From a thread.

Last week I stayed up late, watched gymnasts and beach volleyballists and badmintoners getting their job done, son. Beat the metal of your life into a pleasing shape, and if it's your day, you get a medal. Not your day? Then you aren't even shown on the camera, and so you're as alive to the world as I am here in my office chair. Dive in the water, decisecond here, you're a millionaire, decasecond there, you're a nobody from a nobody country, and the world waves its red or white and blue and you wave no banner at all. Well, unless you're American. Two teams drop two batons in two relays and I see more about them than the teams who advanced.

I watched that swimmer guy win some medals last week. That was impressive.

I almost didn't start watching, though. I hadn't really planned on it. I figured China'd be China, and I didn't want to participate in that, even from afar. And after watching, it was like I figured, China's China after all, and all the blind faith of the IOC in itself to make the world a better place by its mere presence hasn't done a darn thing to help. As of this afternoon, there are still six American protesters flat out missing. Another 12 hours or so, and the embassy can start looking. Until then their hands are tied. That doesn't count the 12 bloggers arrested for protesting. China didn't clean their air (can you even do that?), and they didn't open the internet, and it's all a big show so a red party can prove to a big ol' sixth of the world it's still worthy of ruling them. All like we expected. So knowing that kind of thing was coming from China was almost enough in and of itself to keep me uninterested.

I was also considering not watching due to not knowing how I would feel about the dominance of the American empire's Olympic juggernaut. The richest, most powerful country in the world wins athletic events, so it's no big story, right? Empire being empire. But the U.S. Olympic Committee is a not-for-profit, not a government entity, and all those athletes give so much of their own (and parents') lives and time and money (before sponsorship (sometimes it doesn't even come)) to becoming the best at what they do. So, yeah, we're all emperor here, we're all the shadow government. You buy phone service and the phone company donates some of your money to the people who go to the Olympics so they can do well so you'll watch and they can advertise phone service at you. So even though I'm also not interested in participating in the propaganda my own empire, even from afar, I still find myself drawn on by the culture around me. Kind of like how when you're a kid you think that smart and cultured people are supposed to like the evening news, supposed to be informed, but then you learn the evening news is not really for informing. Aren't I supposed to want to watch the Olympics.? Make it an us up there winning, not a them? Do my part to support the economy, er, I mean, the team?

Also, and I may be alone on this, but who cares if someone's the best in the world at something? What does that prove? What's the good? In the "kingdom of God" there's neither Olympian nor official nor spectator, neither Chinese nor American, neither sweat shop worker nor consumer; we're all one in Christ, right?

So I'd decided I might not participate at all. I would have a private little boycott. Maybe I'd even end up avoiding self-righteousness. Ha, fat chance.

Ended up, we were at Jill's cousins' house watching the opening day events, and the kids were getting all kinds of over-excited about winning. Chastising the players for not playing as well as they needed to. "Blood makes the grass grow, kill kill kill" trickles down. "Home of the Chiefs" trickles, so does "we love you Chelsea." But who am I to deny the hospitality, deny a shared experience, so I did participate then, and I got hooked and I still am participating. As I'm editing this, the women's platform diving is pre-empting the men's beach volleyball final that we'll see an over-edited version of as soon as the network says it's okay, boys and girls. [Later edit. Never mind. It's live, after all. My schedule was wrong. Whoops] But the reason I kept watching the Olympics is the same reason that I watch that one golfer some Sundays lying half-awake on the couch: I like seeing people do really well at things. Sometimes I feel like I and the world are such good buddies in failure, it's so reassuring to see someone excel at anything, even if it's just hitting a thing into a thing from a ways off so people will pay you to say their motorcars are for fancy people. Or swimming faster than everybody else in the world six times in a row and that gets your mom her own clothing line, and you a million dollar bonus. Or sometimes it's just one person proving they're better than someone else at something, even if, in the grand scheme, that doesn't mean anything. Right then, that person was good. Right then, the world wasn't so broken that a person couldn't do well at a thing.

Or maybe I just like being entertained.

Or wanted an excuse to stay up late, push myself to limits of exhaustion.

So I chased those late Olympic nights last week with morning caffeine, stretched myself out on a rack between the two, like Bilbo and butter and bread, getting more and more tired, watched one event while another played on the laptop, no commentary, just the soothing seashore of a crowd, and gulls of the stadium announcers. Got snippy at work. Cheered for the eastern European outside lanes in swimming. Cheered for people to do well, no matter what country. Skipped naps for sports I didn't care about. Cheered for people at all, when it came down to it. Good job, under-age Chinese girl, you did it even though they made you lie. You still did the best, did your best. Good job Japanese guy flying off the rings. You'll be fine even without a medal on your neck. Good job guy whose elbow went backwards weightlifting. Good job specific height-range, specific eye-width to face-height ratio medal ceremony attendants. Good job over-thirty crowd. Good job opening ceremony propagandists. Good job Morgan Freeman voice-over hiring director. Good job Georgian athletes, way to overcome what's being done to your country. Way to go Russian athletes, way to overcome what's being done by your country.

But it wore me out, and the only thing I did creatively all week was take a couple pictures (some shown in this post) on break on Tuesday. So, that's where I've been, if you've been wondering. (Also, I've got a potential new job thing on the horizon, pushed back again to the horizon, and I was thinking about that an awful lot.)

So I was glad to take the day off on Friday in preparation for going on pilgrimage over the weekend. Slept in. Took it slow. Did watch some Olympics, if ya believe it.

