by Lory Widmer Hess

What teacher pushes his student to fail?
What king rides into battle
announcing, “We’re going to lose this one”?
What healer raises everyone else
then falls to death himself?

The one who knows the price of success,
its dangerous allure.

Fail, lose, and die –
live and be free.
Don’t be enslaved to the rising world
but fall within it to be reborn
into its hidden truth.

It’s the only way
to slip through the chains:
accepting their crushing weight.

Lory Widmer Hess is an American currently living with her family in Switzerland. She has worked for the past ten years with adults with developmental disabilities, from whom she has learned her greatest life lessons, and is in training as spiritual director. Her writing has been published in Parabola, Red Letter Christians, Kosmos Quarterly, Christian Community Perspectives, and other print and online publications. She blogs at enterenchanted.com and can be found on Mastodon at @lorywidmerhess@bookstodon.com.