Any bourgeois academic or religious zealot who thinks sports do not matter to God– or should not matter in a civilized culture– got a serious beatdown in Miami last night. I have some serious things to say on the subject, though I can’t help but throw in a little humor and irony as well.

Bottom line: sports matter because human culture matters, to scientists, anthropologists, theologians and deities alike. Now, I’m not saying God always cares who WINS a game. I can’t speak for Him or Her. (First rule of faith: There is a God, and I ain’t Him.) But like everything else humans do, football actually matters, and last night proves it.

Let me make my case first, then see what you think:

Despite all the hype about New Orleans and Katrina, and humble, heroic acts by millionaire athletes and regular Joes in the Ninth Ward, what happened in Super Bowl 44 was about as genuine, as real, as pro sports ever get. (And not that this means much, but has anyone noticed that Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States?!) The odds said one thing, but Reality bucked the odds.  The fact that it was one of the cleanest, closest, and most interesting Super Bowls in history only strengthens my belief that God (or Reality, if you prefer) cared. Despite Dwight Freeney’s ankle– the most famous ankle since pitcher Curt Schilling’s bloody sock in his World Series victory– the Colts played a good game and got beat, fair and square. Despite Peyton Manning’s New Orleans roots, his endless study of game films and playbooks, and his seemingly preternatural ability to play the game so well, it was actually Manning’s “random act of blindness” –and the resulting “immaculate interception” by Saint Tracy Porter of Louisiana — that sealed the victory.

Tracy Porter, who attended Indiana University in college. Tracy Porter, who isn’t even the most famous football player named Porter who comes from Louisiana! Okay, …well NOW I suppose Tracy will surpass perennial powerhouse LA Tech’s running back, Daniel Porter, in popularity and internet hits. But be careful here… does anyone outside of New York still remember the name of the receiver who caught the other Son of Thunder brother Eli Manning’s own heroic pass, in the final seconds of the Giants’ last Super Bowl win? (It was David Tyree, but I confess I had to look it up, despite my being a consistent fantasy football enthusiast.)

Okay, back to the sports and religion thing: For you serious academics– Christian, Islamic, secular, whatever — I cite William James’ famous, respectable, and mostly secular 1902 work of psychiatry and philosophy, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature. Long story short, James makes a compelling scientific case for religion’s essential qualities, for the real existence of an overarching deity. Some one causes some things to happen, in real time and space. Within the mind and within the world, experience does not follow strict scientific laws in every case. Or, as we like to say nowadays: “S–t happens.”

Furthermore, C.S. Lewis –that champion of evangelical thinking who many Americans and Europeans have elevated to near-saint status (with good reason, mind you)– makes a similar case in his book The Four Loves. One of the loves — the Greek philia (filial love, or fellowship), our passion, enthusiasm, loyalty and drive to belong, to be part of a team or family — is cited as a godly and perfectly natural phenomenon. Unfortunately, the modern world has sometimes gone to extremes in this, where the former fanaticism of religious ideologues has now been transferred to the manic, needy behavior of tailgating fans with a fifth of hooch and painted faces. Ask any British soccer fan if you don’t believe me: on the continent where religion itself  has almost ceased to matter, soccer is as close to religious experience as the average Jane or Joe gets.

Finally, as any fan of the Boston Red Sox or Chicago Cubs can attest, remaining faithful to a team despite hardship and persecution can be excellent, character-building training for dealing with the joys and hardships of everday life. Before I ever had a good sense of belonging to God or a church, I was a dyed-in-the-wool, hopeful Cubs fan… and will be to the end (an apparently bitter end, unless they win the Series within my lifetime, which I am beginning to doubt will happen).

So I say a hearty “Hallelujah” and “Amen” to anyone for whom a Saints victory is the next big step in God’s recovery plan for the people of New Orleans. For once, the Mighty Casey has not struck out. There’s a whiff of change in the Brees (har har), and I’m still holding out hope that we’ll all pull together, get through these hard times, and get home safe. Someday.

