Wholistic Fitness

As a Dharma Protector,
some things just force me to pick up my
general public Dharma Protection Sword and start swinging…

This “Letter To The Editor” did just that:

“To The Editor:
Budget Override? Oh, sure!

Let’s see: Can’t pay teachers, but can spend millions on football fields and tracks, etc. Ever heard of responsible spending? I know, I know, I’ve heard the song and dance about “It’s a different budget.” You could move the funds around if you wanted to.

Sports should be last on the list and the three R’s first, not the other way around. Look around. We’ve got enough jocks running around that can’t read, write, or obey the law now.

KE
Flagstaff

Usually i’d let something like this go. I mean, I agree that football budgets and priorities are waaaay out of whack. Football has crushed and crucified nearly all the ‘real’ sports like ski team and has even been known to squash out budgets for music and the arts and often the brightest ‘stars’ of football seem to be the dimmest of lights, however…somebody had to go to bat for sport. ilg chose to say this:

Dear Editor,

To the writer proposing sports be “last on the list” of education to save money for teachers while accusing Flagstaff of having “more than enough jocks running around that can’t read, write, or obey the law.”

Sport IS a teacher. In fact, sport is a multilayered and very beautiful teacher. Like any student however, we must take the curriculum if we are to learn.

The wholistic value of sport is sweat, a necessary agent for personal well-being, integrity, and wise discrimination. Cramming education with the “three R’s” – as the writer suggests – at the expense of sport (and art and music perhaps?) is precisely the insane intellectual codependency which has resulted in national obesity, bickering, mental illness, and spiritual poverty.

For many, sport comes into our lives where real things are missing. Daily sweat tethers our “monkey mind” creating an empowering sanctuary for us to love the discipline of genuine self-learning, instead of rote memorization. Where there is no daily sweat, there is no ventilation. Such chronic inner toxicity suffocates personal wholeness with blubber and mental clutter.

As a lifelong ‘jock,’ I speak for the unspeakable, sacred joy arising from sports and the wholeness it offers to the compass of our lives.

“Compete” means “to arise from within.” Even Einstein said his daily sweat offered answers to many of his most difficult theories. Sports of all kinds must be embraced, not tossed aside by intellectual addicts.

Reverend Steve Ilg
Flagstaff