I love children’s books with powerful truths. Leo Lionni has written “Fish Is Fish,” a story of a fish imagining the world as described by a frog. Here is Fish’s mental picture of a cow:
It is basically a fish with four legs, horns, and a “pink bag of milk.” It is a profound parable of how we see everything from our own perspective, even when we do our best to be “unbiased.” We unknowingly skew everything to match our preconceptions, experiences, personality, etc. so that we can wholly misunderstand others even when we listen with best intentions. Seeing things from another’s perspective is an art and skill that require patience, humility, empathy, curiosity, and practice, and it is one of the most powerful expressions of love we can grant.
My constant refrain this year past, muttered or sighed or groaned: “I am SO tired!” Many times every day and out loud to myself–in the kitchen, on walks, at work, and even in my mind as I spot tasks that stare grumpily at me, like the window air-conditioner sitting on our coffee table that I brought up from the basement two days back. I’ve barely managed to keep up with life: washing clothes and then leaving them in the laundry basket to fish out for work, while I dump dirty clothes on the floor next to it; watering plants just before they die, or not; cooking raw meat just before it rots. I’ve dropped other things after dragging them around mentally like a ball and chain, such as the $8 rebate from Ace Hardware that expired… well I actually didn’t give up on that, it just ran out before I mailed it in. Unfortunately, I never give up on things. I just accumulate them like sandburrs on bare feet.
I could sit here on the living room sofa and write a discouraging list of tasks that I can literally see from here: A dvd player to take to Goodwill–it’s been sitting accusingly at the end of the loveseat for two weeks; an old external hard drive to process, walnuts in a coffee container that need shelling, now practically buried behind accumulating paperwork, books, and other stuff that needs to be sorted and resolved; a briefcase full of files and lists neglected for many months; a dime-sized food stain on the sofa arm under my wrist that needs cleaning–it has been there for two months; and the latest addition–insulation that arrived yesterday, now propped against the wall, that needs to be hung in the attic. I’m not even mentioning the things that are in the room but just out of sight–I am fully aware of them–out of sight out of mind is a laughable proverb for those with a mind like my own. I haven’t even touched on the cars, yard, basement, shed, office–a thousand obligations wrap like Lilliputian threads around me. I could cut off the least important hundred tasks and make no difference to the overall affect.
Mind you, I go to work every day, pay my bills and mortgage on time, walk the dogs, take out the trash, shop and cook enough to keep us fed adequately, mow the lawn, exercise, wash my clothes. In other words, I am a normally functioning human, which seems enough for most folks. I’m amazed at the ability others have to simply ignore their overflowing in-boxes. Something needs to change in my outlook on life, somehow to live under the flow of grace in a way that releases me from this constant weight of obligation. For all the work I have put into grasping this principle over many years, one would think I would have found freedom by now. Even learning grace seems to be such an arduous, long-term effort–my thoughts, my habits, my feelings slide so easily back into my old ways. That sounds so wrong-headed even in saying it… shouldn’t grace be easy by definition? Law is so deeply engrained in my soul. It stains every thought to the roots. Well, let me celebrate each baby step and not add insult to injury by condemning my lack of growth in grace. It will come, it will take time, and this post is one more reminder to myself to re-orient my soul in line with God’s unconditional acceptance.
Monday I was hiking with my doggies in the Blue Ridge Mountains and noticed my neck cramping on one side. To stretch out the kinks I started rolling and rotating my head, wondering what I’d done to my neck. And then it dawned on me. instead of pulling ahead as usual, Mazie and Mitts had fallen in behind me, and as the path was narrow, I held both leashes in one hand. My right arm swung freely, but my left arm was pulled back by the leads, and over a couple of miles that tension worked its way up to my neck.
I spent decades paying little attention to my body, and so harming it. I have only learned in the last few years to listen to this complex, integrated structure–I would never have guessed that a sore neck could come from an arm slightly skewed. When an injury’s throb is felt in a separate body part, it is called “referred pain.” Those are the trickiest to self-diagnose and so misleading that the real problem often escapes us.
During those years I listened no better to my psyche than my body. I shouted down my feelings and became emotionally deaf, unable to decipher its most rudimentary language. Emotions were to be embraced, vanquished or transmuted according to an accepted moral code. I thought every feeling was a straightforward response to external stimuli. My anger was incited by “stupid” drivers. My anxiety was the result of critical bosses. My shame was the direct product of my tardiness. Emotional “referred pain” was not even a speck of consideration… until the conventional interpretations became so convoluted in the telling that even I recognized something was fishy. They rang false, though I couldn’t detect the crack in the bell. It was my indecipherable, unrelenting depression that forced me to finally admit my emotional cluelessness and rethink my psychological map.
