Keeping The Faith

April 3 will mark the tenth anniversary of when I was baptized into the Catholic Church. It’s hard for me to realize it’s been ten years since I took that spiritual step in my life. So much has happened since that day: some great; some indifferent; and some of it very, very bad.

How I came to take that important step is even more extraordinary (at least in my eyes).

On the surface I was born into a Seventh Day Adventist family but in actuality it was a “family” mired in spiritual conflict. My mother (when she was pregnant with me) used her pregnancy to stop attending SDA Sabbath days. From that day forward she drew steadily away from SDA. My father remained firm in the faith (or at least firm in his eyes). He took my brothers and me steadily until when my brothers became teenagers they drew away as well. I kept going (it never occurred to me not to go).

Looking back at my years attending Sabbath at the SDA church in Laurel Springs, New Jersey my mind is filled with disturbing insights and memories. The spiritual milieu at Laurel Springs was not a healthy one. In retrospect I consider the atmosphere there to have been poisonous, sick, and emotionally diseased. There are two literary metaphors that describe the congregation there. One comes from T.S. Eliot’s poetic masterpiece The Hollow Men where he wrote, “The whole world is our hospital.” Actually Laurel Springs was not so much a hospital as it was a hospice. A hospital is where you go to be healed and get well. A hospice is where you go to die which leads me to the second literary metaphor: what Joseph Conrad wrote about Marlowe meeting Mr. Kurtz in the flesh after the long, harrowing river journey in Heart of Darkness. Conrad wrote “It was slow death in there; malaria; nightmares.”

That’s what it was like for me at Laurel Springs: slow, lingering death; nightmares.

There was no wellness in Laurel Springs. There was a lot of anger and a lot of bigotry (not directed at me) and a lot of borderline insanity. (There were a lot of people there who either had or were developing or would later have severe emotional and mental problems). But in my eyes the most damning indictment of Laurel Springs was that there was absolutely no love in that church.

I was too young to realize it back then but as I age I realize what Jesus meant when He told the disciples to love another. Jesus knew that the only way for the love of God to flourish and grow was that His followers had to love another first before they could teach others to love the Lord and obey the Word of God. Love was the rock upon which He built His Church.

But there was no love in Laurel Springs. Indeed there was a lot of ugliness and hypocrisy and in time that ugliness would be directed at my father (and by extension towards myself as well). It began when my mother and two older brothers stopped coming to Sabbath. The elders at Laurel Springs kept haranguing my father about it. In time the harangues turned into prolonged, confrontation, intimidation sessions where my father would literally be surrounded by seven to ten male elders who hammered him repeatedly about why my mother and brothers weren’t there while ruthlessly brushing aside whatever explanations my father offered.

I had to wait in another room while these sessions took place. At the time I had no idea what was going on. In retrospect the hypocrisy and the frightening aspects of those sessions anger me enormously. The elders always demanded sacrifices from my father (and by extension me as well) while they themselves never practiced what they preached.

Looking back what happened at Laurel Springs those sessions smell more like a demented cult than a Christian faith.

My father never admitted it but he stopped attending SDA church altogether although he always abides by the teachings. There was another SDA church in Cherry Hill, New Jersey but he refused to go there. It was Laurel Springs or nothing. He still wants to go back to SDA desperately but the only thing that is stopping him is himself.

I was 11-12 when we stopped going. At the time I was going through an incredibly prolonged emotional ordeal which devastated me emotionally and left me psychologically desolate.

By the time I was age 16 I had abjured all religion; choosing instead a philosophy of simple Deism: God exists but is unknowable.

Mostly I was angry during those salad days. Anger is not the best way to come to grips with God. (In many ways I am still angry although not at God but at my so-called “family”).

