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October - December, 2009

Playing Basketball with God

by Jack Hartog

In my 40s, basketball became my passion. I had competed a little in high school, just missing making varsity in my senior year (being beaten out, I am exceedingly proud to say, by a future successful NFL running back). While I still played better than the average bear, my middle-aged “game” (in quotes, to emphasize the objectively minimalist content of my skill level) left a lot to be desired.

But I loved, simply loved, going to the gym and practicing, even all by myself. All aspects of practicing: lay up drills, running back and forth on the court to improve my wind, working on dribbling, shooting foul shots, using as much as possible my “off” hand (my left hand, other than useful in typing and occasionally holding utensils, generally functions simply as counter-balancing ballast for my right hand) and repeating and repeating my increasingly deadly “jump” shot (the quotes are there because my level of lift was about as high as the font in which these words appear).

After a while, I no longer was the last one chosen in pick-up games. Indeed, after a couple of years of practicing two to three times a week, I was often selected very quickly, and on those days when the really good players went elsewhere for more serious competition, I was one of the better players on the floor.

I found my progress very satisfying at many levels. Just being able to compete without humiliation was an achievement, especially given that I was often the oldest person playing. My physical health improved — I lost weight I could amply afford to lose and I had more energy for other activities (well, more energy after my thoroughly middle-aged body took a day off to recover). My confidence soared in games as I mastered the nuances of the many skills involved and distinguished between the moves I could actually perform and those which I could only envision but not complete (“playing within myself,” as those in the know say).

I liked the whole experience: the sweating, feeling the good soreness of exercise, periodically buying new sneakers, and donning well-worn gym clothes. I especially grew to appreciate the camaraderie among the players. When I would run into them shopping or in a restaurant, I would joke with those, who like me were lawyers, that we would see each other only on the court or in court. With others, I would remark loudly, “I didn’t recognize you dressed.” Occasionally, a celebrity would show up at the gym — a well-known sportscaster, a college ball player, a former pro athlete — triggering excitement marked by excessive efforts to appear casual. I became aware that playing basketball was a psychological metaphor— the attitudes and manners we display on the court always reflect who we are. I uncovered searing insights about myself, especially concerning competition.

Of course, there were always recurring challenges: constant minor nagging injuries, from sprained thumbs to twisted ankles; the bully who really didn’t want to play but simply sought to work out his anger in a game; difficulties finding parking sometimes; and the days when there were too few to play a game or too many good players so that I played little. There were always some negatives. But, on balance, I was having a blast.

I remember my first and last games particularly well. In my first game, I was assigned to defend a kid I later found out was 19 years old and the starting offensive guard for Georgia State. He was only about an inch or two taller than me, but he easily weighed 50 pounds of pure muscle more. My assignment? Keep him from getting rebounds. Right. My real assignment? Just live through the game.

My days with a basketball permanently ended when I was 51 years old, when I sustained a back injury (not glamorously from a hard foul while taking the ball to the basket but ignominiously while carrying luggage). Just before that trip, I played a one-on-one game with a guy in his early 30s. I recognized him — he was an up and coming local newscaster. He now is with CNN. We had the court to ourselves late this one afternoon. I was taller and in general a better player than he was, but his competitiveness was as abundant as his energy level. We trash talked and jostled our way through two games, splitting them, and, although mutually exhausted, went to a third game. The only thing at stake was pride, nothing more. I recall thinking to myself, “He really needs to win, and I don’t.” I was in this game for the fun of competing within my own well known limits. He was in it because competing in everything and not losing simply were his first choices in everything he did. I think he won, but I really didn’t care, and truly remember only the game, not the result.

So here I am, a dozen years later, reminiscing about my lost love, basketball. All of this — all the dedication, hard work, and time I put in to playing basketball in my 40s, and all the satisfaction, fitness and pure joy I got out of it — came rushing back to me in a meditation.

In the meditation, I was wondering why my spiritual practice had become so stalled and sporadic. My ability to commune with God, to experience a presence beyond my senses, almost on demand, has been continual. Yet I frequently experience this sense that I should be doing something more. “Should” is a word I have learned to be wary of. It is almost always laden with guilt or remorse, a moral demand to touch the sun before my wax wings inevitably wither in the heat. When attached to emotions, “should” is particularly dangerous. No one likes to be told what he “should” be feeling, because you feel what you feel. When applied to necessary tasks, “should” simply evokes my contrarian impulses.

In any event, like a bolt out of the blue, it occurred to me during this meditation that if my body could no longer play basketball, my soul could play with the Divine in meditation. I could practice, but without injuries, parking problems, gym fees, finding others to play, or ever losing! My God, I thought, if I just enjoyed and practiced spiritual things with anywhere near the level of intensity, frequency, devotion and joy I practiced hoops, my spiritual fitness could soar.

Wasn’t playing basketball and praying with Spirit, like the rest of life, simply a process to which I could choose to be devoted? Are they not similar in that both involve repeated practice, and through which both lead to communing with the Truth of Being, turning the moments of our lives into their substance? Was there really so much difference, beyond one being physical and the other metaphysical?

One on one games between my ego and God. Sweating replaced by stillness. Strengthening exercises to reverse separation. The rewarding humility of practice. Instead of jump shots, I could witness myself repeatedly catching guilt, anger, anxiety and doubt and throwing them into the basket of nothingness from which they came. Rather than having my hands practice dribbling and passing a ball, my mind could seek to re-examine and channel the thoughts that ran through it. Teamwork with other gym rats replaced by service to all I contact in participating in the forms of this world.

And always, always, a profound gratitude for the joy of playing the game.

© 2009, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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