This summer our kids are taking on the Olympics in their worship breakout groups- talking about how the themes of the Olympics connect with our UU values, and also our goal of world community, our goal of being where we are and who we are and also appreciating the wider human experience.
They’ve been building their own Olympic village, making Olympic torches, and otherwise getting in on the Olympic excitement of this summer.
There is so much to be excited about with the Olympics Games happening in Paris France right now.
From the way they did the Opening Ceremony out in the open so that it was a public event instead of something you had buy a ticket for, to the way they reused old buildings- like the gorgeous 1900 Grande Palais where the fencing happened- and took other measures to make this the most environmentally friendly modern Olympics, to the fact that this is the first time there are as many female athletes as there are male athletes…. to the coverage of Simone Biles and Flavor Flav and Snoop Dog and other Exemplary Americans who are out there living their values in public.
Who else has loved Snoop dogs genuine whimsical excitement and joy, and how he keeps hyping the athletes?
I love that.
I love that the fact that the women’s rugby tournament sold out the same stadium the guys played in. 69,000+ fans for the opening games for them, and the leader of that team’s message that “all body types can be Olympians” has been lifted up in new and wonderful ways.
There are things to be righteously angry about too, of course.
Like the fact that there are zero trans women competing in the Olympics because they’ve been banned from basically every sport.
That makes my heart hurt, and worries me- because transphobia is always a tool of fascism.
And it’s a form of bigotry that hurts ALL women- even women who are identified as female at birth and have xy chromosomes, like the boxer from Algeria who faced so much hate this week after her wins.
And, on a pettier note, I’m annoyed and angry that in this country you have to pay for access to Olympic coverage- that seems totally against the spirit of the games to me- everyone should get to watch our athletes compete, and feel that sense of national pride that’s so different from nationalist violence.
I will probably never make it to see any Olympics in person, but I have such fond memories of watching the Olympics, especially as a kid.
And I’m annoyed at the fact that some of the sports- specifically shooting events- got divided into mens and womens because dudes got upset when women won in a mixed gender competition.
Or, like, I love that Flavor Flav has been getting press for sponsoring the US Women’s Water Polo Team, but not that he’s doing that because he found out members of the team were quietly working multiple jobs to pay for training and competing even after winning three Olympic gold medals. He’s now also paying the rent for a female discus and shot putter who wasn’t getting the support from her university that lower achieving male athletes are.
There might be as many women as men competing in the Olympics, but they are getting a tiny tiny fraction of the money.
Also wearing a tiny amount of the clothing, as the mandatory gendered uniforms for a lot of the sports leave… well, a lot to be desired, if you are a person who prefers to wear actual clothing while doing sports.
One of the stories I love about Simone Biles, and there’s a lot of those given the incredible grace, courage, and kindness of this women, was a postscript I read in a story about her making sure German gymnasts got to sit down on a crowded bus.
Biles takes part in the Olympic tradition of pin trading using a pin she designed herself, and she gave one of her pins to three-time Olympian Pauline Schaefer-Betz, who has been “making waves” in gymnastics fashion by opting to wear full length unitards for comfort and modesty.
Apparently because Germany’s Olympic gymnasts are sometimes wearing unitards suddenly young female gymnasts in Germany are being allowed to wear shorts and such, much to their relief.
If you didn’t grow up wearing a lot of spandex for sport- a leotard is like a girls swimsuit that covers your crotch but not any of your legs, a unitard covers you from the ankles all the way to the shoulders- which means more protection for your skin, and more comfort and freedom for those who don’t like wedgies.
Apparently this German athlete has also be working hard to end the use of psychological abuse in sports culture in her home country and is famous for supporting young athletes, so I’m not surprised that she’s excited to be connected to Simone Biles or that Simone Biles would honor her, given everything our Greatest Of All Time gymnast has been doing to improve her sport.
It’s been cool, since the 2021 Olympics, watching the conversation about athlete’s mental health shift a bit.
Who remembers that moment when Simone Biles got the twisties and stopped competing?
What a moment that was for a woman prioritizing her health and well being over competition! Especially a black woman, right? Especially a young black women in the age of social media and all the hateful rhetoric around it.
As Melissa Kimble of Glamour magazine pointed out- Here we have a woman who made an intentional decision to choose her mental health over more medals, over glory, over the expectations the world had placed on her.
In a society that values productivity over humanity, and places superhuman expectations on Black women, Kimble wrote, Biles’s stepping away didn’t just challenge the status quo—it obliterated it….
As Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry so often reminds us, Rest is Revolutionary- and Stepping away from the expectations of the world may be Biles’s most important legacy. She’s not letting anyone rule her. She is winning.
Holy moly has she been winning, right?
I hope we can get to the place, as a country, as this nation where my heart is, to not just honor the courage and vulnerability of folks like Simone Biles, the way she does the right thing again and again, not just cheer how she has made spaces better for other like her, but do our part to make things better for everyone who looks like Simone Biles, like Brittney Griner, like Simone Manuel, like Sha’Carri Richardson, and Lauren Scruggs (who was the first black women to earn an individual medal in fencing this last week)- like Allyson Felix, who lost her Nike sponsorship when she got pregnant, so started her own shoe company and, successfully advocated for spaces for athlete parents to stay with their kids and to breastfeed them. Instead of a windowless closet with a folding chair, Allyson Felix made sure this year athletes with kids had a family space, where in her words “There are soft spaces for the baby to play. There’s toys, there’s books, there’s a dedicated breastfeeding space. It’s just a place that feels very comfortable to lounge and to be with your family”
I want a day when we are not just proud of folks like these incredible athletes and all they’ve accomplished in spite of all the barriers and prejudice they’ve overcome, but proud because we have been a part of how our nation, our society, cares for and protects and supports black, indigenous and other women and girls of color.
And, you know, I want to be proud of how we care for each other, proud of the achievements and the community care of our athletes, AND excited for the athletes of other countries, you know?
I get annoyed with the medal count aspect of Olympic coverage- I don’t care!
Well, okay, I do care a little bit because getting medals for women’s sports helps those sports, and I want more folks excited for women’s rugby and water polo and fencing and such- the medals the US and Canadian women’s rugby teams got is already changing how women’s rugby is received on this continent, already getting them more money and attention- but I get annoyed with the medal count clicking away as if that is the point of these games, or of our connection to the rest of our planet.
This is my land, the country where my heart is. And yes, I delighted in watching our men’s gymnastics team win bronze- these five young men from such different families and places in our nation, with such different strengths, cheering for each other, winning together the first men’s gymnastics medal for the US in 16 years.
I love seeing the American families, that look so much like families I know, cheering for their athletes- as the commercials remind us, this kind of achievement is never a solitary endeavor.
AND I LOVE seeing these athletes support each other across the divisions of nationality.
I love when we get glimpses of the journeys of non-American athletes.
Like Tom Daley of Great Britian, knitting in the stands, knowing how much difference his anti-bullying work makes, getting teary eyed watching his husband wrangling their two small children wearing those adorable “that’s my papa” shirts.
On Monday I tuned into Olympic fencing just in time to see Olga Kharlan win the bronze in women’s sabre fencing- Ukraine’s first metal in this Olympics.
She had her nails painted in Ukraine’s colors and fell to her knees holding her fencing mask with Ukraine’s flag painted on it, crying to the camera “Ukraine, I love you, this is for you, my dear, this is for you!”.
“This” the commentators told me “THIS is one of those all time Olympic moments”.
There have been a lot of those Olympic moments, right?
Like the athletes of Saint Lucia and Dominica, winning their countries first ever Olympic Medals- not just their tiny Caribbean countries first Olympic medals, but both athletes won GOLD.
And the athlete representing Dominica was a student and then a teacher here in Montgomery county, I learned this morning. We are always more connected than we think.
And there’s this other aspect of the Olympics, those moments when athletes just get unlucky, when they fall down despite doing everything right and training for so long and sacrificing so much, and we see how their competitors and competitor’s coaches gather around them, to offer care and comfort, and often we see them get right back up again.
As Emily Solberg wrote:
“We admire these athletes not only because they humble and amaze us, but because in each of their stories we can see glimpses of ourselves—we can see our own struggles and victories and comebacks and experiences and joy.
We love the Olympics because they reveal the depth and beauty and strength of the human spirit.
And when we allow ourselves to see it, not only in the most elite athletes and competitors, but in ourselves, we can restore our connection to each other in the world.”
This is some of the best of our humanism, our plurality, our glorious global community, our human-ness.
When I dream of the better world we’re working for, I dream of something like the vision we were given as these games began- a sustainable world with plenty of housing and good locally produced food for everyone (that includes decent plant based options and fantastic chocolate muffins), where we celebrate and play with our cultural heritage as well as new innovations, and we uphold our drag performers and our dancers and musicians and all creative and queer folks, where we are cheering for and celebrating each other as we float together down a river clean enough for the mayor of Paris to swim in.
So may it be.