What Is Grace?

Monday, April 21, 2014

When I was a student of Naropa University I took a course entitled “Creativity and Tragedy”.  In recognition of the themes of some of my more recent writings I thought I would share a paper I wrote for this class.  The paper was inspired by Sobonfu Some.  The content appears below.

Subonfu Some writes that the state of grace “is that holy and contented way of being that each of us strives for.”  She claims that signs of grace include an ability to “function peacefully in connection with other people in the flow of life” and making “progress in accomplishing the purpose for which we were born into the world in a way that is pleasing to those around you.”  She later states that “to fall out of grace is a gift, one of the greatest gifts that one receives in life.”

To elaborate my own definition of grace will in some ways contradict some of what Some claims.  I do believe that grace is marked by making progress in the accomplishment of our life purpose.  I do not agree that fidelity to such purpose will necessarily please all of those around us.  Far from it, actually I would say.  Also, it does not strike me as necessarily true that being in grace leads us to function peacefully with others.  Sometimes conflict is a sure sign of growth, and conflict is not necessarily pleasing!  I shall elaborate what I mean shortly.

My definition of being in a state of grace is complex.  It is: An awareness that all creation is a bountiful blessing and exists in such a way that it can and does support you when you yourself are committed to the continual adherence to your own life purpose.  Living a life marked by grace is further demonstrated by an embrace of this awareness such that you make fulfillment of your life purpose your focus around which your whole life orients.  An intellectual comprehension that there is a blessing in all which life brings us is not the same as living an acceptance of this in an embodied, daily way.

Leadership involves offering a competency in some skill to others seeking to develop their own capacity in that same area.  An ideal leader seeks to enhance the ability of others even if that should mean she will eventually no longer be needed.

I have fallen from grace previously when I refused to acknowledge a proficiency I have for leadership in some realms outside of the main work focus I have.  The challenge for me has been to accept this capacity, find a way to offer it so that others may benefit and yet remain balanced so that I don’t over-commit my energies and then my ability to help.

I define family as that matrix of people with and through whom the greater world is mediated to us in all its beauty, tragedy, responsibility, privilege, possibility and limitation.  There are two basic families, those of blood origin and those of our own choosing.

Falling out of grace within the context of family can assume many forms, including the rejection of an individual based on a core aspect of self, forgetting of familiar origin and gifts and adoption of ideologies prevalent in a dominant and dominating cultural paradigm that lead to suffering, loss and ultimately total destruction.

It is my feeling that I fall and have fallen from grace according to some in my family by insisting my family itself conduct an examination of how it has fallen out of grace.  When a family is immersed in its unacknowledged shadows, any person who throws a probing light on the consequent dysfunction can easily become a target for mistreatment and eventual alienation.  The Catholic Church has acted more to suppress than empower my family to express its beauty and gifts.  Some wisely observes that “where a certain, narrow kind of Christianity has been instilled, people accept that they have been born evil.  This view infiltrates the way people look at each other.  “We are all basically evil.”  Somehow, some distance back in my family lineage, my father’s family became converted to Catholicism.  I don’t as yet know when, how or why this occurred.  But gradually the family seems to have inculcated as true the now popular misconception of the emphasis on sin, personal and collective, in the predominant Biblical creation myth.  This overemphasis of the fall-redemption ideology seems to have led to my family becoming dependent on an idea of salvation that requires a mediation through priests.

I myself later fell from grace in the estimation of some of my family when I revealed myself to be of a homosexual sexual orientation.  My lack of true shame about my sexual identity clashed very much with the idea of being “objectively disordered” promulgated by the Church that much of my family has been indoctrinated into.

I believe there is much wisdom and truth in Some’s assertion that “we be willing to get down and scratch and dig our own imperfect family back to grace.”  How this occurs and whether a family can accept a return to grace is unclear to me.  In my own exploration I have come to conclude that all a person can do is faithfully stand in alignment with his essence.  Nothing more can be done.  The idea that one of us can or even has changed another is pure delusional folly.  We are separate individuals and what we do “here” can only be a source of inspiration for how someone is being over “there”.  The example a person makes of her life can inspire others to change their own.

