Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


9.18.2005  

The Road Goes Ever On

The first trip up to South Bend has come and gone, and I have not returned unaffected. I told Mon after the game that I feel a long blog post coming on; how could I not express my thoughts on such a momentous occasion? For those of you who actually kept up with the pictures that I posted throughout the day yesterday, I don't know whether or not to commend you for your vigilance and fortitude or to commend to you a good counseling session with your pastor ;) Seriously, though, it was something I don't think I want to forget, through either visual objectivity or experiential subjectivity, and so this post will recount some of the thoughts that ran through my head yesterday and are continuing to run through my head today. I'm going to do it a little differently, however. How so? I'll take a quote from some place (book, a person, or some other source) and run with it. You'll see what I mean ;)

"Well, I'm back." That's what Samwise said in The Return of the King when he returned from the Grey Havens, after watching Frodo and the rest of those on the ship leave with Cirdan on the ship bound for the West. That's kind of how I feel now. I'm sad; Notre Dame lost, yet the loss is not all sorrow. I gained much in having seen the campus, experienced the sights and sounds I had heretofore experienced only through the Media, and spent some great time with my sister.

When Sam said those words in the Return of the King, the novel ended. Yet his story went on, as he knew it had to. Frodo had left, and he was the Master of Bag End. Life, and not necessarily life as he had once known it, had to go on. In a similar fashion, I was reminded of how fleeting our lives our. On the drive back, I was still thinking about the game, but the Lord grounded me once more in life beyond those 60 minutes of football. We love, we hurt, we hope; what will we do when our hopes are crushed, the hurt is magnified, and we don't want to love? It's easy to bounce back from a game. After all, it's just a game. (I keep telling myself that, in hopes that it'll sink in.) Still, life often seems far more devastating, does it not? What will we do when our hopes are crushed, the hurt is magnified, and we don't want to love? The real question behind that is, "Is Christ enough?" Of course He is. But we answer with our lives, not our lips.

"Great sorrow." If you don't know who says this, you just haven't been at Boyce or Southern long enough. Dr. Betts felt Great Sorrow after Ohio State lost a little over a week ago, no doubt, and I now empathize with him in a much deeper fashion than I had prior to yesterday's loss. Great, great sorrow, indeed!

"They seem a bit above my likes and dislikes, so to speak." Seeing the campus...wow. There aren't a whole lot of people here at school who realize the degree to which I've followed Notre Dame football over the years (or sports in general, for that matter), so this post may seem somewhat melodramatic. If you're one of those people, consider yourself hereby enlightened. The evidence for my fanaticism? Hmmmm...among other things, I'd written a paper on Lou Holtz and Knute Rockne in high school, consistently woke up my sisters and mother on Saturday mornings while watching the the Irish play, cried when Lou retired, screamed my head off and cried when FSU was voted national champs in '93 (the greatest injustice in ND history, other than Joe Montana riding the bench for so long), cut out the Top 25 from the newspaper and used it as bookmarks each week in elementary school (yeah, a long time ago), and generally suffered in agony through the last years of Lou and the Two Men of Whom We Do Not Speak. So yes, to say that the entire experience yesterday was above my likes and dislikes is a very appropriate statement, as I do think that Master Samwise does well in capturing my thoughts once more. He was describing to Frodo his thoughts on meeting Elves for the very first time, those whom he had yearned to meet for so long. I, too, had yearned to watch a game in South Bend, but had not yet done so. Was everything as I thought it would be? Yes, and more so. The Basilica, the Grotto, the Golden Dome, and the stadium...absolutely perfect. But how could they be otherwise?

posted by Bolo | 3:46 PM
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