“Watching the Olympics in Faith”

Sara Phinney Kelley (she/her), Director of Religious Growth and Learning, UUCSV – First written for the Sunbury Daily Item February 2026

I have been spending the past two weeks watching the Winter Olympics as much as I possibly can. I can’t do any of the sports that these athletes can do, although I have cross-country skied and ice skated before. I enjoying watching all the humans who can ski, skate, flip, spin, or curl at the highest level. I love seeing athletes from all over the world. It doesn’t matter if they’re American or not. I feel the same at the Summer
Olympics each year, although the sports are more recognizable – many of us will have at least done some version of more of those sports.

I will also watch the Winter Paralympics that start March 6. There will be much less to watch, since NBC is only showing 8 hours total unless you buy their streaming service. By contrast the “regular” games have 12 hours of coverage per day plus the streaming. I will still watch what I can, as those athletes are even more amazing!

Watching the Olympics is more than just an exercise in amazement. The Games are a testament to fairness, with the rules (at least in theory) designed to create as level a playing field as is possible within the confines of each sport. Look up the rules for ski jumping if you have any doubt.

The Olympics and Paralympics also embody the Unitarian Universalist principle that asks us to work for “justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.” In kid language, the principle reads “We believe that all people should be treated fairly and kindly.” Even shorter: “Be kind in all you do.”

If you watch enough Olympics, you start to see kindness and compassion in many unexpected places. The athletes who ski or snowboard down giant hills, complete with flips and twists high in the air, are all hoping for a medal. When they watch other athletes sail farther or faster or better, they are supportive and excited. Did you see the women’s snowboard big air competition? The pre-race favorite didn’t win, but she and all the other competitors hoisted the eventual gold medalist into the air to celebrate. It’s one of my favorite TV moments so far. It was more important to those women to show love and kindness to the Japanese snowboarder than it was for any of them to be disappointed that they didn’t win.

I saw the same thing in the pairs figure skating; the first people to hug the gold medalists from Japan were the German pair who had looked like they would win after the first round. Again, the love and kindness were visible. Many of us may remember incidents in the last three Summer Games when runners stopped their own race to help someone who fell, even if meant not competing for a medal. Coaches and TV commentators would call it sportsmanship, but it is kindness and compassion.

The Paralympics takes the principle of “justice, equity, and compassion in human relations” to another level. Athletes with all sorts of physical differences compete in events that have been modified from the original form in order to accommodate the physical differences. Often these athletes are called “disabled”, but I don’t think so – I can’t do what they do! They are differently abled, for sure. Creating a competition that allows them to be what they can be is justice.

Creating as many events that are tailored to different kinds of abilities is equity. For example, biathlon has 10 medal events in the Olympics and 18 events in the Paralympics to take vision and limb differences into account. Swimming in the summer games has even more differentiation. Recognizing, but not disabling, the athletes’ physical differences allows the athletes to be athletes in ways that most of us can’t envision.
Watch the Paralympics in March and see equity in action.

I can’t think of another aspect of any of our lives in which justice, equity, and compassion are both expected and built in as part of the system. What would our world look like if the Olympic model were how all systems in our world worked? That’s what my faith calls me to do. I hope yours does, too.