Eschewing SDA led me into a new concatenation of new grief. Since that day I have been on the receiving end of a lot of browbeating from relatives who took issue with my departure from SDA. Back then I thought it was solely because my personal break from SDA but now I realize that it was more than that. My break from SDA was only one stick my relatives used to beat me with but the main issue was simply their refusal to accept my existence as a person. It wasn’t my lack of “faith” that angered them. It was the fact that I existed. Even if I had given in and returned to SDA I knew the contempt I received would not have stopped. It would have continued and grown. Like Napoleon once said, “Never do what your enemy wants you to do.”

In many ways I drew anger because I represented a reality and truth that some of my relatives could never accept or else it frightened them because it called into questions their own “values” or “beliefs”. In many ways I was a living refutation of what they imposed upon others.

Like Jack Nicholson said in the movie Easy Rider, “When people see a free individual it’s going to scare them.”

So it was with me.

College helped me with my spiritual quest in many ways. I took classes in Oriental and Western religions. These classes were merely to provide students with the historical and cultural backgrounds of the major world faiths like Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There were no spiritual services being rendered or proselytism. The idea was simply to understand the spiritual and philosophical underpinnings of those faiths. Those classes did a world of good for me. It opened my eyes in myriad ways and allowed me access to various insights and spiritual concepts I could never have comprehended in my former life.

Those classes made me a better person and, ultimately, a better Christian too. Despite what certain relatives obstinately insist on promulgating I was never a follower of Buddhism, Hinduism, or Taoism. (Not possible. I do not possess the psychic stamina or courage to be able to faithfully practice the tenets and concepts of those faiths).

But I have always drawn insight and inspiration from Buddhist and Taoist concepts. I do have the Tao Te Ching and a book of sacred Buddhist teachings on my book shelf. They lie beside my King James Bible which I still read from time to time. (In fact I was leafing through it the other night, reading the Book of Kings).

I have also drawn great insight from reading books on Native American spirituality: the spiritual beliefs of the Lakota Sioux, the Apache Indians, and the Paiute medicine man Wovoka (creator of the Ghost Dance). Black Elk Speaks and Crow Dog also opened my eyes to a new way of seeing life and how humanity interacts with the Maker of all things.

Years passed and I remained unattached. My family life disintegrated. My relationship with certain relatives became more poisonous.

It took the death of my beloved Aunt Anita in 1996 which led the closing of certain doors and the opening of new ones. When the late Anita Mayers died in 1996 it was a hammer blow to me. Her passing and the heartbreaking days which followed her funeral caused me to look anew at my spiritual past. What I saw repelled and sickened me and I turned my back on it for all time.

I did a lot of talking to certain individuals in the months that followed and it was those talks which caused me to make the final cut. Four months after Aunt Anita’s death, I was attending Mass at my parish in Bellmawr.

How that came about amazes me today. It all began with a bottle of wine I could not open. Some friends of mine gave a bottle of wine as a gift and I kept it in my refrigerator; awaiting New Year’s Eve when I would open it. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to properly store wine bottles. I kept the bottle upright instead of on its side. When New Year’s Eve arrived and I went to open the bottle, the cork had slid down the bottle and could not be reached by the corkscrew. I was so enraged and incensed and upset by this that I had to throw the bottle away. This may sound crazy but I cried myself to sleep that night. It was one of the worst New Year’s Eves of my entire life.

I didn’t have a drinking problem, far from it. At the time I felt that my failure to open that wine bottle stood as a symbol of all the failures in my life. Now I know that most of the “failures” I thought were mine were not mine at all. It was the fault of others as well; my “family” most of all. Some of my failures were brought about because I trusted my “family” and my “family” abused that trust. That’s not failure. That is betrayal and it was that climate of betrayal which would later culminate in my own divorce from my “family”.

I realize that now but I didn’t back then.

But why attend Mass? There is no one major reason. Driving home from work I would see my future parish church and it had a big sign which bid all visitors welcome. My genealogical research also played a key role in it. The realization that my father’s ancestors were Catholic resonated in me.

