Of Basketball, War And Peace

Members of the St. Peter’s University Peacocks basketball team celebrate tjeir upset win against University of Kentucky in NCAA first round. (Photo courtesy of Yahoo Sports).

Like many of us, I watch the heartbreaking images of the human suffering and senseless destruction in Ukraine with growing despondency. Add to it the continuous political squabbling in this country, rising consumer prices and threat of a new Covid variant and it all points to one word: despair. Sometimes, though, joy breaks through.

That happened this past week when the Peacocks basketball team of my undergraduate alma mater, St. Peter’s University in New Jersey, orchestrated a thrilling upset in the NCAA first round against the # 2 ranked team. They won again Saturday night over another formidable and better-funded team and are now headed for the Sweet 16 competiton for the first time in St. Peter’s history.

The Peacocks are like St. Peter’s itself, a place full of grit and determination. Many St. Peter’s students are, as I was in my day, the first in their family to finish college. A Cinderella team indeed.

I felt a different kind of joy in guiding a retreat last weekend on two of our great African American spiritual teachers: Howard Thurman and Sister Thea Bowman. Both endured prejudice, personal tragedy and other significant setbacks. Both emerged from those trials with a strong faith forged by suffering.

Howard Thurman believed in a “Heart” at the heart of life that works toward good. (Photo courtesy of Guideposts).

We might feel powerless in the face of the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. Thurman and Sister Thea show us is that there is something we can do. We can become bearers of peace in our own lives, and in doing so, add to the peace of the world.

Thurman grew up in the segregated south and became the first African American to finish eighth grade in his Florida community. He eventually graduated from seminary, taught at both Howard University and Boston University, then founded one of the first inter-faith, racially-diverse churches in America.

Sister Thea, a convert to Catholicism, joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at a time when few orders would accept African American members. She became an inspired evangelizer who brought her “ministry of joy” to a worldwide audience. She is now being considered for Catholic sainthood.

Sister Thea Bowman overcame racism to join a Catholic women’s religious order. “If they aren’t going to like me, I’ll make them love me,” she said. (Photo courtesy of ncronline).

Thurman and Sister Thea never stopped believing that good is more powerful than evil and love more durable than hate. When her Protestant father warned her that she might encounter people who would not appreciate the sight of a black Catholic nun, Sister Thea responded, “If they aren’t going to like me, I’ll make them love me.”

In a 1987 interview on 60 Minutes, she said, “I think the difference between me and some people is that I’m content to do my little bit. Sometimes people think they have to do big things in order to make change. But if each one would light a candle we’d have a tremendous light.”

Thurman believed there is “at the heart of life, a Heart” that works in all circumstances toward good. “The Christian view insists that ultimately the evil enterprise will not be sustained by life for the simple reason that it is against life,” he wrote. “For what is against life is against God.”

In his most famous work, Jesus and the Disinherited, he said, “There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.”

We don’t individually have the power to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine. We do have the power, wherever we are, to be bearers of peace. Can we create a space for the beautiful, for what Thurman called “the singing of angels?” Can we light a candle with our lives, as Sister Thea Bowman suggests?

Certainly we can continue to pray that negotiations bring an end soon to the senseless war in Ukraine. That might seem an unlikely outcome at the moment, but as the St. Peter’s Peacocks have proved, the improbable can and does happen.

Sister Thea Bowman said, “Sometimes people think they have to do big things in order to make change. But if each one would light a candle we’d have a tremendous light.” (Photo by Rebecca Peterson-Hall)