“11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. 13 I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. 14 There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. 15 But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. 16 But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man’s wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. 17 The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. 18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.” (Ec 9:11–18 ESV)

Whatever your elixir might be, the race is to the swiftest is a creed that sometimes fully applies. Our Religion… in some wild and wonderful way it promises Relief, Absence of Demand, Coming to the Table as we are; and at the same time promises cutting edge Accomplishment, a veritable Evolved Player in the competitions between world religions. It promises Abundant Good Deeds as verified en masse, regardless of the scare tactics around individual Failings. Individuals they Fail; individuals, they have a needy moment so piped up with anxiety and imagined frights, because of their utterly Broken need-action-reward system. Individuals… we… allot all manner of creative Male-Female divides, family Plan, community cubbyholes, while also amped to state, at times Madam Leader is as good as we’re going to get, is in fact Better. Or Sir Loving Parent is amply invested in. What is this? That we acknowledge some level on which stereotypes are the dictum en masse, but in particulars, anyone who has gusto and oomph can fill the shoes. That is, again, the gender divisions would be meaningless if not accompanied with practical-minded Common and Accepted Notions.

Well, that said: hero lady Soldier is today in that Race that goes to the swiftest, or at least to the most Persistent and Plucky. And her religion, it is the Religion of Christ let us say, and very good men and women squint in their elder status, at the outcome of this Faith, and see… it is a matter of Taste, whether to grant the laurels to the Buddhist, the Moslem, the Hindi, the Jew, the Christian. These are World Religions for that reason.

But also there is a bare naked Fact of Accomplishment: evolution has myriad Back Waters. What every religion, even a world religion, needs is a sense of concurrent Reform. Always Pressure to be a little more Aware of just how and why religion at large is even a Thing. Well, we shall go humble and only talk of our own religion: Christians are to Reform and put in the knife, so to speak, put the knife into the pie precisely in some weird and wonderful Fact of walking by Faith not by Sight. That this crimp, this cut, this accoutrement, this coiffe engenders Wild Lashing out in the best sense, lashing forth with hurried Good Works because the Christian is no longer Pressured to Do Good, rather is insanely Inspired to dwell on a playing field so abundantly outfitted with headroom, that their wild prophecies, do Honor their role as CEO and Christian-in-Chief.

Our elixir, it is Personal and sanely Copacetic. It meets the Call to Evangelize our peer, our neighbor, our friend, with Prayer rooted in understanding of the other’s perspective. So we tailor-make our Entreaty, coming with empty hands but all the wealth in the world in our Confident Composure. We are constantly ourselves given over to Reform, because there is Bliss in Dying to Oneself. Their is Headroom for quite Bold and Laudable Confrontations, even when those confrontations are perceived to be Partisan, Biased, and yet Our Elixir: it gestates and gives birth to a Facade amenable, agreeable, to the Moslem, the Hindi, the Buddhist, and Jew. We see something of Civil Mindedness, of Duty: that each religion literally declares historical War, but makes its denizens people who pray for enemies, who are genuinely likable for their humility and membership in the community. So to our beaker, our elixir, trance-like envisioning some Pan-Church Experience, but only needful Once perhaps. Once He died for us on the Cross. Once, Moses gave the Law. Once your religious hero and confidant, made the Life-Affirming Prophecy.

It is therefore an unexpected grin, no grimace, on the Soldier’s face because Christ has already walked this Path, and the Experience of replicating that action, it is personal and private to the front-lines soldier. More, he or she is good at Understanding those members of the masses who come with open hands. We literally, as soldiers of Christ, bore quickly of the awful boasts and comfortable dialogs of the middling ranks, but race to be Close To a fellow in poverty, in eyes that do meet briefly across the Room. Our religion has done this to us, made us Gentle and Affirming of our peers, yet still en masse winning the footrace, bucking forth out of the starting gate, winning on some Measure not quite acknowledged or Understood. It is a measure of Spiritual Compunction, Christ having literally placed Himself where the money is, in Dying, in Cruciform Eschatology (end times talk), anticipating not the next warm lap of life, but anticipating the Act of Dying. For us, perhaps, but if so at least not in any way one might boast about. Literally feeling in His own heart it was all for naught, that the hook didn’t catch the fish, that the timing belt didn’t ratchet the machine into action.