the Empathy List #151: Lower the Stakes
I've adopted a low-stakes hobby: I'm a basketball fan now. (Go, Nuggets!)
Real quick: would you review my book?
And if you haven’t bought my book, today is the day. I DID NOT WRITE A BIBLE STUDY, I SWEAR. Instead, you’ll get storytelling and weird performance art and the politics of Bible reading and me geeking out about the origin stories of science. If you read this newsletter, you’re gunna love it, and disagree with it, and find yourself (I HOPE) wrestling with God. I can’t wait to hear what you think. :-D
Hello friend, Liz here.
How are you? I’m good.
…Just kidding, I’m anxious.
Partly I’m anxious because of ALL OF THIS—
as my friend
writes, “Most days, opening my phone feels like unmedicated surgery. The headlines drip with violence, polarization, fear, and failure. The comment sections (even my group texts sometimes…) are spiritual poison. Despair is no longer something that visits now and then; it’s something I’ve learned to live with, carry in my pocket, scroll before bed.”But also? I’m anxious for my basketball team, the Denver Nuggets. Currently, for the non-sports-people in the room, the NBA season has ended and we’re in the middle of play-off season. NBA play-offs look like the top 8 teams from the East side of the country and the top 8 from the West face-off in rounds of elimination (each round is SEVEN GAMES which is SO MANY GAMES). At the end of the face-off, the East and West play each other. And voila, a new championship team is born.
I am a new-ish sports fan. I played recreational sports throughout my childhood and teenage years, but never devoted myself to athletics.1 And I never watched sports on tv either. I told friends the point of the Super Bowl was commercials and appetizers.
But then I birthed an offspring who cannot sit still. My 12-year-old daughter dribbles, jumps, squats, climbs, sprints. She does nothing half-way. She started scaling my bookshelves before she hit 18-months-old. Bringing her to a playground at age 2 ensured that every adult within a five yard radius experienced absolute horror as they watched her find her way to the tippy top of the structure, the place where an architect built a non-weight-bearing flag for looks. That’s where you’d find my girl. (At the time, I decided I could not stop her, so she might as well learn the limits of her body the hard way.) To this day, she lives in constant motion, and whatever she plays, she determines to win. (Sorry, younger brother, she gives no mercy.)
Anyway, this daughter of mine took a fancy to basketball sometime in the third or fourth grade, and we’ve been sporadically enrolling her in the local recreation league ever since, where we watch her battle with a range of beginners, many of whom look more like experts from where I sit fuming on the bleachers. (I’m always telling my embarrassed husband, “It’s not fair, that entire team looks like eighth graders, not sixth graders! They must be the rich kids who attended all the summer skills camps!!” I wonder where my child gets her competitive edge…?)
I have now spent many of my Saturdays watching young women pass, dribble, shoot, rebound, and foul each other on repeat, and I have fallen for the sport. As a spectator, I especially appreciate that the play does not depend on the weather, as all the sports I played did. And I thought my enjoyment was about my daughter. It wasn’t, not entirely. It was also about me. That was a surprise.
I enjoy chronicling the ways that I’ve changed in this newsletter.
I do not know how often I witnessed people change during my years within the evangelical church. Change, generally, is viewed as a one-time event in evangelicalism, that born-again moment. We (or at least my people) minimized the other ways that we changed—the ways our bodies changed shape, the new hobbies and ideas that compelled us, the relationships lost or found. We wanted to be like Jesus, but we wanted to be like Jesus immediately. We seemed to have no patience for the long obedience in the same direction; we wanted the “snap your fingers” transformation.
Of course, over the course of our lives, we humans cannot stay the same. We do not stand still. Our beliefs shift subtly based on our life experiences and also based on those we know and meet. The stories we read and encounter change us. Our relationships change constantly, too, and when one party resists that change, the relationship can fracture and break. And need I remind us that our bodies are most changeable of all?
In the past few years, my politics have changed, my convictions have softened, and my relationships have dramatically reordered.
One of those shifts happened to include a growing attachment to a ~seven-foot-tall Serbian man and the basketball team built around him here in Denver.
I slowly began to order my time around Denver Nuggets basketball games, this year in particular. Basketball has become a sort of liturgy for our family. My husband plugged the season into our shared calendar, and what began as a “city obligation” to watch the Nuggets in their championship-winning run now has become a shared family activity.
We’ve watched every game this year—and when we couldn’t watch because of streaming issues, my husband and I followed along on ESPN.com. I even read about basketball, and not only news related to my team. I read about the teams we’ll be playing. My husband and I have even begun to watch the games of rivals—”for research,” I tell myself. (haha!)
I will admit, my fandom has doubtless been encouraged by the fact that the Denver Nuggets happen to have the best player in the world on our team, a likable, reserved Serbian center named Nikola Jokić. He’s won the league’s MVP award three times over four years, and he’s in contention for a fourth win. Over the course of this past season, I sometimes found myself worrying about his mental state, his injuries, his horses. (haha, jk, I don’t care about the horses.)
Basketball has become a family affair. Following the NBA has also become an enjoyable way to connect with my husband. As our faith connection has shifted, we’ve found ways to stay close—like religiously watching our team. ;-)
For more on the changing nature of faith in my marriage, read this—
Recently, we had the chance to attend two games live, including watching one double-overtime game from close-up. (Such a treat!)
