3.6

Extra ordinary losses

Change is a constant of life, and a constant of change is loss. Loss comes in many shapes and sizes and varies in its depth and extent and value. Some losses capture all our attention while others are waiting to break into awareness. Some never do. Losses do not need to be seen to exist. We can be living with great losses and be oblivious to them. I do not notice the loss of time and youth with every passing moment, but their loss continues, anyway. I would not know now that I lost my sister who lives in another state, if she were to die this moment of a heart attack. Still, though I do not yet know it, I have lost her anyway. She is gone from me. I may notice no loss of health if cancer is growing inside me now, even though it is actively destroying and stealing my body’s health. I may not recognize any loss in my will’s capacity to drink alcohol, even as I drink more and more often. A breakthrough of awareness must happen so I can see that I have lost a certain freedom of choice with alcohol. These and many other losses are real and significant, though unknown. Loss exists both inside and outside awareness, suffered with eyes wide open and in blind ignorance

There is a specific quality in losses that deserves special attention because of its potential to reflect the deep bowels of God. It is called sacrifice, losing a thing of value for the sake of valuing something else. Sacrifice is present in some form in all losses in all areas of life, at all levels and at all times. It is in the physical, psychological and spiritual realms. It accompanies the full span of life from conception to death. Sacrifice is in all changes motivating existence. It’s surface expressions are evident even in inanimate things. Wherever we turn, something is given up for the sake of something else. This moment is lost for the sake of the one that is coming. Air is sacrificed to objects that move in to occupy it. Energy is lost to mass. A star gives itself to gravity and implodes. These kinds of losses are not usually called sacrifices because they don’t involve life and volition. They do not choose to value as we understand choosing and valuing. Dirt does not choose to give way to a rock that falls on it. Sacrifice with the inorganic is typically described as the loss and end of one thing for another’s gain, whether it is of space, energy or time. No intentional valuing is involved with these participants. This kind of sacrifice primarily describes reality’s continuous movement of give and take, its ebb and flow that leaves nothing in a vacuum or in a state of inertia

In life, sacrifice has much deeper and richer potential. The more complex the life, the richer is its potential expression. Sacrifice forms and informs the cycle of life and death. Simple seeds, for example, break and die for plants to grow. Plants are eaten by grasshoppers that are, in turn, consumed by mice that are prey for cats. The whole animal kingdom is a continual balancing and rebalancing of predator and prey. Their constant give and take is fundamental to life’s ecosystem. Life vitally depends on the dynamics of sacrifice. A lion kills an antelope and feeds on it with his mate and cubs, while hyenas gather nearby, waiting to devour the carcass remains. These sacrifices are so basic to nature that we barely consider the implications of all this killing and death for the sake of life. It is assumed to be nature’s way of survival, without any need to justify or judge it. Who would judge a tiger for killing and devouring a deer to live? Wherever we turn in nature, life is sacrificed in part or whole, for the sake of life

Sacrifice is equally essential to all aspects of human life. We may not kill and maul one another, but we sacrifice in ways that are biological, instinctual and intentional. It’s most precious value is when it is intended, when we will to sacrifice for the sake of valuing another. What we sacrifice, and to whom or what, together reveal its value. These choices have the potential to either nurture life or destroy it. The relation between human will and sacrifice is both simple and enormously complex. For now, we can only introduce something of its nature. However much we can know of its worth will determine how much we can treasure the gift and mystery of life

The choice life gives isn’t whether or not to make sacrifices but, rather, which ones will we make and for what’s sake. Every aspect of life bears their mark. Every choice sacrifices all other options. Every moment is lost to the next one. From its conception, human life graphically depicts sacrifice with its painful, bloody and at times life threatening birth. The biology of life begins in the womb where millions of sperm are sacrificed for just one to penetrate just one egg. Once a sperm firmly plants into an egg, cells begin to multiply, vast multiplications of cells forming life in the womb. The embryo grows by continually feeding on its home, taking all that is needed from the mother to live and thrive. The baby doesn’t wait for permission to take whatever is needed. All that he needs to live and grow is within reach and taken. Life is so designed that the mother’s body gives whatever her baby needs though he is insensible to all its sacrificing and is unable to appreciate and be grateful. This give and take is the solid matrix of every life. The baby pushes aside his mother’s internal organs so he can have as much space as he needs to grow and be ready for his departure in forty weeks. The baby is finally born, covered with his mother’s blood. Life commands life to be just this way. After birth, his parents choose to continue sacrificing time, energy, money and love until he can care for himself and become part of a community that functions best when its people mutually sacrifice for the care and valuing of one another

Sacrificing well is crucial for life to thrive at its best. The richest sources of life and meaning are bred in sacrifice. Without it, only the shallow and temporary exist, without roots to deepen and feed growth. Sacrifice is the rich soil that deepens relationships because it both expresses and nourishes valuing the other. It is essential to the dynamics of intimate relationships, securing attachments that can be gained by no other way. The more we can discern and choose sacrifices that value the other, the closer we approach the reality of love

Those qualities of life that more closely approximate the nature of God have the greatest potential for good, or evil. When we sacrifice of ourself as a gift to another who can value the gift, there is no greater potential for good. But when we sacrifice what is not ours and force another to take it, there is no greater potential for evil. Its potential for either marvelous good or monstrous evil reflects its vital importance to life. Both kinds were present on September 11, 2001. On that clear Tuesday morning, Islamic terrorists attacked three sites in the US with highjacked planes and killed nearly 3,000 people. On that day, we witnessed the horrific killings of thousands of people. We cannot see any good in such a loss, this sacrifice of both terrorists and their victims. It is a senseless, evil sacrifice ripping open a wound in our race that by itself would never heal. By itself it would forever fester, a testament to the face of evil that can never justify itself. It would always retain its stench

But in the midst of this destruction at the World Trade Center, at the same time that death and panic and terror were converging at ground zero, beauty broke into its chaos. People with no part in the destruction began rushing into it as others were desperately escaping. These intruders were neither victims or terrorists. They had no natural part in the tragedy of that day but were of an altogether different order. They were the firemen, policemen and others who ran into the devastation to rescue the wounded, to find and bring to safety whoever they could help. These rescuers had chosen to risk their safety and lives for the sake of the wounded and dead. Many of them died in this final choice they made. Their deaths for the sake of saving others are a special kind of sacrifice

Most people can sense the great differences among the losses on 9/11 of the terrorists, their victims, and those who risked their lives to help. All who died were grieved by someone but they all elicited different sorts of grief. The rescuers expressed by their sacrifice an intention and vision that saw beyond the immediate horror to something of far greater value than preserving their life. Their actions showed something far beyond the rational to the human capacity to treasure life with the treasure of life. Such a human sacrifice is not good as we typically use that word, but it is most precious. Those of us who can appreciate its gift are painfully humbled by it. It is a sacrifice that intimates as a faint echo the living and holy Sacrifice, the mystery who is God. We will explore more closely this mystery in the following chapters

Sacrifice reflects a most important aspect of God’s image in us because it is so central to who He is and His ways. The spiritual meaning of sacrificial loss is God’s holy way of transforming by a living-dying process. What this process personally means will occupy some of the most important sections of this book