Playing in the Zone

Sports satisfy our deep hunger to connect with a realm of mythic meaning, to see transpersonal forces at work within

BY: Andrew Cooper

From "Playing in the Zone" by Andrew Cooper. Copyright 1998 by Andrew Cooper. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.

For those who love them, sports are indeed a matter of faith, or at least they should be. They are not important in the way medicine or politics or law are important. Their value stems from their being separate from the realm of practical affairs that we call real life. They require not belief but the suspension of disbelief--in a word, faith. In this regard, sports resemble narrative art, myth, and religious ritual. That is, they require that one give oneself over to a story in which the elements of human experience are distilled, displayed, and integrated into a pattern of meaning that stirs the heart and quickens the soul.

Sport creates a second world in which our deepest potentialities, our virtues and our vices, are revealed and cultivated within an order that raises them to beauty. One leaves the self's familiar confines to be enriched by other modes of experience. Those who believe in the importance of sports and those who believe in their triviality are equally mistaken. In matters of faith, such beliefs are beside the point.

Our ancient ancestors believed sport was a gift of the gods, something with divine purpose.

The religious nature of sport is the subject of Michael Novak's "The Joy of Sports," a work to which the present one is much indebted. Novak argues, eloquently and persuasively, that in American society sport is a kind of "natural religion":

I am saying that sports flow outward into action from a deep natural impulse that is radically religious: an impulse of freedom, respect for ritual limits, a zest for symbolic meaning, and a longing for perfection.... I don't mean that participation in sports, as athlete or fan, makes one a believer in "God," under whatever concept, image, experience, or drive to which one attaches the name. Rather, sports drive one in some dark and generic sense "godward."

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