Unless God’s plan becomes a bill that has to get through the House and Senate before being acted upon, that is…

Coming in August : Illinois/Midwest MALEs Rites of Passage

• a 5-day retreat/event/workshop for men age 18-80 who wish to go deeper on their spiritual journey toward wholeness.
• ecumenical, powerful, simultaneously intimate and expansive
• drum circles, prayer, teaching, rituals, dancing – all the classic “warrior”/men’s movement activities, within a Christian framework
• expert facilitators and leaders from all walks of life

Watch this space for more info.

See the blogroll at right (Center for Action and Contemplation, or Illinois MALEs) for links to our website and registration information.

Storytelling Night: I’ll be doing a short-story reading with my friends the Chatliens and several other folks that I’m in a writer’s group with

– this Saturday, Feb. 6 at 7:00.

The catch: it’s pretty far north, in Gurnee, IL. 

Location: Annunciation of Our Lady Episcopal Church, at Stearns School and Dilleys Roads. It is very close to Gurnee Mills. Here is a web page for how to get there:

http://www.annunciationgurnee.org/location/welcome.asp

Several writers from various backgrounds will read their original works (fiction and/or poetry), plus “Yukon Slim” is making a return appearance to tell us more hair-raising tales of the gold-rush days in Alaska. It’s suitable for adults and children over 12. Refreshments will be served. Hope to see some of you!

**What follows is an exercise in applied philosophy and anthropology. Imperfect, without a doubt. But worth talking about.**

How do I hate Windows? Let me count the ways. I’ve been cleaning up and diagnosing problems the past two days on our circa-2005 WinXP Gateway. Thus, I am typing this in the Notepad program now as a multitasking task, while I do some uninstalls, search a hard drive, de-frag a hard drive, and listen to Ani DiFranco sing Amazing Grace (live) — all being done with the same machine, mind you. Plus I can see what time it is, down in the lower right-hand corner of the monitor. I could even be watching a slideshow with my peripheral vision in a separate window off in the upper-left corner if I wanted to. All accomplished by the use of electricity, flowing through some complex arrays of metal and silicone.

My point? Just this: a personal computer is an amazing machine, whether or not it is super-fast, or beefed-up with memory and hard-disk space, or made by Apple, Inc., or physically looks like the latest, sexiest model. My 2nd-grade son just read a book about Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Gustave Eiffel and Louis Pasteur exhibiting their work at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. That was about 125 years ago. Before that, the only electricity that we had any experience with came in the form of lightning.

Now think of how far human invention and technology have come in the past 125 years, compared to the previous 10,000 years. In 1889, plastic did not exist. Plastic. Look around the room you’re in and note how many things are made from plastic. Getting the picture?

We’re now at the point where, with the help of scientists, engineers, creative thinkers and inanimate number-crunching machines, we’re inventing new organic gene combinations. That’s about two steps away from creating life itself –out of nothing but information and a few basic raw materials. We may have differing views when it comes to creating life, playing God, or whatever you want to call it. But that doesn’t change the fact that technology and human knowledge have only recently empowered us even to destroy all life on the planet within a matter of days, for better or worse. If that isn’t aspiring to be godlike, I don’t know what is.

If you spend any time online at all, then last year you probably saw a viral YouTube video of comedian and actor Louis CK on Conan O’Brien’s Late Show, in which CK talked about how spoiled we in the West have become. If you didn’t see it, here it is. Runs about 4 minutes:

Louis cited the development and use of airplanes as a classic example. We get on, zip thru the air, and get off a few hours later thousands of miles away. Ask the ancient Israelites –or even your grandparents– if they would have liked to have that ability. Ask the Haitian people as of right now if they’d like to leave on a jetplane and never come back.

And yet, we humans are not likely to stop complaining about what we can’t do, are we? Why? Because we have a natural distaste for limits, humility, sharing and almost all things “natural”. We prefer to “subdue” the earth, as the book of Genesis puts it, by any means we can discover. And we typically subdue each other, as well. We justify it as the “natural order”, as we compete with each other –and with the animal and vegetable kingdom– for limited resources. It’s the evolutionary imperitive, right?

