Grace. Period.
Bathroom wall at Remedy on Whyte Ave.
“we have all received grace upon grace”
— John 1:16
Let’s deal with our shit.
The word grace comes from the Greek word for gift—charis. We use forms of that Greek word when we say someone is charismatic, has charisma, or is charming (i.e., they are “gifted”). In the Christian tradition, salvation is seen as a charis, a gift: “by grace [actually, charis/gift] you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:5). The idea that salvation, or whatever term you use for enlightenment, growth, etc., is a gift rather than something we earn means that grace sometimes gets panned as cheap or easy. In reality, the gift demands a lot from us. Grace requires radical honesty with ourselves. It wants the truth. The writer of John’s Gospel says grace and truth come from Jesus (John 1:17). Truth reveals the breadth and depth of grace. Keep drilling down into the truth. Go deeper and deeper. No matter what the truth reveals, there is grace. And grace gives us the courage and strength to keep facing the truth. This interplay of grace and truth in the Jesus tradition changes grace from a get-off-free card into a spiritual practice that helps us deal with the real shit in our lives.
The fine art of failure.
There is a chapter in Pema Chödrön’s Welcoming the Unwelcome brilliantly titled “The Fine Art of Failure.” Chödrön says learning how to fail is invaluable, but it’s not a life lesson we happily embrace. Our ego gets in the way:
Ego struggles against reality, against the open-endedness and natural movement of life. It is very uncomfortable with vulnerability and ambiguity, with not being quite sure how to pin things down.
Ego keeps us from being fully present in the moment with our failure because it’s uncomfortable with the feelings of vulnerability and ambiguity. To avoid those feelings, ego insists we don’t have a problem, or somebody or something else is the problem. Or even worse, ego insists we are nothing but a problem—we are a complete and total failure. All of these mistruths distract us from simply being present with our failure, which ultimately leaves us feeling dissatisfied, haunted, threatened. Often, we turn to pleasure seeking (e.g., unhealthy sex, over spending), numbing out (e.g., drugs and alcohol), or using aggression (e.g., lashing out at ourselves or others) to deal with our dis-ease.
So, running away from our failure is simply running headlong into more unhappiness. The alternative, Chödrön suggests, is to embrace what we feel when we fail. She calls this “holding the rawness of vulnerability in our heart.” Initially, we’ll be uncomfortable with the “groundlessness” created by this vulnerability. But Chödrön assures us that if remain present in the moment with our failure, we discover that we’ll be okay:
We think that facing our demons is reliving some traumatic event or discovering for sure that we’re worthless. But, in fact, it is just abiding with the uneasy, disquieting sensation of nowhere-to-run and finding that—guess what?—we don’t die; we don’t collapse. In fact, we feel profound relief and freedom.
By facing the “worst” in us, we enter a space where the best part of us comes out: “Our bravery, our kindness, our ability to care about and reach out to others—all our best human qualities—come out of that space.”
Breathe it in.
In many of her writings, including Comfortable with Uncertainty, Chödrön encourages the practice of tonglen. When anything is painful or undesirable, breathe it in—don't resist it. If anything is inspiring, opening, relieving, or relaxing, breathe it out—give it away, send it out to everyone else. This ability to take in unpleasant things and give out pleasant things makes us part of the flow of the universe. We begin to feel in sync with the universe. We feel as if we belong.
Tonglen is the path to bodhichitta, a Sanskrit word that means "noble or awakened heart." We do not start with a noble or awakened heart, Chödrön notes. We start where we are—however imperfect we may be:
You may be the most violent person in the world–that's a fine place to start. That's a very rich place to start–juicy, smelly. You might be the most depressed person in the world, the most addicted person in the world, the most jealous person in the world. You might think that there are no others on the planet who hate themselves as much as you do. All of that is a good place to start. Just where you are–that's the place to start.
Starting where we are is exactly how we experience the interplay of grace and truth in our lives. We accept the truth, and discover there is always grace. Grace emboldens us to go deeper in the truth. There is still grace. Period. The gift is always there, waiting for us.
Lean in.
This website sees love as “some kind of fight” (a phrase from Bruce Cockburn’s Lovers in a Dangerous Time). Grace takes the anxiety out of this fight. It provides a calm space to face our fears and confront our self-ignorance. It helps us accept, perhaps even welcome, the ambiguity and uncertainty of relationships and the unsettling emotions we feel so strongly when we feel vulnerable:
… feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away.
— Pema Chödrön
We can be strong and courageous without becoming hard-hearted or shut down emotionally. We can literally “feel our way forward.”
The fight will take a lifetime (or many lifetimes) to master. We master it one day at a time, grace and truth showing us the way. Grace upon grace always present, no matter what the truth reveals.
Grace
I'm trying to be stronger
Grace
This wounded heart,
it longs for grace
Mercy, take your time
Help me find my way to grace— Rose Cousins, Grace
