In one region of Montenegro, there is a saying that describes someone whom everyone in the village considers bad or the worst. It reads: "Ka' the best..."! Or in a more meaningful form: "It can't be better". One would say that it is a matter of mocking qualification and irony of the upper category. However, this is only apparent. These are not jokes from the bar, nor jokes that street pranksters tell each other behind their backs. These are coins and passwords that have survived at least several generations, and which, like pearls, preserve timeless wisdom with a kind of membrane of experience.
The ironic tone of these words is undeniable. He is their artistic shirt, which people admire and laugh at with all their hearts. But their essence is deeper than that verbal banter. It is the language of the community that protects that same community. It protects it from disintegration, delamination and decay. Therefore, it is inevitable that in a community there are such and such, better and worse, those who are famous and those from whom everyone shuns. However, when you enter any Montenegrin village, despite the consensus that a certain house is decadent and that nothing good has come out of it for years - no one will say a single bad word about it. Especially not - to a stranger, a stranger. Inside and among themselves, they know exactly where everyone belongs, but outside: the whole village is good, every inhabitant and member deserves respect. Even about the worst - something selected and commendable will be said.
I don't see this as an expression of hypocrisy or some peasant duplicity, but on the contrary as an expression of the deepest wisdom that aims to keep the community together. Some ancient genius predicted that if we start to "treat" each other with various grades (especially the one about face and honesty) - no one will be clean or honest. That's why there is something left to be said for those with a weaker composition that will keep him in dignity. If he is skittish - it will be said that he is honest; if he is wavering and indecisive - we will call him "poor"; if he is fickle - he will be "cheerful"...etc. If we were in a court or an entrance exam, it would all be lies and factual inaccuracies, but since it is a language whose goal is not only to judge others, but to keep brothers together, those nuggets of gold washed in a hundred waters will shine with the most beautiful light of truth then when the weak need to be comforted and supported.
Support and encourage the weak, and the first and the leader, when he gives in or makes a mistake, don't rebuke him like some drooler, but also keep him quiet. If such a person understands anything, he will understand that through our silence he has received a worthy assessment of his mistake, and that he too can end up "as the best...", that is, he can see in his own reflection, within a wise reflection, what he should have been and what he could have been. will be, if he is more careful in the future. "Sometimes even the good Homer takes a nap" reads the ancient proverb, which was not invented to relativize the mistakes, especially not of the wisest and most responsible ones, but to - again - protect the community from too rapid dissipation. Of course, when it comes to the first and the best, their role is preserved not only by keeping quiet about their mistakes, but also by not rushing to praise them. Well, let's say in Montenegro, full of striving for heroism and bravery, only rare (that is: a minority) nouns made it into songs. Aside from the fact that, by the nature of things, everyone's father and grandfather is an exemplary moral boulder and the emotional foundation of maturation, but at the level of the wider community, there was no rush to give someone a hero's halo and a monument bust. In fact, one of the characteristics of the local tradition is that the best speaks very considerately and eloquently about those weaker than him, and like a guardian he has some words of praise for the last and least accomplished. The leader in the village or tribe had a deep awareness of the fact that God (or some higher power - for the undecided) had given him: both a gift and strength and a social role. And that he got it not to elevate himself ("if necessary, others will say about that"), but to keep everyone around him together, in a community. Hence, he is one of the first biblical prophets, at the same time a military leader, a judge, a teacher and a wise comforter to each of his compatriots. That is why Saint Peter of Cetinje is like that.
Contemporary pedagogy pays a lot of attention to this motivational moment. The teacher's goal in classroom teaching is not to award the best student the Nobel Prize, but to keep the entire community in the classroom in a creative rapture, and for someone's "three" as the maximum of individual potential to be "equally valuable" as the "five" that someone else achieves with with ease. In this context, the assessment that the one with the grade "sufficient" or "good" seemed "like the best" does not sound funny at all, but is an expression of a strong pedagogical ability to give everyone the best grade. "To a small ant to a proud man" - Njegoš would say describing the variety of potential and range that God has given to living beings.
Mark's "preservation of the other from oneself" was named by Metropolitan Amfilochius, the blessed initiate, as the "fifth gospel". That definition of "community" certainly also referred to the relationship between the stronger and the weaker, and it was not only about physical conflicts or giving alms to those who don't have as much as we do, but above all, it meant protecting the dignity of others. Sometimes with praise instead of reproach, silence instead of hasty criticism.
Once, as a very young and inexperienced priest, I got into an argument with an older man, a sworn communist. There is no topic that we did not touch on that occasion. Of course, I was convinced that I was absolutely right, and that his view of things - was overcome. It was more temperamental than befits our age difference. In the end, when parting, I almost triumphantly tell him: "Don't mind, we got a little stronger...". To that he said to me: "We didn't get stronger. If we did, you are younger and stronger, you would have defeated me". I don't remember that someone more nicely "put me in my place" and "taught me to be smart" in such a wise way - as befits the age difference.
Psalm 133 beautifully sings: "How good and beautiful it is when all brothers live together". It is not the leveling and depersonalization of individual abilities and one's excellence. No, it is a reminder of the truth that God created us to live together with him, in his love. So when His desire implies such a disproportion of potential, as is shown in the "association" of the Creator and creation, then it is clear that at least He is not strange or impossible for a hero and a poor man, a sage and a merry man, a rich man and a beggar to live under the same roof... and that I am not listing all the differences that could be listed between us. Sorry, note…
Bonus video:
