“You can be anything you want to!”
“Never ever quit because you CAN do it!”
“Set your mind to it and it’s done!”
Well, no.
While this may be good Olympic talk, it’s simply not true. There can be only one gold medal winner, one company president, one starting quarter back. Some things are intrinsically competitive and you-can-do-it-if-you-try-hard-enough is dangerous talk and guaranteed to break hearts and spirits, if taken seriously. I’ve seen what this thinking can do to high school students and it’s not pretty. Harvard accepts only five percent of applicants…
Sunday’s Epistle speaks about a race (talk about timing!): “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” At least this acknowledges that each of us has our own challenges and our own “race” to run. However, human life as a linear race may not be the best image for our mental health. Even though the only “competition” may be ourselves, most of us go off-course more than once, stop in frustration many times, and may lack a cheering section.
The esteemed anthropologist Margaret Mead referenced another linear image when she said that you might climb the ladder of success only to find it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Similarly, you might run the race and find out that the original destination is faulty—at least according to what you have learned at that point (“How did I end up here?”).
Mead said that a more helpful and accurate image is a patchwork quilt. Most of us assemble our lives in bits and pieces into a whole that is who we are. Unfortunately, many reject Mead’s image because it is too “feminine.”
I like sermon titles and on Sunday my title is simply “Race.” It will be a little bit about the Olympics, a little bit about race (see what I did there? The race and race?) and a lot about the Epistle—which is as graphic and bloody as any section in Scripture. It is also one of the most beautiful.
See you in church.
Barbara
