AND and FINDING GRACE
The first time I consciously decided to walk away from ‘grace’ was in 1977, a couple seconds after Best-Friend-Annie told me I had none. Over the years since then, I’ve tried to convince myself that she threw those words at me because she had sex with my boyfriend. It’s not true though. I cannot actually remember what particularly ungainly best-friend maneuver I failed, but I know in that instance, she was sincerely—albeit woundingly—trying to contribute. Knowing I had no grace might have helped me, if I was graceful enough to acknowledge I wanted some. I wasn’t.As I edit and cut my way back through this piece, five years after its inception, there are a few inserts necessary to keep it as honest now as it was then. So: It wasn’t until I realized I was actually going to be in my fifties that I began this particular grace-wrestling.
Since then however - often to my dismay - I find myself grappling with grace. Let me assure you I’ve never before been one to recognize a calling of this sort. I squirm when people play catch with the spirituality words. Destiny and acceptance have shared the taboo in my psyche. Perhaps the fact that I’ve survived three violent rapes in my life has made bedmates of odd ideas. Whatever the origin, usually when people blithely mention acceptance and religious brushes with grace, I’ve found myself visualizing victimization.
So why tackle grace at all? It certainly isn’t my favorite subject. I can’t lay claim to expertise. And it’s clearly not at all a state I feel I have attained. But somehow it seems as if my whole world requires it. It’s touchy to write about something that previously held residence in my most cherished set of things I don’t believe in.
But I have this theory. It evolved out of an earlier philosophical stance I held on to for dear life. I used to think that I was different. Alien. Outside. ‘Other’ than regular people. Therefore if I felt concerns, thought particulars, perceived matters that other people didn’t overtly react to, I could still make sense of things. It wasn’t that the other people were blind—as it appeared to me—but just that I was not like them. This way, if something terrible happened, others lack of reaction, in contrast to my extreme response, could reside intact within my philosophy. It was great. As long as I saw myself as separate and unlike most humans, no one had to be crazy in order for things to make sense.
I was wrong though. We’re not so different. I am not a visitor from an alien planet. I’m not a weirdo who reacts bizarrely to hurtful encounters. It’s just that I’ve always seen people’s pain as a ‘something’ that requires help. Here’s the kicker. Everyone else does too. It’s just that somehow talking about it and writing about it seems to necessitate a form of action that many people seem unwilling to live by.
I’ve had to let go of my philosophy of otherness. Thus my current knowing: All humans are markedly similar. Therefore, if I feel something, other people probably do too. What we choose to do about this seems to be up for grabs. The antithetic behavioral choices are indisputable, but the origin of these disparities is not because of some innate individual deviation.
Pit stop here: I have to admit that I had such a good time stringing the above sentence together that for a few blissful moments I just let the cadence and symmetry carry me along. The sentence makes sense and states exactly what I intended. But just in case it’s too twisty, obtuse or otherwise alienating in some obnoxious way, I’m moved to translate: It’s obvious that different people make different choices. The point is that these choices are sometimes shitty, mean, and self-serving. It doesn’t work to try to explain this away by believing the stinkpot is organically stinky and therefore can’t help the stink. Nor does it fly to blame the boogieman under the bed. The reality is, we’re all humans. And if everyone would just try hard, our lives would work better.
Accepting the fact that I’m a human like everyone else (which I now unequivocally know that I am) calls me to practice the fine art of grace. Otherwise, how can I bear our dishonesty? How can I live with the fact that asking for help often elicits rejection? And truly, without practicing grace, how can I survive? Knowing that when we feel how bad we feel—when we hurt someone we love—it’s so excruciating that most people would rather pretend it away than accept accountability and apologize?
The outgrowth of my current theory is fairly straightforward as long as I am able to tolerate the fact that it negates my previously cherished notion of my own ‘otherness’. Here it is then: I have to practice grace in order to participate as a member of our gregarious species. We all do. And we need grace in our culture, perhaps as never before.