Mostly it was bloody curiosity. I attended my first Mass on January 12, 1997. I went there feeling afraid and tentative. If anyone had said “boo” I would walked right out of the church. Interestingly no one said “boo”. I sat there not knowing what to do and I stuck it out. One moment in the Mass put the hook in me. It’s near the end where all the members of the congregation show one another the sign of peace. People shake hands or bid one another welcome. I wasn’t expecting that. When it happened it surprised me but it also pleased me as well.

The following Sunday I went there again…and the Sunday after that too…and on and on it went.

Why did I stay? The atmosphere at my parish was loving, kind, warm, and welcoming; totally unlike Laurel Springs which is not too far away from where I live now. The atmosphere of my parish is an extension of the town of Bellmawr which is a very nice place to live in. I often wondered if I had visited a different Catholic parish, would I have kept attending Mass?

I also dated a very dear and darling woman who was very devout in her Catholicism (we met at a Catholic singles dance in Glassboro). She was very encouraging in my spiritual quest. Although she left me later I still kept the faith. Later, I made friends in upstate Pennsylvania who were (and remain) wonderfully encouraging in my quest as well.

Who knows? There are some parishes that are good and some that are bad. One could apply that lesson to SDA as well. If Laurel Springs had not been such a hospice and if certain specific relatives of mine had not acted like bloody fools in their treatment of me, would I have walked away from SDA?

All I know is that the ill treatment I received played an enormous role in my decision to leave SDA and it was the lovely treatment I received at my parish in Bellmawr which led me to become Catholic.

I gave myself a year to decide whether or not I wanted to be baptized into the Catholic faith. In January 1998 I made my decision to be baptized but there was one problem. RCIA classes for Catholic instruction always begin in September. I was too late to be baptized in 1998. I was asked if I could wait for September 1998 to begin. I said yes and when September 1998 came around I was there for RCIA classes. I was quite the bright student and I became the favorite of Sister Marie Magdalena who taught me. (She wanted me to become a priest. She thought I had potential. I kid you not).

I persevered and on April 3, 1999 I was present at Easter Vigil to receive baptism, confirmation, and communion for the first time. I was totally alone that night. None of my “family” knew about this. Precious few ever knew. I made the decision not to tell anyone because I didn’t want anyone’s “expert” opinion about whether or not I should do it.

This was my decision. Mine alone. The way it should be when it comes to being one with God. I have said this to others many times. Faith must be an avocation; not an imposition.

I didn’t want anyone’s second-guessing or eye-rolling or condemnation.

Still, as always in my life, there was an element of opera bouffe in the proceedings. When it came time for Father Ryan to baptize me with water there was a minor problem. Father Ryan is very short and I am 6-1. He couldn’t reach up to sprinkle the water on my forehead. He was wired for sound and the congregation could hear the whispering between me and Father Ryan about what to do. I offered to get on my knees but Father Ryan demurred. Finally I got into an outfielder’s crouch and I was duly baptized.

I was given a votive candle which was lit to signify my entrance into the faith. A member of my parish later told me that she was struck by the look of rapture on my face as I held the candle in my hands after my baptism. I do remember staring at the flame on the candle and feeling the warmth of its glow, all the while having a childish grin on my face. After decades of being made to feel like an outcast by the entire world, I was finally a part of something; something wonderful; something fulfilling; something loving.

I was finally one.

I still have that votive candle. Each year on the anniversary of my baptism, I light the candle and eat dinner by its glow.

I shall do so again this year.

Amen.

There but for the Grace of God Go I

The tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson from head injuries incurred from a skiing accident is an unsettling reminder of the tenuousness of life. She is not the first celebrity to die in a skiing accident. Entertainer and politician Sonny Bono and one of the sons of the late Robert F. Kennedy died in similar fashion.

I, myself, almost met the same fate.

It was February 22, 1990 and I was skiing at Blue Mountain ski resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Since 1984 I had gradually learned how to ski and had some very lovely experiences skiing mainly at the Big Two: Jack Frost and Big Boulders resorts in the Poconos. My visit to Blue Mountain was my first…and my last.