Wrong. Even without an overarching philosophy or theological system to guide us, if we believed even remotely in *the imperitive of love* above all else (instead of fear), we would have acted quite differently the past 125 years. We would understand what it means to work for the “common good” — a 19th century concept that seems to have gone underground until only recently.

In the age of Marxism (another recent invention dating to 1848), as science and politics subtly went rogue, such cooperation and sharing became tantamount to communism. Then all our old tribal differences kicked into high gear, and in America and Europe we demonized communism as pure evil. That is, until the twin sciences of macroeconomics and social Darwinism took precedence. At that point we expanded our trade efforts with China and Russia, the two largest nations on the planet, setting aside our bias against sharing — at least when confronted with some other tribe or nation whichhas something we want (cheap labor, oil, steel, etc.). Which leaves places like Haiti to struggle, decade after decade — along with most of South America, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Lacking adequate local resources to sustain development, these “developing” nations are left behind, left to try surviving on the gifts and scraps left by the major international players. Or else forced to kill each other over control of a diamond mine, or an oilfield.

On the other hand, I do not wish to be labeled as an ultra-liberal, or a reactionary. I will grant that democracy and capitalism do have natural strengths, and should be held up as models to aspire to as much as possible. But if those flawed systems are used to rationalize violence and abuse — either physical or economic, in Cold Wars, bank bailouts, or massive introduction of pollutants to the atmosphere — then the incredible gains the world has made in the past 125 years will all be for naught… because we won’t be here to enjoy them.

“I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go ’round and ’round. / I really love to watch ‘em roll. / No longer riding on the merry-go-round, / I just had to let it go.“  – Watching the Wheels, John Lennon, 1980

Novelist J.D. Salinger and “leftist” historian Howard Zinn passed away this week, both at an advanced age (91 and 87, respectively). To honor these two giants, I found myself thinking of some lyrics from another literary giant, John Lennon. All three were brave, well-known “radicals”, each in their own way, each in a different era and genre.

Many people probably think of “Imagine” as Lennon’s most important intellectual and spiritual statement in song. And it is a good song, despite being an over-simplified, overplayed,  simple little ditty. But for me, I have always taken two songs from Lennon’s final years as much more meaningful.

One is the above song Wheels, a gentle criticism of Western economic and personal values, in the tradition of Howard Zinn’s influential “People’s History of the United States”. The other song, ”Nobody Told Me” (Strange Days), was actually a posthumous release in 1984 [click here for Chip Madinger's "Strange Days"/Beatles books & blog]. The lyrics are witty and weird, classic Lennon. And the chorus: “Nobody told me there’d be days like these”, was the world-weary wisdom of a disillusioned idealist.

According to the Almighty Wiki, “Watching the Wheels”:

“was the third and final single released from Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy album, and reached #10 in the U.S and #30 in the UK.   “Watching the Wheels” concerns Lennon’s dismissal of those who were confounded by his “househusband” years, 1975-1980. During this period, he stayed away from the music industry and raised his son Sean with Yoko.”

Sounds a bit like Salinger, doesn’t it? Famous guys who hated being famous, and who paid a steep price for it. 

Coincidentally, Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon in 1980, even said the explanation for his act could be found in the pages of “The Catcher in the Rye.”

The particulars on J.D. and his reasons for “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out”, are better stated here in the NY Times obit article. Salinger was probably the last truly great Modernist writer of fiction, and his heavy use of irony in novels and short stories taught generations of “post-modern” writers how to reinvent or overturn a thousand years of literary tradition. Sadly, his last published work appeared over 44 years ago, in June 1965 (just a few months before I was born, in the early days of the Vietnam War –of which Zinn was a steady and loud critic). But Salinger saw 2010 coming a mile away, and didn’t like what he saw. So he retreated, becoming the nation’s most famous recluse.