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My big brother sneaks into my room almost every night. He sits with his arms wrapped around his knees. His cheek never gets poked by the plastic seam on my purple flowered chair because he keeps his head up. Even if he’s crying. Which he does a lot but since I love him, I never tell anyone so he doesn’t get teased. I’m so glad he shares his secrets with me. He’s my big sad brother. I know he’s my best friend. I know this because he lets me see his tears.The internal head taunting holds off until Tuesday, three days after my brother’s call. If there could be a script for each of my perspectives, it’d have to be a multi-act play with a revolving cast: “You’re such an idiot. Remember how he treated you?” “God I hope he’s okay. I wonder how it went.” “I’ve always known he misses me too. It’s so great to have heard him.” “But he screamed at me.” “I don’t want to moan out loud.” “I never meant to ruin anyone’s vacation, I just wanted him to help me.” “I’m glad he asked me for help.” “I wonder if I was helpful. I hope so.”
***I’ve been married almost twelve years when Hurricane Andrew (1992, I’m 37 years old) hits Martha’s Vineyard. My big brother and his family are here visiting from California. His children, my children and my two baby goats are all playing in the laundry room off the kitchen. I get to have all the kids in the house because it’s dangerous to be outside. There’s a howling in the space between the screen door and the wood. The clothesline looks treacherous and empty. It’s dark at two in the afternoon and my marriage is ending. I’m trying not to mentally chant the: “end of life as we know it” line in my head. I pretend to myself that it could be funny to use my tears instead of salt in the potatoes. The swollen places around my eyes undermine my efforts to provide a lovely time for my company. The wind sounds sharp like crazy women in the back ward at McLean Hospital. My big brother can’t control the storm but I imagine him saving me. “I’m afraid my marriage is over.” I wail, and I’m sobbing. My best-friend-big-brother David yells at me “How could you?” before his full volume hits. “You’re ruining my vacation.”
The wind evaporates my wet face and when the tree fell on his car, the final ending of my marriage kept pace with the Woods Hole Towing Company.
***A full half way through my fiftieth year and my brother’s twenty fifth wedding anniversary is tomorrow. My youngest daughter has just had surgery with unusual complications. This is the first weekend day in over a month that is unscheduled so I am anticipating a much needed sleep-in. My phone rings at 5:45 AM. When I hear my brother’s voice I am disoriented. The years and dates and even life-stories slip around in time. His voice is clear. It’s my big-brother-best-friend and I’m so lucky he talks to me. I can smell my purple flowered chair and almost touch my childhood ballerina wallpaper. “I’ve got to talk to you.” my brother tells me. Here in my bed, my body tries to figure out the three hour time difference and how it can possibly be him. (But my heart …) “I need your help.” he whispers. “My marriage is in trouble.”
We’re on the phone for almost two hours. I try to ask gentle, evocative questions. Drawing on my professional time as a couple’s therapist—without using alienating psycho-babble—while I’m half asleep and needing to urinate, is a challenge. I want to do it though. It still feels like an honor that he’d choose me.
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The amazing thing is that all the perspectives are true. Simultaneous, contradictory perceptions. All connected by a precious little word called ‘AND’.
Sometimes I think that my body is the bridge that links the emotions of the past to the emotions of the present. Without the ‘AND’ word I’m afraid I’d split in two.
Holding all the dichotomies inside my head isn’t all that painful. It’s not until I really start to dissect that I realize there’s something important hidden around my big brother story. It’s a something that has to do with grace. The content could be any life story where what we receive and what we give are out of whack.
Right here I run into a quagmire of thoughts that would take a book to elucidate. So. In short form, let me start with the thought that currency in the context of relationship makes me want to vomit. And. Currency is an essential aspect to relationship.
cur-ren-cy n. pl. currencies
1. Transmission from person to person as a medium of exchange
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
The choice to include this definition was a big one for me. Of course there is a number 2 and 3, as well as the etymology. What I found fascinating was that until 1699, when John Locke extended the meaning to include “…circulation of money …” the word currency implied more of a flowing between. Somewhat like a river moves. Or maybe, as I thought, in the arena of how energy flows between humans when they engage in the heartfelt trying required to live.
