Just Thinking

Today’s title should actually be, Just Thinking……As usual.

My take below on sports entertainment, is about watching sports not
participating, although participation certainly can influence
spectatorship.

Over a lifetime of watching people and wondering why they like this,
and why they don’t like that in the world of entertainment, but
especially in sports entertainment, I have developed, as you who know
might expect, my own opinions on why and why not. Why some people take
to one spectator sport, but not another.

Do different sorts of people like different sports? My answer is yes,
but we can like or dislike sports despite our personalities as well as
because of them.

My thoughts came to me this past Saturday night as I viewed (on TV) a
Milwaukee Brewers verses the San Francisco Giants, Major League
Baseball game.

I should begin by stating that while baseball was my favorite stick
and ball sport when I was young, as I played it much including in the
Little League, my interests in baseball as an adult has mainly been to
see what the standings are, and if my team was winning or not. I still
liked it, but it was just way to slow for me as an adult.

As I watched the game with interest on Saturday, I found that while I
enjoyed the strategy and the play, I was beginning to get bored. I
mean, football is my game.

As the game went on, and both teams tried everything, but struggled to
get a lead of any significance, I found I began gaining more interest
instead of losing it. The picture/batter match-ups, and the manager’s
attempts to find a way, any way to gain the upper hand and put the
game away, were becoming fascinating to me. I began realizing just how
much there is to this game, despite the fact that it is a game of
understatement instead of over statement. The players actually put
everything they had on the line. They never gave up

In the end, my team pulled it out by refusing to quit, in a similar if
less brutal fashion than a football team does.

Over the last couple of years, I have taken to following professional
golf. Now I will admit, miniature golf and some time spent on driving
ranges, is all the personal experience I have with golf. With that
said, I am shocked at just how exciting it can be on the Sunday finish
of a golf tournament, when the leaders begin to fight it out in an
attempt make even more amazing shots than they had in the previous
three days. Sometimes it feels like the leader and his/hers nearest
rival, are in a boxing match instead of the gentlemanly sport of golf.
Deliver the knockout punch!!

I love auto racing! It matters little to me whether you call it a
sport or not. There are a million reasons why people like and do not
like auto racing. I figured out many years ago, that if the first time
you hear a race car fire up, and the first time to you see multiple
cars race into a turn, be it at a dirt oval, asphalt oval, or a road
course, you are not immediately taken with this for life, you will
never last as a race fan. My ex-wife spent many years with me,
attending races both as a race fan, and helping me sell pictures. She
also often wrote newspaper articles while I captured the races on
film. She did these things because of me for which I am grateful, but
despite her attempts to stay around car racing after I was gone, it
faded away eventually. Such has never been the case for me.

Very few sports can be an acquired taste. If you follow them because
of somebody else, or because that’s what the gang is doing, you will
fade away eventually. If you get goose bumps from the “get go”, you
will be infected with goose bumps forever, even if there are
occasional lapses while life gets in the way.

Like everything I think about, I equate one subject with another in an
attempt to understand the human thought process, and the human
condition.

If spectator sports are a form of entertainment, and they are (hence
forth the term spectator), then certainly “fandom”, can be similar
with movies, TV, music entertainment and much more.

Politics is among other things, a form of entertainment. We are all at
least occasionally amused and entertained by what goes on. Social
media such as Facebook and Twitter, can be forms of entertainment. I
mean, we laugh, we get angry, we get sad, and we can be indifferent.
Can it be anymore entertaining?

Just the same, the world with all of its glory and with all of its
warts, is there to see on social media. It is a giant soap opera of
life, but it is often as contrived and phony also. So are may forms of
entertainment.

The nightly news has become a sad form of entertainment. Sometimes it
is just as “manufactured” as social media. It is difficult to say
which is harder to cope with, when they report the truth, or when they
merely facilitate the spreading of lies.

The world, and today due to smart phones I mean almost the entire
world, has never had so many forms of entertainment in her hands,
while at the same time that same world, feels so empty and lost.

We have never had so much information (a good thing when it is
truthful), or so much entertainment. I do think today’s world, with
all of its evil, and even with its “look at me, look at me” attitude,
still has a lot to offer. It is incumbent on each of us, to put forth
the effort to find the good, along with acknowledging and fighting the
bad.
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In keeping with today’s post I must opine, while there is nothing
wrong with being entertained at a church service, however, if that is the
actual purpose of the service, or the purpose of attending such, one
must question what they are “truly” searching for.
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The Bible states that God created us in His image. Ever since that
day, man has been attempting to (re) create God in ours. Man, through
“his” church, rather God’s Church, tries to assign humanistic
qualities to God. He appears to do that in an effort to excuse man’s
sins, feed his ego, and bring his version of god down to man’s level.

It doesn’t work, because God is in fact, God, and we are in fact, human.

Over the years, as humans have tried to redefine the Bible to fit our
own sinful desires, or our own lust for power, all we have really
accomplished is to create false idols.

Those who view God as the one true God. Those who understand both His
incredible Grace and Love, and His Wrath, come to know Him as most do
not. No false idol, be it a person, an object, or a church, will ever
measure up.

I am little more than a man who tries to understand. I always need
help in that endeavor and I do use people for that purpose. Hopefully
those who are perhaps wiser than myself. Having stated that, my chief
teacher is God Himself. Always!!! His Spirit is the greatest teacher
there is, ever has been, or ever will be.

I give God credit for every good thing that happens in my life,
anybody else’s life, or in the world in general. I never blame Him for
anything that seems (in my meager understanding) to go wrong, or be a
negative.

That’s right, I give Him credit for everything good but assign Him no
blame for anything that might be bad.

I do this because He is God, and I am not.

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A few images to close with.

Theodore Roosevelt N.P., North Dakota
1TR12
Autumn reflections