madness Socrates talked about, a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention. “ She is a modern-day Wise Fool, whose loss of sanity opened her mind to the cosmos. Pearson interprets the character a Trudy as one who explains “reality” as nothing more than a “collective hunch” which is “the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.” She decides to let go of it through the natural use of humor—jokes. (Carol S. Pearson, Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help us Find Ourselves and Transform our World. New York: Harper Collins, 1991)

“The Triple Fool”

John Donne

I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny?
Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain,
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To Love and Grief tribute of Verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read;
Both are increasèd by such songs:
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

Car-Free or Lite Living: a Path to Sustainable Living

After four years using a bicycle as my primary mode of transportation and recent selling of my car, I share six questions to determine whether you might be a potential candidate for living car free or car-lite. The more you can answer in the affirmative, the closer you are to a smooth transition to living car-free.

1. Can you get over your ego? In an image-centric culture, there is a dominate illusion, that says if you do not drive or have a car, you’re a loser. After four years of clear and numerous benefits, you can call me whatever you want. I am not the one sitting in traffic, paying almost $4 a gallon while wishing I were fitter.

2. Can you get to work reliably without a car? There are some obvious variables to consider with this question, but this basic question grows out of an important statistic. 40% of city travel is done within two miles or less, while 90% of those trips are by automobile (US DOT), e.g., trips to work, the local store, school, bank, coffee shop or restaurant.

3. Do you live in or near a city, urban area or diverse development? Cities provide a number of alternative transportation options: pedestrian infrastructure, trails, and public transportation. Location and distance from where you work is a major factor, but so are the alternative options. Position yourself (that may mean moving or just perceiving) where you have multiple transportation options other than using a car and be ahead of the game.

4. Do you have access to public transportation? While a bicycles (a piece of low tech, nearly divine epitome of sustainability) just happens to be my preferred form of transportation, when the whether is really bad, I take a bus. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 49% of Americans live near a public transit stop. Riding the bus allows time to converse with people, read a book, or just enjoy the scenes that are often missed when concentrating of the traffic.

Tips for riding transit http://www.livableplaces.org/transportation

5. Do you live in close proximity to amenities? Many people live within one to two miles of the basic amenities, e.g., library, park, church, local market and restaurants. There is not a place in town I cannot get to without either riding my bike or talking the bus.

6. Are you flexible? Being car-free or even car-lite means being adaptable. You have to make changes which means changing old ways of thinking and doing. When this gets challenging, I like chasing the emotion behind my resistance to change and connecting it to my behavioral pattern. This kind of reflection helps promote the kind of mindfulness necessary to create real, lasting change.

Here’s a good source, “Car-lite family beginnings”

I am thankful to Chris Balish, who wrote How to Live Well Without Owning a Car: save money, breathe easier, and get more mileage out of life. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2006. Chris wrote a challenging book that offers not only great questions but offers solutions to answering those questions.

Break the cycle; live free!

Preparing for Lent

I record a brief reflection from an ongoing exegesis of I Corinthians 12:24b-31, which helps take me into the Lenten Season.

In todays dominate culture the body of Christ needs to take stock of the impact of inherent societal scripting both individually and corporately. E.g., the systems of accumulation* in our Western and now growing global economies naturally generate anxiety (from the illusion of need promoted via corporate advertisement to the fear of economic collapse) leading to various vices, which if not exposed and changed (metanoia) result in patterns of oppression that find their way in church communities. St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthian church calls us to step back and practice radical awareness and engagement of gifts (cari,smata) which allow us to cultivate a capacity to suffer and rejoice (sympathize) with the other. Through practices that connect and care (merimna,w, 1Cor 12: 25) for the members who lack, we help promote the reversal of symptoms and causes of anxiety in the community via “the more excellent way.”

* See 'Notes on Walter Brueggemann and “The Food Fight: Accumulation and Abundance"'

Ironies

Growing on the previous post, a poem written by Daniel Berrigan from his book, Prayer for the Morning Headlines: On the Sanctity of Life and Death

Ironies

draw the mind free of habitual

animal ease. Sough of tides in the heart,

massive and moony, is not our sound.

But hope and despair together

bring tears to face, and a human ground,

death mask and comic, such speech

as hero and commoner devise, make sense

contrive our face. To expunge

either, is to cast snares for the

ghost a glancing heart makes

along a ground, and airy goes its way.

And Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantine,"

Consume my heart, sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what is . . .

Viral Images: Cruelity and the Fact of Evil

The recent video of Marines desecrating the corpses of Taliban fighters killed in Afghanistan demonstrates a reality of what war creates, a culture of evil that disseminates into our everyday cultural script. This grotesque episode reveals what kind of people we are (plural) if we don’t know the kind of person (individual, group) you are, a pattern that others made that prevails in the world (in the words of William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”)

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,

But if one wanders the circus wont’ find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

To know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

The “fact” is well described by Chris Hedges who serviced many years as a war correspondent (in War is a Force that gives us Meaning).

“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by myth makers—historians, war correspondents, film makers, novelists, and the state—all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty. It dominates culture, distorts memory, corrupts language, and infects everything around it, even humor, which becomes preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death. Fundamental questions about the meaning, or meaninglessness, of our place on the planet are laid bare when we watch those around us sink to the lowest depths. War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface within all of us. And this is why for many, war is so hard to discuss once it is over.”

The reason why people are so surprised by this and other recent news of deplorable conduct by military personnel is partly because it is below the surface in the dominant societal script, a pervasive script that nurtures us all. The dominate script is “technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism” socializing us all, liberal and conservative; unless we are awake to this fact, disengage and overcome it via an alternative meta narrative that breeds holistic life.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider--

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Photograph: William Stafford