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Surgeon Generals Warning: A ramble follows.

Sometimes things happen in life and we think, gee, (or F$?!), if only I could find the one to blame, maybe the pain of this thing would ease up. (For example, 9-11 served up a face we wanted to see on a platter pretty quickly.) It’s way too easy to figure out who’s fault it is, from an individual or organization or politics - anyone see John Edwards’ affair make headlines this week?- or books or subcultures or mommy and daddy or whatever. We can look out over a situation and find a sense of self-importance because we know who the “bad guy” is (and if we keep looking for them throughout our whole lives, pretty quickly you’ll find yourself completely alone- and maybe realize you too are the “bad” guy!) It will keep us out of friendships, marriages, communities, extended families, and churches - because sooner or later everyone is a tremendous letdown and we are super proud that we keenly knew all along about all those fake or sinful or untrustworthy “others”.

I don’t know, but sometimes I get really sick of doing that, and of hearing it from others I know, and I just want to say like, pardon my french but, SHIT! We’re all just as messy as the drunk on the bus, okay? If I want to live this short earthly life with the smallest possible circle of safe people, it will be one very lonely and ignorant existence. (And something tells me Jesus won’t be too pleased when I say, “But,… but!” at the pearly gates.)

I love Anne Lamott and her take on grace. “Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.” After a food binge that left her feeling completely lost in her fear and addiction, she writes, “I burped my terrible Cyclops burps, which brought such relief that I finally remember who I was: one of the sometimes miserable all-of-us. I was a soul, not a faulty digestive system. Not a bad neck; not my ruckles and wrinkles and pouches. A woman with a few small, unresolved issues.”

We recently ordered The Shack for hubby and I to read together, but not after reading the author “Willie”’s story. I love that part:

These facts don’t tell you about the pain of trying to adjust to different cultures, of life losses that were almost too staggering to bear, of walking down railroad tracks at night in the middle of winter screaming into the windstorm, of living with an underlying volume of shame so deep and loud that it constantly threatened any sense of sanity, of dreams not only destroyed but obliterated by personal failure, of hope so tenuous that only the trigger seemed to offer a solution. These few facts also do not speak to the potency of love and forgiveness, the arduous road of reconciliation, the surprises of grace and community, of transformational healing and the unexpected emergence of joy. Facts alone might help you understand where a person has been, but often hide who they actually are.

and then he ends… “I love the wastefulness of my Papa’s grace and presence.”

I was reminded today of the idea that we are all connected, like the little pieces of faces that merge in the film I Heart Huckabees. That when we look out at nature, we can see the ecology of life leaning on each other to keep the system going - it’s progress made most efficient by the working together of its organisms. Then of course there is the “one body” imagery from the New Testament, in that one part of the body cannot say, cut off that arm, we don’t really need it. Cut off that drunk, that rager, that user, that republican, that adulterer, that prick in his fancy car… we just don’t need the dead weight. Cut it off and move on, right? After all, we certainly have never been to blame for other people’s suffering, right? True? Absolute? Verdad?

Just listen to this same self-protective thought from a small dinosaur, Ducky, from “The Land Before Time VII”: “Hello? Anyone there?” (no response). “That’s okay. When it comes to dark and scary places, I prefer they be empty!” (It may not seem like a related note, but trust me, in this brain, its all pretty much related. Whether you follow or not is an entirely different story. And that’s okay.)

Dark and scary places, in my experience, come from blaming and isolating, not from grace and direct, honest relationships.

Parting words from Caedmon’s Call:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Current Events, Faith 'Flections, My Marriage, Politics