Kirkepiscatoid: What's your fight song for God?

What's your fight song for God?

Ok, there is no doubt, come College Football season and College Basketball season, I bleed black and gold.

I grew up with Mizzou football in the Dan Devine era, and Mizzou basketball in the Norm Stewart era. Norm grew up one county away from me in Shelbyville, MO. If there is any "religion" that competes with my Christianity, it is Mizzou football/basketball, and St. Louis Cardinal baseball.

In fact, I chose Mizzou for medical school simply for that prospect of good season tickets as a student. My career in medicine had nothing to do with it. I turned down an acceptance where I presently work, the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, because I had also been accepted at Mizzou. Ten thousand dollars less tuition and season tickets won me over.

I dearly love the Mizzou fight song. It was also the fight song of my high school, Macon High. I bet if you cornered me, I can hum every part in the fight song--the melody AND the countermelody as played by the trombones (one of my high school beaus was a trombone player.)

So why post this on a blog that is mostly about spirituality?

My friends, it's all about LOYALTY.

Sometimes I think about the concept if I could be as loyal to God as I am to Mizzou football, I would not have half the worries I have.

You know, I know EXACTLY when the Mizzou football season starts and ends. I know every Saturday, for several weeks, my boys are going to be locked in conflict with another mortal enemy (Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma being the most mortal of them all.)

But when do I know God is going to show up? That's the hard part.

Back in the day, when I was a Lutheran, I used to joke that the song "This is the feast" was the "Lutheran fight song"....

We sing this once in a while in our church now, but I'm sorry, Episcopalians doing it...well, as they say on the LOLcats and dogs, "Ur not doin it rite."

It needs to be sung with a more "in your face, Devil!" attitude. We do okay, but we just don't quite "get it right."

However, I do laugh. You can look around the sanctuary and see who's "expatriate Lutheran." They don't look at the hymnal.

So....I ask you, dear readers...

What's your "fight song for God?"

5 comments:

Elizabeth Kaeton said... September 5, 2009 at 8:57:00 PM CDT: Hmmmmm . . .. (thinking, thinking, thinking . . . )

I don't like football and while I get your point, I'm cringing at the thought of a "fight song" for God.

Hmmm . . . . .
Kirkepiscatoid said... September 5, 2009 at 9:12:00 PM CDT: Hey, it's not for everyone. I'll be the first to tell you that. But at least for me, I think it's a matter of "things that screw my courage up." It's that "bring it on, I will take what comes" attitude.

There will always be that part of me, as a dyed-in-the-wool expatriate Lutheran, that has to "do battle with something." Even if the "something" is me. I grew up thinking a lot about "the Devil." I have learned that "the Devil lives between my two ears." There are just times I have to rear up and do battle with it!
Fran said... September 6, 2009 at 6:15:00 AM CDT: What Elizabeth said - and what you said in response to her does make some sense to me, even if it is not my experience.
Linda Ryan said... September 8, 2009 at 7:34:00 AM CDT: I listened to the organ piece the other day. Thanks for the ear worm that just won't leave! Oy vey!

I think if I had to have a fight song it would be "Lift High the Cross." While it doesn't get me motivated to go fight someone or knock somebody over, it does get the blood flowing and the head raised a little higher.
Kirkepiscatoid said... September 8, 2009 at 7:41:00 AM CDT: Well, and I got to thinking that, in TEC, the song "The Church's One Foundation," in a sense, was the "fight song" during the time when Women's Ordination came to pass and has been used for a similar purpose as we started to be more inclusive in the LGBT sense.