History of the ordinary

History ‘from below’ gets down and dirty. It is a pity it hurts so much to do it.

The ‘Great Ones’ of human history often earn the acclaim they so enjoy to propagate—at the expense of many ordinary people. These ordinary people either made them what they became (without thanks), or were crushed by them in the process of their exaltation (without mercy). Either way, there are valleys of dried bones beneath the feet of those who call themselves benefactors.

History that is written ‘from below’ seeks to put some flesh back on these bones so dried out by time and by human forgetfulness of the ordinary. The pyramids say the Pharoahs were great, but who were the thousands of slaves who gave their lives to build them? The battles between the many warmongers somehow perversely tell of their glory, but what did the men in the trenches think about life? How did they sustain hope of life in the midst of the shocking assault that those called ‘great’ inflicted upon their very fibre? When the discoverers of the ‘New World’ sailed away again and again, what did their families do? Did they miss their great ones and wonder why they were never there for the bedtime story?

Down below, the historian digs out a lot of pain—the 19-year-old’s mud-stained diary prayer for the morrow’s battle, not knowing that he would not survive, but still praying he might—another son’s letter, written in times of peace and yet in times when no peace is strong enough to stay the death of his infant daughter (the tears water the ink as he pours out his grief to his own father, just minutes after she has died in his arms).

And another son, crying out, because of the death of so many others, broken by those in power, crushed by the human quest for greatness that has riddled human history with bullet holes and brokenness. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). He understood human history from below. He was part of it. He died because of it. The cross of Christ is part of history from below. It speaks to those afflicted in their ordinariness. If we manage to hear its whispered message above the din of the destructive quest for ‘greatness’, it breathes out a promise. But it promises not human greatness, but human liberation. At last, from the midst of human history, the cross of Christ answers the only real question worth answering: can these dry bones live? (Ezek 37:3).