Benediction: a CFC Community Thread

Friends:

I won't be able to join you this Sunday in the match thread. As Spurs kick off, I'll be gathering with other faculty in the chancel of the college church, watching our seniors and their families celebrate their last day as students in a ceremony called Baccalaureate.

At crucial points this season our community has gathered to tell our most embarrassing selves within the confines of the Karma Thread. This is a familiar impulse, the need to confess. What we seek is double-edged, both the forgiveness of sins and the caching of good vibes for later. We need all the help we can get, the logic goes, and help comes to those who are deserving of it. So we perform the ritual ablutions, expecting a clean heart and right spirit will hasten the arrival of divine aid.

Karma, cosmic justice, righteous wrath or just desserts - if such things actually exist - keep their own council and arrive when they please. Which is why, at the end of this Premier League season, as Tottenham Hotspur once again try to buck the "lovable loser" narrative and get it right for once, I suggest we ditch the confessional and embrace what has always been for me the most consistently meaningful part of any religious service: the benediction. We are a community, and I want to suggest that there is something a little sacred about our gathering, even if (or perhaps especially if) we tend towards the ridiculous and the profane.

In the place of confessions, let's use the comment section to create a community benediction, a space to articulate our hopes and dreams for this, the last game of the 2012-2013 season, and the summer to come. (I suggest starting your contributions with the words "May" or "That.")

So, fellow believers here gathered at Our Lilywhite Lady of the Anxious Hand-wringing, join me, if you feel so inclined, for a few final words, a silly song of sending.