The Great Football Revelation

Tonight Rick and I watched the Denver Broncos play the New England Patriots for the NFL playoff. (Denver won!) Now—you need to understand that I have never, ever been a football fan. Since I’ve been in Denver, there have been a few games I’ve kind of enjoyed, but basically, that’s because when you live in a town with major league sports, you learn about the players because they’re everywhere. Okay—the players, themselves, aren’t everywhere, but their images and reports of their comings and goings and yes, tales of their shenanigans are. So it’s a little easier to get excited about a game just by virtue of your acquaintance with the players. And Rick likes football. Thankfully, he doesn’t watch a lot of it, though.

Football, however, is such a testosterone-laden sport. So ego-driven. And I am so not into violence. Seeing men hyped up on their own hormones (or maybe some acquired ones in some cases…) ramming into each other and looking as though they’d like to kill somebody, and sometimes trying to, has just not been my idea of a joy-inducer. Seeing one of them down on the field hurt always made this empath’s body throb with pain right along with them. Even hearing about someone’s injury is hard for me. So I spent much of any game I might be trying to watch torn between feeling bad for the injured player, and wondering why anyone would be such an idiot as to invite a 6’ something, 250 lb. giant to stomp on them. And what was wrong with people who enjoyed watching that? Were they totally insensitive for heaven’s sake?

But tonight I found myself whoopin’ and hollerin’ and really getting into the game. About halfway into it, it occurred to me: This is a sign of spiritual growth! I realized that I had taken a higher stance by detaching from judgment about it all. I realized that I have come to a new level of allowance—of being able to see people doing what I would never want to do in a million years, and letting it be okay for them to do it. If they get hurt—oh well! Their choice. Lest you think me un-compassionate, it’s not that I don’t care what happens to someone—it’s that I have decided to be okay with the choices they’re making and the experiences they’ve chosen to have. Because all the experiences we choose, we do so on behalf of God’s unlimitedness. Who AM I to say that God should not have the experience of making a couple million dollars a year and clobbering other people for money? Who AM I to say that this is somehow wrong? If those people are at the stage of evolution where this is what they want to do, bless them and leave them be! And if I feel the inclination to watch an occasional football game, I can choose to enjoy it as a fascinating anthropological phenomenon.

Very liberating. Go Broncos!