The conditions on the slopes that day were poor. There was little snow and a lot of ice. I didn’t know it but I was over my head. Had I been skiing at the Big Two I probably wouldn’t have had what I would later call the Accident.

I was going down the slope at Blue Mountain and I hit the ice and my skis went out from under me, I was sliding out of control when I impacted into a metal post (lined with rubber) which was holding up the safety nets which lined the run. Hitting those nets proved to be a mixed blessing. My impacting into those nets resulted in me breaking my left humerus; had those nets not been there I would have fallen to my death off that mountain. Also breaking my left humerus was another mixed blessing. Had I impacted into that post with my head, I would have died for sure.

Even as I type this blog entry my head is swirling with the memories of that moment. My left arm is also twitching uncontrollably as well. (It always does when I recall that accident).

The end result was that the ski patrol had to come and get me and put me on a stretcher and then take me down the slope to a waiting ambulance. I was taken to the E.R. where I was stripped naked (save for my shorts) while they wrapped a splint around my left arm and then given morphine for the pain. Only time in my life I’ve been taken to an E.R.

That was a strange situation. I was laying there naked while the doctors and nurses gawped at me. My left arm was wrapped in bandages and my lower back was aching terribly (I had suffered severe muscle pulls in my lower back which would cause me lower back pain for several weeks). While I was laying there I experienced a unique sensation. I don’t mean to sound blasphemous but I had a subtle understanding of what Christ felt when he was nailed to the cross: the feeling of naked, exposed helplessness while the body is wracked with enormous pain; the disinterested looks of bystanders while you are enduring your personal agony; the feeling of separation and abandonment. Unlike Jesus, however, I was given morphine for the pain. Christ had no anodyne for his torment.

I was three days in hospital. My left arm was never put into a cast. I kept my bandage for six weeks. When they removed the splint, I had a hematoma on the underside of my left arms for weeks. The musculature of my left arm had atrophied and I didn’t regain full range of motion in my left arm until months later. It took me 2-3 years until I could build up the muscles in my left arm again. Even today I can still feel the notch of bone where the fracture took place.

Luckily for me I am right-handed.

(It’s ironic to note that all three fractures I’ve suffered in my life all happened on my left side. I’ve broken my left wrist, my left pinkie, and my left humerus in my lifetime).

The physical scars healed rather quickly but the emotional scars endure even to this day. I seldom if ever discuss the accident. When I do it gives me the woolies. I love watching alpine skiing during the Winter Olympics but whenever a skier wipes out I turn my head away. I remember Hermann Maier’s enormous wipe-out in the 1998 Nagano Olympics. I never saw it but whenever I heard the boom from his impact on the countless replays, my mind would snap.

Needless to say I never skied again after the Accident. Simply put: I lost my nerve. I’ve never donned skis again.

Also there have been moments in my life, especially during the early 1990s when I was suffering from a severe depression when I wished that I had died that day at Blue Mountain. That’s not melodrama. That really happened. I remember one time when I was having a nervous breakdown where I cried to my father that I had wished that I had died on that ski slope.

So when I contemplate Natasha Richardson’s death (she was born the same year as me) my thoughts are there but for the grace of God go I.

Rest in Peace.

More Life.

Amen.

Obama: The Last Liberal?

For all the talk about the future of American conservatism being on the line in the wake of the last two elections in America, it’s odd to say that the future of American liberalism is on the line too; after nearly two months in office, President Obama has embarked on the most audacious and ambitious assertion of liberal policy in American history since 1965.

The programs his administration has proposed and intends to propose are staggering. Despite the fact that American is facing its gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression, President Obama has chosen to make the biggest gamble in American political history. Simply put the stakes in President Obama’s gamble not only involves his own political future and that of the Democratic Party but also that of American liberalism as a whole.

Since 1981, liberalism in America has faced a constant, relentless assault in the halls of Congress, in the media, from the pulpit, and at the grass roots level. Since 1981, liberalism has been deemed perjorative. President Bill Clinton spent his eight years in office trying to evade the liberal tag while trying to make the Democratic Party more centrist in its policies.

