Learning from sports

Nineteenth century spiritual pioneer Mary Baker Eddy once wrote in a Boston Herald newspaper article, “Look high enough, and you see the heart of humanity warming and winning.”

Those of us who watched the televised January 6 assault on the US capitol were grateful eventually to see many hearts “warming and winning” as reporters and columnists thoughtfully considered the range of issues crying for attention.

No one had to look for front-page stories, and even sports columnists such as Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post were transformed into political commentators of a kind—with a readiness to look higher for satisfying, far-reaching outcomes.

Jenkins, who is respected as one of the most astute, critical, and often funniest observers of the professional sporting scene, couldn’t resist allusions drawn from several sports.

Commenting on the former president’s insistence on a rigged election, Jenkins pointed out the difference between a Patrick Mahomes, a LeBron James, a Sue Bird, or any other athlete-champion activist, and those who invaded the Capitol building.

One is an expert in real power and voluntary constraint of it, she said, while the other instinctively breaks things  down because he or she is too weak to build themselves up.

These violent protesters, Jenkins went on, miss the exercise of power entirely. The most powerful thing athletes do with their muscle is not run or rampage. It’s stop.

Every Saturday and Sunday, says Jenkins, minor miracles occur in our competitive spaces. Groups of large men and women hurl themselves at one another to the point of potential endangerment, yet manage self-control.

“The dangers are not incidental to the game; they are fundamental,“ she concludes. “The game has always has been partly an experiment in learning—and mis-learning—how we want our larger societal rules to work.”

Jenkins repeats: When players reach the sidelines, they stop. Most of them instantly reel in their uncoiled energy to preserve not just themselves but their opponents. That, she says, is “real, honest-to-God power; and it’s a marvel to watch and admire.”

Jenkins suggests that keenly contested sports aren’t actually about violence, but about real violence averted. If you break the rules, you get ejected.

Significantly, those mentally and physically strong men and women mostly accede to this higher authority, no matter how aggrieved or wronged they feel—and there are no deliberately vengeful, retaliatory actions once the game is over.

I suggest that sporting contests offer many other helpful analogies and life-lessons, showing countless participants whose example deserves to be admired and emulated.      Especially in the universal struggle between good and evil, such athletes lift the hearts of all of us to higher levels of Eddy’s goal of warmth and winning.