By contrast, Howard Zinn stayed very much engaged with the world. He was on the faculty of Boston University for years (where my late mother-in-law, an educational psychologist, worked with and respected him). Zinn kept speaking out for reform, both political and academic (would the term “revisionist history” even exist without him?). And he maintained that honest, fierce idealism and populist perspective all the way to the end, even when the Lennons, Salingers and most of the Baby Boomer generation had long given up the revolution to join the loyalists.   I heard Zinn speak at Northwestern University a few years back, at the height of the Iraqi conflict, and he was as brilliant and reasonable at 84 as he probably was at 44, or even 24.

Here’s a quote from boston.com:

 ”He’s made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture,” Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said Wednesday. “He’s changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can’t think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect.”

Each of us can think what we want of the ideology put forward by these men. Schools can continue to ban Salinger. Politicians can continue to keep us in the dark and use the poor as cannon fodder for silly little wars. The FBI can keep tabs on the activist/artist inheritors of John Lennon’s legacy, like Hoover and Nixon did to Lennon. ( For example, CSIS –the Canadian version of the CIA– has hassled progressive Christian musician Bruce Cockburn for years.) But no one can deny their intelligence and their courage.

We’ll take it from here, J.D. and Howard. Big shoes to fill, but we’ll do what we can.

True North                                     by Mark Nielsen  - Jan. 28, 2010

On the lamp table
out of the corner of my eye,
I see that dime you asked me for
so you could finish your homework
– some 2nd grade geometry thing.

Do you see
that stray, lonely Frasier fir needle,
hanging from the solitary invisible thread
of a spider web–
caught between death and Christmas,
spinning in infinity?
It reminds me I have not taken
my daily dose of evergreen
in several weeks.
That’s why I feel sick.
I actually had a date with death –
you did, too–
but it was canceled by the holiest miracle,
the coronation of the Forever King.

Did I tell you about the names of God?
Thousands of them. Nine million.
As many as the stars in the heavens.
So here’s some geometry for you, son:
the shortest distance between perfect love
and the North Star
is a straight line.

Steer by that star.
It will never go out.

Doing some research and prayers today, I had to go looking for the lyrics to Canadian Leonard Cohen’s classic song “Hallelujah” (Jeff Buckley does the best-known American cover version, and a John Cale version also appears in the movie Shrek). Found out –or was reminded– that there are at least two significantly different versions of the lyric, with very little crossover in the verses. For nitty-gritty details on the song, its history & who has covered it, go to wikipedia… they do it far better than I can here.

First, here’s the original album cut, the Cohen version (and later Buckley’s, though he dropped the last verse), as recorded on Leonard’s Various Positions album in 1984. Note the references to King David and Sampson and Delilah from the Old Testament:

Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen (from Leonard Cohen Live in Concert)

I’ve heard there was a secret chord
that David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, Do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor Fall, The major lift,
The baffled king composing, hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne
she cut your hair and from your lips she drew the halleujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe I’ve been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What’s real and going on below
but now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah… etc.

I did my best, it wasn’t much.
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch.
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come all this way to fool you.

Yeah even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand right here before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

Next, here’s the alternate version that I think I’ve heard. It drops the direct biblical references, and the bit about musical chords, switches some of the older lyrics around, and also adds a bit of new material. The only unchanged part is the last verse, in position and word choice. However, I don’t think Cohen ever released a studio version of this lyric, only a live one on Cohen Live (1994):

Baby, I’ve been here before.
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.
Yeah I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch,
But listen, love is not some kind of victory march,
No it’s a cold and it’s a very broken Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, (Hallelujah…)

There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below,
Ah but now you never show it to me, do you?
Yeah but I remember, yeah when I moved in you,
And the holy dove, she was moving too,
Yes every single breath that we drew was Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

Maybe there’s a God above,
As for me, all I’ve ever seemed to learn from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
Yeah but it’s not a complaint that you hear tonight,
It’s not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light
No it’s a cold and it’s a very lonely Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

I did my best, it wasn’t much.
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch.
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come all this way to fool you.
Yeah even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand right here before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

Finally, a fun little link to a Squidoo page by Carlos Scarpero, a spot where videos of many of the 25 years worth of cover versions are collected in one spot. It’s his most covered song, and wiki sez Leonard’s favorite so far is this live Bon Jovi version (a surprise to me, as I often undestimate Bon Jovi). Another version collected there is by one of my favorite Christian bands, Over the Rhine. I might like that one best, but have not heard very many overall, so I can’t say for sure.

