Wednesday, March 20, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Fighting Illini
If our God, whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us.
We’ve been there before. Often in mid-March some of us go crazy, jumping up and down, shouting hallelujah, because the Illini basketball team plays out of their heads and wins games which moments before looked like they would lose.
Of course it can go the other way too. But not this year. Not so far. Illinois 77, Ohio State 74. Illinois 98, Nebraska 87. Illinois 93, Wisconsin 87. Big 10 Champions, three years out of four.
But even if he does not, know O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue that you set up.
I’m not a big fan of competition. Until I am. This was a good year for Illini fans, even the ones who stay out of it when the team is losing, the fair-weather fans. Which I admit, I have some of that blood in me, when it comes to both the Illini and the Chicago Cubs.
In Austin we are surrounded with Longhorn fans, some of them tepid, some of them inflamed. Chris Thurman, a prominent psychologist and author of The Lies We Believe, teaches Sunday School at our church and ironically but proudly acknowledges the dyspeptic moments he endures when the Longhorns are playing football or basketball. In Austin, burnt orange shirts pop up everywhere. In Urbana the shirts are orange too, but brighter.
Like this, complete with orange and blue taco chips:
Mid March, 2005, Mary Kay, Kelsey, Andi and Amy, along with Mom and I at the end of an undefeated season (minus one point in the final game), then a Big 10 Tournament championship and runner-up in the NCAA Championship. That year the team ended its season 37-2. It was the year my friend Chris and I had season tickets. It was the year I recorded all of Brian Barnhart’s broadcasts and some of the video, along with press coverage of the tournament in St. Louis and elsewhere. I ended up with a twelve CD case, full of memories (none of which were compiled with the “express, written consent” of anyone. And that was a year that I was hot-blooded and competitive.
And now back to the future …
Chris and Melissa were married on May 15, 2004. A few days after their big church wedding they had a second wedding for Chris’ middle school kids (he was youth minister at West Side in Springfield).
 … Twenty years later. We spent this weekend with Chris and Melissa’s family, still in Springfield, both of them now pastors at West Side. On Saturday we watched Jack’s scholastic bowl team take fourth place in their state tournament, and later we watched the Illini WIN. After church we watched them WIN again. Jack, driving permit in hand, drove us to a restaurant for dinner. Aly spent part of the day at basketball practice, as she does every day of the week. She is a nearly 12 year old crack shooter who plays on every team at her school, including the varsity.
Now on TV the team and coaches are screaming and hollering just like we are. Cutting down the nets in Minneapolis.
I had forgotten what it’s like to sit/stand/jump/shout in a living room with other fans as the team scores and groaning in near despair as the team fails to score. Up and down. Down and up. Chris has a roar that I never hear from him anywhere else. Melissa counterpunches as loud as her husband. Jack and Aly holler. And Margaret shouts loud as anyone.
I guess I do too.
So we had a wonderful high blood pressure screaming weekend. The games start again on Thursday, when the Illini play my friend Shawn’s alma mater Morehead State from Kentucky. The Saturday game could match the Illini against Mary Kay’s alma mater Duquesne University from Pittsburgh, where she became a nurse.
Until the end of all this, when I return to cooperative and happy sanity, I am grateful for responsorial psalms. Like the one for today …
Praiseworthy and exalted are you in the firmament of heaven. Glory and praise forever!
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(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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