“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11)

 

These words have come back to my mind many, many times since July 26, 2018. I’ve seen this sentence multiple times over my life while reading the Bible, and I thought I understood it.

Today, those words mean much more to me than ever before.

Trial By Fire

On that Thursday in July, a wildfire of historic ferocity swept into the western part of Redding, California, where I live. Firefighters moved swiftly, battled fiercely, but the blaze won the day. Weather, dry conditions, and challenging terrain sided with the fire. The flames destroyed more than a thousand homes, claimed six lives, and displaced tens of thousands of people, including my family.

During the following days, fire crews eventually gained ground, staring down an incredible force of nature. Defeating a phenomenon like this fire is a long and difficult task, but I have no doubt they will prevail.

As I look at the fire maps, especially those showing devastated neighborhoods in which the fight was close and personal, I am both awed and grateful to the people who risked their lives to save others and protect their property.

I cannot overstate the magnitude of the effort, courage, and resolve of firefighters and all those that support them.

Since I don’t fight fires, I followed the events from a distance, and saw a different side of the disaster. And what I saw taught me what the line from Ecclesiastes really means, “the race is not to the swift.” I saw both friends and strangers open their doors in the dead of night to refugees seeking shelter. For my own church congregation, texts and emails and phone calls flew throughout that day and the following days ensuring people were housed, safe, accounted for, clothed and fed. Many others did the same.

The entire community of Redding, one hundred thousand people of which forty thousand were homeless for days, opened their arms and their hearts. Shelters housed hundreds, donations of food, clothing and other necessities poured in. People sacrificed their own time and their own means to help.

And from that I understood.

The Race and the Battle

The race is not won by the swiftest runner because this race is not about winners. It is about finishers.

The race refers to life itself, our lives. Life does not have winners and losers, it has finishers. We are all destined for the finish line, for some it comes sooner than for others, but no matter who it is, the end will come. And how we finish our life matters a lot. Not the manner of our passing, but who we have become by the time we get there.

I think an excellent illustration of what I mean occurred in 2014 during a college softball game. The full details are available here, and this video shows the event. This story was not about winning, it was about becoming. This is how we put the finishing touches on who we are.

The two young women carrying their opponent to home plate exemplify what Ecclesiastes means by the “race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.”

What does it take to become a person like this?

You and I do not fight a physical battle. Instead, we fight an inner battle against selfishness, ego, and anger. The battle goes not to the strong but to the meek and humble of heart. We win not by slaying a dragon but by defeating our own weaknesses.

Ernest Hemingway wrote in For Whom the Bell Tolls, “for what are we born if not to aid one another?” I wrote about this in an article about Charlotte’s Web, and from that post I wanted to repeat this quote, one of my favorites:

“A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

We Go Together

Lifting seems like such an excellent verb to describe what we should do in life. Especially because when we lift someone else, during their difficult time or tragedy, it lifts us as well. Selflessness lifts our heart and our soul. As Charlotte the spider said, “anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

Since life is not a race, whether we are swift or slow is actually not important. And by taking time to lift others, to take others with us, to help them along, we might feel like we are wasting time and not really moving forward.

My own belief is that not only do we need to help others to be happy in life, we also need to be helped.

No one goes alone because no one can go alone. We are not strong enough by ourselves to make it through life.

Each life has seasons, some of prosperity and some of need. In our own necessity, we often look around and wonder when help will come.

But far more important is what we do during our seasons of prosperity. Do we look around for those we could help?

“No man is an island,” John Donne wrote. “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

We are part of a great collection of people, and we must go together.

Who Goes With You?

For me, this last question is critical. If we accept that life requires living outside of ourselves, caring about others, we will eventually wonder who we should help and how. C. S. Lewis said that giving should hurt. What we give should be something important to us, not trivial.

Giving a little of something we have a lot of is not as meaningful as giving from what we have little of. Giving what is most valuable to us means the most.

In the New Testament, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. This video is a modern rendition of that old story:

I love this video because it shows what it means to truly lift another person. In the context of swift and strong, this video shows that lifting another does not meet our definition of being the fastest. Instead, it shows that we might risk our own comfort, our own wealth, our own destination in order to help someone else.

But that is the whole point. In doing that, we win the battle. The strength to defeat selfishness comes through selfless acts. We learn to control our ego by increasing our empathy, which comes by willingly sharing in another person’s trial. And we can replace anger and hate with meekness and happiness by giving of ourselves, our time and our wealth.

The story of the Good Samaritan also shows us one other truth. Helping only our friends and family, while good, is not enough. It is easy to help those we love. We also need to stretch ourselves and help those who we don’t know, even possibly those who might not even like us. Maybe we might even help someone who refused to help us during our own season of want.

