Taking a brief respite from politics, who else enjoyed the New England Patriots beat the team most pundits have called the best in the En Ef El? The Patriots comeback from 10 down in the 4th quarter against the Baltimore Ravens was vintage.

The D made huge stops on MUST plays, while Brady and company delivered in the clutch. Trailing 20-10 in the 4th to a team that hadn’t given up more than 17 points in a game all year bodes well for the remainder of the season. Deion Branch looked like he never left. The win gave Brady 30 4th quarter comebacks in his career. He is now 8-1 in OT games.

The play that may be the biggest and most unheralded was Zoltan Mesko’s booming howitzer of a punt well into into OT, getting the Patriots out of a deep positional hole. Mesko’s 65-yard blast pinned the Ravens back, the defense forced a 3-and-out, and Brady and Branch took over from there.

Here’s a picture of Mesko’s kick. Mesko looks like he’s repealed gravity. Besides being clutch, this was am amazingly athletic play.

Staying on a sports theme, The Planet still sees a Yankees-Phillies World Series. The first has too much experience in big games. The second has too much pitching.

From Football to the Sublime, You Know, the ‘God Thing’

Well, we can be reasonably sure He doesn't look like this.

There’s no smooth transition between the inconsequentiality of sports and the consequences of The Big Question. You know, the God thing.

All sincere paths to God are made valid by the human incapacity to receive absolute truth absolutely. As tangential beings, humans can only receive (process, understand) in relationship. The relative nature of this reception explains the validity of the many approaches to God: one source, one message, but many different receptions.

In the end, the only sure thing we can say about God is that It is an absolute. God is an unqualified presence of consummation. He is a “being” only as far as the outer limits of our capacity with words can reach. The innermost limit is the end of our ability to conceptualize. She can only be known mystically, beyond all conceptualization and words.

The big “however” is that the “mystical” and the “self-induced” are almost always the same. You might even wish to take the qualifier “always” from the previous sentence. Who can say that the mystical experience of  “God” is actually a hyper-experience of the self’s capacity. When stacked up again the absolute, these outer and inner limits aren’t far at all.  Thus, we must ignore the hubris that takes over the spiritual disposition. We refer to the one that preaches fundamentalism or professes absolute, dogmatic truths. There is no “One Way.” The paths are many. It’s the destination that is One.

Choice but Random Observations on the Speranzo Mess

* Notice how quiet Jonathan Lothrop has been lately? After The Planet outed him as the hand-picked successor to Chris Speranzo’s seat in the statehouse, J-Lo hasn’t said peep. His non-denial speaks much louder than any words he could say.

* Clarence Fanto’s hard-hitting piece in yesterday’s Eagle adroitly fingers the problem with the Speranzo Scheme: It reinforces all the cliches We The People have right now about “politicians.” Play a word association test with anyone. Ask them to spit out the first words that come to their minds when they hear the word “politician.” You’ll get a river of invective wider than a mile.

* Latest word is that all the coverage (Conor Berry, The Planet, and Fanto) may scare the bosses off their plan. If Speranzo has secretly accepted the clerk magistrate’s post, and he does win re-election, and if J-Lo does becomes the hand-picked stooge-successor, that would eliminate ANY talk of local politics being legit, wouldn’t it? Who know, maybe we scared them off … this time.

* Fanto joins a host of others who have expressed the view to The Planet that Spurs ducks the debate we have set up for him and Mark Miller at Vox studios, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 11-noon. If he does, to quote Clarence’s words from his previous column on the ethical lapses of Democratic candidate for auditor Susie Bump, “it won’t be pretty.”

* And why isn’t anyone running against Ben “Dover” Downing?