Show Up
Growing
up in Peoria my family often went to Peoria Chiefs baseball games at old Meinen
Field. I remember chatting my dad’s ear off asking him about where we were
sitting, if I could get autographs from these no-name ball players who one day
would be the next Ozzie Smith or Ken Griffey Jr., and what the chances were
of me snagging a foul ball. I went with great expectations.
Now
that I am much older and more aware of the beauty and the spirituality of the
game, I have come to realize not only why so many continue to go watch a bad
ball club but also the reason why I go myself:
connection.
We
are a part of a world of disconnection. Things were created
to be a certain way, and they are not that way, and we feel it in every fiber
of our being.
We
feel it when our heart sinks at the sight of Styrofoam cups and burger wrappers
lining our creek beds rather than flowers bursting with beautiful blooms.
A disconnection
with the environment.
We
feel it when we realize what once gave us life --a relationship, our work, and
perhaps even our church-- now feels like an obligation, something that exhausts
rather than excites and inspires.
A disconnection with each other.
A disconnection with each other.
But
it hasn’t always been like this. In the first chapter of Genesis, when God
creates the first people, God blesses them. This is significant. The story
begins with humans in right relationship—in healthy, life-giving connection—with
their maker. All of their relationships flowed from the health of this one
central relationship—people and God.(1)
Then,
like the 2003 Cubs team, everything goes south. They choose another way. And
they become disconnected. They are told there will be conflict between one
another; there will be conflict between them and the soil.
We’re
severed and cut off, disconnected in a thousand ways, and
we know it, feel it, and are aware of it every day. It’s an ache in our bones
that won’t go away. And so from an early age we have this awareness of the
state of disconnection we were born into, and we have a longing to
reconnect.
 |
| "Stadiums are less majestic at times, but several are famously intimate, linked to their communities by their own histories and traditions, representing much more than concrete and steel... Only the spiritually numb would miss the wonder of Wrigley Field, one of only two stadiums [the other being Fenway Park] still standing from the construction binge that began early in the last century..." ~John Sexton, Baseball As A Road To God |
I
face the traffic of Lake Shore Drive during the dog days of summer to catch a
baseball game for that reason. It is why you go to the Met in New York to be
with a group of people and listen to an opera that will move you in ways you
never have been before. It is why you go on that boat trip or hiking trip with
your buddies because what you see and experience reconnects you not only
to each other, not only to yourself, but to something greater:
to
the God who dwells within you.
Standing
up and stretching while singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” connects
us to something beyond ourselves. We don’t know all those who have gathered. We
come from vastly different backgrounds, we disagree on hundreds of issues, but
for an evening, for a fleeting moment, we gather around these ball players and
that artwork, this artist and these songs, and we get along –we connect.
The experience moves us because it taps into how things were meant to be, and
few places exist where we can experience what God intended on such a large
scale.
That
desire is why people continue to show up, for a hundred years now, to Addison
and Clark. It’s why we walk through the doors of any concert, church service,
or rally for a just cause. We feel connected to the people we’re having
the experience with, and not just connected, but the experience taps
into that awareness of something bigger than all of us that we’re brushing up
against in the process.
That
in itself is reason enough
to
show
up.
(1) Sex God by Rob Bell
No comments:
Post a Comment