President Obama has changed that.

His policies must be seen as the most vigorous reassertion of liberal politics since 1965 and a bold attempt at restoring the balance of conflict between the forces of the Right and the Left which had been placed seriously out of balance since 1981.

If Obama succeeds (and there is no guarantee that he will succeed) then he will have gone a long way at restoring American liberalism as a viable and workable form of American politics; inspiring countless others to succeed him in the years to come.

If Obama fails (which in itself will be an enormous catastrophe for America) then liberalism will be destroyed and discredited forever as a legitimate form of American politics.

When considering the stakes of Obama’s wager this writer is reminded of a conversation between FDR and, I believe, Herbert Hoover (I’m not sure it was Hoover) on Inauguration Day 1933. Hoover, riding in the car alongside Roosevelt, wished FDR good luck and hoped that he would not fail. FDR allegedly remarked, “if I fail then I will be the last one,” meaning that if he failed to get America out of Depression then there was the distinct possibility that America would degenerate into revolution, anarchy, and, potentially, fascist government—a distinct possibility as evidenced by the rise of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco.

The analogy can be applied to Obama as well. If he fails then he will be the last liberal President in American history.

Only time will tell if the gamble pays off.

Poem: Bitterlong

Risen above

Bitterlong

Pathway imperfect save for the ghosts unseen

Amidst the breaks in between the music in my head

A long awaited sleep

After decades of sleeplessness

Brought on

Imposed upon

But sleep

Chaste and chastened

Bound and unbound

But sleep

Dreams disoriented

Ships exploded

Swimmers seeking shore

All the while trying to forget to remember

Where I’m going

Unknown, undetermined, unbeknownst

Where I’m going

Austral winds
African plains
Senegal

Fanciful thoughts

Wishing I were wealthy but glad I’m not

Oh! To be free from the sake of being me!

© 02/28/2009 by Matthew DiBiase

Barack Obama: All in a Month's Work

Whether the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package and its relief plan for homeowners will achieve its desired results is debatable. The Great Depression didn’t end until America entered World War Two. Congress passed Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981 but had to endure two hard years of economic recession before the Reagan Recovery took effect. The severity and breadth of our present crisis requires a special patience from the American people. Whether the American people are presently capable of such patience is also debatable.

What is not debatable is the skill and speed with which Obama Administration got the stimulus package passed and signed into law. Whether you are for or against the package, Obama deftly and subtly utilized his negotiating and oratorical skills and the political skills of his Cabinet and staff to get Congress to approve the deal. Despite facing Republican opposition in the House and Senate; despite experiencing tangential obstacles like the withdrawal of some his Cabinet nominees for various embarrassing reasons, Obama never lost focus and never lost sight of what had to be done. He held firm against any attempt at pulling the teeth from the stimulus package but at the same time allowed room for compromise in order to insure passage of the bill. Obama did what he could to bring a bipartisan feel to the bill. I can’t see how he could have done anything more without compromising the effectiveness or integrity of the package. After he got House passage of the bill he faced the prospect of a filibuster in the Senate. Amazingly, however, it didn’t happen. He got the three G.O.P. votes needed for cloture and secured Senate passage in record time and, even more amazingly, got the House and Senate to reconcile the two bills even more swiftly than the original Senate bill.

Critics carp that Obama only got three Republican votes in the Senate. What they forget is that Bill Clinton got no Republican votes at all when he needed Congress to pass his tax increase to reduce the budget deficit and get the economy moving again. He may have only gotten three votes but those three votes were all that he needed—a lesser President would not have gotten those three votes. Obama got them. That speaks volumes about his potential for leadership.

Obama didn’t have to resort to fear-mongering or arm-twisting like George W. Bush did. Obama allowed the bleak news to convince Congress. Necessity alone dictated that some sort of plan had to pass if this nation is to regain its economic confidence and reestablish its primacy again. To do nothing was to fail.

