Ignominy

There is only one word that keeps coming to my mind after the football game last Sunday, the one that really didn’t need to be played because it was, every one was sure, a “slam dunk,” (to borrow a metaphor from another winter sport).  And I had trouble finding the word because, it turns out I was spelling it wrong.  The word means (according to Random House Webster’s College Dictionary) “1.  Personal disgrace; dishonor. 2. Shameful or dishonorable quality or conduct.”  I was spelling the word igonominy.  The correct spelling is Packers.

I have made much too much about just how terrific Wisconsin sports are lately.  But the tides are turning.  The University of Wisconsin Badgers lost at the Rose Bowl, though they put up a good fight and were in the hunt until literally the last seconds.  The Packers, on the other hand, played as badly as they did decades ago when they were not so much a team as a joke.   It was painful to watch, and though there were plenty of reasons and lots of excuses the dropped passes, the fumbles, made us cringe for four quarters.  When it was all over I hid my Packer beads.  I took off my Packer sweatshirt, and sweater and teeshirt.  I quickly exchanged my Packer pajama pants for neutral gray sweats.  What else could a fan do?   The cheesehead went back up on the shelf.

But not, apparently, up high enough.  Always sensitive, always wanting to please, our just-over-one-year old Standard Poodle is now tall enough to reach that shelf.  While I was mourning the loss in my study, he was busy.  When I came out to the living room there were pieces of foam rubber cheese everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  And though it was a mess to clean up, I really couldn’t really blame him.  After all, the Packers stunk.

Then, after a while,  I decided it was time to be sensitive myself.  I imagined what it felt like to be in the locker room after the loss, how the Packers must have felt as they slumped through the town that defines itself by the team the people of Green Bay own.  And it wasn’t as if it was a quiet defeat.  Literally millions of people around the world watched their downfall.

How awful it would be if our own mistakes were that public, that visible.  How painful it would be if we walked down any street and everybody could see us as the losers we sometimes are.  How miserable it would be to have to see the lopsided score on the computer screen, in newspaper headlines, running over and over again on the ESPN bottom line.

And how much worse even for there to be no going back, no mulligans, no do overs, no redemption.  How hard it would be to make a mistake and know that not only are there consequences, but there is no way of evening the score, or finding reconciliation, or getting a second chance at being a success.

So I guess those of us who gather together on Sunday mornings in churches instead of in front of televisions, who hear comforting, forgiving, loving words instead of the thump of helmets or the sound of defeat are the lucky ones.  We are the ones who can never lose, because there is One who will always find us when we are lost, who will lift us up when we are feeling down, who will turn us from defeat, and  lead us on to victory. 

(And I am still, despite it all, a Cheesehead.  Next year…..there’s always next year.)