Winners and Losers...

Wow, it wasn't even close!

In Seattle they are celebrating right now, but in Denver it's back to work.

Of course those who are celebrating will learn sometime soon; that as hard as it was to get to the top, the slide down is even harder to prevent.

Now the Seahawks deserve their victory, but the bigger life question deals with our response when we lose.  I have a friend who has just witnessed a family member pass away.  Death has not come easily, and there are no good words to be offered at a time like this.  We cannot sugar-coat the pain of life and death, for if we cannot accept the concept of loss, we ultimately are destined to sink deeper into despair.  Whether it is the small deaths we face each and every week, or whether we are humiliated on national TV, we are all losers.  Our struggle for success will ultimately fail us as we struggle under the gravitational pull that drags us down into our humanity.

We live in a world that loves 'rags to riches' stories, or the image of the 'self-made man.'  The truth is, however, that no matter what we do, we cannot escape the dust.  The earth has a claim on us.  As the minister is likely to say as the saint is lowered into the ground,  'ashes to ashes and dust to dust.'   No matter how strong we might be, eventually we must succumbed and be pulled back to earth.

Now I don't mean this to be maudlin.  I find the struggle to appear successful to be deadly to the soul.  It steals from the heart.  In the attempt to prove ourselves successful we miss out on significance.  I find it comforting that we are not to be evaluated by God as to whether we made it to the top or not.  Our value is not to be measured by success, but instead,  life is found in the depth of our humanity.  The closer to the ground we are, the closer we are to our origins.  The closer we are to our origins, the closer we are to God.  It is not our goal in life to show ourselves better than others but to make the world in which we live a bette place for all.  The goal is not to divide ourselves between winners and losers, but to dig deep into our fallen nature and thereby discover our common humanity.

So I have learned a lesson in humility this weekend as my Broncos lost.  Perhaps, however, this makes me the ultimate winner because I am more human than I was before.   It's lonely at the top, but there are plenty of losers all around who will share in our grief.

Peace,
Pal