For all the conservative cant (and it is cant) about labeling the Obama stimulus package as nothing more than a massive borrow and spend bill what conservatives really don’t want the American people to remember is that America has been engaging in borrow and spend fiscal policies since 1981. The Reagan Recovery of 1983 to 1987 was financed by money which didn’t exist. Presidents Bush the Elder, Clinton, and Bush the Younger all perpetuated this trend. The only differences are in the ideological foci of the spending bills. The last truly fiscal conservative President (who truly believed in balanced budgets and cutting government spending) was Dwight Eisenhower.

For all the G.O.P.’s ideological posturing and their partisan hand-wringing, the truth remains is that they had six years from 2001 to 2007 to practice what they preached about fiscal sanity and less government—and they refused to do so.

Ideological purity is all well and good but to paraphrase the Lakota medicine man Black Elk: you can’t eat ideological purity. You can’t cash ideological purity at the bank. You can’t use ideological purity to pay for groceries or the mortgage or the car loans or your kids’ college education.

All this country can do now is hunker down and pray that the economic stimulus package works somehow.

Abraham Lincoln: a Bicentennial

The number of books, articles, columns, novels, and stories written about Abraham Lincoln could fill a large arena. Considering the fact that two days from now America will celebrate the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth the challenge that confronts this writer is what can I write about Lincoln which hasn’t been written before?

Instead I would like to define Abraham Lincoln in a series of vignettes. The first vignette happened on April 7, 1865. Lee’s army was in full retreat and racing towards its rendezvous with destiny at Appomattox Courthouse. Two huge Union Army columns were converging on Lee from the North and South, trapping him. One of the column leaders, General Phil Sheridan sent a telegraph to Ulysses S. Grant saying, “If the thing is pressed. I think Lee will surrender.” Lincoln, who for years had monitored all cable traffic sent by the Union armies, did a rare and extraordinary thing: he telegraphed Sheridan and Grant both saying, “Let the thing be pressed. “

Lincoln’s cable is a terse testament to the iron will which sustained not only him but a divided nation which suffered through four horrific, bloody years of Civil War. Throughout those four years Lincoln had to repeatedly give orders which resulted in tens of thousands of brave men on both sides to go to their deaths. Throughout those four years Lincoln repeatedly struggled and implored the vast majority of his generals to let the thing be pressed so as to bring this war to a quick, decisive, victorious conclusion only to be denied because many of his commanders were too timid, too incompetent or too unwilling to push until the Confederacy gave in. It wasn’t until 1864 when he found Grant, Sheridan, and William Tecumseh Sherman that he found commanders with the same steely resolve to let the thing be pressed. For too long Lincoln had seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. He was determined not to let it happen again. That was why he sent the cable to Sheridan and Grant, imploring action. (Not that they needed it. Both generals were just as eager to end the war as Lincoln was).

Two days later Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.

The second vignette happened days after Lee’s surrender. Washington, D.C. was alit with torches of celebration over the restoration of the Union. Lincoln, having spoken so often during the war now wanted to speak in a time of peace. Lincoln stood in a window of the White House while a huge crowd gathered below anxious to hear what he had to say. Lincoln spoke to the crowds in his inimitable way and, in the course of his speech, asked the assembled throng a rhetorical question, “What shall we do with the rebels?”

The crowd, wearied by the long war, thirsting for revenge cried out, “Hang them! Hang them! Hang them!”

It was then Lincoln’s young son, Tad, who had been sitting at his feet inside the White House while his father spoke, cried out to his father, “No, Pa! We must hang onto them!” Lincoln, who weeks before had told the nation, “With malice towards none and charity for all” looked down at his young son, smiled, and said for the crowd to hear, “that’s exactly right, son, we must hang onto them.”

That magnanimity of spirit came from a moral code which had been forged and sharpened by a lifetime of hard work, sacrifice, heartbreak, disappointment, and struggle. It was that moral code that allowed Lincoln to overcome disunion, public vituperation, military defeat, and potential political ruination in the course of restoring the sacred oneness of America and to allow this country to once more proceed on its unfinished quest to form a more perfect union. Eighty years later Winston Churchill defined the moral code as being “In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: good will.”

