The Thursday Review: Squash and the Spiritual Life

first published May 26, 2011

If you were like me growing up in church, analogies for the Christian life taken from the world of sport (and somehow these seemed ubiquitous in the pulpits of my youth) always came off as a little contrived.  The ones that didn't leave you flat felt forced.  I recognize, of course, that sporting analogies have a long and deep biblical tradition.  Paul himself likened the Christian disciple at various times to a boxer in training, a runner in a footrace, an Olympic athlete striving for the laurels.  But comparing an Ephesians 1:17 Christian to a basketball player putting up a hail Mary against the final buzzer in the championship game (true story, true sermon) leaves one feeling like the preacher cared more about his sport of choice than the text he was wrestling with that week.

My sport of choice is squash.  And the above paragraph is my disclaimer for the squash-court epiphany I'd like to share today.  I was playing with my regular partner the other day, and, though I started off strong, somewhere around the third game in the match, I noticed things starting to slip away from me.  I was running ragged, wearing down, chasing shots from pillar to post.  Between gasps for oxygen, I could smell skunk on the wind.

Now for those who haven't played, or maybe forget, there's a T roughly in the centre of the squash court (and a little to the back), where the two serving lines converge. It's the prime piece of real-estate in squash, because as long as you're hovering roughly over the T, you can see most of the court laid out in front of you.  From the T, you can anticipate drop-shots before they happen; from the T you can reach the back corners with ease; from the T you're in control of your game, and usually his as well.  But as my game slowly unraveled, I suddenly realized that I'd not been keeping on the T. Instead I'd been chasing balls all over the place-- into the front pocket, digging deep cross-court, down into the opposite corner, now kitty-corner to where I was before.  No wonder I was running down and running out of steam.

As I gasped for breath again between serves, I made a determined decision to stay on the T.  After my serve, hover on the T; after my return, get on the T; after that long lunge to recover a drop shot, back to the T.  And my game came back.  It was actually quite amazing how quickly peace descended on me, as long as I stayed on the T.

Now for the epiphany:  because in that moment, as I realized the difference staying on the T made to my game, I suddenly saw an analogy for the Christian life-- for my Christian life. When we "get off the T," and start chasing balls - our personal ambitions, fears, goals, agendas - into the corners and along the edges of life, the game unravels really quickly.  When won't hover on the T, we risk burning up our spiritual stamina and burning out our hearts.  When we fail to "get back on the T" after every shot, we wind up playing more and more desperately and out of control.

And the T is Christ. 

And almost like the sting of a squash ball between the shoulder blades, it walloped me:  "You've not been staying on the T." Blogs are probably not the best forums for true confessions, but let me at least say that right there on the court, in one of those rare flashes of clarity, I saw how sloppy I'd become in my discipleship of late, and next to that I saw how much burn-out and chaos I'd been feeling in my spiritual life as a result.  And I realized the two were intimately connected:  I'd not been staying on the T, and my heart knew it, and my soul had lost its wind because of it. The welt stung, of course, but it also woke me up:  as long as you're staying as close to Christ as you possibly can, and keep your eyes open for where he is in any given moment, and move there, you'll be playing (as Paul might have said) "in such a way as to win the prize."

I won't tell you the final score that day, but I will tell you that I left the court with new resolve and eagerness to play (if I haven't yet pushed the sporting analogy too far)-- to play with my heart hovering "on the T."

Sqaush and the Spiritual Life

If you were like me growing up in church, analogies for the Christian life taken from the world of sport (and somehow these seemed ubiquitous in the pulpits of my youth) always came off as a little contrived.  The ones that didn't leave you flat felt forced.  I recognize, of course, that sporting analogies have a long and deep biblical tradition.  Paul himself likened the Christian disciple at various times to a boxer in training, a runner in a footrace, an Olympic athlete striving for the laurels.  But comparing an Ephesians 1:17 Christian to a basketball player putting up a hail Mary against the final buzzer in the championship game (true story, true sermon) leaves one feeling like the preacher cared more about his sport of choice than the text he was wrestling with that week.

My sport of choice is squash.  And the above paragraph is my disclaimer for the squash-court epiphany I'd like to share today.  I was playing with my regular partner the other day, and, though I started off strong, somewhere around the third game in the match, I noticed things starting to slip away from me.  I was running ragged, wearing down, chasing shots from pillar to post.  Between gasps for oxygen, I could smell skunk on the wind.

Now for those who haven't played, or maybe forget, there's a T roughly in the centre of the squash court (and a little to the back), where the two serving lines converge. It's the prime piece of real-estate in squash, because as long as you're hovering roughly over the T, you can see most of the court laid out in front of you.  From the T, you can anticipate drop-shots before they happen; from the T you can reach the back corners with ease; from the T you're in control of your game, and usually his as well.  But as my game slowly unraveled, I suddenly realized that I'd not been keeping on the T. Instead I'd been chasing balls all over the place-- into the front pocket, digging deep cross-court, down into the opposite corner, now kitty-corner to where I was before.  No wonder I was running down and running out of steam.

As I gasped for breath again between serves, I made a determined decision to stay on the T.  After my serve, hover on the T; after my return, get on the T; after that long lunge to recover a drop shot, back to the T.  And my game came back.  It was actually quite amazing how quickly peace descended on me, as long as I stayed on the T.

