Who will be the greatest?

Every four years

the Christians put aside

their differences to gather

at the Discipleship Olympics.

There they contend with each other

to determine who is the greatest.

The rivalry is fierce,

with acolytes punishing their bodies

and exercising their minds for many years

even to prove worthy of selection.

After days of contesting, measuring,

personal-best scores, fingernail finishes

and acts of heroism and sacrifice;

after countless stories of love,

devotion, triumph over adversity,

courage, heartache and disappointment,

winners are declared.

Flagpoles are readied, anthems are cued

and the victorious ones are called

to stand behind the podium

and await the invitation to ascend.

Before they can do so,

a group of children,

playful, unkempt and disorderly,

is herded before them.

The medals are presented

to the children, who play with them,

laugh, and take turns

in having their pictures taken.

© Ken Rookes 2012

The Olympics: a parade of Life

Perhaps in no other way is Life Force so visible to us than in sports, especially the Olympics. When we’re watching or participating in a sporting event of a local nature, we have a narrower view of Life Force flowing through individuals within a certain team, or event, or sport in places familiar to us.

When it comes to the Olympics, however, we see the spectacle of the diversity of the world and Life Force, Source Energy, Itself, in it’s myriad splendor in events, in individuals, across nations and encompassing – The World.

As these individuals “compete”, we thrill to their achievements whether they are “our” team or not. Somehow the Olympics makes us fans of Life, and we can cheer, root for, and appreciate every single one of them as our own, which they are.

http://appliedspirituality.com/current-events/the-olympics-a-parade-of-life/

Certainly a spiritual take on the olympics

Thankyou to Michael Leunig of the age for his deep insight once again.

The Olympics of Kindness

I wish there were more made of this sort of thing at the olympics.
"The 1992 Olympics are now history, but while they were in progress a few months back, we remembered the story of Henry Pearce of Australia, who was competing in the single scull rowing event at the 1928 Olympics. He was leading when a duck and her string of ducklings came into view up ahead. They were on a collision course and Pearce reckoned that his scull would cut the string in two and sink a few ducklings in the process, so he pulled in his oars. When the ducks passed, Pearce again bent his back to the task. There’s a happy ending to the story. Pearce won. Usually, acts of sportsmanship result in defeat. Remember Leo Durocher’s pronouncement, “Nice guys finish last”? It happened a couple of years ago in the marathon tandem kayak racing event at the world championships in Copenhagen. Danish paddlers were leading when their rudder was damaged in a portage. British paddlers, who were in second place, stopped to help the Danes fix it. The Danes went on to defeat the British by one second in an event that lasted nearly three hours. But there’s a happy ending to this story too. According to The Wall Street Journal, the British kayakers won what many people regard as the highest honor in sports. They became the winner of the Pierre de Coubertin International Fair Play Trophy. The trophy is named for the founder of the modern Olympic Games, and it has been awarded annually for the past 28 years to people in sports who have demonstrated nobility of spirit. It is big news in Europe, but it has not been given much recognition in the United States. In the past, the trophy has gone to a Hungarian tennis player who pleaded with officials to give his opponent more time to recover from a cramp, and to a high school basketball coach who forfeited the Georgia (US) state championship after he found out that one of his players was scholastically ineligible. The first trophy went to an Italian bobsledder named Eugenio Monti for a gesture that exhibited a touch of class. In the two-man bobsled event at the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics, Monti was the leader after his final run. The only one given a chance to beat him was Tony Nash of Great Britain. As Nash and his teammate got ready for their final run, they discovered that a critical bolt on their sled had snapped at the last moment. Monti was informed of the problem and immediately took the corresponding bolt from his own sled and sent it up to Nash. Nash fixed his sled, came hurtling down the course to set a record and won the gold medal."
http://bible.org/illustration/1992-olympics

A comment on the Olympics

Credit to michael leunig in the age today.