That is why we honor Abraham Lincoln today.

Super Sunday: A Long Time Coming for the Cardinals

I love it when two small market teams play one another for the world championship in any of the four major sports but particularly for football or baseball. Even though the networks always bemoan small market match-ups they usually provide first rate competition in terms of pure athletic performance.

Even though there seems to be less hype for this Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals than there was for last year’s match-up between the unbeaten New England Patriots and the New York Giants, Super Bowl XLIII should be a well-fought game between two enduring NFL franchises.

The Steelers have had their fair share of Super Bowl triumphs (indeed their last Super Bowl appearance and victory was in 2006) but for the Arizona Cardinals this marks their first ever Super Bowl appearance.

It’s been a long, strange trip for the Cardinals. The last time they ever appeared in an NFL championship game was in 1948 (where they lost to the Philadelphia Eagles ironically enough the same team they beat two weeks ago to get to the Super Bowl). The last time the Cardinals ever won an NFL championship was in 1947 against the very same Philadelphia Eagles—and that was when they were the Chicago Cardinals.

The Cardinals franchise (like the Green Bay Packers) pre-dates the NFL itself. Until 1960 (when they moved to St. Louis) they shared the Windy City with their East Side rivals the Chicago Bears, playing in Comiskey Park while the Bears played in Wrigley Field. They won their first NFL championship in 1925 under slightly dubious circumstances. They were awarded the NFL title because another team the Pottsville Maroons (that’s right football fans Pottsville, Pennsylvania had an NFL franchise) violated league rules by playing an unauthorized exhibition game and were stripped of the NFL title. The Cardinals were granted the title instead.

Until 1947 the Cardinals were eclipsed by the Bears, usually playing at a mediocre level. During World War Two the Cardinals had to endure a temporary merger with the Pittsburgh Steelers ironically enough just to survive for one season (they were called the Chicago-Pittsburgh Carpets and they were treated like carpets—losing all their games in 1944).

The Cardinals experienced an all-to-brief revival when they won the 1947 NFL title with the Dream backfield of Paul Christman, Charley Trippi, Elmer Angsman, and Pat Harder. Sadly for the Cardinals though they reverted to their mediocre status and never made it to an NFL Championship game until now.

Despite all these slings and arrows the Cardinals always had some great football players who rose above the mess left by their teammates. NFL legends like Ernie Nevers, Ollie Matson, Larry Wilson, and Dan Dierdorf played for the Cardinals. Top-flight players like Jim Hart, Jackie Smith, Charley Johnson, and Jim Bakken earned their wings for the Cardinals too.

But even moving to St. Louis wasn’t good enough so the Cardinals moved to Phoenix and swiftly became the dumping ground and the cheapest franchise in the NFL.

The fact that the Cardinals have made it to the Super Bowl seems impossible to believe but there they are and it feels wonderful to see such an incongruity in professional football.

Emotionally I want the Cardinals just to end their role as the NFL franchise with the longest championship drought (after the Cardinals are the hapless Detroit Lions who haven’t won since 1957). Pittsburgh has already won their Super Bowl three years ago. I also want the Cardinals to win for the uniquely historical fact that Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner will attempt to become the first NFL quarterback to lead two different teams to Super Bowl victories. Warner won Super Bowl XXXIV for the Rams. Now he will try to win for the Cardinals. The only other NFL quarterback I know who led two different teams to Super Bowl appearances was Craig Morton who led the Cowboys to a Super Bowl V appearance and the Denver Broncos to a Super Bowl XII appearance losing both in the process.

If the Cardinals win on Sunday then it will be a well deserved return to glory for Kurt Warner whose NFL career has been a roller-coaster ride from obscurity to glory back to obscurity before returning to glory again. Warner is living proof of the Roman poet Virgil’s phrase, “adversity has a way of eliciting talents which otherwise would have lain dormant.”

It’s going to be a fun game.