An Indomitable Grace

An Indomitable Grace

Thoughts on mercy, humanity, vulnerability, and beauty

I like to write. I don’t know if I’m any good. I like ee cummings, Beyoncé, John Keats, and Shakespeare. I think life is better than death, but perhaps I’m biased.

  • Wrong isn’t the Same as Bad

    An Indomitable Grace

    People disagree a lot. We like to assume that when someone disagrees with us, it’s because he is stupid, ignorant, or even evil. Really, most of the time, it’s about having conflicting priorities. Why are there people who are pro-life? They value the life of the unborn and want to protect it all cost, even at the cost of certain rights for women. People who are pro-choice value the rights of women and want to protect them at all cost, even at the cost of the unborn. It is probably the case that pro-lifers and pro-choicers both value the life of the unborn. It is also probably the case that both value the rights of women. I wish there was a way to have a conversation that encouraged the protection of both, but, instead, we assume that people who disagree with us are stupid, ignorant, or evil.

    I majored in philosophy. I am pretty good at it. One of my first philosophy professors recruited me into the major because he thought so too. There are people who are a lot better at it than I am. There are people who are worse at it. Mostly, though, there are people I disagree with.

    One thing you end up getting really comfortable with as an undergraduate student in philosophy is being wrong. You change your mind about the existence of souls or God or universals three or four times. You think that Cartesian Dualism makes no sense, even though, fifteen minutes ago, it was the only theory you knew existed. You take metaphysics and become a compatibilist just to cover all your bases. You learn that the most famous philosophers can also be the most wrong; they’re famous because they redefined the box, not because they were right.

    None of us is perfect. None of us is right all of the time. We don’t have to agree about what contributes most to human flourishing, but being open to being wrong is so very important. It is extremely likely that you will be wrong about some things, so listen when people tell you they think you are. Listen past their wounded pride and their offended tone. Listen past the condemnation and condescension. Listen past their tropes and their emotionally distant wall. Listen for kindness and understanding. Listen for common ground. Listen to learn.

    Then, call your mom and talk about nonsense. Cuddle with your someone. Drink some cocoa. Drink some tea. Watch some fluff about hipsters in Portland or a bad nineties mystery put out by BBC. Play a video game where you get to be the hero. Put on your favorite footie pajamas (because you definitely have more than one pair). Relax. Even when you’re wrong, you’re still OK. You are still loved and accepted. You are still human and capable of good things. It isn’t about being right, and being wrong isn’t the same thing as being bad.

  • Meeting Her

    An Indomitable Grace

    Normally, I take Fridays to reflect on things that inspire my writing or other creative endeavors, but this beautiful poem by my dad inspires my living. There are thirty years behind these words, thirty years of failures, of joys, of triumphs, of grief, of grace, of growing in love. I am often afraid I will fail, and I have already done so in pretty much every way possible, but I am so deeply encouraged to live in love because of the two wonderful people who are my parents. 

    Meeting Her
    By Chip Burkitt
    Back when I was mad at God,
I rattled around the gloomy, tattered world
Dry as an old crust and
Dangerous as a dropped pin.
I ate alone
I slept alone
I stole brief pleasures alone.
Strange, unnamed animals came to me,
And I named them all alone.

I kept waiting for Him to slip up again
Or maybe I was expecting to catch it
For accusing Him
  (Though, really, it was all His fault.
  Who does He think He is?
  I was perfectly willing to forgive Him
  If He would just admit it
  And say He was sorry.)

I slept and had unnatural dreams.
I dreamed of a dark chasm into which one could fall and never 
reach bottom forever and ever, world without end, amen.

She came when I awoke, a little stiff on one side.
In her hair were sunlight and laughter.
Her merriment unfurrowed my brow.
I desired her pixie ears, her strong chin, her lithe limbs, her
   supple skin
I desired her infectious joy.
I desired her.

We fell into step.
The day got brighter.
The road got straighter.
The air got lighter,
   And I gingerly began to trust Him again.