As with several of the stories Some briefly relates, my experience of falling from grace has resolved around the reality of unfulfilled expectations.  My father had hoped I would give him grandchildren.  Though this most certainly still remains a possibility, the context of how this would occur would not be as he had first imagined.  I would be married to a man and have to adopt children or use some other creative method.  This is not what he had initially held in his imagination as how it could be.

I also have the common experience of having suffered a long ongoing homesickness.  Throughout much of my earliest years of adulthood I always had an intuitive feeling that seeking out the land of my ancestral origin in Europe was the only way for me to heal.  Spending time in my ancestral land, as one man did according to Some, seems to be the only cure, but a true one at that.

I finally wish to articulate my belief that I may very well be the janitor, “a humble person who will sweep clean” my family history that Some describes.  I certainly have carried a family burden and have often felt myself as a voice crying out in the wilderness.  My intuition is that my family has a special gift it has forgotten to practice.  I hope to discover it during my time in the Netherlands.

I define work as that activity one develops a deep proficiency for, has a gift for performing, enjoys doing and which affords one a living.

It seems clear I have, through my own action and inaction, done nothing to fall from grace in the work sphere of my life.  Rather, as Some herself observes about the West, the broader culture no longer offers a meaningful container in which one can discover the true gifts he has that the world eagerly awaits.  We choose a career and mold ourselves into it rather than allowing our talents to mold our lives.  I am still seeking deeper clarity about my life purpose after having performed numerous jobs through the years.  Somehow the lack of conscious, competent guidance to develop and offer my true gifts has been an invitation into grace, the grace of being willing and able to set out on an exploration for eventual clarity of my purpose.

The village environment Some touches on seems to have the potential to be oppressive in a different manner.  With the purpose of a person known from birth, it seems possible a child might be dissuaded from energetic exploration of activities known to not be in alignment with that purpose  Yet cutting out such exploration would be like cutting out all play.  Removing this outlet has been observed to be detrimental to people’s well being in various health studies.

Possibly the greatest way I have fallen from grace, and continue to do so, has been my continual tentative dance with my knowledge of the inevitability of death.  We are all mortal beings housed in a body which has a finite time here on the planet.  I seem to find myself frequently enmeshed in an outlook that insists there will be enough time to do all I wish to, that I will live to a ripe age and enjoy many things many others do not.  The West’s simultaneous fascination with and denial of death has certainly impacted my own development.

I most identify with Some’s comment that “People say ‘I have this powerful mind.  If I knew how to use it right I would never have gotten sick,’ or ‘I would be able to heal.  Many times I have imagined that it is indeed within the power of my mind to heal my body.  Yet if this is true, I must simply not yet know how to cleverly harness the power of my mind, or so I have imagined.  During my journey to my ancestral homeland, I wish to discover if it is true in my indigenous tradition, as it is with the Dagara, that ‘people who are chronically ill are regarded as specially initiated.’  I have been challenged by a variety of health difficulties for over three years now.  I know not if they shall permanently improve.  That seems to be the evolutionary course.  Amazingly, despite my own challenges, my birthmother’s descent into schizophrenia and my father’s near death at the age of forty, I still find myself deeply ensconced in this illusion that there will be plenty of time.  Of the lessons I feel I need to learn, day after day, and of the many ways a person’s fall from grace can manifest, the truth of our shared mortality challenges me most.  Imagine if we could all treat one another in such a way that is honoring and respectful based in the knowledge, cultivated by an active awareness, that every time we see someone could be our last time being with that person, either because we may die or this other person may die.  Perhaps the cultivation of such awareness would help us to transform the planet.  Perhaps we would take each other less for granted and really be with other human beings.