Riding the Wave (Bot9 #311)
Think back to your favorite moment at the ballpark. I’m sure there are as many for you as there are for me, but think of one that was so magical you couldn’t wait to tell the story of your experience to someone who wasn’t there. I think back to watching Bo Jackson destroy a home run we swore hit the centerfield scoreboard at Royals Stadium when I was a kid. The stands were packed, we were watching probably the greatest athlete ever do things not witnessed by humankind, and it was July 4th. It was a moment in time when I was 13 and it still holds a cherished place in my mind.
But there are other moments far more memorable and special to history than a single home run. Playoff games, championship-clinching plays, and iconic moments when long-standing records fell stick in the minds of a greater number of people as a common, shared experience. John Sexton wrote about this idea in his book Baseball as a Road to God in this way.
As the cheering crowd rose in awe, Ripken circled not the bases but the entire ballpark, stopping frequently to shake hands with fans along the rails. The effect was as magical as it was celebratory. In their book All Things Shining, philosophers Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly describe how, in such moments, “something overwhelming occurs.” As they put it, the cheering crowd “wells up and carries you along as on a powerful wave. The wave metaphor is crucial here. Then a wave is at its most powerful, it is a solid foundation that can support as many riders as will fit upon it. It can even sweep up more as it runs along. But when the wave passes, nothing but its memory survives. Try to stand upon the still water and you’ll find that the supporting foundation is gone. Those moments of sport are like that. When you are in the midst of them, riding the wave, they carry you along and give meaning to life.”
A great team experience is like this as well. There’s a foundation of people who sweep in as many of the rest of the group who desires to ride. Then, at the end of the season, only the memories of the shared experience exist. While you’re in the middle of them, a great team can provide meaning and purpose to your life.
As I’ve continued to dive deeper into making my faith a part of my every day sports experience, I think about the truth of this wave metaphor. I can’t swim and I’ve certainly never surfed so I can’t speak to the feeling a wave might provide its riders. But the idea resonates deeply to the temporary nature of the world and our experiences within it. Sports provide us with an element of seasonality, a way to break up the experiences of life, of each wave that comes our way.
Yet there are moments that will live on as memories which provide a deeper meaning to life. When you have the opportunity to speak the truth of God to people on the field, it puts you into the ocean of eternity where you ride waves which never crash. I got to experience one of those moments this week as our softball season ended and one of our seniors spoke about an experience we had shared during her freshman year. She explained how she lacked the confidence to play on a high-level team as a freshman and was expressing her anxiety to me in the outfield. As she recounted the moment from four years ago, she read the Bible verses I read to her that day four years ago so beautifully and eloquently to the crowd at the banquet. It was one of the most overwhelming moments I’ve experienced in my life. She was reading to the group what I had read to her. I heard her voice speak the same words I had spoken to her. The Word had brought her peace and she saw her place in the body. It brought her life.
We know the Word is life and Jesus is the living water. I wonder sometimes why we choose the narratives of the history of games to bring us life, when there’s only one wave we should be trying to ride. Jump into the ocean of eternity and let Jesus sweep you up into the foundation of His wave. There are people riding the wave already, join in with us as we see where it takes us all!