My So-Called Life in Hockey

AM Psalm 55 • PM Psalm 138, 139:1-17(18-23)
2 Samuel 1:1-16 • Acts 15:22-35 • Mark 6:1-13

In today’s Morning Psalm 55, the “noise of the enemy” makes the psalmist tremble with fear. Worse is the betrayal by the psalmist’s “equal,” and “companion,” who

...laid hands on a friend
and violated a covenant with me

with speech smoother than butter,
but with a heart set on war;
with words that were softer than oil,
but in fact were drawn swords.

Doubtless, the duplicitous one is included among the “bloodthirsty and treacherous” whom the psalmist wants God to throw “into the lowest pit.”

There is plenty of violence in the Bible; here the violence is the specific violence of language. My late teacher, Dr. John Robert Locke, referred to the weaponization of language as “linguistic terrorism.”

Semester after semester, John would say more than once that there are many ways of mis-using language. And, John would say, those who mis-use language to our face mean us harm. In the 1995 movie The American President, President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) says of his opponent, Robert Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss), in words all too relevant today:

And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.

To demonstrate to my students, perhaps a little too smugly, ways to mis-use language, I would introduce myself at the beginning of each term by saying something like:

I attended Middlebury College in Vermont from 1968-1972. We had some great men’s ice hockey teams. Several times we won the NCAA Division III Men’s Ice Hockey Championship. I was fortunate enough to play hockey at Middlebury in 1972. In fact, I scored the last goal on the Middlebury ice surface in the Memorial Field House before the ice was taken up the next day to reveal the tennis courts to be used in the spring.

I would continue with the opening day lesson, pointing out policies and schedule on the syllabus. Then I would give a true-false quiz on the lesson “to see if you were listening.” Among the questions:

True or false: Gamble played on the Middlebury College men’s hockey team in 1972.

And almost everyone said true, but in fact the answer was false. Actually I was playing in a co-ed hockey club that met Monday afternoons—a fact I conveniently neglected to tell my students. I never said I played on the Middlebury men’s hockey team. I just put a few “facts” together and let my students do the rest. I excused my own “mis-use of language” on the grounds that I was trying to teach my students a lesson—though I am reminded that as in many other endeavors, teaching someone a lesson is an activity best used in moderation.

I have never had any feedback as to whether any of my students have remembered this lesson about my so-called life in hockey. But several students over the years have become teachers. And professional writers. And politicians.

This has been a hard piece for me to write. I like to think of myself as having been the wise and benevolent sage on the stage, bestowing wisdom about language and literature (and a few other things) for the benefit of my students. My reviews were usually pretty good, pointing out that I was a “caring” teacher.

But Psalm 55 makes me face up to times when my “speech smoother than butter” belied a “heart set on war,” when my words “softer than oil” were in fact “drawn swords” used, intentionally or not, to hurt people—my friends, my family, and, yes, sometimes, my students.

Bible stories offer us the chance to see ourselves in different characters, or in the same character at different times. When we read scripture, it is tempting to imagine ourselves in the role of a hero, or of a victim of some un-named “enemy”, whether named (the Amalekites or Philistines fulfill this role admirably) or un-named. We may want to be Jesus who performs miracles; but at times we might well be Pharisees, who try to trap Jesus with weaponized language. Or we want to channel the courage of the David who slays Goliath, but in the next breath be the David who sends Uriah the Hittite to his doom.

It might well be that because of self-rejection, fear, and all too human lapses of faith, we lose the ability to discern when we or others are weaponizing language. How can we know for sure? Henri Nouwen writes of the healing voice that says to everyone, “You are God’s Beloved” (29). It is the one voice he seems most sure of – and the voice that can help us live through, if not always answer, all the other questions.

And did Gamble really score that last goal before the Middlebury ice was taken out in 1972?

Let me tell you another story.

Written by James Gamble

James Gamble is reading Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith by Henri Nouwen (Harper One, 2006) and is grateful to St. Paul’s Youth Minister Emma Mitchell for reorganizing our St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Library.