Soccer, War, and the Counterpoison of Hope

I woke up Saturday to another morning of war scenes spread across my screens. I then quickly shut down and drove 2 1/2 hours to watch my grandson’s soccer game.

I arrived at a pristine middle school field with artificial turf under a blindingly clear autumn sky. Bright, distractible 7-year-olds ran back and forth for an hour with only the slightest knowledge of sport itself. It was magnificent.

One child would inexplicably stop midfield and just stare for a bit at whatever caught his eye in the sky. Another ran to the sidelines mid offensive drive to get his mom to tie his shoe.  Another was smacked in the face with a kicked ball and his coach/dad calmly cleared the field by scooping him up in his arms as the crying boy buried his face against his shoulder. 

The parents clapped and cheered, the kids rolled around the sidelines laughing and fooling around. The coaches only job seemed to call out the need to pay attention to what direction their team’s goal was. 

I sat breathing in this scene with a catch in my throat. This is how childhood should play out. But the news and scenes on my computer that morning were in stark contrast, also playing in the back of my mind.

Across the world kids were running for their lives through the rubble of bombs. Parents were scooping up the maimed bodies of their children.  There was nothing that would ever be carefree in any of their lives.

I know my daughter is almost paralyzed with this enigma of living in the ease of American suburban life while watching the slaughter of innocent child elsewhere. How the weight of her son’s sleepy body is too similar to the horror another mom is enduring holding her dying child’s body. I don’t know what to say to her. I know nothing about how to survive war, except surviving my personal one.

But I have a friend who does know about war. He is not only fighting his own battle with cancer, but has served and commanded through three military tours. This is a man who has lived through the evils of war and has literally stood face to face with terrorists. I asked his take on this whole scary geopolitical scene, of which he has much inside knowledge about to this day. After deep discussions about his life, his career, his cancer, the decline of his health, and the general hopelessness of the world, I was feeling overwhelmed.

He pointed out the “great conundrum” at such times of darkness, where the world seems to spew a poisonous venom from too many hate-filled and barbaric corners, yet, lightness is still there if seen through the lens of something as simple as gratitude. He reminded me that when we hold gratitude close in for the miracles of a sunrise, a songbird, a soft rainy day, then we feel humbled, sometimes awed, for these seemingly simple, but profound, gifts.

It almost seemed too dewy-eyed to espouse awe in a sunrise these days. Both of my kids are expressing such deep sorrow for this world and I’m reticent to share this simple antidote with them. Sometimes I feel Ben’s unfair life and death unleashed a passion for justice they held inside for a long time. I don’t want them to feel like I’m a Pollyanna discounting their feelings.

But I do want to tell them that passion for the atrocities of this world is a needed primal force, a beautiful, essential part of our humanity. It shows the courage to love deeply and can be the fuel for the spirit and for creativity when directed with a fierce openness to all perspectives and carefully bracketed with an attitude of kindness to self and others.

I want to tell them what my battle-weary friend encouraged me to do. That as to the bigger picture of war and atrocities, it is of course beyond our reach and comprehension. But we can “draw our world in closer.” When we express gratitude for companionship, love, and tenderness, even a beautiful sunny day at a kid’s soccer game, we are rewarded with expressions of joy and delight. We can live with a lightness that cannot be diminished, even in the face of darkness outside.

Our world drawn in close.

So I will hold gratitude in my heart for the exuberance of those American kids playing soccer, for the kindness and love I saw from their parents, for the sweetness of my grandson as he offered to share a KitKat bar with me from his after-game bag of snacks.

We will always be faced with atrocities in the world and versions of such in our private lives. I will keep reminding myself, and my kids too, to hold on to the counterpoison of hope and the goodness found in the small joys of today.