One brief moment

I’m not the only one remarking on how, for one brief moment, the people of Iraq forgot their divisions and were, for a time, a country. And it was all because of soccer.

But that got me to thinking: It was one of the few times in that region’s bloody history that the religion that divides them was replaced by a shared one, a sport. It wasn’t much, but it was a glimpse of what could be.

So for that one brief moment I was able to, as John Lennon asked us to, Imagine “no religion, too”. So could they. Pity they, and we, can’t act on that imagination. Not even soccer can change that.