The Big Dip

Yes, I like Hitchens’ writing. But I refuse to buy his book. I’ve read what free excerpts I can find on the net, followed his debates and have self-righteously concluded that if his theme is so understandable and personally heart-felt, then he needn’t write a book about it or hold public debates. It smells like selling out to the man to me. I’ll read it entirely someday later, I suppose.

That said, I do think he hit a nerve.

That throbbing nerve has two shared branches. One end points to religion as the cause of or at least an abetting culprit to all humanity’s grinding turmoil. The other points to a kind of American Rebel angle on the Golden Rule: Believe what you want, but please leave me and my children alone.

I read the Freud versus C.S. Lewis series compliments of the Padre a couple years ago. Lewis, like Anthony Flew, had one of those “it must be” moments on a public bus near Oxford or someplace and it changed his views forever. Freud presumably remained in disbelief until his ego disappeared from this earth. I found neither man very compelling.

And I agree with you precisely, again, that a thinking person’s disappointment is always at the end of this story no matter how it’s told. What we’ve laid out among our lives seems like the perfect agnostic argument. As you can tell, I’ve searched long and hard for something to replace my agnostic ways…guess I’ll just have to wait a while longer.

But all of that has had me thinking this past week about God in the same way that I think about something we call luck.

Of course, I can’t just say that luck exists although I know many people want to believe it is real along with their beloved ghosts, leprechauns, ET and Big Foot. Still, I sense in this empirical world that good fortune is a 50-50 kind of deal. Half the time it seems people make their own luck and the other half of the time it seems there is no reasonable excuse for it. That statistic curiously reassures me that even Plato was wrong to call Reason our highest savior.

When pressed, I’ve known nearly as many people who would turn down a healthy dose of good luck as I’ve known true Communists or Christians. That is to say, I have known none. I know a lot of people who like to say, “I’d rather be lucky than good” but I admit I’ve never really understood what the hell they mean by that and I rarely ask for expansion. Any argument about it is pointless. I am forever at a loss to determine who wins and who loses when it comes to luck or God.

Bringing it up to date, this week saw the two best teams in the NFL playing against each other. The incessant hype of this game, like that of luck and God, was such a waste. I felt all along that as football fans we should just keep our mouth shut on this one. Only the players had any business getting in the middle of it. When the sports channels came to the point in the show when they were forced to say something about this game, they should have just shown a picture of the two corporate-funded mascots and breathed a pregnant, heavy sigh. I won’t even mention the teams’ names now. You know damn well who I am talking about. If there was a regular season game that should have been left alone to stand on its own merit, perhaps in the last 5 or 10 years, then this was the game. In the end, when the smoke cleared, we could all then tally up the scorecard and argue about luck versus talent and human skill versus God’s will.

Rather than during a ride on the public bus, these thoughts all came cascading down on me Sunday afternoon as I watched the vaunted Packers defeat the lowly Chiefs.

I was standing in a crowded little tavern in the blood red heart of Chief’s Nation among a horde of cheese-eating, sausage-grilling, beer-swilling, obnoxious yellow and greenies as Favre worked his magic once again. There were side-bets galore, the man-made arbitration of blind luck versus an all-knowing God if you will, and I sheepishly admit I personally contributed a case of ice cold Bud Light to the contest, but most significant to me was the Vegas-like showdown between a man named Stroke and a man named Earl.

Stroke, 55-ish, works as a grounds laborer for the county and originally hails from some small town near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A simple, single man, he has little to show of his life other than a quick wit and an endless smile. But his pride in the Pack also knows no bounds and he saw fit to bring along a posse of like-minded thinkers with him to watch the game at the tavern. This unquenchable crowd invaded the tavern in a way that for a moment I thought they might actually drink it dry.

(I knew this would happen. I was forewarned. As everyone knows, I typically do not observe The Game with others as I tend to get irritated by obvious inattention to the details. But I made a notable exception in this case.)

Earl, 75-ish, is a revered man among children. Married several times over, he now is known to commute often with a not a few different fair ladies in the town. He is leathery, lean, and fearless to a fault. When asked what contributes to his longevity, he will demurely reply that he made a few wise investments when he was younger. I have witnessed him ride his motorcycle in the fiercest weather, under the most dangerous road conditions. I once joined him and his oldest son for another drinking contest deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The bet that night was that the first man to give in and use the facilities would pay the bar tab. Many hours later, I stumbled down a dark dirt road back to camp beside the ramrod winner, my shallow pockets emptied by the old man’s stamina and pain-defying persistence.

To me, Earl is like a Zorba of the Midwest.

“Earl,” growled Stroke before the game began, “is your oldest son’s backyard pool still uncovered?”

“Why, yes, Stroke, I do believe it is,” replied Earl smoothly.

“Well, then, Earl, I’ll bet you a dip in the pool after the game that the Pack wins.”

With little apparent hesitation, Earl answered, “Stroke, you’re on!”

The crowded tavern heaved and shivered as we looked out on the blustery autumn street, dried leaves blowing in the gusty wind towards a pool of nearby water which surely registered a temperature near the middle 40’s.

Towards the end of the battle, as Favre plunged for the kill, Stroke sat at the bar laughing loudly to himself, clutching a mug of warm beer in one hand while numbly stuffing his mouth with maraschino cherries from a grain-alcohol laced jar, the meaty fingers of his other hand stained and dripping with a vile pink juice.

No sooner than Favre’s business had ended, a giddy throng of gabbing drunks gathered themselves and marched two blocks to the house of Earl’s son. With no kind announcement of our arrival, we barged in through the front door, past the silent big screen tv and the coffee table covered with chips and dip. We poured through the kitchen and into the back yard where we circled the frigid-looking pool of anticipation. A couple of thoughtful cheeseheads dragged an inebriated Stroke from out of the crowd and held his head up so he could maybe focus better on the honest culmination of a wager. Always a quick study himself, Earl’s son picked up a long-handled net and scooped out some of the pesky floating leaves from the water’s surface, careful to not make any waves. Earl’s daughter in law stood cautiously in the kitchen doorway, clutching her bare arms around her middle and trembling at the sudden cool breeze which just blew so rudely through her home.

As the drunken natives bounced in rhythm and chanted his name for all to hear, Earl quickly stripped to his skivvies and took his position on the diving board. He beat his hairy chest like a wild ape, took a short step back then raced forward to the edge where a young man’s daring soul catapulted a 75 year old body high into the air above the chilly water.

It was at that frozen moment in time that my mind—ha!—a wandering thought that now I think one day may just come back to haunt the dreams of this week’s latest proud victors—my mind caught a glimpse of the beaming smile on Earl’s worn face as he dove majestically into the icy pool and a cold confidence splashed in my direction, speaking bold words so clear to me then…

“Sometimes, little boy, losers are luckier than winners after all.”

Cheers,
Mb