Look, Nothing is Fucked, Here, Man

I’m sitting in an airport in Oslo, Norway on my way to Svalbard. I am sure I will be writing some posts about this trip in the near future. This is my fourth airport out of five on this trip. I am tired but wanted to write about one of my favorite quotes from the Big Lebowski. It relates well to life in airports, but also just life in general. Sorry no audio for today. And I’m using the app on my phone, not a laptop, so a bit clunky.

At one point in the movie The Dude is talking to Mr. Lebowski, who I have come to consider is the Big Lebowski. He is trying to explain that everything is ok and it comes out, “Look, nothing is fucked, here, man.” This line is delivered flawlessly by Jeff Bridges in this manner of speaking it seems he created just for this character.

The Big Lebowski replies to him, “Nothing is fucked?!” He then raises his voice to shouting level and bursts, “The goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain!”

This past week we were reading Mark 12 in my guys Bible study group. As someone was sharing their thoughts on a particular passage, this line erupted inside of me. I think it hit me on multiple fronts, but mostly it was the way in which we tend to talk to ourselves. Something terrible happens in life and we say to ourselves, “Nothing is fucked, here, man,” while another part of the self is shouting, “nothing is fucked?! The plane has crashed into the mountain!”

Or we tend to do this with our friends, colleagues, and whoever else we talk to during our day. We tend to try to calm people down with a sweet “nothing is fucked, here, man.”

But sometimes, in fact, the plane has crashed into the goddamn mountain. Sometimes life is ripped away from you, leaving hopes and dreams smashed against the cold rocks of reality. Sometimes it gets worse as you work through the wreckage to realize the loss you’re experiencing will last a lifetime. Sometimes it’s so inexplicably bad that you cannot even face it. “Nothing is fucked, here, man.”

It is in times like these I turn to the Psalms. This is one of the most honest spaces the Bible has to offer us. People rage! They question. They writhe in disbelief. They shake their fists at God. There are moments when they still come full circle to a loving God and there are others where they remain outside of the tent in the devouring storm. I mean go read Psalm 109 and 137!

And it is in this dance, this eternal struggle between humanity and God, where I find solace in the darkest of my nights. I think in part is because in this mystery defined by dichotomy and seeming contradiction, that both and becomes reality. We see a space where the “nothing is fucked, here, man” and “the goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain” are both reality. It is a place where the ground is soaked with our tears of loss, but also where some part of us extends to the grace of God knowing somewhere deep, is a truth we cannot fully process.

Have you ever entered into such a reality such as this? I hope you have not m, but I am almost certain you have. One of our only hopes in moments like those is a friend who forces us to remember that everything is not “fucked, here, man,” while leaving space for the fact that the “plane has crashed into the mountain.”

It is rare to find someone who can hold this kind of space for us. Perhaps the best practice for today is to wonder how we can be those people. How do we hold these seemingly opposing views in tandem? How do we offer hope and grace to someone caught in the storm?

Today my answer is — go to the Psalms! Go there. Live there. Rest there. Be challenged there. Be.

And remember both, “Nothing is fucked, here, man.” AND “Nothing is fucked?! The goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain!”

Amen.

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