just being christian

“What do you want for your birthday?”

“I want to go to Denver for the first Timbers match as an MLS team.”

“Really? Are they going to be good?”

“Probably not. They’re still putting the team together. And they’re playing the defending MLS Cup champs. At altitude. They’ll do well to draw. They might get blown out.”

“Wow. Great idea, dear.”

–

Look, I’m a realist. I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for this road trip. I would have loved to celebrate a victory on the field that night. But I knew it was much more likely that the Timbers would lose. And boy, did they lose.

Eight minutes into the match, Colorado scored their first goal. Welcome to MLS, fellas. It’s big boy time. The Colorado fans all turned to our corner of the stadium to let us know about it. When you run up into somebody else’s house acting crazy, that’s what you get. You have to sleep in the bed you made.

At that point, the Timbers Army did what we do every time the opposition scores. We raised our scarves above our heads and belted out a chant that’s reserved specifically for such occasions.

Rose City ‘til I die!

I know I am, I’m sure I am,

Rose City ‘til I die!

Consider it part of the liturgy of the Timbers Army. This liturgy is sung by TA at matches and tweeted by TA during matches. It’s a liturgy that grounds us in the broader reality of the moment, be that moment joyful or painful. It stinks to get scored on. On that night in Colorado it stunk when the Rapids put a second goal on the board in the 29th minute, followed by a third goal one minute later. It wasn’t the most hope-filled moment in the world. The 400 TA in attendance let out a collective groan, but quickly jumped back into the liturgy.

Yeah, we were down 3-0, which I often refer to as “crossing the blow-out line”. But we would not turn our backs on the team. We would not stop singing. We would not allow the momentary agony of on-field humiliation to strip us of our pride. And we certainly weren’t going to sit on our hands and shut-up. This particular slice of TA liturgy keeps in mind the history and journey of the Timbers. It embraces a larger civic pride. More so, it speaks to the hope for a future that will be far brighter than the dark moments.

And so we sang.

There’s a tension in such singing. It’s not done blindly. Every person singing at that moment knew that things were looking bad. It was clear that work would need to be done for the Timbers to be competitive in MLS. It wasn’t as though people looked at each other at halftime and said, “we’re not playing that poorly.”

It’s similar to the tension we see in the Psalms. There’s some real stuff up in there. Poems and hymns that reflect many of the darkest emotions and experiences known to humanity. Betrayal, anger, depression, sadness. It’s all in there, and sometimes it gets really ugly. But underpinning all of those very real expressions is the truth that while our experiences might be malicious, the God we serve is good. Bad experiences do not necessitate a bad God. The poets reach back throughout history to remember the goodness of God, and they look forward to a time of restoration.

Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from those who are deceitful and unjust deliver me!

For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you cast me off? Why must I walk about mournfully because of the oppression of the enemy?

O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

–Psalm 43 (NRSV)

It’s a powerful liturgy. It doesn’t discount experience, but it doesn’t lose hope.

The hopefulness of the Timbers Army shone brightly that night in Colorado. At the end of the match we were on the wrong side of a 3-1 score line. And yet, we sang. We sang as the Rapids fans exited the stadium. We sang after they were gone. We sang for nearly 30 minutes, until security politely asked us to go home so that they could go to bed. We might have lost on the field that night, but our liturgy reflected our understanding that the reality of being a part of the Timbers Army was full of win.

Renew and Restore

My wife was supposed to road trip with me to Denver to attend the Portland Timbers first game as an MLS team. I was pumped for her, because it would have been her first Timbers match. Alas, our son came down with a vicious ear infection the night before the trip, so she felt it would be best to not leave him in his moment of distress.

This left me in a little bit of a pickle, in that I already had two tickets to the match as well as a hotel room in Denver paid for. I started brainstorming people I could invite to fill-in for Stacy, but the requirements to get an invite limited the list of possibilities. To qualify for consideration, said individual would have to be:

• Able to drop everything on 9 hour notice.
• Enjoyable to be locked in a car with for 14 hours over the course of two days.
• Willing to try new things.
•  Capable of not be completely overwhelmed by the Timbers Army.

I reached out to two people and ended up getting one of my BFF’s to accompany me at the last minute. My man Aaron fulfilled my first three traveling buddy stipulations, but I wasn’t totally sure about the fourth. While Aaron and I share a lot of similarities, we also are different in a lot of ways. He’s a clean-cut conservative Midwestern fellow. I’m filled to the brim with West Coast Swaggar and am completely desensitized to those from the motherland who pride themselves on keeping Portland weird.

I tried to prep my man on the way out. He wasn’t a huge soccer fan, and no matter what he thought he knew about American soccer culture he had no idea of what he was getting into on this little adventure.

You’re either going to love this experience or hate it, man. There’s no in between. You will probably see things you’re not used to seeing. You’re going to hear things you’re not used to hearing. But you won’t doubt the passion of the Timbers Army. Just keep an open mind, stay cool, sing the songs. Trust me.