The experience of watching a tough game from good seats, surrounded by super fans who stood with us through ten minutes of overtime, all of us holding our breath, swearing, sweating, heckling, chugging our beers and cheering—that almost felt like church. Actually, the stakes felt higher than any church service I’ve attended. That feels crazy to write (the evangelical part of me protests!!), but as I have reflected on the experience, I realize that the weighty, communal experience of fandom is a feeling I want to have more often. So, since that game in early April, I’ve actually chosen to go to my church more often in hopes of cultivating the same weekly experience. (It hasn’t felt that weighty yet. ;-))
My regular, obsessive Nuggets watching has become yet one more way in which I see myself changing. I’m so grateful that in a time of so much uncertainty, stupidity, and anxiety that this family hobby has resulted in so much joy. It snuck up on me, and I’m grateful for it.
Although, truthfully, the competitive part of me DOES feel VERY ANXIOUS amid this play-off season.
But maybe it’s a safer sort of anxiety? More like the anxiety/annoyance I feel when I cannot finish a puzzle as quickly as I want? ;-) At least in these cases, the consequences are low. I do not have to weigh whether a win or loss will hurt democracy, destroy churches, or fracture marriages. Instead, win or lose, I can find something to enjoy.
I hope you too can find a similar low-stakes obsession. (Or maybe you have? Tell me about it in the comments)
As we head into the summer months, I pray that you can offer yourself permission to feel joy alongside anxiety. Embrace the warmth of the season, and pray for hope. Grief and hope are two sides of the same coin, after all. When we despair, hope is not far behind. I want to remind you that the world is still beautiful. However that reminder arrives, I hope that you can at least see the humor in me falling hard for a huddle of tall men fighting over a basketball. Who woulda thunk it? Not me. But I’m sure glad it happened.
Thanks for reading, my friends.
Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant
Tell me: how are you changing for the better? What is bringing you joy?
And now for some programming announcements:
#1 This FRIDAY at NOON MST I’m going live ON SUBSTACK…
with
to talk about the malformed pillars of evangelicalism. I really enjoyed our conversation for his podcast a few months ago, and I’m looking forward to continuing the deep thinking out loud.TUNE IN HERE on Friday, May 9th at 12PM MST: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/26528
#2 I’m taking a Substack vacation, starting next week.
During the summer months, I take a break from the Empathy List, usually for a couple of months, following my kids’ summer vacation schedule.
I am the lead parent, and I need to be more flexible when school’s out. Plus, by the time these months roll around, I am out of ideas for this newsletter. Being a one-woman show, it’s important to rest so that I can sustain the disciplined practice of independent creating for the long-term. So I’ve cultivated this regular rhythm of a summer vacation to keep my enthusiasm up for this sweet community here!! I value my readers so much and want to keep giving you all my best.
May is a bit early for my break. But this year took a lot out of me! I’m sure that’s not a surprise for those with any familiarity with book publishing. Normally, I would have taken a break in December, too, but as my book was set to release on Jan. 7th, I preferred to be active here during the lead-up to the launch. So, I’ve been going full tilt, writing every week for this newsletter since last August… and at this point, I’m running on fumes.
Plus, I have something I want to work on with greater attention. During this newsletter pause, I plan to explore my next book project. So far, the plan is to combine the stories of the Hebrew prophets with stories of real-life contentious objectors. I’ll be telling the stories of prophets and protestors (especially women and BIPOC protestors)! I’m so freaking excited!!
If you’re curious or want to offer feedback—and especially if you have an little-known historical story of protest to share!—please reach out! Just reply to this email. I really love to hear from my readers.
Thanks for your support and understanding, my friends! I’ll look forward to getting back to my regular schedule, likely in August.
I’ll also plan to resume my normal structure for these newsletters: twice-monthly essays (the empathy List editions) AND twice-monthly “curious reads,” where I collect a round-up of five interesting stories from around the internet and discuss one story more deeply. If you’ve only found me recently, I think you’re going to enjoy these collections of Curious Reads. I have heard from many people that, lately, the entire internet has started to feel like “the bad place”! So, it’s a relief to lean on a trusted curator to find interesting and meaningful stories for you to read. (Much safer than doom scrolling.) I also include something goofy at the bottom of every list. ;-)
For those new-er to the newsletter, THANK YOU for subscribing, and may I suggest 8 Empathy List classics to read over the summer vacation? Enjoy!
Read my most liked post of all time, in which I reflected on writing THAT essay about Elisabeth Elliot’s third marriage—
Get to know me by reading this series, “A Debut Writer’s Publishing Story.” Start here—
Read about my favorite missionary, a deaf woman who ministered among the Kiowa people, Isabel Crawford—
Before the election, I was thinking about this question… and I’m still thinking about it—
Read how the gospel of Jesus is a story of empathy—
Read about that time when Dr. Dobson gave me the sex talk—
Read an interview with a dear friend of mine, Steve Slagg, who was excommunicated for his church for being gay—
Read about a man’s de-conversion from gun culture—
Now that I’m a “cute fat” lady, most people assume I’ve never held a ball in my life……. sorry to disappoint if that’s you. ;-)
I would say my current low-stakes obsession is NYT crossword puzzles, Wednesday puzzles specifically. I have a couple of books of collected Wednesdays, and now it's part of my bedtime routine. This is a BIG deal for me, as I'm a classic achiever who likes to get stuff done, show for my efforts, and create. There is literally no point to doing a crossword except for the joy of actually doing it. I need that.