And then, if we can do that, we can change our own heart. We can be finishers.

 

 

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Island Photo credit: armandogalonso.com on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC

Cover Photo and final photo credit: on VisualHunt

Shoah (n.): the Hebrew word for catastrophe; used since the 1940s to describe the Holocaust.

 

My wife studies the Holocaust. Documentaries, books, photographs, museums, anything and everything interests and intrigues her.

I grew up reading about WWII, but not much about the Nazi party or their political actions. Instead, I spent much more time on the military history and the war strategies (I was a huge nerd). That wasn’t all I read though, fortunately. As a teenager, I read and enjoyed the diary of Anne Frank, which was probably my first conscious realization of the Holocaust’s existence. Since then, I became more interested in learning about the events of the Shoah.

Why Discuss The Shoah?

Why? Good question. The events that occurred in that time period are deeply disturbing. At the same time, I am also inspired by the stories of courage and integrity that litter the records. The more I learn, the more interested I become.

Certainly when I read Elie Wiesel’s book Night, I learned, or perhaps came to consciously realize, some of the realities of what had occurred. Anne Frank’s diary is an innocent, youthful day-to-day observation of life in a Nazi-occupied country. Night is an exposition of terror. If you have not read Wiesel’s book, you absolutely need to. After you read Night, I recommend the movie Life is Beautiful to give you a whimsical experience with a deep and somber backdrop.

My wife and I recently went to France and had the opportunity to visit three sites that are not on the typical European vacation itinerary. I didn’t really know they existed until my wife clued me in (she knows this kind of thing). But all three are heart wrenching and eye opening.

One place was the former location of the Vélodrome d’Hiver (or Vel d’Hiv, pronounced vell deev), a site of tragedy for French Jews during WWII. The second site was a museum called The Shoah Memorial (Mémorial de la Shoah) in Paris, which houses the Crypt (more on that to come). And the third was a museum in Orléans called the Memorial Museum of the Children of the Vel d’Hiv (Musée Mémorial des Enfants du Vel d’Hiv). All three of these centered around a singular event.

Vélodrome d’Hiver

I can’t recap the entirety of the Shoah here, besides, Wikipedia already does that (see you back here in five days if you click that link). Instead, let me give you just my version of the Vel d’Hiv.

Germany defeated France in 1940. The invasion took about six weeks and Germany agreed to leave half of France unoccupied if the French government cooperated with the Nazis. This collaborative government was located in the town of Vichy.

As part of the collaboration, the Vichy government participated in the collection and deportation of French Jews. Over the course of the war, the French authorities sent about 75,000 of their own people to concentration camps in Poland and Germany. Of these, 2,500 survived.

In July 1942, 13,152 French Jews were arrested by French police. They sent about 8,000 to the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris, a bike race arena. The Vel d’Hiv had been used for French fascist rallies in the past, and the Germans appropriated it for the purpose of holding Jewish prisoners during these July roundups.

Of the people sent to the Vel d’Hiv, just over 1,000 were men, about 3,000 were women, and the remaining 4,000 were children. They deported the men first, almost all of which were sent to work camps. Then they removed the women, forcibly separating them from their children when necessary. They sent the women to Drancy, a deportation camp, to be shipped to Poland.

They left the children alone in the Vélodrome for three days, with no food or sanitary facilities, and only a single faucet with water. After three days, the Vel d’Hiv had grown completely silent. The French police collected the children, herded them into cattle cars and sent them to Auschwitz. The Nazis took them to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.

Memorials

The Vélodrome d’Hiver has since been demolished, but two memorials remain.

The inscription at the former site of the Vel d’Hiv reads (translated by me):

The 16 and 17 July, 1942

13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and its suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Vélodrome d’Hiver, which stood here, 4115 children, 2916 women, 1129 men were kept in inhumane conditions by the police of the  Vichy government under orders from the occupying Nazis. That those who attempted to come to their aid be thanked.

Those who pass, remember!

And then on the statue near the former Vel d’Hiv site, in view of the Eiffel Tower:

The French Republic, in homage to the victims of racist and antisemitic persecution, and of crimes against humanity committed under the authority of the de facto government of the French state, 1940-1944

Never forget

I prefer the original wording in French, but you get a sense of their weight even translated.

Even more moving to me however was the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial. As you enter the memorial courtyard, you are faced with row upon row of stone walls with the inscriptions of the names of every known French victim of the Shoah.

There was no need for a quote or caption to emphasize the significance of this place. The names, the sheer number of names, speak for themselves.

After the courtyard, we entered the memorial building. While most of the building is used for records, temporary exhibits, and a bookstore, the real reason for its existence is in the basement. That is where the Crypt is located.

The Crypt

Entering the Crypt was the moment I will never forget.

