Sport and Religion, Chapter and Verse

The below is some reflections that I have been having on the place of sport in Australian life, more particularly my own... but it seems symptomatic of Australian society (Melbourne Cup day was mooted for a public holiday again .. Anzac Day, has a game of football - AFL, New Years Day has the Cricket test.. and I go on....)

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For our nation, Sunday comes, and it is time to head to the cathedral again not with stained glass windows but towers of light, not with bibles, but the Record or the Big League we sing the club song instead of Hymns, and we chant, shout and sledge.

This is the cathedral of the 21st Century, the Australian Church, as we worship mortals chasing leather, reading their scripts, and watching them act, in the theatre of dreams, rather than singing praises to the mighty and living creator.

We dress for the occasion wearing our colours as we see good, wrestle evil. For a season, our dreams are their dreams, we unite with colleagues discussing the common dream, a grand final win, a semi final birth, and the great robbery under lights, our fate, united to theirs, as we read their scripts, and dread that the off season will be long once again.

The stadiums of today, are theatres of dreams, idols of weary souls, as we find fulfillment in two numbers after 90mins, rejoiced for days, confined to history, and remembered by few. The promises it offers as we see heroes run around writing a script we wish was from ourselves. We join with them seeing our place in the sun come, as they to the battle field go.

Football, (or whatever sport you run with) is a major distraction from removing us from worshipping the living Creator, as it drags us all to easily away from our church family, and away from the Creator God.

Our nation won't see a ticker tape parade without a World Cup, without gold medals, a ticker tape parade will not come for harmony, melody, and unity, for poetry, for dance, for success in science. We do not value the word, woven into music, painted into art, and spun into a story.

And as our heroes fade, their achievements seemingly etched in time; these figures and achievements become folklore, and players are deified as God, the greatest Australian, or Australian of the year - anyone stating other, slandered, or ignored, or even called un-Australian.