What do I complain about the most? That’s what the site is asking this morning, and that’s almost too prescient. I wonder if the site prompts are different for everyone, and this AI algorithm is listening through my phone/tablet/tv set for who I am and what is, specifically, on my mind. Because I have been complaining this morning, and it happens to be what I complain about the most, in this season of my life.

I’m calling this post Gongoosmos-ing, because gongusmos is the Greek word for complaining, used often in the Bible. (I add the -ing because we can do whatever we want – I’ve never pretended to be a Greek scholar, I just love the word and want to use it.) It’s used to describe the behavior of the Israelites after they have been liberated from Egyptian slavery, and as they walk in the desert, they gongusmos. It’s the words uttered (or muttered) that are simply the outflow of the heart. “We deserve better,” that sort of thing. They lose sight of the blessing, or any hopeful vision for the future, exchanging it for an entitled sense of misplaced arrogance. We have been given less, we are lacking something, it sucks, and I’m going to tell you, tell everybody, about it again and again.

But some things do suck, right? The trick is to figure out the kind of perspective that can see the suck in a redemptive way, looking for solutions (this sucks, what can we do about it to make it not?), instead of just seeing the suck as static and impossible to affect any change (this sucks and will always suck).

I’m going to be honest with you, here, in a way I may regret. Maybe some things shouldn’t be aired in public. But maybe that’s it’s own form of despair and resignation to the toxic “it is what it is” status quo mentality.

(I’m going to use sports, but as we have learned, this isn’t only about youth sports. Not by a long shot.) We’re at the tail end of my son’s high school basketball season (maybe I’ve mentioned it;). The referees are embarrassingly inept. If the things that happen on the court, the way the players punch and push and harass, are within the rules, they should not be. (To be clear, they aren’t. When I say ‘if,’ I don’t really mean if.) It’s hard to watch a game. I gongusmos about that, and I’ll tell you why in a paragraph.

There are 2 sides of youth sports coaching. First are the x’s & o’s, wins and losses, the actual game, teaching positions, skills, plans, strategy – where the players learn the game and grow in it. The second are 3 C’s: character, connection & care – the players spend so much time with the coach, they are taught much more than the game. They are taught sportsmanship and all of those characteristics that come with becoming men and women. The best coaches have both. They relate and win, the players trust them and play for them. They exit the program as better versions of themselves in so many ways they may not understand. They just know they’ve been cared for. The vast majority of coaches have just one. They either win OR they’re the men/women you’d want your child to spend the time with. The worst have neither… I gongusmos about that.

Woeful officiating and shameful coaches have the same symptom and consequence, they communicate the exact same message: “Who cares? It’s just sports, it doesn’t really matter. We can’t do better, we’ll take what we get, and throw our hands up in a bizarre kind of aggressive indifference.” And maybe. It is just sports. (The fact that it is the American religion is a topic for another day.) Maybe it is so ancillary to the human experience, that devoting an ounce of attention to the (sometimes) miserable state of affairs is misspent energy.

However. The real message we are communicating is that it’s not the sports that don’t matter, it is the kids. (I cringe to say the familiar refrain, “it’s for the kids,” because the people usually self-righteously screaming it are obviously lying. Oh well.) The idea that my son (and your son and the 2 boys that quit 13 games into their senior season and the boys that cried after each devastating loss) deserves whatever we can throw at them is violence to their spirits.

Maybe we’re all so anxious and depressed because the world is a mean place where the people who should be fighting for us aren’t because it’s too much trouble. Maybe our kids don’t trust anyone because we’ve all proven ourselves to be so untrustworthy. Maybe this isn’t gongoosmos-ing, it’s shouting into the crowd in an attempt to incite a revolution. The revolution that reclaims the worth and value of every person. The revolution that stops sending the message that you aren’t enough, aren’t important enough to demand better, and starts sending a different announcement, that you ARE. The revolution of radical love. And maybe we could start to prove it with our skin and bones and decisions.

Maybe this is all gongoosmos-ing. I guess it all depends on if we can turn these warped tables of our own apathy over and rebuild this whole broken system.