“Look at me no one has ever had pain like mine. Young men and women killed by enemy swords.”

A line of text in Hebrew decorates the far wall as you enter. The translation I cited is given on a placard at the entrance. The words are excerpts from Lamentations 1:12, and 2:21. However, in some ways I prefer more of verse 12 in Lamentations 1 (KJV):

“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow…”

In a place like this, from the moment you enter in, you know something you never knew before. Not because you have read or seen a new thing, but because you feel something that can never be replicated elsewhere, something which is unforgettable.

Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina:

“What I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my heart.”

When I entered the Crypt I felt the presence of those whose names are engraved in stone on the Wall of Names. The Crypt is mostly empty, with only the marble Star of David, the eternal flame, and flowers in the center, but the true memorial is beneath the floor. The Crypt protects the ashes of murdered Jews, recovered from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka and other death camps. These ashes are buried in soil brought from Israel.

There are places where heaven and earth meet, and for me, this is one of them.

Memory and Promise

The French people had a hard time (nationally) accepting their role in the Shoah. Although it took a long time, what I saw and read when I was in their country tells me that they are committed to remembering what happened.

Some people (I think) wonder what the big deal is. Not that so many people died, I think everyone recognizes the big deal there, but more of why we continue to discuss the Shoah. Can’t we just let it go?

Well, I guess we could. But should we?

Absolutely not. We are so far distanced from those events of the 30s and 40s, that the history of it feels like story, not fact. A word like “genocide” does not really carry the meaning that it should. It feels unreal. Of course there are even those who claim the entire history of the Shoah is a fabrication. Perhaps equally astonishing is that others write or say (I have seen and heard it) that such a thing could never happen again.

I disagree.

Unless we remember and continue to honor those who were murdered, and unless we remain conscious of what happened, we cannot guarantee anything. The fact that it did happen means that it could happen again. It is hard to fathom that people are capable of such actions, and yet they were. And there are those still today who do things on a much smaller scale. That should remind us we are all human, with all the meaning that goes with that statement.

But for me, the promise of retaining the memory of the Shoah is that we have the real chance of preventing anything like that from ever happening again.

Invitation

The inscription on the memorial sculpture at the site of the Vel d’Hiv says n’oublions jamais.

Never forget.

Translating is difficult. The phrase n’oublions jamais in French means more than just the simple directive of “never forget” that the English translation offers. In French, it is also a promise that we will not forget. And it is also a statement assuring everyone that we do not ever forget.

I invite you to understand these words in all three of these contexts. We must remember.

 

The Modern Today Show Prayer

Somewhere far away

Gunshots

Change the lives of thousands

In an instant

 

An earthquake or wind or water, Nature,

Unavoidable

Sweeps away cities of nations of people

A chaotic wake

 

And the Modern Today Show Prayer

Is offered

Instantly tumbling from every lip like water

Cascading and rushing forth

 

“We send our thoughts and prayers

To You

The Suffering, the Broken Hearted, the Lost,

And to the Dead“

 

“Our thoughts and prayers are all for you”

Until

The next day when another shot rings out

And You are forgotten

 

Still the Modern Today Show Prayer echoes

Everywhere

Through every mind and from every mouth

But no one’s heart

 

The prayer, cloned from screen to screen,

Spurred by guilt

Each offers it back and to each other, fulfilling

The obligation

 

And then you feel at peace, having done

Your part

To show that you have done your part

Doing nothing

 

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to you”

But that’s all

 

-Eric Halpenny, November 6, 2017

 

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What Did I Just Read?

I woke up today with the words of this poem in my head and I had to write it down. But honestly I was afraid to post it, so I’m pressing “Publish” before I can talk myself out of it. Poems are pretty personal to begin with, especially ones like this. And besides that, this is the kind that might offend someone.

There was another shooting yesterday, at a church in Texas. I don’t know why, and I really don’t want to know. Trying to find the “why” almost makes it seem like there could be a legitimate reason that people are looking for to make it okay. As if we could find an explanation that would make us say, “oh, okay, I get it now. Makes sense.”

No. There is nothing that justifies it. There are no whys that matter and no amount of bluster will fix it. I’m not going to touch any of the usual topics that come up in American news media either. The endless debates and outrage seem futile to me. There is no real communication, no dialogue, and no listening in that debate. There is only noise.

I think it’s the same with disasters and catastrophic events. There is the never-ending well-wishers, and then the small number of doers. Those in need need doers.

All I want to say is this: Do something good in the world today. And tomorrow. And every tomorrow. I don’t mind that people say they are sending good thoughts to another person or that they will pray for them. That wasn’t my point. We can always use more goodwill and prayer. But neither of those things, even with the best intentions, are enough if your commitment ends there. Take action. Make a difference.