Grace, the dirty process of giving thereof
This article is not what you think.
I don’t want to write about grace today, because grace is unpleasant and hard. Grace is dangerous. Just thinking about grace makes me afraid and angry.
It is so hard to practice that I can not believe that a whole culture could assume it.
Grace is an individual’s practice, built on the understanding that you will not receive grace for giving it. Grace is not a currency that returns interest on investment. Give grace to another, you may have pain and loss in return.
Grace goes against how we teach each other to be. Our legal system does not have systems for grace, for we are certain that they would be exploited. Bad people would get away because of the grace loophole.
Grace is fine with that. She is defiant and won’t be built in to a system. She does not scale. To offer grace is to join her in defiance and risk.
Grace is defiant to your supporters, who want you to win. She sneers defiance to those who want a story to follow, a model of a path to a happy life. Walking with grace is dangerous to absolutely everything you desire, including justice and safety.
In the town nearest to my house, on the day of the nationwide ant-Trump protest No Kings Three, a small group of people attended wearing shirts from reading People’s Rights. People’s Rights is a right wing organization that has been present in Central Oregon for several years. Their focus seems to be on personal liberty. They are not normally on the side of Democrats and Indivisible.
I do not know their motivation for showing up and being counted with the anti-Trump rally. Perhaps a foreign war crossed their belief in America First. Perhaps masked, unidentified police performing arrests in defiance of our constitution signaled forces they must stand against. Perhaps they joined us after seeing that powerful people were protecting other powerful people who systematically injured and traumatized young women.
I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I do know that they were offered snacks and hugs. I understand that they declined both.
At about the same moment, in the larger town just a bit farther down the road, a man stood up in the midst of the thousands of people at that particular No Kings protest. He produced a flag and started to make a speech about his intent to burn it.
I need to be careful about how I talk about this incident. I was not there, either. The details are very important to how people want it explained, and I don’t have certainty of the details today. I do not expect anyone to be merciful or understanding if I get them wrong, so I am going to try to only say the most general truths about it.
Other protesters did not want him to burn the flag. De-escalators became involved. There was physical violence.
Eventually, the flag was burned. People continue to be angry that it was burned. Other people are angry that the flag burner was physically assaulted.
I have anger about it. There are systems for me to express that anger, including this internet that you are using to read this message. It is good at transmitting anger.
But should I transmit grace — grace for anyone involved — this big machine would almost certainly transmit back to me lessons on justice, lectures on history, and judgement upon me.
I am exhausted, realizing that for the world to be the world I dream of, I need to practice grace more than I believe that I can. I do it in silence from a distance today, because that is what I can manage.
I have already been graceless, yelling and gesticulating my useless judgements and insults. I hope that poison dissipates quickly, damaging few.
These people, trying to make their world better through action; I know not what they do.
I am told that while dying, Jesus said of those who ground him down:
“Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.”
Happy Easter.
I never quite knew how to define Grace. I grew up Christian, but not the kind that talked about Grace, I guess, so I thank you, at the very least, for offering me your definition. I accept it.
There actually HAVE been times in my life that I've extended grace, only to be repaid with betrayal. I wondered what the lesson was. Should I not have listened to my heart? Now I understand -- it was Grace in action. Of course, there were other, more reciprocal stories of Grace in my life, but those left no mark on me. I can't even recall them.
We don't see Grace modeled much in leadership today. "Every person for themselves, devil take the hind most," is the mode of the day. Grace is misunderstood -- a sign of weakness by someone who doesn't understand the assignment, when actually it's quite the reverse. Do we adjust to these changing times? When they go low should we meet them there? It's a conundrum, I agree.
Anger is present in me as well. My body catches it like a cold but its my soul who heals me. Sometimes it takes days for the symptoms in my body to rise to awareness. But when they do it's plain to see. My stomach is clenched, my lungs are tight, anger is in control. Locating myself beneath the anger, she reminds me: The old ways were different, not better. Deconstruction needs to happen. It's hard to watch. Stay with the heart.
I'm still trying to figure out the algorithms here. Have you seen any of my promos about my last post "What's a Forest, Mommy?"