The Baptism of Christ, 10th January 2021 - online
Since Christmas, I’ve been reading a heavyweight book - heavy in size, I mean, not in content: 370 pages, over 500 photos, 50,000 words - which I’ve found fascinating because it reconnected me to a strand in my life which I had thought was long past, but it turns out still means a great deal to me.
It’s the 125-year history of Marine Football Club [1] who, if you follow the local news, will know are the North Liverpool team from the Northern Premier League Division One North West, the same league as Clitheroe and Kendal Town play in, who this afternoon are hosting in their tiny Crosby ground the mighty and glamorous Tottenham Hotspur in the Third Round of the FA Cup. Even just saying that fills me with emotion, for I watched Marine for many years, from the age of about eleven till I was well into my forties, on and off, and throughout my teenaged years that was every week, at home and sometimes away. [There’s a picture of me in the book, in the crowd celebrating a Marine goal, all gangly arms and long hair…]
Now in these serious and sobering times, soccer might be dismissed as being not weighty enough a subject, and at the start of the first lockdown last March Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp sagely put things in perspective by describing football as being “the most important of the least important things”. [2] But in reading the Marine book and reconnecting with old friends over the Spurs game, I reckon I’ve found that my rekindled enthusiasm for all things Marine is not just escapism or nostalgia. It’s about family - who nurture us - for it was my granddad Cyril Davies who introduced me to that club as a youngster, and we bonded on those terraces more than we did anywhere else. It’s about community - which extends us - as you’ll well know if you’ve ever been part of a small sports club; where the players and supporters and directors are all on first-name terms and all work together to do what’s needed to keep the organisation afloat. It’s about friendships - which add substantially to our sense of well-being, friendships with people who we can be ourselves with, in fact, have to be ourselves with for they know us too well for us to pretend otherwise, friendships of the sort that last a lifetime, that may come and go but are always fundamentally there. And it’s about having a sense of place, of belonging, of somewhere you know is your heart’s home. ‘Community is at the core of football, and with it notions of identity and place,’ says the writer on football culture Martin Cloake. [3]
We draw from deep wells. Sometimes we forget, but in times like these, times when we may be feeling vulnerable, alone, misplaced, insecure, when life’s certainties are being challenged by circumstances we can’t control, it’s good to remind ourselves of the deep wells from which we draw.
We draw from deep wells. Each of us has our family history - the stories of those who’ve nurtured us, and how we’ve matured through our relationships with them. Each have been formed in community - extended by our involvement with others in common tasks and mutual interests. Each have our friendships - which have given us our sense of value in the eyes of others. And most of us too have a sense of place, a home where our heart is. In these times when we are physically distanced from many of these people or places, it might help for us to take time each day to draw from them again - to spend time on the phone or writing a letter or revisiting old photographs or books or films which remind us of them - for by bringing these people, places, things to the surface and contemplating their significance to us, we may help restore in ourselves a peace of mind, a sense of self and of well-being.
Of all the deep wells from which we in our particular faith tradition draw, one of the deepest is the waters of our baptism. Those who have been baptised are blessed from time to time when reminding ourselves of what this means. The family which our baptism connects us into - the family of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom we intimately belong. The community of faith - the church in all its forms, including those brothers and sisters for whom baptism is not such a key thing, but with whom we practice a spiritual life, by sharing in those acts of worship which sustain us. And within that community of faith, there’s our friendships: with those who especially affirm, encourage and understand us. These are all deep wells from which the baptised may draw.
There is also our sense of place, those churches, cathedrals, chapels - or places in nature or the built environment - where we especially feel closer to God and our sense of ourselves. We may be unable to visit them just now, but at any time we may bring them to our heart’s surface as we prayerfully seek God’s renewing in our lives.
One deep well on which I draw is my friendship with two spiritual elders with whom I worked for a season in my life and whose valuable soul-friendship continued on afterwards. From them I learned to value the idea that ‘most people know most of what we need to know about God already, we don’t need new information, but we do need encouragement and confidence to trust our own instincts.’ Henry and Roy edited a book about this called The God You Already Know, in which they say that
We believe that if we pay attention life will teach us most else that we need to know. God’s creation is good, and life is basically friendly and can be trusted. We acknowledge that sometimes we get things wrong, or that bad things sometimes happen to us. But we believe that when either of those things does happen, then under God we can learn something from it and grow. God is not in our experience a punishing God but a loving God. God’s creation is basically good, and we as a part of that creation are basically good too, at least in God’s eyes. [4]
Their message is that ‘we can for the most part trust ourselves, our deepest desires and instincts.’ And ‘with the support of a faith community and a modest degree of self-discipline in prayer’ we can draw on the deep wells which are the resources life has given us. Is now a time when you feel you’d benefit from doing this? May God guide and bless you if you do.
Notes
[1] Barry Lenton, Marine Football Club 125 Years.
[2] Paul Wilson, 'Football matches aren't important': Klopp sends message to Liverpool fans. Guardian, 13 March 2020.
[3] Martin Cloake, ‘Community is at the core of football, and with it notions of identity and place'. Sporting Intelligence, 3 September 2014, an edited extract from the book of Taking Our Ball Back: English Football's Culture Wars. Martin Cloake also happens to be a Tottenham supporter.
[4] Henry Morgan (funnily enough also a Spurs fan!) and Roy Gregory, eds, The God You Already Know: Developing your spiritual and prayer life.
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