… to reprint this post from 2007.

Here’s hoping I can reprint it again February seventh!

A Royal Blue Silk Rose

You know the routine.

It’s game day, or race day. You take your seat, be it in front of the television or if you’re lucky among the thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands attending the day’s event. You watch; you cheer and boo; you exhort your favorite. At the end of the day you celebrate or commiserate depending on how the proceedings went. You talk or grouse about it, feeling happy or ticked for a while depending on what happened. And then you file it all away until the next game, the next race. It’s all part of being a fan.

You see the team or individual you root for, and in them that is exactly what you see. It’s not life or death. The sun will come up tomorrow regardless of their performance on that day. Sure, they’re your team, your driver. But that’s all. They’re the ones for whom you cheer. That’s where it ends.

Most of the time.

Sometimes, you see the team, the driver for whom you cheer, and you don’t see them at all. You see a moment, a place in the past, a time where an inexorable bond was forged indelibly identifying a team or individual with someone you know, or someone you knew; a memory that never fades. You see a team or individual, and suddenly you are no longer where you are. You’re somewhere else, somewhere long ago and far away yet as vibrant as though it was happening in the here and now. You’re at your first ballgame; you’re watching a highlight moment with family or friends no longer here. It is as though these moments live again. It is as though these people have never left.

That’s why you take it far more personally than is the norm when someone speaks against this team, this individual serving as a bridge between today and a bittersweet yesterday filled with magic and loss. Sure, you get your back up when someone trashtalks your team or driver. You give as good as you get. But you don’t take it all that seriously. The same cannot be said about the ones unknowingly serving as a bridge. They’re not just another team, another driver for whom you root. They are set apart, privately sacred. They are consecrated; living servants acting as a conduit from where you were and who you were with to where you are now, without those you were with before.

This is why today’s Super Bowl was far more than another game to me, or even another championship game. As has been said before, I am a card carrying season ticket owning member of the Raiders Nation. That’s my team. I go to the home games, I watch the away games on television, I have far too often buried my head in my hands these past few seasons wondering when this team will start playing like the Raiders I grew up with; i.e. winning. I’m a fan.

But when I see the Colts, I don’t see a football team. I see my heritage, this hybrid of Orange County Republican and small-town Hoosier hick born, raised, and living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I hear the phone conversations with my Dad after he retired and moved back home to rural central Indiana, me going with him and Mom for a spell before returning back here, commiserating over the Colts when they were bad and celebrating when they good following their move to Indianapolis in 1984. I see my first Colts game seen live at home, two years after my beloved father had passed away in 1999. In a touch of bitter irony, it was played the first weekend sports had resumed after September 11th, and the pre-game ceremonies were filled with the kind of heartland patriotism coast dwellers deride as hackneyed cornpone drivel. But not to me.

Every season ended with a promise unfulfilled, at best a playoff disappointment. Every season after that game ended with a different promise unfulfilled, something I had vowed upon my first visit to my father’s grave that September of 2001 would someday be done if it was allowed to be done.

It never was.

Not until tonight.

Tonight, as I pull out my Colts finery to wear with even more pride than usual, preparing to luxuriate in this ultimate triumph and its penultimate companion the amazing, heart-stopping comeback victory against the archrival Patriots in the AFC championship game two weeks ago, a note is made of a promise now enabled. It is not a great thing, but it is an item I swore to both my heavenly Father and my earthly father now in heaven would be done. And it will be done.

I will find a royal blue silk rose, and at the base of the pedals tie around it a white ribbon. On it, printed in silver, will be these words:

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

SUPER BOWL XVI CHAMPIONS

I will lay the rose on my father’s grave, and then I will look to the skies and say the words I longed to say when my father was here, but know in fact he will still hear:

“They won, Dad.”

They won.

Much has been made of the manipulation by liberals of various classes — economic, racial, gender — through the selling of synchronized victimization and entitlement.

It’s a seductive spiel, one for which the appeal is rooted in the notion that should you by dint of race and/or gender belong to one of the aforementioned classes, none of the negatives in your life are your fault. All the bad things are due to a combination of oppression, discrimination and misogyny. Well, we’re here to set things right! Behold our magnanimous generosity as we take from your evil dark lords and freely give to you. You don’t have to earn anything! We’ve got your back. Oh, no thanks are necessary. Well, if you insist, there is this little election thing coming up.

The whole issue boils down to political Scientology, really. “It’s not on you. It’s those blasted engrams! Here, let us help you get rid of them. You need us for that.” In this case, the engrams are conservatives and anyone who speaks of such things as personal responsibility and the need to work for what you have is obviously a suppressive person, one to avoid at all cost. Otherwise, someone might get the notion they’re being fed a line designed to keep them and their descendants in a state of perpetual dependence on the government while resentment against them by those paying for, in essence, their lives through taxes grows.

