Why Win?

Apart from a brief stint in middle school basketball, I never played competitive sports.  This is not to

"Don Quixote" Pablo Picasso

say I did not compete; I was involved in a variety of competitive theater and music activities through high school.  These two varieties of competition are not without similarity.  Both require dedication.  Both commonly draw upon reserves of strength and talent of which one is ordinarily unaware.  Both demand that one perform at the peak of excellence on command.  Yet, somehow athletic competition remains distinct from other varieties of competition.  Athletic competition is raw, savage, and primal.  Athletic competition arises primarily from the part of man that is still mostly governed by the instinct to survive.  For this reason, I posit, it manages to provoke human passion as little else can.

I have been thinking about this question at some length, trying to understand the power of sports.  One of the young men with whom I associate regularly is a college football player.  Perhaps more accurately, he is on the football team.  He has played the game since middle school, he has demonstrated a fanatic devotion to the Greenbay Packers for decades, and at each of the major turning points in his life, some portion of his decision has pivoted upon how football will fit into the plan.  There is very little in this young man's life about which I am unaware, and we have a rapport as good as you will find anywhere.  I know him.  Still, this is a part of his life that baffles me.  I do not understand it.  I have never felt so passionately about something that objectively so insignificant.  What difference does football make?  He and I discussed the question recently, and though I still cannot make sense of his subjective attachment to the game, I think we have begun to arrive at some sort of philosophical explanation of the power of sport.

It begins thus.  Sport is attractive because it entails two essential elements.  First, it presents an obstacle.  This obstacle is of the variety that at the visceral level, it presents a threat to ones sense of being, analogous to the threats primitive man knew.  He was forced to compete, to fight in order to live, to eat, and to mate.  Such threats could only be answered by means of physical dominance.  Thus, the second element of sports becomes apparent.  There is a clear winner and a clear loser.  Sport ignites human passion because it speaks to a primal drive to survive.

Modern man, however, has no need to battle for survival in this fashion.  In fact, the transitions of man from one period of history to another have been marked most significantly by the advances he has made in using his brain so as to provide advantages over adversaries such that he avoid the need for such conflict.  Regardless or the degree of advancement, however, man finds that he is always confronted with one foe over whom he cannot win final victory.  This foe is himself.  Regardless of his strength, his speed, and his ability, man remains finite.  He is bound by time and space.  He eventually achieves a threshold across which his body will not bear him.  Herein lies the ultimate attraction of sport.  It permits (requires?) one to thrust oneself continually against the outmost boundaries of his ability hoping to push the boundary further away.  Like Icarus, he wonders how close to the sun he might fly, before plummeting into the abyss.  How tall can the men of earth build a tower before the tower collapses.  If man be like God, how much like God might he be?

In this question lies the value of sport and the innate drive to compete.  Among the powers of the soul God has given to men is the power of the will to desire the good.  This desire is insatiable, longing as it were, for nothing less than the infinite.  Because of this, it pushes man to constantly long for the "something more."  This something more remains constantly just beyond his reach.  As such, man discovers his only satisfaction can be found in God, who alone possesses the capacity to satiate an infinite longing.  To the extent that competition and sport push man to become what in God he already is, to become more and more what he will only fully become through perfect union with God, sport is good.  To the extent that sport reveals to man that he is created for more than the limits of a fallen nature permit him, it has value.  To the extent that it makes man better than he was, it is good, virtuous, and glorious.  To the extent that sport is simply for the fading glory of victory, for a crown of laurels that whither, it is foolishness.

Don Quixote, at least as presented in "The Man of La Mancha" understood this idea.  As he sang in the musical:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To be willing to give when there's no more to give
To be willing to die so that honor and justice may live

And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

Merry Christmas 2014

The posting of my Christmas letter is just a month late this year.  It is a resolution of mine to blog more often this year.  Perhaps a few days off will afford me the opportunity to work on some ideas that I have been kicking around.   

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December 2014 

Merry Christmas! 

A year ago in January, I accomplished my thirty-third successful trip around the sun. Catholic friends were quick to remind me that Jesus died in his thirty-third year. I reminded them that his death happened only after many had come to believe that he was the Messiah. Much to my own dismay, few seem to suspect the same about me. I am not the Messiah, but, like everyone else, I need him to save me. 

I was shocked to discover, while on vacation in September, that my friends are getting old. A smile from one of them revealed wrinkles around the eyes that had not been there the year previous. The hair of another is now tinseled with silver. The vanity of a third friend required him to shave his beard for the same reason. I could not, for my part, identify how I had aged outwardly in a year. Interiorly, though, I feel older. I find I am more sensitive to the invisible ways that people suffer. I acknowledge more readily that people do what they do, for good or for ill, motivated by a desire to be happy. Daily, the voice of the Holy Spirit finds a way to whisper to me, “You will be judged according to how you have loved.” These observations are made more poignant after a truly exceptional retreat in October wherein Jesus gently but emphatically reminded me of how much he loves me. 

My thoughts turn often to my family these days. I fear I have neglected them in my five years of priesthood. None of us anticipated how often my own sense of duty would deprive me of time with them. Both of my brothers live on the ranch now, pursuing dreams of becoming cattle barons. I harbor no such desires myself, but I am jealous of the amount of time they spend together. I anticipate spending a week on the ranch in January. That should be enough time to remind me that while always my home, I do not want to live there. 

 I also find myself thinking often of Fr. Peter Kovarik. More than 1,000 people attended his funeral. I have never seen the Cathedral so full. He touched many lives. That is what happens when you love people. That is what happens when you allow Jesus to love people through you. I hope that my own funeral is well-attended someday as a testament that I have loved well. Thus, for another year, the Lord has been softening my heart, stretching my capacity to love, knocking down walls of pride, and inviting me to give him more of myself. He reminds me day by day that the first posture of the Christian before God is one of gratitude. He has given me so much, and among these gifts is you. Thank you for teaching me to love. Thank you for all you do for me. I am deeply grateful. 

Sincerely yours in Christ, 
Fr. Tyler