I’m sitting in a hockey rink even as I type this.  LightGirl has just finished part one of her weekly private lesson with HeadCoach at the rink.  She is now skating in a rink full of boys.  Some of them are quite large.  Most of them are very good.  One of them just skated by with his five o’clock shadow glistening at me.  Well … now.  My little girl is skating amongst large young men.  She is looking just the tiniest bit overwhelmed and undone by it all.  She wants to get in their game.  I suspect they’d make room for her.  But she doesn’t know the code yet.

It’s one of the things I’m enjoying most about hockey.  It’s a very egalitarian sport.  There’s very little crying out, “You skate like a girl!”  Yes, the boys do play harder and more aggressively than the girls.  But the girls are simply feted for playing.  They are embraced for being out on the ice and welcomed.  Hockey is such a tiny little sport that everyone who plays is looked on as a compatriot because of the love of the game.  The boys don’t appear to be threatened by the girls.  Instead they join them on the ice.  I guess they figure, the more  the better.

Hmmm … I wonder when the church will get that mentality.