Friday, September 26, 2008

Sometimes When You Lose, You Win


Every Olympics has great stories—usually too many to keep track of—but for me, the greatest story of this year’s games didn’t happen this year and was only part of the Olympic coverage because of (of all things) a credit card commercial. It’s the story, not of a champion or a medalist, but of a dead last, disqualified loser.

The story goes like this . . .

At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British runner, Derek Redmond, was forced to stop in the middle of his run of the 400 meter event due to a snapped hamstring. Trying to finish despite the horribly painful injury, Derek quickly discovered he was unable.

When he fell to the ground in pain, stretcher-carrying medics made their way to him, but determined to finish, Derek got back up and began to hobble in an attempt to at least cross the finish line. However, it was obvious there was no way he could finish the race.

Then, out of nowhere, an older man jogs up beside Derek, hoisting his arm over his shoulder and helping the agonizing athlete. The man’s name was Jim. Jim Redmond, Derek’s father, and he had broken through security and onto the track to help his son.

Derek Redmond didn’t finish first or second or third—or at all, according to the official Olympic books—but he and his father crossed the finish line and completed the race.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

By not winning, by not even officially finishing, Derek Redmond and his father, Jim, have inspired millions, have touched me so deeply, so profoundly, I can’t think of the story, can’t see the images, the pain on Derek’s face, the strength and resolution on his father’s, without tears coming to my eyes.

Sometimes, to find our lives we must be willing to lose them. To live, we must die. To win, we must lose.

When the mighty Roman Empire executed Jesus, it looked as if all was lost. But long after Rome burned to the ground, the message of love preached by the Jewish peasant is still proclaimed and occasionally lived out around the globe today.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

When a bullet of ignorance and hate pierced the precious body of Martin Luther King, it looked as if the movement was over, but the movement wasn’t a man, and that seemingly defeated man’s dream still haunts the dreams of a nation, his call to “Let freedom ring” still rings round the world.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

When anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa, it seemed as if racism and injustice would have the final word, but after 27 years of prison, he was paroled on my birthday in 1990 to become president of the same country that had imprisoned him, to eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and to continue to inspire true freedom fighters everywhere to this day.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

Both King and Mandela credit Gandhi for having a huge influence on their non-violent struggle against oppression, injustice, and racism—something he did long after an evil, fearful, cowardly assassin took this peaceful, righteous man’s life while he was out on his evening walk.

Sometimes when you lose, you win.

It’s not if we lose . . . Each of us will lose. What is life but a series of losses? Ultimately, we lose everything. It’s how we lose that defines us. Competition, like the challenges of life, reveals our true character—who we really are, not who we pretend to be. In the game of life it’s far better to be a loser with character, with depth and substance, than a shallow, unscarred winner—which, of course, is not a winner at all.

Sometimes when you win, you lose.

By losing with such dignity, such character, Derek Redmond became a winner. By helping him so nobly and gracefully, Jim Redmond became an even bigger one. When the world was watching, they performed to perfection in a most magnificent defeat. Derek and Jim are heroes. Each man, the kind of father, son, and loser I’m trying to be.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

I Thirst


It seems like Jesus spent his whole life thirsty.

I can relate.

I suspect a lot of people can.

From his first miracle to his last words, Jesus was simultaneously thirsty and a quencher of thirst.

So should we all be.

Each one of us is defined by our thirst or lack of and what it leads us to do or not do.

While attending at wedding in Cana, Jesus was asked by his mom to do something about the fact that the host had run out of wine. He did. He made more—instructing the servants to fill the wine jars with water. Water went in, but what came out was wine so good one of the guests remarked that the host had broken the tradition of serving the best wine first.

Jesus quenched thirst.

Jesus’ true followers continue to quench thirst. "I was thirsty and you gave me drink. When?

When you did it for the least and the lowest."

Jesus thirsted.

Traveling from Jerusalem to Galilee, Jesus, weary and thirsty, stopped in Samaria for water. Encountering a Samaritan woman, he asked her for a drink. She gave him water and they discussed a kind of water, a gift from God, that would quench true thirst.

At the end of his life, while suffering the horrible torture of execution by crucifixion, Jesus said, "I thirst."

They are among his very few last words, which along with his transforming the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, bookend a life of thirst, a life of quenching thirst.
Humans are beings with needs. We thirst–and not just for literal drink. Christianity says God became human, among other things, to know what it means to thirst.

I thirst. I serve a God who thirsts.

Jesus’ haunting last words echo through history to remind us that God thirsts, that God thirsts for us even more than we thirst for God.

I drink a lot. I’m always thirsty, always drinking—some water, some wine, tons of tea, some cola, an occasional beer, the occasional coffee, and lots of orange juice—but my physical thirst is emblematic of a much deeper thirst.

Jesus drank his way through his thirsty life—so much so that his critics called him a drunk and condemned him for the drunks he kept company with.

Like Jesus, I thirst for far more than physical drink.

My thirst for life, for God, for the other, for knowledge, for wisdom, for experience, for love is insatiable. Unquenchable. Only satiated for moments at a time.

The unquenchable thirst at the heart of humanity propels us to search out sources of refreshment. But there are many unsatisfying substitutes, many counterfeit elixirs. The world is a wilderness, a cracked and sunbaked desert beneath a unsheltered sky, and we thirst in it searching for an oasis, too often finding mirages.

We thirst and the world offers us drinks, but ultimately they are as unsatisfying as the vinegar Jesus was offered as he hung suffocating to death.

We must be careful what we drink. The shallow emotionalism of religion, the surety of self-righteousness, the mob mentality of nationalism can be as intoxicating as alcohol. The simple sweetness of self-deception, of trite, easy answers and sentimentalism can be as ultimately empty as a sugary soda pop. We can drown from the wrong drink as easily as dehydrate from no drink at all.

Thirst is communal—something we all share—and one of the best ways to quench it is with the common cup, sharing both your thirsts and our drinks.

Thirsty beings is who we are, and it is our thirst that gives us the empathy we need to become thirst quenchers for others.

Life is a cup offered to us. One we should share.

Take, drink, Life says. But sometimes the cup offered is not the one we want to drink. We must drink it anyway.

In the dark garden known as the place of crushing, Jesus, praying next to a winepress, begged for the bitter cup he was about to drink to be taken from him. It was not. Sometimes the cup we drink is bitter, and it takes all we can do to get it down. We must drink it, take it in, swallow it down, let it make its way to every cell of our very being.

Beware. We are what we drink.

We all have a vampiric thirst. We must drink or we will die. But not just any drink will do. We need the drink of life. New wine. Blood. Living waters that truly quench—for a while anyway. And we must keep drinking.

I thirst.

As I write these two simple words, my mouth is dry, my soul parched, and I long, I ache, I crave, I thirst. But as thirsty as I am, as deeply felt as my desire is, I don’t wish for my thirst to be taken from me. I am my thirst, just as Jesus was his, just as you are yours. Without it, I could be content, satisfied, satiated. If I weren’t missing something, I’d really be missing something. So I continue to thirst, continue to drink, continue to thirst, continue to drink, continue to thirst, continue . . .




image by Wonsook Kim