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by Dan Shenk (Author)
You Are More Than Your Score: On Sports and Spirituality majors in storytelling: true stories from sports history, up to the present, about dozens of household names. The book takes a heartfelt, behind-the-headlines approach to the mixed blessing of sports, along with the very real human beings who compete. It also presents numerous accounts of ordinary people with extraordinary stories.
Further, the author describes how games and sports have played an important part in his life and faith. He has increasingly seen the benefits of spiritual disciplines. The book describes more than 30 spiritual practices, including meditating with music, experiences in nature, personal retreat days, journaling and prayer as "multi-faceted and many-splendored." You Are More Than Your Score, therefore, seeks to bring together two vital aspects of the author's life.
Toward the close of the final chapter, we find this: "Let's celebrate sports, and yes, let's compete, demonstrating sportsmanship in victory and defeat. But let's also see that life is so much more than sports-and so much more than score, wins and losses."
The book makes a strong case that defeat, loss and brokenness in sports, as well as in life itself, can set the stage, empathically and paradoxically, for grace, healing and service to others, in the spirit of Jesus. Paraphrasing the end of the Introduction, may this book encourage readers to recognize and tell their own stories-what they have experienced and learned personally-and to reflect on all this in light of God's great gift of life itself. The author invites readers to join him on the journey.