  • The Runaway

    An Indomitable Grace

    Once in awhile, Seattle reminds me that it isn’t merely a cultured, educated, progressive place with good coffee and microbreweries. Instead, I am confronted with the harshness of someone else’s reality, someone else’s hysteria, someone else’s pain. She is scared, scared enough of home to brave the streets and abandoned buildings this city has to offer, scared of the men intruding on her illusory haven. She is even scared of herself.

    And that’s where I see her, in her desperate state, squad cars arriving as a clean-cut young man stands just outside the foray, vainly trying to get a signal. Her face is bloody, and there are stalky, less clean men corralling her. One of them is yelling for the police.

    She is standing now. No one is pinning her down, like before. Someone, not a man, is comforting her.

    I leave as soon as the officer steps onto the scene. I was only there for a minute, after all. Best not to get needlessly involved. She will be taken to a place where men don’t sit on girls. She will be safe now, I hope.

  • Megazord

    An Indomitable Grace

    MegaZord

  • Woman of the Island

    An Indomitable Grace

    I have this idea of a woman. She has long hair, probably a little red, and she’s soft. Her skin in the wintertime is as pale as milk, but gets brown with exposure and summer sun. She is used to wearing hand-knit sweaters, flax-woven dresses, and flowers in her hair. Sehnsucht is in her songs, whispers of all hope and memory and longing.

    She sees the beauty of every kind of weather, wonder in pink sunsets, stormy afternoons, or silent snowfalls. She has not romanticized life, but has let all these things romance her to her very core. She is not frail, not ever, even if sickness wastes away her fleshier parts, she is sturdy, determined, stoic. And yet, she knows when she needs to be cradled by the earth or wrapped in someone else’s arms, when the earth doesn’t suffice. And yet, she can laugh for hours and love for eternity, even when the strain of it hurts her sides and her throat is parched and she doesn’t know to how draw even one more breath. Somehow, she keeps on.

    There, in her eyes, can be seen in turn, or maybe even all at once, a merriment and a sorrow, sorrow that goes down so deep, it mingles with the very groaning of the earth, mingles with the earthquakes and volcanic rumblings, mingles with everything unsettled, mingles with the soil, even as it gives birth to life.

    She is a storm-weary traveler.

    She is the soft sun, breaking through the leaves.

    She is alive.

    She is mystery, paradox, enigma.

    I have this idea of a woman. In her voice is triumph and subtlety. She is bountiful in graces, even when she is lacking in possessions. She maintains the tenuous complexity of being and becoming.

    I have this idea of a woman. She is imperfect and oh so perfect in her imperfection.

    I have this idea of a woman.

  • Great

    An Indomitable Grace

    “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

    -William Shakespeare

    This line was written as hyperbole to puff-up the already large ego of a character in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Its pompous grandeur and false depth were laid as a trap to make a fool out of a very arrogant man. It worked (watch the play). What was Malvolio’s failure? Why was he so taken in by these words?

    He was blind to the greatness in others.

    I must admit—albeit sheepishly—I have often aspired to greatness (I even read that Jim Collins book). I don’t mean popularity or approval. Those things are not indicative of greatness. Greatness is not about how many people know your name. This is why I love shows like The West Wing and Newsroom. They unfold events that demand greatness of the characters (who fail—a lot). In turn, this demands greatness of the audience. It’s inspiring. It’s…relieving.

    Now, I will tell you a secret, something I suspect Shakespeare knew when he sarcastically scribbled the above lines: greatness is not a birth right or an achievement or a force of nature. Greatness is a generosity.

    Unless we believe that others are great, we cannot be great. Unless we choose to see others as equally capable of all the greatness we hope to achieve, we are merely going to be Malvolios, or worse (and possibly more pitiable), the same CEOs whose business decisions lead to economic havoc or the politicians who can’t create laws supporting average Americans while their own income is wildly disproportionate to the average. We will be the nagging mother or critical boyfriend. We will be the micro-managing boss or the choir lady who corrects everyone else but never sings on key. Treating people with contempt is the best way to hinder your own greatness.

    If any of us strive for greatness—in our careers, with our families, in our communities, in our faith—we must believe that the people we meet, interact with, and read about have the same potential for greatness as the fire that burns in our own imaginations.

