What sword would you die on?

"In difficult ground, press on; On hemmed-in ground, use subterfuge; In death ground, fight."  - Sun Tzu


"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  - Jesus (Matthew 6:21)


Where is your heart?  What sword are you willing to die on?


Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" is oft quoted by generals, CEO's, athletic coaches, computer obsessed hermits, and other wannabes of all stripes.  You have certainly had bosses who embodied the mind of Sun Tzu, and you bear the scars to prove it.


Sun Tzu has much to say about victory. As a morally inadequate leader, he used his most astute observations about the human condition to make decisions about how to manipulate his own men to win in battle, with little or no regard for their lives.  Hence the above - inscribed for the successful to consider, or for the morally inadequate, like Sun Tzu, to use to their own advantage.


Know that there is TRUTH in what Sun Tzu said.  Each of the above is what will occur, if you consider examples from your own life, when you are cornered.  


In difficult ground, the instinct is to press on.  This is why parents send their adult children mercifully out into the world to make their own way, even though what they would prefer is to keep them home near the fire.


On hemmed in ground, your native savvy for survival will chemically elevate your brain to its highest acuity, its sharpest edge.  When there's only one way out, you get smarter, really quick.  You will find it easy here to recall examples from your own experience.


Only in death ground will you fight to the death, and should.  In death ground, your "fight" instinct will by your very nature kick in unless your will to live has already been impaired by other conditions, such as depression or learned hopelessness.  Fight or die.


Sun Tzu knew these things, and deliberately put his soldiers on Death Ground when he knew he needed them to fight with all they had.  Still, you can use his observations for what they are worth, which is a lot.


These conditions are actually simulated in everyday life all the time.  The question is, what do you consider to be difficult ground, hemmed in ground?  


What do you consider to be death ground?


Where is your treasure?  What is worth dying for to you, even figuratively speaking?


There was a terrific special about Sun Tzu on the History Channel this week, equally as informative as Thursday's edition of the X-Factor, which I will address later.  To illustrate the Death Ground Theory of Sun Tzu, the commentator referenced the Battle of Normandy.


Here goes Amateur History Lesson 1A, straight from the only slightly informed brain of this hippie historian. Please be forgiving as you read, considering that my primary concern in high school was the history of social movements and related policies, not the classic Presidential and military history to which high school kids are normally treated.


So, carrying on, it appears that in 1944 the best option for landing on enemy territory dictated a beach attack, which would leave American troops on Hemmed In Ground. Eisenhower scrupulously concealed his plan with subterfuge. He diverted Hitler's attention to a fake fleet of blow-up rubber tanks, planes, jeeps - the works - all of which he kept elsewhere, to trick Hitler into thinking the attack would occur not on the beach at Normandy, but at Calais.  


Seriously.


Eisenhower's forces deflated and moved the decoys repeatedly in the dark of night to simulate what would occur with real inventory, going so far as to use rollers to simulate the tracks that would have been made in the dirt as they moved.


On D-Day, faced with the tack-tack-tack of bullets pelting the shells of the very tanks that temporarily shielded their faces, American troops confronted the reality that they would soon step out onto occupied soil, sitting ducks, even in spite of the decoy maneuvers.  The front line was sure to die.


No retreat was possible.  Death Ground.

Line after line of men was cut down. Lifeless or dying bodies - bunkmates and brothers - stacked up in the doorway, steaming, as the men at the back awaited their fate, or their destiny.  Horror crouched mere inches from their faces, the hot stink of blood thick in their nostrils.  


Their response?  To storm out with guns blazing, penetrating deep into Hedgerow Country.  From Death Ground to Hemmed-In Ground: their destiny.


In the Hedgerow Country, where centuries of dense growth blocked even the fiercest tank penetration, only hand to hand, gut to gut combat was possible: knives, guns, garottes, bare fingers.  Nazi soldiers lay in wait in the darkest corners of the maze.  Each boy's consciousness had to achieve its highest level of acuity to survive, had to remain on highest alert, shot with adrenalin.