Every year our church takes a weekend to travel to a camp an hour away from home and eat, play, and pray together for a couple days. Prayer three times a day, food three times a day, swimming, camping, talking. Do nothing or do everything.

Saturday night, most of us spent a couple hours grouped in 20s on a symbolic pilgrimage out through the woods, stopping to reminisce about the Hebrew exodus a couple times, then through a 1/3 scale model of the tabernacle, talking about how Yahweh's right here among us, a god who pitched his tent among the people, and what that might mean for us. We talked about that for a while in our group, and how a bunch of us are more in love with comfort than most things, even a god we're trying to follow. And I watched the other groups come down the path and through the tent like a nation on the move, and then we sang some songs like we Christians like to do sometimes, and then headed back to build a fire so Sam's last year rained-out s'mores plan could come to fruition.

I ran inside real quick to go to the bathroom before we went to make the fire, and on the big screen in the dining room there was a crowd gathered watching a swimming relay race. I watched it. It was impressive, like all the others. Some of the people cheered when the U.S. won. Some of the people clapped. I saw a man earn an eighth gold medal, get turned into something more than a man in mythological imaginations, still be just a man. I ask why he is the god or the dolphin, the one going home to Sea World? Why not the Japanese breast stroke guy, or the back stroke guy, or the guy who whose name I don't know who swam under a world record time but slower than three other guys who did the same? They're still above and beyond my ability, your ability, all but one other guy's ability. Gotta be the best, or you aren't a god. Or you aren't anything, apparently.

I read an article the other day by this lady who used to be a gymnast, and she is now an office drone, and she's tired of people saying that they could have been an Olympian, could have been that swimmer, that wrestler, that fencer, if only they'd stuck with it back when they were younger, could have flipped above the beam, flipped just so -- so there's no splash, jumped a horse over parallel metal bars. And while I agree that no matter how hard you try, there are some things you won't do, some medals you won't win, not everyone could win, I also think that anyone could have won. Anyone could have been that guy. Who picked field hockey? Not good enough for soccer? Of course, some people could never be there, no matter how they trained. But it could have been anyone. Didn't the Chinese replace most of the men's gymnastics just before the games? Maybe they were good enough for gold, too. My friend Galia swam for the junior national Belarusian team. Maybe she'd be famous, I wouldn't have a friend Galia if she hadn't quit. Maybe that pole vaulter is a friend of Jill's, save a choice she made when she was ten. Maybe Jill's on that uneven bar eight years ago if her parents pushed her to be the best, rather than the Jill. Maybe none of that, maybe all of it.

Things could have been different. Some guy's dad sticks with his mom, and he never gets into after-school swimming in Baltimore, and someone else gets to be America's Apollo this year. Like in those speculative commercials where the famous pitcher is instead a famous bowler. Maybe the swimmer would be the ninth best fencer, or the fifth best biathelete (it was the shooting that will keep him home from Vancouver in two years), and we'd never know him. Or maybe he'd be some frat guy at a college, gonna be the next big thing at the law firms in New York. He'd be just as unalive to the world at large as we are. Just as unsponsered, unaccoladed, unmedaled, just as much an everyday emperor as the next guy, buying phone service. Just a cog, just a bolt in a row of bolts on top of an air conditioner behind some power boxes in an industrial park. Or maybe, he's supposed to swim, that's who he is, he's made to swim, that's how he makes the world more beautiful. Maybe he would have been there no matter what.

I'm not trying to discount the work, the mornings, the sacrifice. Those are beautiful things. Maybe more beautiful performances than the ones on the big stage. But, for what? What's the big story those small ones tell? Is it so I can say my empire's just as strong as the red one? So I can have comradery with my fellow US-ians. Because it's good for the economy? To foster peace around the world. Aren't these the reasons use to we go to war? Is this the bloodless war?

My dad is bigger than your fatherland.

I met a foul-mouthed guy named Jeremiah at lunch today who caught a ride to Olathe last night to "visit his homegirl." She's going to buy her grandmother's car, but hasn't yet, so he was trying to hop a bus downtown to get home to 42nd and Rainbow. He said that a cop stopped him as he was walking to HyVee from 125th and Ridgeview because he had an axeman tattoo that indicated he was into the Insane Clown Posse, and Olathe's having a Juggalo problem. You read that right. The cop said Olathe's having a Juggalo problem. A. Juggalo. Problem. Jeremiah said he got his tattoo in fifth grade, back when he was doing whatever he wanted, before he knew better. The cop asked his birthdate. Sometime in early 89, he said. So he's not truant or anything. Cop searched him for drugs and alcohol based on the probable cause of a "gang-related" tattoo. I helped Jeremiah find where the Olathe Connector stops, so he could get to the "great" mall, and then get on the C bus four hours later to get home. I shook his hand and wished him luck, prayed for him a little on the inside.

I wonder if Jeremiah could have been an Olympian, if he wasn't the next Adonis, but he grew up in KCK, never learned a sport he loves. Probably not, I guess. That's a specially gifted human who gets there, after all. But I do know that I care more about this guy whose life story I haven't seen in stock footage and popular music and twirling black background camera shots, and who I'll never see again (let alone for shore in four years) than I do about people who worked really hard their whole lives to win a shiny disc on the end of a wide ribbon, a shiny disc that's for their country, as much (or more than) it's for themselves. I hope he made it home.

Disclaimer: I listened to my second through umpteenth Bright Eyes songs while writing this today.