Category: Soccer

Hundred-Word Highlights

Kyle

Our official mid-unit evaluation day at CPE took place on Tuesday, which means my time in New York is more than halfway done. One of my late-emerging CPE learning goals is to be more concise when speaking and writing, so let me offer a few hundred-or-so-word highlights of my time here. Here’s some of why I love CPE and New York in general.

The Radios

I do not lead with this item lightly. My off-hours life in the Upper West Side and West Harlem is blessed by the presence of countless people engaged in one of the few cheap recreational activities New York offers: sitting outside listening to boomboxes. Maybe I just miss my parents’ backyard, where this activity comprises a fair chunk of my family’s time together. Or maybe there’s no better soundtrack to summer than Michael and Marvin (in Harlem) and endless salsa (on Columbus south of Morningside). Plus—in a New York moment I can’t believe I’ve now experienced—one night I heard someone very appropriately rocking LL Cool J about a block from my house. I don’t think I could live without it either, LL.

The Markets

Not that I missed grocery shopping all that much, but among my pining for Madison apartment life during a year in a suburban dorm room was the occasional desire to be back at Regent Market Co-op, picking up groceries on the walk home from St. Andrew’s. Well let me tell you, RMC (unsurprisingly) can’t hold a candle to the likes of New York markets like Fairway (“Like No Other Market,” indeed almost otherworldly) and the more modest Westside Market (still frickin’ beautiful). New York markets have so much delicious food crammed into so little square-footage that I’m surprised none have collapsed into some sort of gastronomic black hole.

The Multi-faith Chaplaincy

My short list of complaints with Virginia Theological Seminary includes what one of my classmates calls “the orthodoxy wars.” Think of it as an omnipresent, just-below-the-surface tension that descends on practically any conversation of theological import. This is in many ways a good thing. It’s the result of bringing together opinionated and highly intelligent Episcopalians and other Anglicans from across the theological and political spectra to teach and learn at a deliberately centrist institution. It can be fun and a tremendous learning experience. But it’s also exhausting. I’m so grateful for this summer in the hospital, for the opportunity to recharge my spiritual batteries via an experience founded on the goodwill that results from people of different faiths coming together to do work that is, let’s be honest, far more important than systematic theology.

The LGBT Pride

Check out Kristin’s post and pictures for much better coverage. I would add that it was incredibly moving to hear the passion in the various parade-side emcees’ voices as they gratefully announced the approach of the Diocese of New York’s marchers (and float!). It’s quite something to walk through the Village in the Pride parade and be thanked for being part of a church that (at least in some places) was welcoming LGBT folks back when practically no churches were. I also picked up a little New York gem: People say “Happy Pride” the same way they would greet each other on holidays (as in—to choose a not-at-all random example—“Happy Thanksgiving”). The whole thing was a tremendous experience that I felt really privileged to be a part of (including, unexpectedly, as a substitute acolyte at the St. Luke’s Festive Choral Evensong that night).

The Prominent Judaism

As I’ve alluded to previously, only a couple of books have changed my life of faith more profoundly than Harvey Cox’s Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey Through the Jewish Year. Well, I’ve now shared a fair bit of common prayer with both the many Jewish patients I serve in the hospital and with my fellow CPE chaplain interns, three of the four of whom are Jewish. In fact, at 8:11 this evening, Kristin and I will help light Shabbat candles with the latter up near Jewish Theological Seminary. I can’t overstate what a joy it has been to be a part of so many lunches of comparative-theological exploration, so much shared ministry (a touchy word in this context, but my colleagues have encouraged me to go with it), and so much mutual affection. (I’m also totally excited to live and work within the truly massive Manhattan Eruv. I can’t really explain my strange fascination with this theologically rich enclosure.)

The Soccer

My past three weekends have revolved around multiple viewings of a sport I spent a lot of my life hating, and I couldn’t be happier. Yes, perhaps the greatest highlight of all has been watching soccer in a wide assortment of Manhattan drinking establishments with a rabid Germany fan I happen to be quite fond of. While die Mannschaft can sadly do no better than third place and the Americans squandered a golden opportunity in a lopsided bracket, I’ll count this year’s Cup as a success because I’m now hooked on an exciting, beautiful, even sexy sport I’ve spent too long ignoring.

