Odysseus's Lament

A sleep-deprived reflection on powerlessness, loss, and the need for home

I have been thinking in Odyssean terms since I saw the film on Tuesday night.

I don’t care about the controversies. I only care that this story, in this moment of my life, spoke so deeply to me that it felt like a spiritual experience I did not expect.

It is the tale of a man separated from where he belongs, tortured by longing and regret, trying to make it back, confounded by the machinations of the gods, and circumstances that seem to outmatch his skill at every turn.

His family is struggling, hurting, and he cannot help them.

Even when he is distracted by strong forces, his mind keeps returning to their names, their faces, and where his heart is.

He has angered Poseidon but protected by Zeus. He is not allowed to die, but his life is full of torments and terrible obstacles to his purpose. He spends years adrift, attacked, bewitched.

Every time he finds a little respite, it turns out to be another trap.

When he has his men lash him to the mast, and he listens to the sirens’ song, he endures something excruciating.

When the ordeal is done, and his men ask him about the song, he tells them:

"It told you that what you most want is what you can't have. And what you most can't have is what you already had, and lost."

When he at last emerges from Calypso’s spell after seven years — at least he had some company in his unwanted exile — she tells him that Poseidon must be given his pound of flesh, and he must endure it and surrender if he wishes to return.

This morning, before I fully woke, I tossed and turned in my bed, trying to pray.

Please take care of my family, God, because I cannot.

How do I say “Jesus I trust in thee” when I don’t? Should I fake it? Is it a lie? Should I say the words when they lack conviction? Can I somehow make myself believe he will ensure their wellbeing, when I’m not sure he’s even there, or that if he is, they may well be as abandoned as I feel?

I do not have the means or the power to change…anything. I can only keep going. Keep rising, keep toiling to push my head above the turbulent waters, fighting the monsters before me, keep trying to find the path…to where?

How do I accept my punishment?

How do I abandon myself to God so that I may traverse the wine-dark sea?

How do I make it home, when home no longer exists?

I have no Ithaca to return to.

My people have been shattered, my homeland sundered like Troy.

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