Where Football Tears, Poetry Mends ...

Another marriage milestone ... our 3rd rival-versary, in which we endure the third fourth Saturday of October without reneging on our vows.

This year was tougher and easier, all at once.

Tougher because one of our teams was ranked #1 in the nation in one of the polls. Tougher because the other team has a new coach and had already lost to those we don't speak of.

For those who read this from outside the Southeastern Conference, this may seem melodramatic, but football is carried in the bloodlines around here, and there is no love between the Vols and the Crimson Tide.

Except, there is.

And he looks like this:



And he grins wide and says "Go vawws wole tide wole!" all together, unaware of the contradiction, or perhaps, in hope of mending it.  And that's the easier part.

We forged a new family tradition by heralding the morning with both team's fight songs, then made a "game day parade," leisurely nudging a stroller with team streamers attached and watching as flittering flakes of amber carpeted our maple-lined street. Then we rattled around in antique shops in the quaint Mayberry-esque downtown a stone's throw from our house. Afterwards, Beckham took his pre-game nap and I pushed up my orange sleeves to scrape banana pancakes off the breakfast plates.

While washing, I put on a Tim Keller sermon and felt the suds of his words sink into my soul. He spoke of a hope that is not of this world and gave a call to live so that others might trace our steps back to the One whose won-lost record is life-changing.

Now I'm no killjoy, and I haven't lost my assurance that there will be tailgating in heaven, but it was mighty hard to get all "life and death" about a football game with God working his chisel at my (orange) heart.

As a high school and college athlete, I always took the adjective "competitive" as a compliment.  And in some situations, it can be.  Leave all of this "give everybody a trophy" business alone.  Competition (in the right context and with the right attitude) ensures that we are striving for excellence.  It motivates us to be our best.  And ... it's fun.  There's another side of being competitive, however ... one that has my footprints all over it.  It's what C.S. Lewis talks about in a chapter of Mere Christianity:

The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive - is competitive by its very nature - while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

College football is a glorious thing -- a Saturday tradition that is fun to enjoy with family and friends -- but when we switch from cheering to jeering, it creates a space for the ugly.  I saw some of that ugly this weekend, and what makes it so hard to confront is how deceptively prideful it is.  Being proud of my college?  Great.  Being offended when someone puts down my school?  Understandable.  Being so miffed that I snap out a sarcastic (albeit funny), biting retort?  Ehh... probably not me at my best.

So I went for it.  I tried my best to battle pride while my Vols were battling Satan's Saban's team.

It looked something like this:

Wow, we're really outplaying them, ranking or no.  Perhaps I should call this to Ryan's attention.
Fight back pride.

Are you serious?  They're acting like that lineman deserves the Heisman for blocking that kick, when in reality, the replay clearly shows that the (less than stellar) kicker planted one straight in his armpit.  That was much more "fat kids gets put out in dodge ball" than it was athleticism.

Oops.  Let's try less of that and more of fighting back pride.

Whaaat?  After four quarters of being outplayed, is the entire Alabama cheering section REALLY chanting "We just beat the hell out of you?"
Choke on pride.  It burns.  Try to congratulate husband.

Competition separates.  Kept in check, it's all in good fun and there can be reconcilliation.  Left to itself, it morphs into ugly pride.... a pride that can separate husband from wife.  A pride that separates all from God.

As for us, we reconciled.  We lived to fight another year.  Ryan's parents took Beckham after church so that we could share a straw and hold hands in the dark while watching a movie.

And not just any movie ... THIS movie.  [knees go faint just posting this]



So in the end, in the battle between football and poetry (two competing loves of mine ... weird, I know), poetry won.  In a single salty popcorn smooch, Love tackled Competition.

Go Vols.  Go Keats.

BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task	5
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,	10
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.