In the Ethereal Zone of Forgiveness

[gurdonark]

I love that post-red-eye-flight feeling of zoning through a day on too little sleep but lots of enthusiasm. It's like some real life REM, in which one is just too tired to focus on anything but the essentials. It's similar to the way in which any faux "real" emotional crisis can sometimes be ameliorated by a good head cold. Life is too short to worry about emotions, when real things such as bronchial congestion are involved. Today I worked like a dog in some proverb in a Sumerian text about canines with law licenses, too tired to worry, to tired to feel anything but good. I'm so glad that I feel good. I'm so eager for a weekend.

Last night, when taking breaks from knocking off a re-read of Rumpole and the Angel of Death, I pondered the notion of forgiveness. I grew up in a Missionary Baptist town in the heart of the Bible Belt. I was never a Missionary Baptist, and have always been more or less liberal in my faith(s). But I feel I am drenched, and to some extent admiring, of many of the concepts I absorbed as if by osmosis. One Baptist notion current in my little town was the idea that salvation follows a form of "conviction". In this construct, one's life essentially becomes an endless trial, in which one is "tried" and "found wanting". One becomes incredibly conscious of the wrongness of one's life. Evelyn Waugh expresses a similar idea in Brideshead Revisited, when the character Julia speaks of the notion of "living in sin". To paraphrase, she points out that "living in sin" is more than merely living in a sexual relationship without the benefit of wedlock. Instead, she takes the metaphor literally--drinking tea in sin, sleeping in sin, breathing sin, eating sin. In other words, in this notion, sin becomes one's natural state; indeed, in many forms of Christianity, it is post-Edenic man's "natural" state. The idea of God's forgiveness as a form of salvation from sin through the intercession of faith in salvation through Christ is a well-known Christian doctrine.
I'm not particularly interested in debating that old tried and true issue of literal or metaphoric belief in the Christian faith. It's just a bit chic and easy, whatever one's belief structure, to do the "never" or "only" bit about religious beliefs--to either slam the faith or to insist that only this faith is right. I see little point in this post in taking either tack on.

But I do find that notions of forgiveness and sin (error), salvation and grace permeate our culture as if they are part of the bedrock of our vocabulary. One of my favorite college professors, Dr. Bolsterli, once assured me that if I ever left Arkansas, I'd see that not every culture in the US is so Christianocentric as the Bible Belt. Yet, even when I lived in California, I found that these same ideas permeated everything. We are a land of "second chances", secret damnations, and 12 step salvations. Genuine saints and the genuinely mad alike, regardless of belief, have ideas drenched in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. That's not to say that other traditions are not important--the effect of 20th Century skepticism, of Buddhism, and of the new age and new thought faiths is not to be underestimated. But it's hard to escape the notion of "sin" and "forgiveness" in everyday life, or, in my own case, in my own self-view.

Let's leave aside for a moment whether there is literally "sin", or whether there is literally a "divine forgiveness" or whether the constructs are useful or outmoded. These are all crucial questions, but they are not at all what my post is about. To digress, by the way, my answer to each of these crucial questions is often the somewhat elusive "that's a good question, but not the right question". But I don't want to dally with personal witness on my own flawed belief structures, as that won't advance my point much.

Instead, I focus lately on how important it is that we achieve the peace with ourselves that "forgiveness" symbolized in so many of our lives. I do not propose a magic formula. I do not write this post to prescribe, as in Islam, the affirmation of a phrase 3 times, nor the radioevangelist formula of "If ye will jest accept JAYSUS in yer heart". I do not have some chic psycho-babble substitute for forgiveness and self-acceptance. I meet people from a world of traditions who express their faith in a world of spiritual languages who find ways to get around the guilt of personal imperfection.

Instead, I am concerned that we disserve ourselves when we appropriate the language of self-damnation while excluding the possibility of grace. To phrase it in the Buddhist tradition, recognition of the suffering inherent in all living is useless if the consolation of seeking to transcend that suffering is not adopted. To speak in a less "religious" way, we must learn to accept ourselves with something other than derision if we are to function at all.

I have found this an incredible challenge over the years. In some ways, I am very demanding of myself, and in general do not trust "feel good" or "self-esteem"-y ideas. I tend to think that while my relaxed, "flow" moments are wonderful, self-demand and self-discipline are important. But the corollary is that I always fall so short of my goals. I am now able, as all too many self-laudatory LJ posts have demonstrated, to confer on myself some "cheap grace" from time to time. But in general, I trust meaningful living more than I trust pleasure-seeking. The net effect, of course, is that I get down on myself if I fail to accomplish what I need to accomplish. I feel that I have "sinned".

