A friend of mine hung out in a coffee shop yesterday, the Monday after the Super Bowl, and he asked the proprietor how his day was going.  "Fine," the man said, "if you like presiding over a wake."

Another friend of mine e-mailed from his home in Colorado about something unrelated, but closed by saying, "Sorry about the Super Bowl. Seems like Boston can't have everything!"  Which, looking at it that way, seems fair enough.  If one was in the mood to look at it that way.  And what was the deal with that exclamation point?

The general vibe of the city reminds me of the morning after the infamous 2003 Grady-Little-waits-too-long-to-pull-Pedro-Martinez playoff game.  That morning I greeted a man in my building with my own cheery "How's it going?" to which he replied, never breaking stride as he walked past me, "Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

We're a low bunch.  History in the form of a perfect season was a play or two away.  It was a largely stressful season (you might remember a certain videotaping allegation that has sparked, apparently, a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that's not something the average sports franchise sees everyday) that pretty much required this victory to bring meaning and relief-which leaves us, evidently, with meaninglessness and cold comfort.

And it's that meaninglessness, that bereft feeling, which suggests to me that there's a spiritual option crying out to be heard.  One of my young sons was particularly devastated, crying himself to sleep, waking up crying, crying during a break at school.  And the question his reaction posed to me was sobering: namely, had I done this to him?  The reason he was so enmeshed in the Patriots season was because, when he was maybe two years old, he picked up that I was an avid sports fan and he eagerly dove into sports himself, seemingly as a way to bond with me.

And the reaction he had to the Patriots' loss was only a modestly-overstated version of how I would have responded at his age-and maybe only a boldly-overstated version of how I in fact responded in the moment to this loss.

The God of the Bible has far fewer demands upon us than the popular conception would suggest.  But one unequivocal demand is unexpected and, it seems to me, relevant here.  He demands that we find our joy in him and he suggests that, as surprising as it might seem at first blush, we won't like the consequences of putting our joy anywhere else. 

I've learned a lot about this from that most-winsome essayist Anne Lamott (her occasional jarring essay about, say, assisted suicide aside).  Her collection of essays from 2005, Plan B, dealt to a great extent with her demoralization over how the 2004 presidential election had gone.  Her most-recent collection of essays from 2007, Grace (Eventually), talks about how she'd learned she needed to get beyond that, how she needed to forgive politicians who made her mad, how her joy was never meant to be placed in the hands of events under which she had no control.

I thought about Ms. Lamott yesterday and it seemed to me that her insight crossed over to our situation and dovetailed nicely with the Bible's take.  I found myself asking God's forgiveness for perhaps an over-avid sports fandom.  I don't expect ever to quit caring how the local team does.  But I've been offered profound joy from another source and have been warned of the downsides of hitching my wagon too closely to the hope of my joy coming from anywhere else, as if that decision will guarantee that that other thing-that thing which looked so engaging and alluring-will become a hard master if I give it its head and will, even at its best points, deliver ever-diminishing pleasures.  Which, now that I think about it, rings a bell.

And so I asked forgiveness, and then I asked-if it wouldn't be too much trouble-for some of that joy that God promised those who looked to him for it.  And I had a great day, hopeful and encouraging.  And I prayed for my son and asked that God might undo any ways I'd messed him up.

When I got home, my son was cheerful and, within a few minutes, he told me a secret.  One of his siblings had evidently broken into his stuff and had ripped to shreds every single Sports Illustrated magazine he'd saved from this year that had a Patriot on the cover.  The shards covered his room.  Is there any chance, I asked, that that other sibling was you?  Well, he laughed shyly, could be.  And, my hand on his shoulder, we headed up the stairs to clean up the mess.