March Madness.....

Somehow the Ides of March have been taken over by March Madness and the NCAA basketball tournament.  It's all set out in brackets with teams that are rated and then placed in the brackets according to their records, schedules, who they beat and lost to--then presto!  out come the brackets.  Then upsets are called as lowly teams knock off the higher seeds--so on and so forth.  Madness relates to the roller coaster of the unpredictable that can fall with the last shot! 

So is the walk we learn early in life--the competitive edge, to live your life for the goal--reach for that brass ring?  Yes...  We do.  Fairfax County breathes it.  I learned it in New Jersey and have carried it with me ever since.  What happens, however, when life teaches us that to win is actually to just push you into the next bracket?  That your worth depends on what the world calls winning--so that the one who truly wins (so often quoted) "is the one who dies with the most toys." 

Joseph Campell--Power of Myth--writes that it takes a shock to break us out of the"brackets" and learn that we are living for God's Kingdom.  Sooner or later, he has said, we discover the truth that left to ourselves, we find out that the ladder we climb is against the wrong wall.  The stairway to heaven is paved with the gold of grace--and that takes eyes of faith, deep trust, to "find your way home another way." 

Happy walking in Lent!