*
The Game
By Jane Tawel
October 22, 2026
*
The World has always
been full of grifters.
To con ourselves is the first step
We take towards “adulthood”.
The second is to con others,
Playing the game
to convince them we are
the roles we play.
*
Our natural tendency and desire
to win by luck
or place of birth
or beliefs in passing knowledge
of how to game the System —
writ large on decaying papyrus —
these things we tell ourselves
are what we have learned
what we have earned
by whom and what we are.
And the Question of what it all means
dies with the Quest of the More.
And we no longer play games
like children do — curious, free, delighted —
But like con artists who play to win
At any cost
At any loss
of self, or soul, or Awe.
*
Playing the short-con,
is the uniquely human achievement.
And on days the die lands on red,
We smile thinking we have won.
And on days the die lands on black,
We turn away —
Angry, afraid, jealous of the gods
who we believe
have stacked the decks against us.
*
Preferring to think our lives
will never bankrupt our souls
we find a new table to play at
to eat at
to rattle the cup
that contains the pips we call
“Reality”.
*
We live in the uncertainty
of why we never seem to win
that which we think we most value.
And we tell ourselves that even
when the Game Room of Life
closes and all our chips
must be turned in (like it or not),
we hope and pray
there will be more games to play
in some new casino we call Heaven,
a future myth we have gambled on
while only temporarily here
playing Blackjack with our souls.
*
So few of us have found the Truth and lived it.
Fewer still have listened and followed.
There was a man from Galilee
and one from Quren village
who entered all the holy gambling places
and with the mighty swords of Words alone,
turned over the gambling tables
and walked out Whole and Free.
And both said humbly, “All you must do,
Is simply follow Me.”
And the gaming table
was refashioned into a Communion Table
where all know “they have plenty and are rich”*.
*
This life is not a game
and we are not the players
but the played.
We have inherited
a Sacred Trust –
to squander it, is to die.
To invest it in our Holy Being,
will resurrect the soul to Eternity Now.
One can not gamble with Presence:
it simply Is.
*
“Oh, Human, what are you —
that God has you in Mind?
God, why do you visit us
and care?”**
*
We do not know or understand.
But do we really have to?
Can we not walk away
from the games we play
the unrealities we create?
And stand in awe and mystery —
Amazed? Awake? Alive?
The Whole World is within us —
A Kingdom of God
And nothing is a gamble
And nothing is lacking
And there is nothing to fear.
Be Still.
Trust.
I AM.
No games to stop at.
Just Flow.
Beyond luck.
Beyond entitlement.
Beyond fear of loss.
Beyond death.
*
“They that place their bets
upon The Good-Love
shall be made whole and free forever.”***
*
For God has always played
the Long Con.
*
© Jane Tawel, 2026
*Lao Tzu Proverb
** Psalm 8:4
*** Isaiah 40:31
