Back in 2009, I played junior hockey in Manitoba,
Canada. Once a week on Thursdays our team would have chapel. Chapel consisted
of a group of players getting together in the players’ lounge, eating pizza,
and listening to the priest preach some sermons he had prepared for the day. Post
preaching, all of us shared some stuff about ourselves and joined into
conversation together with our teammates. At first I was obviously just there for
my love of food, especially since it was pizza. As I attended chapel more regularly
though, I began to enjoy these times spent together with my fellow teammates
and our priest. I have never in my life been very faithful and religious,
though I do not condemn those who are religious. I have always approached these
belief systems with an open heart and mind. However, I have never bought into
one religion as a follower.
While reading Habits of the Heart and the section we
discussed in class about lifestyle enclave I realized the truth in these claims.
We were a group of people who shared some form of private life. We were
expressing our identity through shared patterns of appearance, consumption, and
leisure activities.[1]
I was picking up a “second language”, as Robert Bellah would perhaps claim. Although
I never believed in the stories told by preachers, I began to understand the
importance and impact they have on certain individuals. There I was in a group
of men who fight, sweat, and bleed together every day in the purpose of overcoming
a common enemy, in the search of glory and fame. At the same time there we were
as a group of individuals, all with our own pasts brought together into one
cohesive group, sharing a common lifestyle enclave.
[1] Robert Neelly Bellah and others, Habits of the Heart, (California: University
of California Press, 2008), 335
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