Janathan Grace Reflections   This is my journey of self discovery shared with you

‎”Suppose this sunset, this moonrise, this symphony, this buttered toast, this sleeping child…suppose you would never experience these things again! Few things are commonplace or boring in themselves. It’s our reaction to them that grows dull.” Arthur Gordon [via Elizabeth Godbold]

A few nights ago I dreamed I was back in India, a fairly common dream for me.  Even though it is a decade past, reminders of that period in my life almost always stir up very painful emotions which I usually choose to avoid.  But that morning I began to reflect on the many regrets, small and large, which hound me: hurtful things I have said and thoughtless things I have done, often with very charitable intentions.  I realize that I am not unique in this—everyone screws up a lot of things through the course of life.  I’m guessing I will reach a stage of maturity in a decade or two when I will no longer cringe at the negative side-effects of my personal impact on the world.  I commented to my wife Kimberly, “I should have been quarantined from society till I was 65 or 70 years old.”

I have always assumed that only the demonstrably good things I do are a benefit to the world, that everyone would be better off if I had no flaws.  My good blesses the world and my bad curses the world.  But in my own marriage I see a contrary principle at work.  Not only our strengths but our weaknesses and flaws– and even, by grace, our sins–benefit the other.  I have seen this hundreds of times in the 6 years we have known each other.  When I am pricked by my wife’s issues and react, I am forced to admit and face my own insecurities, which, if left unchallenged, would subtly and powerfully stunt my growth.  I am astonished by the idea that even my flaws are a blessing to the world.  When I accept myself and others for who we are now, today, and not who we wish we were, grace has a chance to do its work.

Something I wrote at some forgotten occasion and time about my sense of inadequacies:

Since childhood my imagination has been overstretched,

dragged down by the weighted melancholy of ten thousand wretched little sins

and darkened by the graves of a multitude of irreparable failures. 

No grand failings, only contemptible ones. 

Sins can be forgiven, but what remedy can undo failure? 

Failure of the poorly finished, the unfinished, the misguided, the foolish;

Failure of too much or too little insight, of too great or too little effort;

each failure leaving its residue of guilt clinging to my soul

long after the deed itself had slipped from memory,

while others refuse to be forgotten,

jabbing my conscience with fairy tale endings to stories now beyond recovery.

Some people stumble grandly and suddenly, reaping admiration and sympathy. 

But my dreams have died quietly by slow betrayal,

the bright morning of anticipation shriveled by delay to the wilting burden of duty,

and duty sinking into the shame of good done too late or left undone. 

Even good begins to stink if it lies too long unfinished.

Dream upon dream turned moldy and abandoned,

stacked one on another like corpses on a lost battlefield,

grand hopes that kept at bay my sense of worthlessness,

finally unmasked by time’s ruthlessness.

A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, “I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it.” The teacher’s reply was casual, “Ten years.” Impatiently, the student answered, “But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?” The teacher thought for a moment, “20 years.”

Right now, at this very moment, I feel at peace.  It is a precarious feeling.  I’m fairly sure it won’t last long, but I am okay with that.  I can savor it for what it is.

“Grace is that force that infuses our lives, that keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned and gratuitous love; the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you; grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there. Everything feels crazy, but on small patches of earth all over, I can see just as much messy grace as ever… It meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.’” Anne Lamont (from “Plan B”)

My wife and I were watching the local news last night, and I commented, “I like that guy [the commentator].  He’s nice.  I wish I were nice like him.”  He reminds me of the folks on the Today Show–you feel safe with them.  You are sure they would never say or think anything mean about you.  I like nice people.  I want to be with them.  I need them in my life in a big way.  I was drawn to my best friend in college and later my first and last girlfriend, Kimberly, primarily because they were nice.

I want to be like these people, to be sweet and safe, and deep down I feel ashamed and guilty that I am not like them.  It is not who I am.  I am not a nice person.  If someone asked my friends and acquaintances for a one word description of me, “nice” would simply not occur to them as a possibility.  I’m not trashing myself–I think I do have some good attributes, and these same friends might say that I am intelligent or genuine or determined.  The opposite of nice is not necessarily mean.  I have something really important to contribute to others, something that nice people usually don’t have, namely challenge.  And challenge often makes people feel uncomfortable and perhaps unsafe, but it’s hard to grow personally or relationally without some challenge.  I am very, very grateful for those folks who are naturally sweet and gentle from birth, by personality.  I am not one of them.  So I need to learn to accept myself for who I am and not shame myself for who I am not.  I want to grow more gentle and patient, empathetic and accepting, but I will never be Mr. Rogers.  I don’t know that I would like a world full of only nice people.  Still, I struggle often with the shame of not being soft and safe and find it hard to accept myself for who I am and who I was designed to be.  My eyes fill up with tears just thinking about it. 

What a sad thing not to be who you wish you were, and who, at some deep level, you feel you should be.  I can imagine nice people feeling ashamed that they don’t have the gumption or courage or whatever it is they see and covet in me.  My heart goes out to each of you who, like me, feel ashamed of who you are even at your best, who struggle desperately to be someone he or she is not.  May we learn to delight in others’ gifts without it sparking a sense of our own inadequacy.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
—that is to say, grace—
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.

–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

[thanks to my cousin, Em]

“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.  For just as the wind carries thousands of invisible and visible winged seeds, so the stream of time brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.  Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them.”  –Thomas Merton

I would be interested to hear your thoughts and feelings about this quote.