[Oe List ...] football etc.

[W. J.]

I've always had zero interest in football (although I did play clarinet in DUMB [Duke University Marching Band] back in the dark ages, which involved going to a lot of football games and doing those halftime [halfassed was more like it] shows, etc. It was somewhere between dumb and pointless--especially for my grade point average).

So I can't really comment on the current thread topics. I'm not an expert fan.
My only theological insight is about loss. And I'm not talking about losing a game, even the Superbowl--though there might be some theological insight to be found there.

It is about loss of functional clarity of mind after a series of concussions.
 
In our group I learned that we accepted huge risks--including the possibility of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual 'disasters'--that somehow became meaningful in the context of giving ourselves fully to the necessary, practical immediacies of doing a global mission that transcended our little piece of it in the moment.

And of course we had our share of tragic disasters. Religious houses burning down. Sexual abuse. Substance abuse. Phil Townley (don't ask!). And I could go on. I sometimes encounter colleagues who are still battling their old issues with the O:E. The walking wounded still among us sometimes come to visit and spill out their painful stories with great intensity, with a faraway look in their eyes, or with a certain haunted, glazed look that suggests that they're not able to be fully in the present.
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