Eisenhower, with his men blocked as they were by the now accursed hedges, bombarded the nearby Caen to lure the Nazi forces out of the labyrinth and into the light.  Subterfuge.  Victory.  Unimaginable loss, and incomparable courage.


It causes me to wish I'd paid attention to the World War II unit more closely.  American balls out courage is demonstrated there in remarkable ways.


As we watch ourselves, and our friends and neighbors, it's clear, sometimes painfully so, where their - where our - treasure lies.  In daily life, rarely do we find ourselves lying in wait behind a pile of dying soldiers, committing our souls to a cause so large our brains cannot grasp it in the moment.  Our fight or die instinct presents itself in more mundane ways most of the time.


We have instincts waiting for a cause, and we choose our causes every day.  This is how our small worlds are shaped.

Example: on the X-Factor (Fox Network) this past Thursday, little Rachel Crowe, just thirteen, was eliminated from the field of musical competition only five short steps from victory.  She had sung her heart out, week after week, throwing it all down, fight or die, against people more than twice her age, for her treasure.  


Music. Performance.  To be herself.  "If I were a boy."  Treasure.


When the news was announced that this would be her last night on the stage before millions, only a moment of shock flashed over her face.  In an instant, she melted to her knees, then to the floor.  Then, the heaving gasping sobs came, then a bawling noise like a child whose mother has just died.


Then, standing, she faced her mother.  No one had died.  Yet she confronted her:  "Mommy, you promised me.  You promised I would win."  Still fighting, mindless of the national crowd, fighting to the death for her treasure.


But then a shift came.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw judge Nicole Scherzinger, so abject herself that she couldn't speak.  Scherzinger had been the one who could have saved her to sing another day, but instead had thrown her to her fate, on the other side of the hedgerow from her treasure.



But what did Rachel do next?  Did she attack, garotte, stab the one who threw her dream on the ash heap?  

Not at all. Instead, she turned to her greater treasure: the compassion that resides in her child soul, and then to its twin in her judge, her friend.  She momentarily set aside her loss, not so large and permanent after all, and turned to what really mattered - to comfort her grieving friend, to thank an audience and a fan base who had loyally supported her - a true princess, if you remember the tale.


It was not so different with fifteen-year-old Drew Ryniewicz the week before, who upon her elimination simply said through her grief-stricken sobs, "You need to know that Jesus loves you.  That's what I really came to say."  Treasure.


Where is your treasure today?  The answer to that question daily shapes the outcomes of your life.  The answer shapes your soul, and its destiny.


Make a conscious choice about what your treasure is today.  Know that, in the end, you will likely be called to die for it, either literally or figuratively.  Are you ready?  Are you willing?


What sword do you want to die on?  How will you instruct others, with the manner in which you choose to lay your life down?


Comment below, and tell us.

Bible time: Why worry now?

If I wanted to make some money and could get somebody to bet with me, I would bet that you have worried about something in the last twenty four hours.

More likely the last twenty four minutes.

And I would win.

Not I, you say.  I am a positive upbeat soul, a veritable Alfred E. Neuman.  What, me worry?

Hold on, now.  Ask your mother if you worry.  Or your wife, or husband, or kids, or boss, or co-workers.  At least one of them would tell you different, you worry wart.  I guarantee it.

Worry by our very nature waits, crouched in our bowels, a primeval survival mechanism born back when the earth was still steamy and moist with its own birth, and unimaginable violence lurked in its deepest, blackest places.  Worry lives in us so that we can be ready in case a tyrannosaurus rex (did man co-exist with those?) or a serial killer jumps out, or a flood fills the cave we live in.

The worst that could happen, back when the world was new, was just a whole lot more LIKELY to happen than it is today, here in this age of antibiotics and education and law enforcement and subsidized housing.

Still, there is plenty to worry about.

Indeed, awful things still do happen.  We know what they are.

