They Might be Giants: Finding the Courage to Overcome

It has been quite a summer of sport. It is not over just yet, we are still in July after all. I have enjoyed it immensely, the hopes and dreams and ups and downs, that for most has ultimately ended in disappointment. There have been quite a few underdog stories too. Most of us love an underdog story, probably because it taps into the dream that one day, by some miracle perhaps, we might become victorious.

Before I came to live in this area I knew very little about Urmston and Altrincham. I had heard of Urmston only because of one of the characters from “Dinner Ladies”, that wonderful comedy by Victoria Wood. I only knew of Altrincham from watching the football results and the mythos of their giant killing days in the FA Cup. It has been a great honour to serve the good folk of both places these last 16 years.

Now it was this year’s FA Cup that brought a local giant killing to mind, perhaps the greatest. This was when Non-League Macclesfield Town slayed Premier League Crystal Palace. Crystal Palace were actually the FA Cup defending champions having won it 2025, how the mighty fall. Other examples of minnows defeating or shining against the giants were Cape Verdi in the World Cup, drawing nil-nil with the eventual champions Spain. Cape Verdi did not lose a game in their group and were only beaten by the finalist Argentina in extra time, Argentina had scored an equaliser in injury time of normal time. Now despite a few hiccups the giants did eventually gain victory, the top four ranked teams in the world filled all four semi-final places.

There were two wonderful examples of minnows defeating giants in tennis too. Maja Chwalinska ranked 114 in the world and a wild card reached the French open final. Then the British qualifier Arthur Fery, another a wild card and coincidentally also ranked 114 in the world, reached the semi-final at Wimbledon before succumbing to the giant Alexander Zverev. I remember watching them walk side by side and thinking this truly looks like a David and Goliath rematch as Zverev stands 6 feet and six inches, Arthur Fery is just 5 feet 9 inches tall, almost a foot shorter. Instead of shaft the size of a weaver’s beam, his weapon of choice was his tennis racket.

In such encounters Goliath usually wins, but not always. Sometimes the underdog does win. The small does overcome the giant. Courage can be found if we carry it within our hearts. The 19th century Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, said, “The arc of the Universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He believed that there was some deep and powerful force in the Universe that stands behind the weak and the small when they fight against the more powerful. The story of David and Goliath, the little shepherd boy, the runt of his family, the eighth born son, who defeated the most powerful warrior in the world, asks us, “Where would we find such courage?” Sport can be a wonderful metaphor for this, sometimes the mighty do fall and the righteous do indeed overcome.

I am sure we are all familiar with the story of David and Goliath. I know as a child I found it compelling. It made me think that the weak sensitive child that I was would one day stand up to bullying giants of life. I still live with this childlike hope. I know I am not alone.

The story of slaying of the giant Goliath is to be found in the Old Testament book of Samuel. Here is an extract from 2 Samuel Ch 21 v 19

“Then there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob, and …………… killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.”

Do you know who killed Goliath in 2 Samuel? Say it out loud to yourself.

Well, in the “ Samuel it was someone named “Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite”

Here is the full verse: “19 Then there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.”

The story of David slaying Goliath is actually found in the 1st Book of Samuel, which describes Goliath there in the following way 1 Samuel Ch 17 vv 4-7

“4 And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was four[a] cubits and a span. 5 He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. 6 He had greaves of bronze on his legs and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. 7 The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron, and his shield-bearer went before him.”

“The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam”

Now to add to the confusion here is an extract from 1 20 Chronicles, probably written a couple of centuries after the book of Samuel. This section depicts the battles of David and his army at war, including with giants. There are many battles depicted as David was the warrior king.

“5 Again there was war with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.”

All three accounts use this same description of the shaft of a spear being like “a weaver’s beam”

Confusing isn’t it. How do we make sense of these seeming contradictions.

Biblical scholar Dan McClellan describes the slaying of Goliath as one of the biggest contradictions in the Bible. The Bible in McClellen’s understanding is not a univocal text, meaning it does not speak with one voice, nor should it be viewed this way. Instead, it is a text to be engage with. I am in great sympathy with Dan.

