When A Game Is Just A Game

As a professor of religious studies, one of the things that is a continual source of surprise to me is how ordinary religious people wear religion lightly on their sleeves.

I first became aware of this when I spent a week as a visitor at the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, the famed home of Thomas Merton. The Trappists are known for their strict obedience to the vows of silence and meditation. The expectation I had prior to my visit was that these would be a group of holy men whose cares and thoughts transcended the ordinary concerns of the rest of us humans. While observing their communal prayers, however, I quickly noticed how they too would get distracted, would shift in their chairs or shuffle on their feet. While their separate voices blended beautifully in the age-old Gregorian chants they sang, their worship was not at all effortful, but relaxed and commonplace. So commonplace, in fact, that I found myself even more inspired by their witness than I had expected. These were ordinary human beings just like me. While they had committed their lives to this religious vocation, in no way did this exempt them from the day-to-day habits of personality that mark us all.

I have since had this original insight confirmed time and time again. For instance, the last time I visited a Buddhist meditation center, the monk who led us in contemplation began by describing how much she had enjoyed the Bob Dylan concert the night before. Whenever I speak with local Muslims the common refrain I hear is the sense of universality they feel with regard to all people of faith. When I ask them about the intractable differences between the Shi'ites and the Sunnis, they inevitably remind me that within their own congregation, they all worship and pray and play together. And thus, they are just as confounded as anyone else by the extreme politicization of their beloved faith that they see on the nightly news.

It is with that in mind that I was not surprised to read about the nonchalant attitude displayed by India's Sania Mirza and Israel's Shahar Peer with regard to their decision to play as a doubles team at this year's Wimbledon. As Mirza said to reporters, "We're playing tennis, we're not making statements." Of course, we have all been programmed to think that even such statements as that (a statement of a non-statement) is in fact some kind of a statement. After all, the last time Mirza and Peer teamed up in 2005, Jewish and Muslim militants raised enough controversy that they decided it was not worth it to continue.

More positively, we remember the role played by sports in integrating our own country to the point that it is now the realm of athletics where we are least racially conscious.

But sometimes, as Mirza and Peer insist, a game is just a game and a competitor wants nothing more than just to have the best opportunity to compete. Likewise, in spite of all the warning cries about religious extremism (many of which, by the way, I consider to be absolutely legitimate and urgent), when we really think about the religious people we know, if we are honest we might admit that they are no more crazy or sane than the rest of us.