Super Bowl Sunday is a very special day for millions of American football fans. For this annual ritual, they gather around the television set, equipped with the requisite food and drink, for the National Football League championship showdown. The players are primed to play their best; the coaches are ready to offer their most creative strategies.

But most of all, Super Bowl Sunday is about the fans who are there in the stadium and watching at home to partake of all the joys of victory and sorrows of loss. The late Michael Dwinell, an Episcopal priest, wrote one of the most thought-provoking and poignant pieces we've ever read on the spiritual dimensions of pro football. In this poem, he finds God in the stadium amid the cheering and the longing and the pain. His canticle "The NFL and God" can be found in God-Birthing: Toward Sacredness, Personal Meaning, and Spiritual Nourishment..

To Name This Day:

Books

Read our review of Dwinell's imaginative book.

Book Excerpts

Read the excerpt The NFL and God

Films

See our feature on the Ten Best Football Movies

Personal Explorations

Watch the game and notice the presence of God.