Just as often, mercy intervenes, when it is not yet our time.  I am reminded of a friend who lived in Half Moon Bay with his wife and toddler, back in the '70's.  It was a crystal blue day with a stiff chill, characteristic of Peninsula towns, and the extended family was gathered with neighbors out front, roasting corn and chicken on the grill, trading stories and sipping spiked punch, while the babies waddled and dug in the dirt and played with the kittens. John Barleycorn Must Die and Cream and Paul Butterfield blared out through the front door from the stacked turntable inside.

How quickly it happened, there while they celebrated.  A moment turned away, and my friend's toddler was face down in the shallow pond, dark stains of green water already soaking up the sides of his red overalls - still as death.

His mother turned, saw, screamed, dropped her cup, panic cutting her from throat to gut in a single stroke.  She was halfway there in less than a second.

But even quicker, the neighbor's goose, on the scene before the mother ever reached her baby's side, had snatched the baby up by the straps of his overalls and flipped him onto his side, out into the dirt.

Seeing the child who had grown up as his own, he had crossed the yard in two gallops, wings outstretched like a squawking barnyard angel.  The baby's plump cheeks lay flat, pallid.  Then, one cough, one gag, a rush of green.  An ambulance ride with a new teddy, gifted by the EMT.  Safe.

Sadly, that goose, soon to become famous in the front page story that followed in the local paper, was declared in violation of zoning ordinances within the week and seized, possibly to become some government official's pet or Christmas dinner.  One never knows.  But even in spite of this, he had fulfilled his destiny, had made a difference in his brief goosey life.

Yes, things we don't like will happen. But so much GOOD, so much warm, so much organized and safe and beautiful will happen right alongside the bad things to soften the blow.  We have so much to be thankful for.

Most important, we must ask ourselves the question:  Do I BELIEVE?  Do I believe in a higher power who organizes my life, who has mercy on me, who sends barnyard angels to save me?  A higher power who loves me?

I do.

I believe that Jesus is the living Son of God, on this Sunday.  That God came to earth in human form to show us what love looks like, that He allowed us to kill Him on purpose so that He could become a Soul that would be our Holy Spirit.

He breathed His Spirit into John's mouth before He left this earth.  He breathes it into us whenever we ask Him to.

I believe that He is our daily Counselor who lives within us and moves us with His own hands to do His best in this world.  That He rescues us every second, and that if it appears He will not rescue us, He has so much better planned for us that we can't even see yet.  That it might even be Heaven He has for us, right now, today.

Believing this requires trust.  He will teach you to trust, if you ask.  But you have to ASK.

Worry is good when it moves you to prayer - to ASK.  Worry is bad when it simply moves you to greater worry.

Bible time:

Genesis 10:13 -15.  I have placed my rainbow in the clouds.  It is the sign of my permanent promise to you and to all the earth.  When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will be seen in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with everything that lives. This was written back when the earth was still fresh and wet with its own birth, and really wet from a super big flood that required Noah to trust.

Psalm 37:1-2.  Don't worry about the wicked.  Don't envy those who do wrong. For like grass, they soon fade away.  Like springtime flowers, they soon wither.  Given by God to David, a man after His own heart.

Matthew 6:28-30.  Why worry about your clothes?  Look at the lilies and how they grow.  They don't work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.  And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you?  Straight from the mouth of Jesus, the right hand of the Three in One.

I believe, and have seen with my own eyes, that there are barnyard angels lined up to get me to the perfect destination He has planned for me. He moves them with His own hands to save my bacon every day.

I believe I must trust Him and do as he expects - must listen to His small voice instead of the clamor of my own worry - especially in case it's my job to be someone's barnyard angel today.

I am a worry wart, I confess it.  I must lay it down and pray through it every day of my life. There is SO much to worry about.

But there is ever so much more to be thankful for.  What a life!  What a sky!  What a beautiful warm fire.  My family - there are no words.  I love my job so very much.  Thank you, Jesus.  Thank you.

I love you.  He loves you more.  Don't worry.  Be happy.