Hockey Fights and Family Values

Well, it's happened. My sweet baby boy (okay, so he's a husky almost-thirteen year old) has had his first hockey fight. I've dreaded this day, known it was coming, and hoped it would never come.

In the final game of a tournament to determine the Midwest Regional Championship PeeWee team, Dan earned a game misconduct for fighting. Apparently, the Omaha players were taunting him by calling him "Condom" among other equally nasty names and Dan lost his temper.

One thing I haven't written about in this blog is the role that faith plays in our lives. We are Quakers. Most people don't know very much about Quakers and tend, when hearing the name, to think of the guy on the oatmeal box or to think of people long ago who didn't wear buttons or dance. Quakers do have a long faith tradition dating back to the seventeenth century. Quakerism is a Christian faith, but differs significantly from other protestant denominations, perhaps most evidently in our belief that every person is a minister; hence, at least in conservative Meetings, we don't have ordained ministers, but sit in silence waiting on the Word of God. Any person who feels moved to speak may do so.

Much has changed in Quaker faith and practice, but four central tenets of our faith remain. These are Simplicity, Truth, Equality, and Peace (I teach my children to remember these by the acronym, "STEP." Mike and I remember them by the acronym, "PEST" as Quakers can be pests when we feel convinced that we must stand firm in our faith.

For our family, Simplicity means being conscious of the mark we leave upon the earth, stewarding our planet as responsibly as we are able and it means holding most dear our shared faith, our love for one another, and God's creatures rather than prizing material gain.

Truth means that we try in every circumstance to speak the Truth as best we can discern it by attending deeply, reflectively, and deliberately to the will of God as it is revealed to us. We talk of listening to the Still Small Voice Within and attending to that voice at every moment in our lives. For this reason, we don't swear oaths but commit ourselves to speaking the Truth in every circumstance.

Equality means that God recognizes no hierarchies among the peoples of the earth. Each of us, regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, nationality, or faith, is beloved of God and equal in Her eyes. And God may give any one of us some piece of the Truth and ask of us that we minister that Truth.

Peace means that there is that of God in every person and in every one of God's creatures. Therefore, to do harm to another is to do harm to God, Herself. Most Quakers are pacifists.

When Dan first started playing hockey, we were living in Kinderhook, NY and were members of Old Chatham Monthly Meeting. Some of our Friends were, well...not shocked exactly, but curious about our choice to encourage Dan in the sport because of its reputation as a game that values, even encourages violence. I won't speak for Mike, but I felt (and still feel, I guess) that the pleasure that hockey gave to Dan and the athleticism it required of him trumped the predilection of some fans toward a kind of gladitorial culture. I felt that we could teach Dan to play the game well and bring our faith to his playing of the game. I felt, and really do still feel, that faith means little if it is never tested and that the right choice would be to talk with Dan about the violence of the sport rather than seeking to protect him from thinking through how our faith might inform all kinds of choices he might make even and especially under the most challenging of conditions.

While there are certainly fights in professional hockey, the culture of violence in hockey, I think, is most prevalent at the junior level, particularly in leagues like the USHL in which the players are high school aged boys with promising talent. Here, games are preceded by light shows, smoke, and loud music in a style quite akin, I imagine, to the opening of professional wrestling matches. There is, in these games, an endorsement and promotion of a masculinity defined by aggressive physical prowess even, in many cases, at the expense of skills in skating, stick-handling,and strategy. And this culture, I think, is not unique to hockey played at this level, but is, rather, an exaggeration or a kind of excessive performance of masculinities in which boys are steeped in all cultural contexts (including school).

To live his faith off and on the ice is a lot to ask of young Dan. And yet, I think, it is in the imperfections of our faith as lived experience, as choice, that we learn how better to be faithful in our lives. The objective of faith, I think, is to honor God by trying hard and with humility, not to achieve the fact of or some conviction that we are, in fact, perfect in faith.

When we were living in Minnesota, we really stopped going to Meeting. There was no Quaker Meeting in St. Cloud and the nearest gatherings were in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Brainerd (an hour's drive each way). Two weeks ago, though, and largely because Grace has been asking so much about Quakerism, I started attending the Quaker Meeting here in Lincoln. Next weekend, Dan, Lucy, and Mike will, I hope, go with Grace and me. I realize I've taken to much for granted with regard to our faith. We need to be more intentional in our sharing of our faith with our children if Dan, Lucy, and Grace are to be equipped to choose lives of faith even in the face of a culture that espouses and valorizes violence over love, respect, reflectiveness, and compassion.