Fantasy football that is. For the last ten years or so I’ve been playing Fantasy Football with a group of people I used to work with. If you go here you’ll see how I’ve done this year (although it’s a week out of date at time of writing. I didn’t win).
Thing is, I’m a Chelsea fan, so I’m not sure that there are going to be many years as satisfying as this one (first championship since before I was born), and there’s also the question of whether it’s ethically fitting to keep supporting a team built upon expropriated Russian assets, and where the board is led by someone like Peter Kenyon. All in all, time to take a break.
I also want to make room in my life for something else. I’ll still watch/ follow the footie – there are plans afoot to watch at least one of the world cup matches in Germany – but I want to actually play it a bit more often (as opposed to not playing it at all at the moment!) and put the time I had been putting to following particular players towards other ends. Like becoming the priest God has called me to be. I’ve got a long way to travel yet. Time to quit while I’m ahead.
Go back to your sermon today at St Edmunds! You have also said that God’s grace is a gift to us, we cannot earn it. We must not make judgements but be where Christ would be amongst sinners remembering that each and every one of us is a sinner too. What I would suggest you give up is the fantasy of an ideal priest. Be in the world and let the grace you have been given shine like a light.
he he he :o) that’s what my wife says as well! On the other hand, there is the question of letting God lead, which is what I *think* he’s doing in this case. Live and learn, that’s all.
It may indeed not up to you to be able to oversee, let alone decide, what’s THE ideal priest. Maybe you DO have to immerse yourself in football in order to enable ‘God’ to use you one day as a vehicle for his ‘grace’ (whatever that may mean) for hooligans. Who can know except ‘God’?
Yes, do practise letting yourself be Led, ask yourself whether leading liturgical worship helps you practising your openness to divine guidance and leave thinking about where it might lead you (e.g. ideal priesthood) to ‘God’.