MY NIL IS NULL [Sun, 12-5-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

I recently reached a totally spiritual state. CS Lewis says that we are not bodies that have souls, but souls that have bodies. I am now in that bodyless state.

I knew that I had faded from view during the covid19 lockdown. I’m just not out where people can see my image and likeness. I go to church on my sofa, with my coffee. I use the drive-thru at the bank. Then…

Helen had decided to do without greens for Christmas decs this year, but our friend, Kathy, said, “Why don’t we go looking for greens while John fixes lunch for us?” Helen is a strong-willed woman, but what wife can turn down a deal like that?

I know how to cook, but only in even-numbered years. However, I am “never daunted,” as I sing each day in the IU fight song. I went to Fresh Thyme to buy ready-made sandwiches. I had been there only once prior, several years before the pandemic hit, and I have faded so far from view that my image and likeness did not even register on the automatic door. I stood there, feeling rather foolish, hoping that some more substantial person would come along, so that I could glide through the open door behind them. Then an employee-type person on the other side of the glass, the other side of reality, came over and waved a hand at the ceiling. He did not say “Open Sesame,” but the door slid over. I slipped in and said “Thanks,” but he turned away without a word, apparently embarrassed to be seen with someone so insubstantial that the door won’t even open for him.

Being so spiritual, I don’t think I can make any money on my NIL [name, image, and likeness] the way college athletes can now. NIL marketing agencies are signing up college players and publicizing the list of what they charge—so much for an autograph, this much for a photo, a whole lot for coming to your kid’s birthday party. You used to get thrown out of college for that.

 

And sports gambling! Pete Rose is denied the Hall of Fame because he gambled. People went to jail and paid fines because they gambled on games. Now, like in no time at all, which is all the time it ever takes if someone sees a way to make money out of something that was formerly a crime or sin, you’re not even allowed to watch games on TV if you don’t gamble on them. The guys who are supposed to be telling you what is happening on the field or the floor are spending their time trying to get you to bet on the next play: “Just text the number of your pension account to YUSUCKR and wager on whether the next shot will be for one point or four!”

What if you broke some law, like sports gambling, that is no longer forbidden? What if you went to jail, or paid a fine, or lost a job, for doing something like sports gambling that everyone does now with impunity? Shouldn’t there be some recompense?

Even worse, what if you were consigned to hell for doing something that is no longer a sin? What if you were a Catholic and ate meat on Friday? I know my Catholic friends and cousins were scared witless about going to hell back then because of eating the wrong stuff on the wrong day, or praying the wrong stuff in the wrong way. What about all those Catholic kids who unknowingly ate a hamburger on a fish-only day because their Methodist grandma didn’t care if they went to hell? Is there some sort of “get out of hell free” card the pope can give you in a case like that?

I expect that I’ll be enlightened with the answers to such dilemmas, now that I have become so spiritual that my NIL does not exist. But I would suggest you not depend on me to provide lunch.

John Robert McFarland