It’s a spiel I’ve given before. Last May I invited a friend from my high school days to attend a match with me in Portland. By the time the match was over he was already making plans for us to attend a match the next time I roll through PDX. (It’s a date: 5/25, Timbers vs. Ajax)

This is why I’ve stopped entering into verbal debates with people about soccer and soccer fandom. In the end, it’s tough to convince people by arguing with them. Discourse in our culture is rarely rational. It’s all PTI and Crossfire and hyperbole and canned arguments. So when people start making fun of soccer, I just remember one of my favorite verses from Proverbs: “Haters gonna hate”.

Instead, I invite people into the experience of being a soccer supporter. My office adornment includes four separate soccer-related items that often start conversations with people about soccer culture. It’s tough to fully explain the culture even with my props. Which is where an invitation to the experience comes in. Give people a front-row view of what soccer fandom looks like. Let them meet the community. Let them see it in action. They might love it, they might hate it. But at least they’ll have an accurate view of what it really is.

So far I’m two-for-two in my evangelism & conversion initiative. Granted, it took Aaron a little while to embrace soccer culture. Dude wasn’t too sure what to do with the chant war that broke out at the pregame tailgate. He was a bit glassy-eyed as the police escorted us into the stadium. But after an hour or so of pregame singing in the staduim, my man had his mojo. He rocked the scarf. He met members of the Timbers Army and came to realize that they were awesome and (mostly) normal people. He sang so much and so loudly that he lost his voice. He dubbed us “Timbers Army: Kansas Division”. On multiple occasions he’s mentioned that we need to make another Timbers roadie, and he has a habit of starting up a TA song whenever we are together.

My wife is still my #1 target for my evangelism and conversion initiative. Her time draws neigh. On the afternoon of May 29, she will stand with the Timbers Army for the first time. She’s half excited, and half apprehensive. In watching matches on TV this season she’s developed an appreciation for the passion and the tifo. She’s not too sure about the smoke bombs and the general craziness of the atmosphere.

Pray for her.
Renew and Restore.

Photo Credit: Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian

There’s no better way to support your team than by shakin’ it. What “it” is exactly depends on the sport and your team. You can shake your pompom. You can shake your terrible towels. You can shake your clackers. If you’re a soccer fan however, you shake your scarf. Ok, maybe not shake it so much as wear it around your neck with pride, spin it above your head enthusiastically, hold it high as a banner of allegiance, and wrap it around your face so that you can breathe amidst the smokebomb-filled goal celebrations that break out in the stands. You know, the usual.

You want a scarf? Hit up your favorite club’s team store. The upside is that the transaction is clean and easy. The downside is that the scarf will probably look mass-produced and a bit corporate.

There are alternatives. Supporters groups usually finance and sell specialty scarves. These scarves tend to have more symbolism and stories that explain their creation in comparison to their more corporate counterparts. They’re more iconic, I guess is how it might be best described. And they’re iconic because they’re organic. The way it works with the Timbers Army is that you can “sponsor” a handful of scarves and then take responsibility for distributing your portion. Some designs are sold directly through the TA organization itself. If you don’t end up sponsoring a set, you can always find TA barter with or buy from. It’s a system that encourages interpersonal contact and engagement with the community.

That being the case, it’s makes things somewhat tough for someone like myself who supports the club from 1,500 miles away. I don’t make it to a ton of matches, and I don’t have a lot of chances to socialize with other TA in person. Thank goodness for the internet.

Before heading out to the Timbers first match in Denver, I was chatting with people via Twitter and a Timbers fan board. There is a scarf floating around that is Sunflower themed and commemorates one of the more memorable moments in Timbers history. Because the sunflower is the state flower of Kansas, I wanted badly to get one for my collection since it’s a nice representation of my dual-citizenship. I was trying hard in the run up to the match to arrange for someone with one or two spares to sell them to me at the match, and had some decent leads. Unfortunately, we all got so caught up having fun at the match that I was never able to meet them in person to actually make the transaction.

I was pretty bummed to leave Denver empty-handed. But then my mourning turned to dancing a few days later when I got an email from one of the guys that I had been trying to work something out with. He was a longstanding member of TA, and felt bad that we didn’t hook up. He proposed that he send me two scarves via the mail. Of course, I was jazzed and offered to send him some money right away. But he wasn’t interested in my money. He just wanted to spread the love, and he wasn’t going to accept any form of payment. Wouldn’t even let me pick up shipping.

In the end, the care package was incredibly generous. Two sunflower scarves. Two Timbers Army pins. Half a dozen stickers. Just an all-around generous thing to do. So generous that my wife could hardly believe it. Neither could the guy who traveled out to Denver with me, who would be the beneficiary of the second scarf. He kept asking questions to verify the details of the story.

You’ve never met this guy in person? You just chatted on a message board? Seriously?

Yeah. Seriously. There’s certainly a lot of money wrapped up in professional soccer. But when it comes to fan culture, especially with the Timbers Army, it’s just not about that. It’s about keeping it real and representing in an authentic way. It’s about the community, even when members of that community are spread across the country. And it’s about spreading the love.

Renew and Restore