    This does not mean that everyone is, in fact, great.  Some are in outright rebellion to greatness. Some are merely pretending. They have learned the right songs to sing and the right beers to order in pubs. They have just enough hipster in them to make them interesting without being condescending. They have just enough nerd in them to make them intellectual without making them socially awkward. They have just enough art to make you think you could write poetry to them forever. And of course, there is greatness in them; they’ve just turned it off with so many shoulds and constructs of cool.

    Maybe my determination to see greatness in others is foolish optimism. Maybe even the term “great” inevitably leads us into the same trap Malvolio falls prey to. Maybe this is just a sentimental ideal, a remnant of the archaic Platonic philosophy. Maybe the amount of evil in the world is too much, or maybe the system is just broken.

    Maybe.

  • my father moved through dooms of love

    An Indomitable Grace

    Read with your intuition at the ready, not your practiced knowledge of grammar. Then you will know its beauty, and you will see the sky the same way that Van Gogh must have.

    34

my father moved through dooms of love 
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where 
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep 
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy; 
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend 
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright, 
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
---i say though hate were why men breathe---
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

-ee cummings

  • I Know why the Caged Bird Sings

    An Indomitable Grace
    By Maya Angelou

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream 
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks 
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze 
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

  • Sacred Interruptions

    An Indomitable Grace

    I don’t know where this comes from, but even our dependence on language seems to be born out of our propensity for categorizing.

    We plan and construct and carefully organize. We buy plastic bins to hold our out-of-season clothes, our Christmas decorations, our past selves that we can’t quite throw away. If we have enough, we build castles, or we content ourselves with one in a row of tidy, little cottages. We keep calendars and balance checkbooks. We learn math and logic and how to bring order to everything we touch. We think agency is orderly.

    Then there are people. They are messy things more often than not. They open up our neatly kept boxes, reorganize our cupboards, draw out of us our deepest fears and joys. Relationships are really sacred interruptions, more than phone calls or bad traffic. We cannot approach the sacred with sharpies and bankers boxes. Relationships are mysterious things that cannot be boxed and shelved so easily as our memories. They are to be among the most cherished of our posessions. We may approach, as one philosopher put it, with fear and trembling. 

  • Different Kinds of Happy

    An Indomitable Grace

    “Let us hope that we are all preceded in this world by a love story.”
    –Sweet Land

    Whenever someone asks me what my favorite movie is, I can’t just give one answer. There are at least ten. This is one of them. It is about a young German woman who travels from her home in Norway after World War I to marry a man she’s never met. She finds herself in the middle of Minnesota, where anti-German sentiment is unbridled.

    This isn’t a political film, though. It doesn’t dissect the social norm of mail-order-brides from our modern perspective or try to convince us of the need for the burgeoning socialism. It’s a love story, the kind that makes you want to sit at home with someone you love, after working all day, or bake a pie and drink black coffee. It’s a story about community that reminds me, in this big and sometimes disjointed city, how important it is to help each other out. It is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen.

    At several points in the film, there are references to a conversation Olaf has with his best friend Frandsen while taking a photo of his bride to be, Inge. Frandsen asks Olaf what the word for happy is:

    Olaf: Lykkelig
    Frandsen: Lykkelig’s happy? I thought glede was happy.
    Olaf: That’s more like delighted.
    Frandsen:…What’s the difference?
    Olaf: There’s no difference.
    Frandsen: So why have two words, then?

    When Inge is older, Frandsen poses the same question to her, to which she replies, “Different kinds of happy.”

    In the midst of struggle—being an outsider, not being able to speak the language, a difficult harvest, and losing loved ones—this is a story about people who experience different kinds of happy; like the smell of grass and feeling the sun on your face; friendship and good pie; dancing to familiar music; building trust, forging bonds, and creating memories; the simple gesture of holding hands. This is the story they so beautifully pass on to their children and grandchildren.

    This is my story too, not just because my parents have given me a love story to aspire to. If there has ever been anything compelling about the story of my faith, it is this: we were created in love, redeemed for love’s sake, transformed by love, and remain here to love. We are all preceded by a love story, a story of perfect love. And that love creates in me different kinds of happy.