I discovered that my pride was tangled up with fear, my affection enmeshed with insecurity, and a seeming calm and patience was simply an emotional disconnect to protect myself. I realized that my anger ignited from inside, not outside, that it was a cover-up for shame, and my shame was grounded in a legalistic denial of grace. It was all so much more complex than I realized, but this self-reflection, softened by grace, opened me to a remarkable level of integrity and clarity and personal growth. My whole sense of spirituality and relationships was reorganized. I finally had the tools I needed for fundamental transformation instead of the spiritual strictures of a flawed system.
I have been working for years to learn my emotional ABCs. Slowly I untangled the knots so that patterns stood out in relief and dynamics materialized. What is the real reason for these feelings? What leads me to freedom and understanding rather than fear and blindness? What does my soul need in the way of support? What pulls it down or picks it up? I wonder–do any cultures teach their children to be heart-interpreters rather than heart-controllers?
Addendum to clarify yesterday’s post
Working an unskilled, low-paying job makes me feel humiliated (as I shared yesterday), but that feeling is based on a lie. I have nothing but respect for those who work such jobs, which are usually far more taxing and less rewarding than typical middle class jobs. Minimum wage workers are usually treated like minimum worth commodities, used and discarded, so they have to survive in very difficult situations and are often treated with disrespect. It is not the job which is inherently humiliating, but the false valuation of society. I do not wish in anyway to lend credence to the notion that such jobs should be despised or devalued–it is a defect in myself, not in the work, which brings about my shame. Yes, feel with me my shame in an understanding way, “I would feel the same in his shoes,” but also realize with me that such shame is misplaced. Hard work is always a credit to the worker (unless the business is evil) and should never be seen as beneath us, beneath any of us. Honest work should always be a source of pride, never of opprobrium.
[*by “pride” I mean self-satisfaction, not self-aggrandizement]
For five years I have worked in Lynchburg College Library as a circulation supervisor at night (8 pm to 2 am). It has been a vital part of my emotional survival because it is low stress, but I get furloughed at Christmas for a month and 3 months for summer, so it has put a strain on us financially. Last fall I finally landed a second part-time job, selling fridges at Home Depot for $9.25 an hour. My career has been a slow but inexorable descent by demotion. From respected missionary to struggling pastor to harried social worker, and finally out of ministry of any sort into secular, unskilled labor. From minister’s collar to blue-collar… to no-collar. From meaningful work to trivial, from salaried to part-time poverty wages, from insured to Obamacare. And as long as I’m confessing my low-status, I also have a job as substitute janitor in junior high school: even on the toilet-swabbing team I’m a bench-warmer.
As a 54-year-old with two Master’s degrees, I felt humiliated with my entry level job for teenagers, and it took me two months to work through the shame enough to admit it to my fellow librarians. It is quite possible that some student I have supervised in the library will be the junior high teacher next fall who is spitting his gum into the trash can as I pick it up to empty. I’ve acclimated enough to my new roles that I think I could handle it without chagrin… or maybe I’m kidding myself. Like coming out of the closet, any closet, the initial shock of exposure is the hard part, and after that it is just a matter of learning a new level of humility and the grace to remember that my worth has no connection with my occupation. It is freedom and growth through downward mobility.
It’d be a lot easier to wash dirty feet if I could take up the towel of my free will instead of being handed the towel and told to wipe down. A leader who volunteers for menial labor can earn high praise for his humility, augment rather than diminish his reputation, and so ironically can undermine his growth in grace. Being humble contrasts with being humiliated precisely because the latter is out of our control, like being nailed to a cross. It is a rich person choosing to wear rags in contrast to a person who only has rags to wear. In my experience, actual poverty, though it is more scary and painful, has more power than voluntary poverty to open me to grace. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
I have always been a highly disciplined person. This has been unfortunate from so many angles. It has made me arrogant and judgmental towards those with less “will-power” or commitment. It has made me focus excessively on behavior and choice and see them as the foundations for goodness rather than its fruit. It has made me self-abusive, both in driving myself past any reasonable limits, resulting in self harm, and in condemning myself for my shortcomings (because of the unbridgeable gap between highly disciplined and perfectly disciplined). Like all coping mechanisms, it played to my natural strengths and inclinations and offered me protection from the fears that snarled and snapped inside, but like a protection racket it kept me permanently bound to those same fears.
