Do you ever wonder why those who experience deep suffering, for whatever reason are considered “losers” in our current American, if not worldwide, cultural narrative of WINNING?
I recall an experiment some years ago that was conducted by educators. I guess you’d call it an experiment on reversals of expectations. Young kids were invited to run a short race at the end of which there would be a surprise of some sort. The kids ran their hearts out. Those who came in last and second-to-last got recognized as “winners.” The uproar was intense, and the conversation about “fairness” even more intense. As I recall, one child was quite overweight, expending every ounce of energy and effort he could muster, to “win”. He did. Everyone learned something, and I’d wager that everyone still remembers that paradoxical race. I do.
Still, the more we love to win and fight to win, and start wars to win sovereignty and assert our own values, the more we actually lose. Our heroic self-esteem only lasts for a short time, and then we wonder once again who we are, do we really matter—for what and to whom? Wars don’t work.
Q: Who gets to be heroes in the biblical narrative? A: Those who lose.
The passionate Israelites, the children of Abraham, the tribe of the Northern kingdom, Israel, lose every battle, yet they are the “chosen” of YHWH—the Jews. In fact, it’s odd the way “losers”— even in baseball, even in Ukraine, even in Afghanistan, “abandoned” by the U.S.A. in one more failed war, and even Jesus, unjustly murdered—are remembered as “winners” over time.
Easy to shrug off the question and decide it’s all God’s will—then keep on fighting to win anyway.
The biblical Job is not satisfied with pat answers that try to silence his fierce prayers. Job’s losses and sufferings multiply in unbelievable ways, causing him to besiege and batter God for answers to his ongoing prayers: Why me? Where were/are YOU? Finally, God responds—not giving Job the answers to his quest and questions about WHY the “Almighty” divine powerhouse keeps on letting all this bad stuff happen. What does God do? God takes Job on a tour of all creation—amazing panoramic beauty, sparkling with life abundant. God does not provide a rational, logical, obvious answer to Job’s questions; nor does God address moral issues like winning or losing or fairness or justice. There is simply an enormous revelation of the brilliant huge, glorious enormity of the whole. It’s not about blame or shame, but about divine compassion. Could God change the way it is? Would God?
Can we see, and will we love it all, in spite of our own troubles? I don’t know, but I do know that sometimes Beauty comes my own way and breaks through but does not eliminate all my fears and doubts and struggles and pains.
“Winners” don’t break open our hearts, “losers” do. It is they who elicit our deepest caring, promote our finest connections, heal sin—anything that separates us from the goodness in ourselves, others and God. The poet gets it.
THE HOLY LONGING
by Johann W. von Goethe
Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman* will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of love nights,
Where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
A strange feeling comes over you
When you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught
In the obsession with darkness,
And a desire for higher lovemaking
Sweeps you forward.
Distance does not make you falter
Now, arriving in magic, flying
And finally insane for the light,
You are the butterfly, and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this:
To die, and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest
On the dark earth.
Written in 1814 inspired by a German translation of Persian poet Hafiz, labelled mystical and magical and above all “untranslatable.” A rhythmic challenge in English.
*”massman”means something like everyman or one of the masses.
©Lyn G. Brakeman, 2023
