Light rain falling outside,
from my window I watched the squirrel
drinking from the grout lines of the tile floor
where the water collects first.
In a heavy rain, a heavy rain,
she would not have to be so precise
and could quench her thirst on any surface.
Still, she seems satisfied
drinking from the grooves between the tiles,
and perhaps feels some sense of pride
that she has figured this out.
She should, because
(as if this is relevant)
it impresses me!
From “The Best Shitty Feeling In the World” in Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber:
“And the thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings. It stings because if it’s real, it means we don’t deserve it. No amount of my own movement or strength could have held up those plates I’d stacked way too high, I tried, and I failed, and [they] suffered for it, and then they extended me kindness, compassion, and forgiveness out of their silo of hurt and grace…. And receiving grace is basically the best shitty feeling in the world.”
It seems an easy trap to fall into, to somehow feel that I deserve grace, or perhaps worse, that I am owed it. But that is the sting that is pointed out. My part in the dispensing of grace is only to have screwed up sufficiently to have created the opportunity for it to be dispensed – hardly something that warrants any accolade or reward. No, the power of grace, the core, is not in the deservedness of the receiver but in the love of the giver. Grace doesn’t eliminate my screw up. It still occurred. So yes, the sting is there, but I think she’s got it right – that receiving of grace is “the best shitty feeling in the world.”
From Joan Chittister, Uncommon Gratitude:
“Be grateful and let it show. What is due to others who seek the same liberty as ourselves? Never imagine that anyone is dispensable. Keep the promises you have made and honour the promises of others in the world of human relations. Remember that the security you seek is what all want, and don’t set out to invade. Tell the truth about yourself and others. Don’t imagine that what makes someone else secure and happy is exactly what you need to make you secure and happy if only you could get it from them.”
This all seems like pretty good advice to me, but the one that stuck out in my mind was the “don’t imagine that what makes someone else secure and happy is exactly what you need to make you secure and happy.” It occurs to me, however, that as problematic is a proclivity, one I have, to think that what makes me secure and happy is (using my keen sense of logic) just bound to be what makes every other sole in the universe secure and happy. Because I view Fritos and bean dip as a comfort food, everyone (even those who don’t) must see it the same way.
“Consider the possibility that you might actually be lucky when you get rejected from stuff. Because of this streak of what appeared to be bad luck, I fell into my life as it is today.”
Lisa Yuskavage
It is so hard to see, hard to understand, and even more difficult to have the patience to see this to be true, but experience tells me that dark clouds do have silver linings. Or as Garth Brooks and Pat Alger wrote, “some of God’s greatest gifts, are unanswered prayers.”
From Summer Storm by Dana Gioia:
Why does that evening’s memory
Return with this night’s storm –
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointment warm?
There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won’t stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.
And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.
I love those last two lines. It occurs to me that much of life is, or can be, focused on that “as if” and not on what is, here, now — which can lead to a sort of nostalgia for things that never were.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to week and a time to laugh, a time to morn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
I can’t say I understand this passage, particularly the peace some people seem to find in it. It seems to suggest that not only do I need to know what to do, but I need to know when to do it. Not only do I need to make the right choice, but I need to make it at the right time. At times like this I fall back on the timeless wisdom of Yogi Berra: “You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got timing, it’ll go.” There, he has reduced the difficulty by half.
“When all else fails, you always have delusion.” Conan O’Brien
Thank God for that — though it occurs to me that my delusions seem so much more tolerable than the delusions of others. If only others would have reasonable delusions like mine!
“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive….” C. S. Lewis
Ah, forgiveness! So readily received, and so reluctantly given. Yet it is, as Lewis notes in Mere Christianity, a two-way street – a bumpy, difficult two way street (at least in that one “giving” lane), but a two-way street nonetheless. While it is not an easy journey, Lewis provides at least some advice on how to travel a bit more easily in the “giving” lane: “Perhaps it makes it easier if we remember this is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves. For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco….”
It occurs to me... 