So here is the wretched conundrum of every coping mechanism: the very thing that protects us blocks us from a real resolution. We cannot give up suddenly and entirely on our coping mechanisms or we will be unable to cope, trampled by our fears and dragged away from the grace that comes to save us. Except for miracles–and by definition those happen rarely–we must grow into grace, beginning with small steps. We speak of a “leap of faith,” but that is best seen as a change in direction rather than a sudden and complete transformation of our psyche. We make a deliberate commitment to a new vision, a new allegiance, a new God of grace instead of the old god of legalism, but learning to live out that commitment is a long, slow process, full of missteps, confusion, and doubt–ask any newlyweds… or oldy-weds. Trust is a tree that matures from a sapling, not a full-grown log dropped at our feet.
Coping mechanisms are both necessary and limiting, helpful and ensnaring. They cannot be shaken off in one go, cold-turkey, like one might give up alcohol or drugs, because they sustain us in a vital way. The struggle for health is more aptly compared to an eating disorder, since we all must eat daily, so the solution cannot lie in abandonment (which seems much simpler and easier to me), but in rehabilitation. That is, I cannot simply chuck discipline, since some discipline is necessary for life and growth. I can certainly moderate self-discipline, but that does not resolve the root of the problem, which is not the amount of the discipline, but its role and purpose. “Why?” is the all important question to snag our inner gremlins. “Why is self-discipline so important to me?” Because it is the gauge by which I measure my worth, it is my source of validation. As long as I do the right thing, I think, I am in good standing with God… which is the quintessence of legalism.
I’ve been at this for years, rethinking my knee-jerk criticisms of the “lazy and irresponsible” and trying to be a little more “lazy and irresponsible” myself as a means of practicing grace towards others and myself. I’ve worked hard for over a decade to recognize my real reasons for doing good and avoiding evil and to realign those with the gracious God I serve. I’ve been focused on this, disciplined. Oh, snap! Yes, it’s true, I can even drive myself to grace or shame my lack of it, trying to force grace to grow but ending up frustrated and impatient, which helps neither me nor my relationships. Old habits die hard, and often rise up in new guises. But I recognize it, take apart my viewpoint and reorganize it. Wash, rinse, repeat. By God’s grace I am not who I once was, and by God’s grace I will not be who I am now.
Good Friday was the triumph of grace over law. Law was unmasked, over-ruled, dethroned. Forgiveness triumphed over judgment, love and mercy over just desserts. Do your worst to God, torture and kill his own son, and he will love you still, he will reach out to you, offer you a way out of your lostness, bitterness, hatred, and misery. God will never stop loving you with all his heart… or your neighbor… or your enemy, which is the hard part for us. He does not love us more than them… he does not even see them as more wicked and deserving of damnation than he sees us. That is the tough news of grace–it embraces everyone or it succumbs to the law, loses its whole nature of undeserved love. Once any small degree of deserving enters, grace disappears. The amazing, wonderful news is that grace is not partial, it covers every evil we have done or will do without flinching. No act, no person is beyond its reach… which is also the hard news. It means the world is not divided between a good us and a bad them. There is no them, just us fallen human beings. We’re all in this together, broken and in desperate need of grace.
But the tough news is the good news, because we finally have a solution to our fractured and destructive relationships. Our resolution to the anger, hatred and aggression of others is not to overpower it with our own righteous judgment and coercive power–for when we try to stand on our own righteousness, we ultimately judge ourselves. The law condemns all equally. The only resolution to hatred, whether self-directed or other-directed, is more love. In other words the true solution, the only solution, the only possible way out of our lostness, is grace. And that grace is ultimately, finally, completely poured out in the life and death of God’s only Son. Grace has come and triumphed over all, breathing life into death, flashing hope into despair, filling our crushed hearts with love unconquerable.
Obituaries bring out the best in people, both the writers and the subjects. Hearing a genuine and discerning appreciation of someone, even someone I don’t know, draws my soul down into grace. It breaks through the clouds of an otherwise mean and turbulent world to shine down kindness and love and acceptance, reminding me that deep goodness still threads its way between hearts that open to it. When I hear it, I want to be part of that spirit of generosity, to appreciate the good in others without restraint or caveat. So those eulogies not only bring out the best in writer and subject, but in listeners as well, a spreading contagion of grace.
But I am reluctant to make any commitments (like “memorial Mondays”) because I am a master at turning opportunity into burden, love into law. Grace which is forced is just legalism in a tux trying to push its way into the party–it looks good till it takes over and puts all the guests in straight-jackets. So it is just a hope that I can share some stories of folks, dead or alive, who have blessed me. I’d love for readers to share stories of their own here as well, a column of living obituaries. There is a lot of good out there for us to notice and appreciate.