So, who was it who slayed the Giant Goliath, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam?

McClellan’s highlights several academic observations that reveal that the account in 2 Samuel of Elhanan of Bethlehem slaying Goliath pre-dates the account of David in 1 Samuel. That as the legend of David grew editors of the Davidic tradition appropriated the heroic feat of Elhanan to build up the myth of David, as the heroic underdog and creating a different kind of giant mythology. He highlights that the account in Chronicles is an attempt to show Elhanan as the slayer of Goliath’s brother Lahmi. By the way there are many accounts of giants being slayed and warriors going into battle. David is viewed as this warrior king who came from nothing to lead armies with ingenuity and skill.

The central claim of McClellan is that these account’s were ways to attempt to build up the legend of David as this little man who through courage and ingenuity slayed the giants. It is a wonderful mythos and like so many heroic figures of human mythology contains truth and exaggeration. In my view knowing this does not down play the idea of courage and guile to allow the small and seemingly weaker overcoming the giant, at least sometimes. Like all heroes such figures are flawed and sometimes their supporters build them up in order enlarge the mythos.

Here Dan McClellan explores the David and Goliath contrdictions.

 
We find our own truth in such tales and this is what matters to me. I wonder who your favourite underdog is, ancient or modern. Mine is probably “Daniel-San” from “The Karate Kid”, a story clearly influenced in part by the story of David and Goliath. Or perhaps Luke in the original Star Wars film “Episode IV” “A New Hope”. Surely Luke destroying the Death Star by finding it’s one vulnerability is another example of the David and Goliath Mythos. Or perhaps Achillies from “The Odyssey”, out now at the movie theatres, is another example. Even the mightiest fall, for they have their weak spots.

I recently listened to a Podcast by Malcolm Gladwell. He was discussing his book “David and Goliath” it takes a very different view to the conventional understanding, highlighting that David’s skill actually put him at an advantage. He highlights that often in war the mightier do not prevail and the righteous more often than we would think can become victorious, not through might, but through guile and skill. He highlights that sometimes our seeming weakness can become our strength. I know myself I was often told that I was overly sensitive as a child and that I would not survive in this world if I didn’t change. There was truth in this. That said I know today that my sensitivity is one of my greatest assets in my life. It just needed to be used in the right way. It turned out to be my stone that slayed my inner Giant. The central theme that Gladwell highlights is that the very thing that puts you at a disadvantage forces you to creatively reinvent the rules of the game to amazing effect. You develop new kinds of skills to compensate for the areas where you are weakest and you approach the world with a fresh kind of offbeat vision. You play a different game and suddenly your powerlessness becomes the very root of your power. It can be disarming, it can be thrilling, it can be wildly successful.

The message at the heart of the life of Jesus teaches this. I don’t mean the mythos developed around him and often the religion built from him, but the radical message he brought. He came to reform his religion to bring it back to the people, but not through power in a conventional sense. Being an ordinary working man it prevented him from doing so in a conventional way, so he followed his own path. He used what he had, he made the most of his simple gifts. He refused conventional status and power and created new terms of success showing how the so called losers became winners and winners became losers. He said “Blessed are the peacemakers.” “Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness… blessed are the merciful… blessed are the pure in heart…” Jesus taught that success was measured by how loving and compassionate you are. Instead of accumulating wealth and power here, “store up treasure in heaven where moth and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.” The problem was the worship of other things, such giants actually got in the way, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” He contested all the social values of his day and invited the people into a different dimension of spiritual living.

Sadly, this is a message that has so often been lost in the religion created in his name and much religion actually. Sadly, too often the worship of other God’s and monster have taken over. Too often, as in the original story, David becomes the Goliath.

Now the David’s and Goliath’s come in many forms; they do not necessarily come in human form; the giants, the monsters, the unsurmountable obstacles incarnate in various ways. It takes faith and hope and courage to overcome them, even if we have failed many times. It is the faith, hope and courage that enables us to stand up and try once again.

