I have
found the time leading up to Thanksgiving to be one of the most reflective
times of the year. It’s the time of year to don the robes of grace that have
made us, good, bad or indifferent as human beings this past year and look ahead
bravely to the future.
Our life
is marked by sorrows and joys, but it is largely behind us, and I find it
helpful to look back on where the journey has taken us, me and you.
Those
sorrows and joys, those unbidden events are all invitations to accept the grace
of God and enter into the next year of your life. The point is to live into the future, lean
into the possibilities that are beyond what has past, and in so doing remember
that you are alive. While my daughter
Fiona and her family still lived in Hood River, OR we hiked up a trail head to
a waterfall far into the Columbia Gorge. We literally had to scramble up a dam
of giant pines, 20 feet tall, and wade through a freezing stream up to our
waist to reach this waterfall. I love
water, and so I tore off my jacket and my clothes and down to my shorts stood
underneath that mountain water. I was reminded of what Annie Dillard once wrote:
“What
does it feel like to be alive?
“Living,
you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you
shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks,
hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard
water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong
water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs
rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up
your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the
force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of
your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this.
And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you
try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot
pummeling! It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching
on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop
through time and the beauty and grace of God, reminds you that you are still
alive.” (From Tinker at Pilgrims
Creek)
I
stepped out of that waterfall and Francis handed me my jacket which I donned as
a robe of grace, still warm from her body, for I could only stand under that
waterfall for a few minutes.
Living
in the presence of life is like this.
Most often we live our lives at the edge of the waterfall. Occasionally,
we feel compelled to step in either because someone has a great need, or a
death is impending, or life has dealt us an unexpected loss. Then is when we are most alive. And when the uprush is done, and we step away
from that waterfall again, we feel the glow of grace that is our life.
I am
told that child birth is much like this.
A woman is being pounded by pain so intense she can barely hold on and
then comes a child, a baby Jesus of her own, and there is a glow unlike any
other. We don’t need child birth to be reminded that there is grace waiting to
be worn. We need simply look around this time between the years to see what
was, acknowledge it and look ahead.
Perhaps
the greatest exercise of grace in our lives is when we find the room to accept
those who are different than us, whether they are gay, straight, poor, homeless
or politically different. Facing grace
is learning to make room for those who not only believe differently than we do
but who are radically different than we are.
A
surprising statistic has emerged in recent weeks; there is one demographic
group which is seeing a rapid increase in mortality. White middle aged men who
are not college educated. They are dying at an alarming rate. What are they
dying from? Drug and alcohol overdoses, diabetes and heart attacks. But as
Steven Williams Mayor of Huntington, WV told NPR, these men are really dying of
hopelessness. With so few jobs, men who used to support their families are
taken to alcohol and heroin as a way out – and they are dying of overdose and
related deaths. In a passionate interview Mayor Williams said, what we need to
do is hold on to them, through drug rehabilitation, social services and human
contact, we need to hold on and not let go. (adapted Morning Edition, NPR 11/6/15)
We need to drape a jacket of love over their shoulders.
This Thanksgiving, who will you wrap up in a robe of grace? Who will you step up to and offer a drape of love and forgivness?
With Grace and Grit, John