I am pondering tonight how important that idea of "forgiveness" or "self-acceptance" can be. Never mind whether forgiveness is "of God" (and evil "of Satan") or if it is just a cultural more or personal quirk. Let's not deconstruct our values system, as we never see the gestalt by trying to break it into pieces.

I don't have some big conclusion here, nor some Key to All Mythologies. But tonight I realize how important that certain feeling is which I call the feeling of being forgiven. I know that for some, "forgiveness" is not the construct. It is called something else. But that sense that one is all right, that one has a path, and that one can function--that's so important. Perhaps it is that, coupled with the will to "live with it", that is the Kingdom of Heaven they keep singing about--only the Kingdom, as the poet says, is entirely within.

Comments

[wildgarden.livejournal.com]

"Well while I'm here I'll
do the work-
and what's the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow." -Allen Ginsberg

[lonestarslp.livejournal.com]

That is so good. I am living that quote right now. That is dealing with depression in a nutshell.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

and perhaps, indeed, that is what your new career in SLP can come to mean for you. It's really "easing the pain" in so many ways.

[lonestarslp.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. My job is part of my therapy. Just the act of having to get up in the morning and be somewhere is incredibly helpful. I have found that being needed by someone (kids, family, students) can keep you going when nothing else can.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

You know, I think there really is something in that being needed thing. Sometimes I wonder if being needed is just part of who we all "need" to be.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I did not know that Ginsberg poem, but I like it very much.
Thank you for commenting with it.

My hands are small, I know...

[espvivisection.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Now that the issue has been put to me (and I mean me in the general readership sense), I'm sure that I will be thinking about this tonight (I've decided that I should wait and sleep on the plane, since I'm leaving when I usually go to bed anyway), and tomorrow on the plane between naps, and probably well in to this weekend and in the coming months. That said, I thought I might comment on my initial gut reaction.

When I talk about "faith" about finding faith and having faith, in fate or God or Yahweh or "the path" or whichever name you confer upon it, essentially what I’m talking about to a large extent is the concept of grace. Sometimes I need a little grace, a little forgiveness, a little willingness to be a fundamentally flawed and still lovable human being. The reason I started going to Mass in the first place, and the reason I have continued to go for so many years, is because there is something about the structure of Mass that represents a grace, a forgiveness. I know that specific Mass parts have always appealed to me (like "Look not upon our sins but upon the faith of your church and grant us peace in our day," and "Lord, I am not ready to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed") and the moments that I find most moving are always the ones that revolve around love, grace, and acceptance. Were the Church even 10% less focused on these concepts than it is today, I would not even consider converting. I think the concepts of forgiving and loving ourselves for the benefit of ourselves and for the benefit of loving and accepting others is a critical part of what it takes to be a GOOD HUMAN BEING (TM). In my mind, being capable of love and trust and forgiveness are the hardest things for us to grasp and are fundamentally the most important, because they do so much to engender harmony and relief and benevolence. I grapple with the issue of sin and fragility and failure all the time, and I don’t have an answer. I don’t even purport to believe that my answer (a bizarre mixture of paganism and Catholicism that constantly merits questioning by my peers) is THE answer, because I just don’t think there is one answer. I just happen to find a crucial chunk of it for me lies in being surrounded once a week by doubting, fearing people who are, in all likelihood, as lonely as me, and finding peace and comfort and acceptance among one another. No, it’s the brush most people paint organized religion with because it isn’t most people’s experience. (It hasn’t been my experience anywhere else.) I do think that searching, and the rare finding, of grace is the key to peace, though, and I encourage everyone to search every metaphorical rock and tree, because I firmly believe it to be critical for our happy living, both in the individual and collective senses.

twixt hell and the first hymn

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that comment. It is the puzzle of grace I am puzzling over. I don't need to call it "grace". I am happy with the search for radical freedom or satori or what have you. But it's not the achievement of some pinnacle that interests me. It's the achievement of day to day equilibrium which fascinates me. It's that recognition that life can be lived even when "one is not worth it" or even when one worries that it is "too late" to live life with grace. It's the undeserved redemption.

I am very sympathetic to the notion that this idea can be carried too far, as an excuse for failing to act responsibly. But I do not have a convenient construct to help avoid the pain of living, other than that one.

I think it is so nice, if I may use the old fashioned sense of the word, that you find so much comfort in the Mass. I do not have a similar touchstone ceremony, and I envy you yours. Of course, the idea in my post applies to a wiccan rite, a hindu ritual, or even a good flow filled inquiry into finite reality. It's a self-acceptance, a received ability to function.