Mark Nepo takes an interesting slant on this ancient Mythos. In the “Book of Awakening” he writes about the Goliath’s in life being the towering unsurmountable obstacles that we all face. The impossible dream, the heartbreaking challenges of love and loss such as grief, chronic illness and the personal traumas we all face. Every day I find myself in conversations with folk living through challenges of all kinds, and of finding the faith, hope and courage to overcome their own personal Goliath’s.

Mark Nepo describes his own battles with his own Goliath’s. After surviving a rare form of lymphoma in the 1990s, he emerged with profound insights on suffering, transformation, faith, hope and resilience. These were the equivalent to the five stones that David carefully selected. Nepo was taught the true meaning of courage, of love. He learnt that these seemingly unsurmountable obstacles were not giants or monsters to be slain, but teaches, hard lessons that compel us to strip away the things that do not really matter in life, discover where the true meaning is found and uncover the true courage at the heart of our being. Not in vainglory but as people of faith and hope and love.

We all face our mythological giants in life. I wonder what has been your greatest challenges and how you have walked through them, overcome them. Some of us maybe facing some now. What has carried you through? What were your five selected stones that helped you defeat your Goliath? What stories, mythos helped carry you through? Not what hero fought your battle, but who or what inspired you keep on taking the next step, the one of courage to keep on walking on through.

May we all find the faith, the hope and courage to face what we encounter on our journey through life. May we find the love to encourage one another to keep on, no matter how many times we might fall.

I’m going to end this with this piece.

“My Heart Fights for Those Who Can't Fight” by Sara Sutherland Dean

Someone called me a “bleeding heart liberal.” It was not intended as a compliment. However, I will always consider it one of the biggest compliments of my life.

My heart bleeds for the underdog.
My heart fights for those who can’t fight.
My heart rejoices in seeing others overcome adversity.
My heart desires love and peace for everyone.
My heart is compassionate and empathetic.
My heart sees pain in others and wants to help.
My heart believes in equality.
My heart sees the good in people.
My heart chooses action over fear.

Amen

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

There must be another way — a way to unself just enough to remember each other

It is said that soon after his enlightenment that the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked, "My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?"

"No," said the Buddha.

"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"

Again the Buddha answered, "No."

"Are you a man?" "No."

"Well, my friend, then what are you?"

The Buddha replied, "I am awake"

The Buddha was awake, he was fully conscious to all that is and all that will ever be. He was fully integrated, he did not see himself as separate, well he did not see himself at all.

Now this is not a claim I would or could make about myself. I can be self conscious at times, aware of my short comings and frustrations. I more liberate from this than when I was younger. Some days I feel free and others I can get caught up in my shortcomings.

As a child I was very self conscious about the way I moved. This became excruciating as a teenager. I was born some of the nerve endings at the base of my spine underdeveloped. It was something akin to a less severe form of spina bifida. As a child I had to frequently go for physiotherapy and there was a period when I was not allowed to engage in any sport. I hated the feeling it engendered in me as I looked at the other kids running around in the playground, knowing I wasn’t allowed to join in.

It was a few years later when the pain really hit me though, in my mid to later teens when I was painfully aware of the way I walked. I waddled when I moved, I still do now. I remember walking down the street of the town I grew up in and whenever I saw someone walking towards me, especially teenage girls, I would stand up straight and attempt to push my feet inwards in the vain hope that they wouldn’t think that there was something wrong with me. I must have looked a right sight.

I was just so terribly self-consciousness, locked in on what I believed was wrong with me. As I look back now’ I’m not wholly convinced that the problem was my perceived physical imperfections. I suspect that if I’d been born without this physical difficulty the problem would have manifested in other areas of my life. The problem was the self-consciousness, I was locked in myself and therefore not fully conscious, I was separate and felt alone.

One thing I’ve learnt over the years is that I am not alone in this. So many suffer from self-consciousness, feel lost, lonely and cut off because they are locked in what they believe is wrong with them. Sometimes it is harder to see what is right, than what is wrong. This is a deeply lonely, isolated, way to be.

