Unmerited Favor as Oxygen
As a writer sometimes I surmise it is my task in life to unravel it all and do so through an essay, an article, or a story. When my soul longs for an over arching defining narrative it is easy to become lost in the varied and cacophonous offerings of grand narratives accessible via art, entertainment, religion, philosophies and the social sciences.
The irony is we can know countless ways of writing and parsing these varied and sundry stories and yet outrun our own sacred story and get lost in a garbled script of deeply hidden familial expectations, societal demands, and the oft demonic voices of false religious guilt and shame. These stories of course not only fail to serve us but become energies that stifle and dam up the very pace of grace needed to live out and narrate our lives and histories to date.
When I allow my heart to inform me of my deepest narrative dreaming, something happens to my body and emotional life. When I allow my own grief to inform me at a deep cellular level of my sadness over life’s broken state I discover that I am the one profoundly in need of this abundant grace. I am in need of a blessing. It is this painful remembrance that reveals my own failure to treat my soul gently, to offer myself the same blessing and tenderness and kindness I offer others.
I am just beginning (at my rarefied age) to look at grace as if it were oxygen. My breathing has a pace to it and so does my soul. When I am off life support or God’s divine breathing apparatus (so to speak) I keep trying to create some act, some presence, some persona, that makes me worthy, special, above the fray as it were, which then becomes the very air I breathe. But rarely and only occasionally (I am saddened to admit) do I set my pace to the rhythms of divinely imparted self-love and care written on the very DNA of my being. I don’t know what it is about those of us who have grown up in hyper-religious cultures where self-incrimination and flagellation are tantamount to spiritual maturity. Like punishment, self-accusations, judgment and such aren’t good for any soul. But alas, many of us have been raised with this devilish foundational guilt of a distorted sense of worth. Rather than discovering andclaiming our intrinsic worth, we assume it is won through perfection, accomplishment, acquiescence to religious traditions and interpretations. It is all a waste of time in the inner life. Only this grace filled oxygen of magnificent undeserved favor fills the lungs that were never made for pity, inner rancor and self-depreciation. That is the space I wish I had walked in just a bit more in my life.
So I offer this suggestion to us all. Breathe deep today the pace of grace. Rest in your unique magnificent loveliness. Only the childlike innocence of hope and the desperate craving of belonging allow the spiritual lungs to breathe to their fullness. Pace yourself. Pace yourself for the favor designed for you from the foundations of the world. If you sense of tinge of neediness, remember, heaven has been hoarding blessing for centuries just for this moment. It will feel underserved for reasons made clear only on the other side.
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