The Musician Footballer
June 25th, 2004
Dear Friends
We are afflicted by Euro-mania. People have been voting with
their feet! Politicians were ‘kicked in their euro-teeth’ and now we gloat in the
performance of footballers kicking each other and occasionally the euro-ball!
St George and the dragon are still at odds in a sycophantic banner waving
charade! Why are we passionate about the game some describe as ‘beautiful’?
One of my interesting reads this month was an essay by Stanley Hauerwas called ‘Performing the Faith’. He describes faith as the ‘art of living well under God’. He sees faith akin to an improvised musical performance in which artistry, grace, virtuosity and timing are of the essence. Living life without a score and creating whilst performing; building a theme that requires attentiveness, attunement and alertness, he sees the spiritual fusion of play and player, performer and performance to the extent that word and deed become inseparable.
He could just as easily have been talking about football!
He sees the distinctive goal of Christian (as opposed to secular) rhetoric to be a ‘peaceable character’ that brings non-violence to the transcendence of personal differences. “The Christian God is one who makes possible a true melodic progression by His openness in love to all differences.” He describes worship as attunement to operate in God’s time, a break in our time to prepare for the peaceable life in the week to come, a space where time is transcended and realigned, a time into which God intervenes in our drama and enlarges our biography.
A performance of the good news of God’s redeeming love in Christ is not just about the right words, it includes the right key, the right meter and the right cadence. Learning to appreciate, understand and play music is a ‘supremely moral activity’ because the skill required includes a ‘recovery of the morality of time’. And without time – the continuing hard and patient labour of forgiveness and reconciliation prove impossible.
We are called to dance with God, to breathe with Him, to join His grace movements, to open our arms, to lift up our eyes and to extend our roots downward. Dancing is natural to God. (as might football be?) It could become natural to us.
There are some for whom performance means ‘Waving banners that our fathers waved and the warfare that our fathers waged’ and gaining the disdain that one gets from waving banners and waging war. Maybe the Euro-anthem ‘Joyful Joyful we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of love’ has more to offer than Beethoven anticipated. May God continue to unfold your heart like flowers before him as a centre of unbroken praise. All your work with joy surrounds you….- mortal- join the mighty chorus. Let us bring new meaning to ‘harmonious (life) development’!
Yours sincerely, ever singing, marching onward
Victor (in the midst of strife)