Socrates said that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Now while not wishing to argue with the great philosopher I do wonder if the “over examined life” can prove just as worthless. It is so easy to get lost in oneself, wrapped up in our own underwear to such an extent that we do not live at all. We can become so self-conscious that we fail to become conscious of all that is and all that as ever been. It is so easy to become wrapped up in our own perceived needs that we fail to live in the world with others and then complain about feeling lonely. Yes it is important to examine ourselves, to understand who we are and what makes us tick, but that should not be an end in itself, a destination. It is a staging post in the spiritual adventure, but not an end in itself.

I have had several conversations with people recently who have been struggling with severe self-consciously, manifesting as pride. Bruce Lee observed "the core of pride is self-rejection" and Agnes Martin knew when she cautioned that pride destroys freedom, joy and creativity. The ancient Greeks had a word for the ultimate self-consciousness “hubris”; the most destructive form of pride; a pride that puts yourself at the centre of the universe. This strange and terrible kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. Think of Narcissus who was so locked into his own reflection that he drowned. The great writers of tradgedy have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. We witness it in the monsters of history and some world leaders of our age.

One antidote to such destructiveness is to live creatively. Madeleine L’Engle wrote on this:

“Creativity is an act of discovering. The very small child, the baby, is still unself-conscious enough to take joy in discovering himself: he discovers his fingers; he gives them his complete, unself-conscious concentration.”

Continuing…

“The kind of unself-consciousness I’m thinking about becomes clearer to me when I turn to a different discipline: for instance, that of playing a Bach fugue at the piano, precisely because I will never be a good enough pianist to play a Bach fugue as it should be played. But when I am actually sitting at the piano, all there is for me is the music. I am wholly in it, unless I fumble so badly that I perforce become self-conscious. Mostly, no matter how inadequate my playing, the music is all that matters: I am outside time, outside self, in play, in joy. When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love.”

I think we all have activities that make us feel free. Free to be ourselves and be part of something more than our mere selves and part of something larger. I know I am when I sing freely. When I feel confident and comfortable enough with a piece of music. I can express myself freely, but freely as a part of something more than myself.

When I feel free in song I embody those words of Maria Popova:

“There must be another way — a way to unself just enough to remember each other, to grow a little more awake to this world that shimmers with wonder, of which any one self is only a fleck.”

When singing I unself just enough to feel fully part of the “Musica Universalis”, I feel a little more awake in the world that shimmers, I am one self in an incredible interconnected universe.

Negative self absorption keeps us separate, locked into all that is wrong with ourselves or all that is wrong with the world. When you look at your own reflection in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see someone that you love? Do you see who you really are? While we may see ourselves warts and all, how many of us see the beauty spots too? The self-absorption that most people I come into contact with suffer from, tends to be a deeply ingrained negative type. The preoccupation is often with what is wrong with them, with their shame, rather than how wonderful they are. Also the pride is in worrying what people think of them, that someone might just see their flaws and reject them.

This kind of self-consciousness can become so consuming that it takes over our human interactions. I wonder how many of us suffer from this kind of commentary when we meet up with people. “What will they think of me?” “How do I look?” “If I say something, will they think I’m an idiot?” and then as it continues, “He gave me a funny look, he must have thought me a fool. Why on earth did I have to make that stupid remark? Gosh I’m such a freak, they all seem to be staring at me.”

This kind of inner dialogue can be so crippling. It can haunt us from the moment we wake and continue throughout our day, eating away at our every decision. Oh and of course because we doubt ourselves and every decision we make, we assume that everyone else must be doing exactly the same thing. This kind of self-consciousness can be so crippling and it blocks us off almost entirely from the world around us. We can be consumed by this kind of self-consciousness we see the world from our own point of view and it aint a pretty one.

So what can we do about it? How do we wake up to a greater consciousness? How do we break free from this crippling self-consciousness?

In the Gospel’s Jesus taught his followers that they must lose themselves in order to be found. That by emptying ourselves of our self-absorption we begin to be filled with the spirit of neighbourliness. So that when we look deeply into the still waters we are not drawn in by narcissistic self-consciousness and loathing at our own reflection, but rather into a deeper contemplation of our shared lives. We become conscious of all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. By opening ourselves to and for others we begin to shed that debilitating skin of self-consciousness that is so easy to become imprisoned in.