Soccer in the Hospital

Kyle

Kristin has a new post up about soccer in the port. The soccer-aiding-chaplaincy factor is definitely present in the hospital as well. I met one cancer patient yesterday who is almost always asleep when I swing by. They were saving her a seat for the U.S.-Algeria match, though. She told me she’s more of a tennis fan (speaking of which, holy smokes) but that she’d really gotten into the World Cup. Nice to be able to high-five a serious leukemia patient, even if it is over a last-second goal rather than a more important piece of good news.

Come to think of it, the World Cup was probably on in 85-90% of the patient rooms I was in today during match hours. I guess there’s not much else of value on TV during the day, but still…I think Kristin’s right about the U.S. continuing to catch soccer fever.

Newbie Soccer Thoughts

Kyle 2 Comments

I am a systems person; I enjoy watching new systems in action and trying to figure out what makes them tick. I’m also, as one of my CPE supervisors pointed out to me this week, an associative person; I like making connections between seemingly disparate things (both a blessing and a curse in the CPE context, let me tell you).

As such, I’ve had a field day–or would it be a pitch day?–watching World Cup games this weekend with my my über-enthusiastic, half-German girlfriend. I’ve been dipping my toes into soccer’s waters off and on since the last Cup, but it’s starting to get a bit more serious. Among the questions I’ve been pondering are the following: why don’t more Americans like soccer, and am I allowed to support* Germany in the plausible event that Germany and the U.S. meet in the Round of 16 (apparently it would happen if Germany wins its group and the U.S. takes second in its, or vice versa)?

Regarding the former, my working hypothesis is built on the lens of looking at the two most dominant presences on the American sports landscape: football** (it dominates our current sports culture; we can’t get enough of it) and baseball (it dominated our past sports culture; we’re slowly abandoning it). I’m coming to the conclusion that soccer is more like baseball than football. It’s subtler. It requires the fan to have a greater appreciation of small details and a more patient orientation toward brief, intense action rather than the throb of regular scoring. And, just like in the game where the best players only succeed about a third of the time, soccer doesn’t always reward brute effort. Kristin caught this telling gem in the Times this morning: “It was a characteristic American effort, full of resolve[***] instead of beauty.”

This comment actually sort of leads me to my second question. Many people rightly sing the praises of international soccer’s coolest attribute: that the teams’ styles often mirror their national personalities. And a major reason I want to support Germany in this tournament is that they play, well, like Germans: organized, patient, attentive to detail. Somewhere around the tenth minute today, I said, “They look like they’re spending more of their energy thinking than playing.” Like a Bo Ryan basketball team, they’re patient, plotting, and sometimes plodding. They’re like my parent’s Volkswagon Cabrio, which was a humorous and kinda futile attempt at a midlife-crisis car. They’re not a sexy pick. They’re a sensible one. Sounds like my kinda team.

My problem is this: I’m not so sure we get to pick our loyalties. I grew up a Pirates fan because I lived in the town in Florida where they Spring Trained (this was before the Marlins). And then, when I moved to Milwaukee, I became a Brewers fan. “Root, root, root for the home team” is not easily dismissed in my sports worldview. I think Americans who have spent substantial time in countries that actually care about soccer are well within their rights to transfer their allegiances abroad. But that’s not me. Am I stuck with Team USA until they’re out?

What do you think about sports allegiances? Do we get to be primarily aligned with the team that makes us say, “I like they way they play”? Or is there something bigger at stake?

* Pitch instead of field and support instead of root for are among the charming vocabulary upgrades you get when you watch soccer (others: match instead of the more pedestrian game and side instead of team, which is fun even though the connotations are troubling). But see below for a major vocabulary pet peeve.

** If you are an American living in America and have not spent significant time in a foreign country (that’s context information your hearers usually have), please don’t call soccer football. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s kind of obnoxious and typically American that we call our much more provincial game by the same name that everybody else (more accurately) uses for the world’s most popular sport. But you only confuse things when, as an American having a conversation in America, you use the non-American convention. Not only is it confusing, it’s kinda obnoxious. It’s like insisting on calling the theater the theatre, spelling gray with an e, or putting periods and commas outside of quotation marks: nice idea, classier perhaps, but you’re in the wrong country. I want to be British too–that doesn’t give me license to punctuate or spell as if I were.

*** Even I can see that this is why an America-Germany matchup will just be a train wreck. The Americans will be stubbornly flying all over the pitch wearing themselves out while the Germans very patiently pass the hell out of the ball and dissect their opponents’ feeble defense (especially if Howard is out).