Cohen’s own croaky voice  is an acquired taste (like his pal Dylan’s –who has also covered this & played it live), and I’m sure all this is T.M.I. for most non-fans. But for them whose light and life hangs on little details like these, I hope you enjoy it! Discuss as you feel led —>

(Yes that title’s an homage to former Cub broadcasters Jack Brickhouse and Harry “Holy Cow” Carey, for those keeping score. Now on to our real subject: communion — boring though it may be compared to the “hot stove” league.)

This may have been obvious to millions of people over the years, but for some reason one simple piece of information about the Last Supper seems to have sort of escaped me till now:

The grail was not the mythical, golden $20,000 jewel-encrusted chalice we we’ve been told it was by well-intentioned artists and ministers. No, it was instead two cents worth of clay – thrown on a wheel and fired in a simple oven.

The contrast occurred to me at communion last sunday, when I had a choice between a golden (brass?) chalice and a simple brown pottery cup. (I went for pottery.)

The original grail must have looked like the brown one. It probably had chips, was well-used and unpainted, and occupied no place of honor at the table, neither before nor after that day.

And then it was lost — contrary to all those cool legends involving knights who say “Nee!”. And for that matter, has any other cup also been called a grail, or was that the only one ever made? It’s funny to think about (okay, funny to me…)

I believe the grail was lost because it was not the point: the contents were. The blood and the Spirit did their work from that moment onward, and the grail was almost certainly shattered eventually, and returned to the earth from whence it came. Like that whole ashes-to-ashes thing. You may even have tread upon some of the dust of it yourself.

Jesus was a poor man, as were most of his friends. But to badly paraphrase those Mastercard commercials: “One ancient clay cup: Two cents.  Drinking wine that enfolds you in a community and redeems all of mankind: priceless.”

Tuesday is Christmas Eve for Eastern Orthodox, Coptic and several other Christian traditions (also, Jan. 6=Epiphany for Roman Catholics and others) . So in honor of these celebrations– and because God poked me to say “Post this”– I present the new poem below.

BTW, for a fantastic OLD poem about Epiphany, the Wise Men and Christmas, check out T.S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi, from 1927.

Now,  Kala Christougena! …and on to my poem:

Bethlehem Lost   by Mark Nielsen

In the original Hebrew,

Beth lehem means “house of bread”.

And the Bread of Life did come from there.

(The Arabs call it “house of meat”–

ironic, for He was all three: bread, meat, life…

also known as Father, Son, Spirit.)

Then the British came to Palestine,

made a royal mess of the city,

and named –of all things –

a London psychiatric hospital after it.

The poor Cockneys who feared madness

called it Bet-lem.

The British nobles–

who could afford to keep their madness at home

behind closed doors,

to spare themselves embarrassment –

stole something else from the poor

and invented a new word for this madness:

bedlam.

In America, we have a nearly dead steeltown

that went back to the original name:

Bethlehem, PA.

It didn’t work.

The Bethlehem plants still closed.

And the houses of miners and houses of steelworkers

didn’t have much bread left in them.

Not much life, either.

And the original town where my Lord was born

has had nothing but senseless bloodshed

since Herod first slaughtered the innocents.

Where are those wise men now that we need them?

                                              -by Mark Nielsen,  January 5, 2009

 Holidays got busy, and not over yet…

Meanwhile, I’ve been poking around on my computer in the deep recesses of  folders-within-folders-within folders of saved material, and finding some lost gems.

For instance musically, try this Patty Larkin/Bruce Cockburn duet on for size:

<a href=”http://www.rhapsody.com/goto?rcid=alb.94690&variant=play&lsrc=RN_htm”><img src=”http://static.realone.com/rotw/images/buttons/playsm.gif” width=”20″ height=”20″ border=”0″> Strangers World – Patty Larkin</a>

Happy New Year!