Now for the epiphany:  because in that moment, as I realized the difference staying on the T made to my game, I suddenly saw an analogy for the Christian life-- for my Christian life. When we "get off the T," and start chasing balls - our personal ambitions, fears, goals, agendas - into the corners and along the edges of life, the game unravels really quickly.  When won't hover on the T, we risk burning up our spiritual stamina and burning out our hearts.  When we fail to "get back on the T" after every shot, we wind up playing more and more desperately and out of control.

And the T is Christ. 

And almost like the sting of a squash ball between the shoulder blades, it walloped me:  "You've not been staying on the T." Blogs are probably not the best forums for true confessions, but let me at least say that right there on the court, in one of those rare flashes of clarity, I saw how sloppy I'd become in my discipleship of late, and next to that I saw how much burn-out and chaos I'd been feeling in my spiritual life as a result.  And I realized the two were intimately connected:  I'd not been staying on the T, and my heart knew it, and my soul had lost its wind because of it. The welt stung, of course, but it also woke me up:  as long as you're staying as close to Christ as you possibly can, and keep your eyes open for where he is in any given moment, and move there, you'll be playing (as Paul might have said) "in such a way as to win the prize."

I won't tell you the final score that day, but I will tell you that I left the court with new resolve and eagerness to play (if I haven't yet pushed the sporting analogy too far)-- to play with my heart hovering "on the T."

Confessions of a Fencing Dad

Last night my son had his season-end tournament at the fencing club he's part of. Here's some footage of one of his bouts (that's him on the near/right side).

How did he do in the tourament? Well, I don't want to sound like a "fencing dad" or anything, but fans of The Princess Bride will understand me when I say: if ever I'm stabbed by a six-fingered man, I know who I want avenging my death.

It's Fun to Stay at the...

This summer my family signed up for a membership at the local Y. Nothing intentionally spiritual in this decision, we just wanted a bit of motivation to do some more active things together as a family. And that's primarily what it's been: the kids have signed up for karate, junior life-guarding club, swimming lessons; we've spent a few Saturdays together climbing on the climbing wall; we've made it down to the gym on a relatively frequent basis.

Like I say: there was nothing explicitly spiritual in this decision, we just wanted a bit of motivation.

But yesterday I was walking out of the gym after an early morning workout, aching arms and a vivid awareness that I was alive burning in my chest, and it struck me that the "C" in YMCA has always stood for "Christian." The roots are buried pretty deep now, but the YMCA was actually founded as a Christian movement, with the goal of improving the spiritual condition of young men in London England. Back in 1844, a London draper named George Williams was watching people flock to the cities looking for work, and seeing the effect of the Industrial Revolution on their spiritual well being. He was particularly concerned over the lack of healthy activities for young men, and their tendency to turn to unhealthy alternatives like gambling, brothels and taverns instead. So on June 6 he founded the first ever YMCA, with the Christian goal of helping young men develop a healthy "spirit, mind and body."

Again, those roots are buried deep now, but one hundred and sixty six years later, the YMCA still maintains its commitment to the three principles of healthy spirits/minds/bodies; and, while there is nothing explicitly Christian in its four core values, I doubt any Christian would take issue with a movement that encouraged caring, honesty, responsibility and respect.

I wonder, though, if there isn't something even more biblical to the three principles of healthy spirits, minds and bodies than meets the eye. Often the Christian understanding of the human being is coloured more by Greek philosophical categories than biblical ones, and so we tend to assume the physical body is somehow less important than the immaterial "soul," which, we hasten to add, constitutes the "true self."

This is a more complex theological issue than a 600 word blog post could ever unpack, but let me at least suggest here, in concert with a general consensus among contemporary biblical scholars and theologians, that such a dualism is foreign to the biblical understanding of the "self." If Genesis 2:7 can at all be our guide on these matters, then whatever else we are, we are nephesh-- living creatures made of matter-animated-with-the-divine-breath-of-God.

Put differently: I don't "have a body," biblically speaking, I "am a body." Or, as Marrianne Hicks puts it: "'I' come into being and live and grow ... in the inextricable interconnection of matter and spirit” Or as Stan Grenz puts it: "We must follow the lead of ... the Bible... and adopt a holistic view of the human person. ... The human person is by design one indivisible reality."

What does all this have to do with the Christian life? I'm not exactly sure, but if these readings of biblical anthropology are right, then I am, by design, a "psychosomatic unity," mind, body and soul. And walking out of the gym, or off the squash court, or away from the climbing wall with aching arms and vivid breath burning in my chest, at the very least these moments are small, helpful reminders of that indivisible reality.

good sport

I'm not much a fan of hockey, but they say
"We we won last night."

Yesterday my son points out to me that
when the team we're cheering for wins
we tell each other, "We won."
But when the team we're cheering for doesn't,
we tell each other, "They lost."

As in: "They lost last Sunday."

Again, I'm not much a fan of hockey,
But I wonder if there isn't some ancient seed of sin in that
unnoticed tendency to include (only when we gain from it)
those we would decisively exclude
when they can't deliver.