Gandhi said “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service of others”

The Buddha talked of Nirvana, of being freed from the suffering that was the blight of humanity. He showed that we all suffered and that it was in seeing our suffering as individual that led to this sense of separation. He suggested that we needed to break through our suffering not only to serve others but to reach a higher state of being, true consciousness, to be awake.

Now please don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that we do not need to know ourselves to understand how we tick. All I am saying is that we must not get stuck there, we must not get lost there and we must not see this as a destination, more a staging post on the journey. The adolescent stage I suspect. Sadly, for many folk, me included, this adolescent stage often goes well into adulthood.

I remember another antidote that probably fuels creativity suggested in Forrest Church’s “Lifecraft”, a book suggesting ways to make life an act of creation, a way to move from self-consciousness to consciousness. He offered three simple suggestions, which he called the three “E’s”, “empathy”, “ecstasy” and “enthusiasm”. The key he claimed could be found in the literal understanding of these words. “Empathy”, to suffer or feel with another; “Ecstasy”, to stand outside ourselves; “Enthusiasm”, to manifest the god (theos) within us.

Empathy is a deep felt compassion. When we open our hearts empathically to another we are courageously refusing to allow self-consciousness to stand in the way of a higher consciousness that comes into being as we feel what another is going through. In so doing we serve both ourselves and the other person, as well as that higher consciousness beyond our singular selves.

Now ecstasy has often been misunderstood as some kind of hedonistic state and therefore self- indulgent, it is far from this. In its truest sense what it actually does is takes us out of ourselves and lifts us beyond the confines of ourselves. In so doing we transcend our self-consciousness and enter a realm in which purpose begins to emerge and meaning is found.

Enthusiasm means to be filled with spirit, with holy energy. Enthusiasm allows us to be fully involved and engaged in whatever it is we are doing. It allows us to see beyond the confines we have created. Forrest himself states that “Here, once again, consciousness displaces self-consciousness. We escape from our mirrored room. Its mirrors turn into windows. Or the pond grows so still that we can see beyond our own reflection to the trees and clouds and birds and sun. There is, by the way, no higher form of spiritual practice. When we step out of our own shadow, consciousness replaces self-consciousness.”

In so doing we are set free to walk with others in our own faltering ways. Instead of being lost in what we believe is wrong with us we are set free to do what we can in this our shared world and in so doing we encourage others to do the same, as perfectly imperfect children of God.

For me the purpose of the spiritual life is to develop a deepening sense of connection. We all have our troubles and our worries either within ourselves, those around us or wider world. We need to see them for what they are, we need to acknowledge the truth, but we must not get stuck there, for that will paralyse us and stop us doing what we can. We cannot change the way the world is but that need not prevent us from doing what we can do and in doing so we will grow spiritually as we become integrated into all that has been, all that exists and all that will ever be.

As a kind of conclusion I’d like to leave you with one final thought. I think that so much of modern spiritually gets it wrong because it is seeking the wrong thing. There is so much talk of finding ourselves, when in actual fact what we ought to be doing is losing ourselves. What we ought to be striving for, I believe, is integration and remove those aspects within ourselves that block this. We all ask the question “Who am I?” when really we ought to asking is “How am I doing? And if we are still feeling utterly dis-connected we need to ask why? And how can I integrate once again? You see if we can begin to integrate with all that is, all that has been and all that has ever been we begin to truly cohere. In doing so we transcend our self-consciousness and become conscious. We become spiritually mature. We become like the Buddha, awake.

So how conscious are you today? Are you truly awake?

If not. I have found a way to unself just enough so that we remember each other, to remember we are part of something wonderful and greater than our little selves. To feel a little more awake in this world that shimmers. To know that our single selves are just a fleck, but a vital part of the “Musica Universalis”

“There must be another way — a way to unself just enough to remember each other”

Please find below a devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"