Ardent Participation
By Andrea Lingle
“I love all those whom you have given me to sustain and charm my life. ” (Chardin, The Mass on the World, “The Offering”)
Considerately cheer one another on.
(McQuiston, Always We Begin Again, 20)
The risers jounced and rebounded under the pounding of a thousand jumping feet. The stadium air reached body temperature as the exhaled shouts formed a miasma of heat and sound. Arms stretched forward toward the opposing team with fingers wiggling, a thousand-tentacled beast of sporting spectatorship.
My time with the Cameron Crazies (Duke University’s student fans) was a master class in cheering. The energy was contagious. Before each game a sheet of paper would circulate through the students, lined up for a square foot of space, with the words of each cheer, the fight song, and tidbits about the opposing players that might afford a bit of teasing (all in good fun). Corded like a winter’s worth of firewood, we would assemble in the student section. My spot was beneath the goal in the grad-student section. Shoulders overlapping during the most sought-after games, we would fill Cameron Indoor Stadium with our ardent participation.
Ardent participation.
How glorious are the hours that we spend in ardent participation!
As the time-out whistle blew, we would sag against our neighbor, suddenly aware of the toll that forty game-minutes of jumping can have on a graduate scholar. But, the buzz of the game on would spur our quadriceps and gluteals to great feats of adrenalin-laced enthusiasm. In answer to our outpouring, the players would rip three-point-shots, dunk over grim-faced defenders, and block the nastiest of opposing efforts.
They were our team.
We were their Crazies.
We are all here in a context, a place, a wider-community. A place that needs our ardent participation. The preschool teacher comforting the heart of a home-sick toddler, the working parent who stifles a yawn to try to help reveal the impossibility of dividing fractions to an exasperated middle-schooler, the sanitation worker who jumps out of the truck to gather up the spilled contents of a recycling bin: these are the motions of our lives. We are here, “to sustain and charm” each other. We are here to love each other.
I was not a sports fan growing up, so, when the inevitable day came that our cheering was not enough and Maryland beat Duke at home (by nine), I made it to the car before I cried.
They were my team.
I was their Crazy.
And that is the risk. I had never cared one little bit about who won or lost on some random Wednesday, but my ardent participation carved out a place in my soul for this game. It brought cheers to my throat and tears to my eyes. My husband chuckled at me as I sniffled and dried my tears on my Duke toboggan. I smiled back at him. Living fully hurts. Living fully gleams. Living fully makes the one by one life gorgeous.
Mentioned in this essay:
Chardin, The Mass on the World, “The Offering”
McQuiston II, John, Always We Begin Again