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“His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner; but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.”
Psalm 147:10-11
Since my mom taught there, even as a middle-schooler I spent a lot of time roaming the halls of our small town high school. If there was a game, I was there no matter the season, football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and track in the spring. Mom taught music so I was also at the high school for choir performances, band concerts, and most rehearsals where tenors could be found squeezing their tuchases in their labored search for an F sharp. On the weekends and through the summers, I’d be playing pickup games with high schoolers on driveway basketball courts and sandlot football fields. Sports were of supreme importance to me, and I could not wait for my turn on the fields, courts, and tracks of varsity glory.
I eagerly awaited my turn to strut down that hallway from locker to classroom to practice swathed in that symbol of secondary school transcendence, the letter jacket. That was the prize, the sign of status, the gateway to popularity. And in our small town culture, it wasn’t just the letter or the jacket classified your eminence. The next level of cachet was achieved through additional honors you could sew onto your letter jacket –– chevrons for multiple seasons of notoriety; all-district honors; conference champion patches; and the ultimate sign of ascendance to the status of legend, a patch shaped into the outline of the state of Missouri, thus, telling the world that you were not just any athlete, you were a state champion. Hallelujah! Blessed is he who comes in the name of Spalding!
By the time I was in eighth grade, I was already calculating how many patches could be sewn onto the letter jacket, such that one could detect but a hint of crimson wool beneath the island chain of all-conference, all-district, and all-wonderful honors. Of course, I wouldn’t be wearing the jacket, because supreme status was attained when you had a girlfriend who wore your jacket.
By the spring of ’75, I was sooo close, perhaps months away from sewing that first letter onto a high-schooler’s amazing, technicolor dreamcoat. So close … and then we moved.
The culture was different in the halls of where I would attend high school. Oh, we still received a letter jacket, but there were no patches, just the jacket and the letter. Your girlfriend wouldn’t wear your jacket because she had her own, and probably earned it before you did. The band, the dance team, the pep squad, the chorus; they had their own jackets. It’s not like you would stand out, anyway, because you would always be outnumbered by legion of blue corduroy jackets festooned with the signs and symbols of the Future Farmers of America. I would say my new high school was a more egalitarian system, but it was high school, and high schoolers will not relent in their efforts to create a caste code. Yet, whatever signs youths form to symbolize their particular prowess, they should not trust that those signs will maintain their cachet far into the future. One of Springsteen’s great ballads grants us a glimpse into the lives of folks who cope with their current discontent or depression by hanging onto the myth of their youthful glory. “Glory days, yeah goin back ––Glory days, aw he ain't never had…”
Muscles wither, speed diminishes, medals tarnish, glory recedes, and memories can deceive. In the game of life, what you’ve achieved becomes far less significant than who you are. As Paul said, “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” I believe it was the late Henri Nouwen who spoke of the many who cry themselves to sleep at night under the blanket of success. An athlete trains to win the race, but the faithful know the race holds little meaning without the assurance of steadfast love. “His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner; but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.”
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