Much of the world, in small corners and large, is focused on one thing: Soccer! or Football or La Copa Mundial depending on where you live! People are late to appointments (I was late to our zoom watching the last minutes of a match) and even canceling them to watch their favorite teams. I love a good competition, and even Bill is getting into it by rewatching the movie The Cup. At their best, sporting events cultivate what Fritz Kunkel calls a “Primitive We,” a kind of communal love shared among diverse body of people. At their best, they combine play with love and even justice (take the US Women’s Soccer team, for example!)

Sports can also take a dark turn, an Us vs. Them, spawning a primitive kind of nationalism. Of course, this drifts into spiritual realms in that if we remain playful and open, we tend to have a growth mindset. If we remain closed and competitive, we tend to have a restrictive mindset. As James Hollis writes, we can ask ourselves at any given moment whether a {behavior, belief, action, or thought} enlarges our being or not. And as Bill frequently says, what are we doing to live with more truth, freedom, or love?

We are responsible for creating the world we want to live in, and I wonder if the hope isn’t that we get ever closer to the edge and then push slightly past it. With that mindset we are helping expand the universe.

Thanks for listening!