That said, are we who believe in Christ guilty of the same sin as those who believe they have a birthright to entitlement and privilege?

Consider this. When Paul was lambasting the church at Corinth for its assorted sordid failings, note how he punctuated one of his rants: “And you are proud!” One of the unfortunate hallmarks of a Christian or group of Christians off track is that even as we are a trainwreck unaware of the fact we’ve crashing, we are quite satisfied with ourselves and certain of our position in the grand scheme of things as God’s most deserving equivalent of teacher’s pet. Bad news all around. We’re in denial about both whatever the sin or sins may be we are committing and the sin of pride when we have nothing about which to be proud. (Of course we’re not supposed to be proud anyway, but you get the idea.)

Another line from the same rant comes to mind: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” It does us no good to try and explain to others how they’re being fed a tasty lie when we’re in the middle of doing the exact same thing.

Following Jesus isn’t a sign of favor or being better than those who don’t. It is an acknowledgment of failure, a confession and admittance that nothing stands between you and an eternity spent in isolation from God’s love except the shed blood of a tortured, executed Savior. Who rose from the dead so we could live with Him in eternity. Not a whole lot there to stick your chest out about, what say?

It’s a difficult thing to convince someone who believes they’re entitled this is not the case. However, it’s a necessity if we are to break the stranglehold this myth has on both our political process and society as a whole. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We must remember that we means, well, we. And that’s no myth.

P.S. Speaking of no myth…

Michael Penn – No Myth

Token gratuitous Ayla Brown photos.

• Yes, I am delighted that Scott Brown won the Massachusetts senatorial election last night. Can we talk about something else for a while, Twitterville? Give it a rest already. Also, had I read one more “fate of the Union” tweets yesterday someone was going to develop breathing problems.

• Headline I would have loved to see this morning: BROWN WINS, SUN WAS GOING TO COME UP ANYWAY

• Not sure what to make of yesterday’s developments in the Rifqa Bary case. My main question is whether she’ll continue to be isolated from friends and fellow believers until August. If that’s the case, there’s a problem.

• Speaking of Rifqa: yes Mr. Examiner editor, I’ll find some kind of local angle tie-in when I write about it today. How’s about getting we’uns back on Google News?

• Doubt this is the first time it’s been said, but the thought occurred to me this morning that the loudest possible answer to a question is silence.

• A good example of a bad example is only good if you not only resolve to do the exact opposite, but in fact do so.

• Back to Brown for a second. It was quite amusing that attempts to make political hay were made from the fact he posed in Cosmopolitan magazine once upon a time. Judging from the assorted comments last night by more than a few members of the fairer sex, I dare say he hasn’t lost his ability to filla  room with flying estrogen.

• Okay, one more thought on Brown. Hypothesizing about 2012, should Sarah Palin run for President the thought of what it’d be like at a campaign stop for her at which Brown makes an appearance… yowza. Especially if their daughters are in attendance. It’d be half political rally and half Duran Duran concert circa 1985.

I didn’t spend a great deal of time yesterday pouring over the Mark McGwire story. Didn’t need to. There was more than enough sanctimonious self-righteous twaddle being hurled about should I have wanted to go that route. Which I didn’t. The most unintentionally amusing slab of sludge came from “outraged” Giants fans and radio stations hosts. You know, the same ones who spent years denying their precious Barry Bonds ever partook of anything stronger than the occasional glass of milk, and today immediately change the subject whenever it is broached?

Instead, indulge me as I tell my own Mark McGwire story.

It was the mid ’90s. McGwire was still with the A’s. My parents came out here to California from Indiana, where they moved after my Dad retired, so they could visit with friends and family. It was the weekend, and the A’s were in town. I suggested to my Dad we go to the game.

Just like we did so many times when I was a kid.

On our way to the Oakland Coliseum, amid the usual father-son banter a quieting through came to mind, one unspoken yet unavoidable. Given my Dad’s age and health, this would undoubtedly be the last game we would see together. A sobering contemplation to say the least. Nevertheless, I pushed it out of my mind as best I could. Savor the moment.

And all I wanted was my Dad to see Mark McGwire hit a home run.

He did. The A’s went on to win the game.

That day I was a kid with his Dad at a ballgame.

It was a bit ironic that a couple of years later McGwire would be traded to the Cardinals, the team of my Dad’s youth. The year before he passed away, McGwire broke the single-season home run record.

That’s my Mark McGwire memory. I’lla lways be grateful to him for that, steroids or no steroids.

So excuse me for not indulging in the sanctimonious self-righteous twaddle.

I’ll keep my memories of a kid with his Dad at a ballgame, thanks.