In The Name of Love

Another month has gone by.  It's hard to come up with blog topics about sports when you're not watching any.  It's also hard to not flip on ESPN when I'm traveling and I crash in my room at night, but I've been good so far (ok, I have read through the sports pages of the free papers, but that's all). 

But I am having a moment of inspiration in the midst of my insomnia, and have been thinking about what we do in the name of love.  Yes, this is related to sports, or have you never claimed to love your sports team(s)?  I know I have said that I "love the Steelers".  I have worn shirts that say "Luv ya Lions!" when in college at PSU.  And what I must feel for the Pirates is either a form of love or Stockholm syndrome...  And yet, when we proclaim love for our teams, we almost immediately forfeit rational thought.  There can be no room for another team in that sport, else we would be practicing sports bigamy.  We defend our love against all threats, much as we would our partners of children.  We live and die by their successes.  We say outrageous things and make asinine claims - all because of the love we claim to have for our teams. 

And for what?  A team cannot love us back.  We may feel joy at our teams' triumph - but they cannot do more than make a statement of thanks for our support.  We may despair at their failures - but the teams go about their business regardless of our feelings.  It's a one way relationship.  A crush.  The unrequited love that so many poets waxed on about in the 19th century.  We martyr ourselves for something that cannot love us back in any tangible, fulfilling way.  We're left with all of the pain of watching our loved teams fail exceeding the pleasure that comes from the relationship.  And still we fight for that love, we hate their opponents, we invest our emotions and time and money, and we are cannot receive the full value of that investment except perhaps fleetingly during the moments of victory.

If this seems rather depressed, it's because that's how I feel on this sleepless night.  I think I could have replaced the word "team" in that preceding passage with any number of things.  I could have picked "political party".  I could maybe have picked something job related, though I find my job is quite rewarding and not a good fit.  What I really feel tonight is that I could insert the words "faith tradition".  Let me explain.

I was watching a webcast of the Upper New York annual conference of the United Methodist Church.  My wife's a pastor - I had a legitimate reason to do so.  It was like watching C-SPAN, only without the rules of order.  Today, they were debating a number of petitions regarding the church's stances on homosexuality.  And I was struck at how many people stood up and said some version of "Because I love this church so much, I cannot support anything that would be good for gay people"  It was rarely that blatant, though there were a few people who came close.  But they all talked about how they would exclude a whole portion of the world from the church "in the name of love".  Just as I have proclaimed a hatred of Baltimore or Cleveland for love of Pittsburgh, they proclaim exclusion of homosexuals for love of the status quo of tradition and the words of white, European men from over a thousand years ago at a council in Nicaea.  [Spare me the "the Bible is the Word of God" shtick for now - they may have been words from God or Jesus, but they were heavily edited, redacted, and spun for the benefit of politics and power.]  And there is little rational thought that I have discerned in these statements.  It is my view that a church that wishes to grow and remain relevant in the world while actively excluding parts of society is hypocritical at best and deliberately hurtful at worst.  And that says nothing about the church's harsh treatment of clergy who wish to include those people in communion and community.   Because these people proclaim love for the old ways, they reject new paths for growth without discernable rational thought, and so goeth the Church.

I was stuck in Cleveland a few weeks back while trying to get home from an event in California.  And I wouldn't stop making horrid statements about the town to Allyson.  I made those statements because of my "love" of the Steelers.  And when I finally opened my eyes to see that the people in that town were nicer than many of the people I had encountered in any other town I'd traveled to recently (such as Newark, NJ), I realized that I had been cheating myself.  It was a moment of growth for me - I realized that I was depriving myself of a fulfilling experience for love of a sports team that couldn't offer the same fulfillment.  I wonder if the deniers of equal rights in the United Methodist Church would experience similar growth if they let go of the things they do in the name of love?