So, yes, I did sort of blandly confess yesterday that my life is a useless dead-end. If my dispassion came from fatalism or apathy, it would likely be a sign of spiritual stagnation, but instead, my sharing it with such ease and openness (not stuffed with caveats or apologies or explanations) is a very real sign of spiritual growth for me. It has taken years for me to slowly come out of the closet as a failure, a nobody, and grow into the faith that God is in control and loves me with an unfettered grace. He is famous for using asses (both the donkey variety and the human kind) to accomplish good on this earth, even those totally resistant to his purposes, like Jonah at Ninevah and Peter with the Ethiopian eunuch, so he can surely use someone like me who, though deeply flawed, is eager to be his instrument.
I no longer cower under the withering suspicion that my flaws keep me on the bench, but It is not easy to feel useless, to feel as though my gifts fall to the ground like rotting apples in a starving country. It requires faith and patience in the mystery of God’s will and work in the world. I’m getting better at that… I have to get better at it because the longer I live, the more clearly I see the wreckage around me. As I told Kimberly yesterday, this wretched world gives no rational proof of a good God. The balance sheets of justice (let alone beauty and goodness) cannot be reconciled on earth. As Paul said, “If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable.” Forget the world around me, the world inside my chest is so slow in growing towards God that death will catch me long before I’ve lived into half the truth I’ve come to see.
God has a lot of explaining to do to justify his creating this muck-up since he knew the disaster that would come, but I expect one glimpse of his beauty will obliterate all our questions and doubts and captivate our hearts. Until then, we live by faith in a beauty we cannot see, in a grace we cannot well absorb, and in a love that guides us through the dark and home to his heart. May we all find our way by grace and en-courage one another with compassion.
Patience was a virtue before the industrial revolution, but we’ve developed beyond that to aim rather for efficiency. Waiting is passe. In the old days we had to gather wood and build a fire to boil water, but then we invented electric stoves, followed by microwaves, and now (since we can’t wait 90 seconds) we have steaming water on tap. We’ve discovered that frustration breeds progress–impatience is the new virtue. All the important people are doing it. I know I felt important–and righteous–when I was hurrying to do God’s work, but I think I missed a turn somewhere, because I seem to be stuck in the slow lane in God’s Kingdom… although, since I’m not even inching forward, maybe I’m in the back parking lot.
As I shared in my last post, I have never been good at waiting. When God scheduled practice sessions, I played hooky, so I finally got sent to Waiting Boot Camp where I’ve been for a long time now because, apparently, I’m a slow learner. How ironic. Waiting well is an art, and no one advances in it without first understanding its value. What good does waiting offer? Let me start by pointing out problems that come from not waiting.
First of all, there is the bad alternative solution, the shortcut that ends in a mess (ask Abraham about Hagar). If the best solution requires more time, then every quicker solution is going to be defective. It turns out that God’s not in a rush because he has all the time in the world (literally), and he’s savvy to the best rhythm. being both the composer and conductor of the symphony we call history. In fact he IS the rhythm of history, so it’s kind of important that we get in sync with him. The point is to experience the music, not get to the end as quickly as possible. To play his music well, we must be as faithful to the musical rest as to the beat. Timing is fundamental, good waiting is as crucial as good working.
Second, there is our own arrested development, the shortchanging of our own experience and growth, missing what God wishes to do in us and for us by having us wait. When God has us wait, it is always for our benefit, never for our deprivation. God does not have to bilk us in order to bless others, because his resources are limitless. His one unwavering motivation for delay is expressed in his Son: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” We cheat ourselves when we rush ahead because our growth and fulness depend as much on our stillness as on our striving. The first is just as active in shaping and satisfying us as the second.
Finally, there is the impaired relationship, because when two are out of step, their dance suffers. Our motives for pushing ahead of God hurt our bond with him, whether that comes from doubt in his wisdom and love or from being too willful and inattentive or from fear or pride. All of those pull us away from a trusting relationship. The motives erode our connection and then the actions we take widen that fissure. That is to say, capitulating to our fear is relationally harmful, and so are the actions we take in living out that fear. When Abraham bedded Hagar to get a son, he not only side-tracked God’s plan and undercut his own faith, but he also distanced himself from God. He was less able to hear him, to trust him, to receive from him, to delight in his presence.
So failure to wait hurts the objective, the person, and the relationship.
But if you are like me, God doesn’t speak clearly and audibly to give specific directions, so how can we know if we are missing his timing? It is a dance. Dance partners don’t have a running monologue, “Step to your left… step back… on the count of three, dip.” Through a lot of practice and experience they learn to feel one another’s rhythms, patterns, and tells, and it is always more about moving together than getting the steps precise, more about trust and response than about rules and conformity. But if we do not embrace the pause, the waiting, as well as the stride, we will likely miss our partner’s gentle guidance and stumble in the dance. Waiting seems like doing nothing, but it is pregnant with power. Doing and waiting are the inhaling and exhaling of life’s rhythmic progress.
Janathan Grace Reflections 