And consider this quote from: ‘Mutant Message Down Under’ by Marlo Morgan
“That brought up their definition of a gift. According to the tribe, a gift is only a gift when you give someone what the person wants. It is not a gift if you give them what you want them to have. A gift has no attachment. It is given unconditionally. The persons receiving it have the right to do anything with the gift: use it, destroy it, give it away, whatever. It is theirs without condition, and the giver expects nothing in return. If it doesn’t fit that criteria, it is not a gift. It should be classified as something else.”So if we’re thinking about the exchange that occurred between my brother and I, did I give my brother a gift? Or did I enable? And further, since I believe I enabled by omission, do I want to consciously choose to contribute to a denial that has been passed down in my family, certainly through my immediate family of origin but perhaps for generations?
What I’ve come to see is that I did not give my brother a gift. If I use the ‘Mutant’ definition (which I love) than there was no gifting going on at all. Nor was I acting in grace, as I’ve been taught to understand grace. It’s odd in a way. I did ‘turn the other cheek’, and I did ‘unto my brother as I’d wish him to do unto me’. Except. I wouldn’t. Want this. I don’t think it is grace to rob a loved one of the truth. And the truth is he hurt me terribly in the past. He never acknowledged it. Nor did he apologize. He did ask me to wake up and be a loving listener (which of course I want to be) without ever asking me if it was okay or even how I was doing. Unquestionably, I love my brother. Out of this love, I chose to give and ‘forget’. Except the forgetting didn’t hold. I do not believe it graceful. What I think is that in those moments I was too selfish to risk my own discomfort by speaking the truth in its complexity. I, in fact, robbed him of the opportunity to be a part of a loving reciprocity with me. I do not think this sort of robbery graceful. As I said, I cannot pretend to be a grace expert.
We’re taught that if we live with grace, good things will follow. My truth is that when I am my most graceful, often others really dislike the truths that come with the territory. And many times, they dislike me in the process.
When someone hurts us, grace requires us to address it. To speak the reality of the wound. True grace then exacts the ‘hurter’ (whether deliberate or not) to acknowledge what has happened. Further, grace extols an apology.
Whenever we take a human interaction out of a continuous contextual time-line, it can appear lopsided. It is also true that when we experience a particular human interaction, in the moment, we are out of a continuous contextual time-line. We are in a moment with the other person. It takes grace as I now understand it, to both hold the history and be in the moment.
And here again is the amazing little ‘AND’ word.
Somehow we need the ‘AND’ in order to practice grace. The ‘AND’ allows us to disclose the truth. Without it, communication gets pinched and squeezed-in, unilateral, one dimensional, boring, and it’s a lie. Telling the truth, in all it’s messy, contradictory, beautiful complexity, is a graceful thing to do. Non-disclosed truths (lies), are the opposite. Lying promotes violence. What’s missing, omitted, pretended away, made unimportant or rendered invisible, still simmers below the surface or on the far side of a blink. This underbelly has an unfortunate propensity. It interferes, interrupts, causes a schism, becomes a separation. The omission blows up, erupts and is often violently destructive. Truth with an ‘AND’ could potentially be a graceful promoter of peace.
But how do we practice grace if one of the requirements is truth-telling and truth-telling is deemed so socially unattractive? And perhaps more complicated, what if what I was taught about grace, what I’ve tried to live (since the teachings and trying-s have often involved a socially enfranchised – polite – kind of lying) isn’t graceful at all? What if the gift I gave my brother, by supporting him through his marital woes, when he utterly slammed me through mine, was in fact, the opposite of grace. What if giving a gift, before a wound is acknowledged, is morally wrong? And damn it. What if grace, living in grace, moving with grace, dying gracefully, all require a trying – a truth-telling – that shows our fallibility, our fumbling efforts, perhaps involves losing precious people we love to our depths? Because what if grace is only sometimes beautiful (the way we in our culture, understand beauty to be) and more often messy, ugly and downright unattractive? And finally, what if living with grace means being generous enough to let our loved ones reap what they sow, even if it breaks our hearts?