[coollibrarian.livejournal.com]

As a Christian, I have struggled with the fine line between sin and grace myself. If I dwell too much on my sin, I forget that Jesus died as the sacrifice for my sins. If I take grace for granted, I forget why Jesus was crucified.

I dunno if the above has anything to do with your post so forgive me if it seems completely unrelated.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comment. I think this is a dilemma, and I almost put the dilemma in the post. The notion of grace, or being forgiven seems indispensable to me, and yet the idea that one is forgiven so anything goes sometimes crops up. I heard a sermon on the radio a few weeks ago by a minister in a local church that essentially put sin by a believer on a different plane than sins by others--as more forgiveable. The dangers in this, of condoning wrong by those within the inner circle, concern me. I think that the way you put it really sets out the dilemma well.

food for thought...

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

From a book I started reading today, The Archivist by Martha Cooley:

Christianity takes grace too far, Judith said. Like it's guaranteed--which it isn't. We're here for the repair of our breach, to restore grace. That's our job. It's pretty natural to have doubts in the face of such a job, isn't it?

It all sounds complicated, I said. Too complicated.

Syncronicity

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

That is food for thought indeed. Today I was inspired to pull up the section of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship which first discusses "cheap grace". Bonhoeffer was
with the German Reformed Church, and was the fellow martyred by the Nazis. The Cost of Discipleship was written well pre-war, and Bonhoeffer himself later backed away slightly from its harshness, and in his letter and papers from prison advocated a new church in which
the symbols of "Christian sanctity" were replaced by a faith in which people live responsibly as
if God did not exist, in God's name. I still find the Cost of Discipleship a powerful set of ideas, though, and wanted to see his attack on "cheap grace". Your quote seems to dovetail in altogether.

Here's a part of that passage from Cost of Discipleship:

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack's wares. The sacraments, the
forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is
represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with
generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without
cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and,
because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the
possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins
proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God. An
intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The
Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that
grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required,
still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God".

Even leaving aside that some of the mythic language is not really my view of the world,
it and Ms. Cooley's quote are much to think on. Complicated....too complicated...yes.

Re: Syncronicity

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, I think I agree...I seem to want things, all things worthy of consideration, to be worth something, costly in some way or another. In fact, worth is what makes something worthy, isn't it? Well, this is me making no sense, but it's slowly filtering in...It is complicated, but that in itself makes it worth something, no? I like the notion of reparations...but reparations for what? Merely existing? Original sin? All the wrongs we commit every day?

Still thinking...

Going back to other discussions, those about art...that which is priceless is different from that which is cheap. Just because you can't arbitrarily assign a value doesn't mean something is worthless, in fact, it usually means the opposite. Is that related? I'm not sure...

Re: Syncronicity

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

You're making sense. I think that the notion of grace, at least the grace described in the various letters attributed to Paul, recognizes that no matter how hard one works, one still needs that extra something. But I don't think the availability of that extra something is a reason to stop working for what is worthwhile.

Original sin only has meaning to me in a metaphoric sense. My own view of things is that if we are to have the world we want, we must evolve from competitive behavior to cooperative behavior. To me, grace may be the flash of insight when we can actually do that, and the burst of comfort that helps us feel our way through when we know we are still in those old fight or flight modes. But I've not put it together in my mind very well yet.

I just know that although it is all very worthy, I make too many mistakes every day, and that sense of grace feels essential to me.

the other side of synchronicity

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

So sorry to double comment. I always feel the one Bonhoeffer quote is incomplete without the other side of the coin in his later writings. I think the two together state the dilemma on
living with grace in a graceless world very well. This is from a letter from a Nazi prison:

"We cannot be honest unless we recognise that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur [as though God were not a given]. And this is just what we do recognise – before God. God himself compels us to recognise it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God".

I think that we all are in need of grace, but grace is not always merely a crutch.

Re: the other side of synchronicity

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people do act as if grace were a crutch...and a guarantee. That's what leads to the apparent hypocrisy so many find deplorable when considering religion.

Re: the other side of synchronicity

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's that apparent hypocrisy that is so disturbing about so much religion. But when one is to undertake to live a worthwhile life, whether we call it religion or something else, one has to both undertake to do what is worthy, and to feel "accepted", "acceptable", "saved by grace", "at peace". I'm not advocating necessarily for a "religious" position (for the simple reason, as the quote suggests, that I think all life is lived "religiously" no matter what one calls it).
But to use your art metaphor for an example--some are gifted with skills and insights that others don't have. Some must work to produce even the most pedestrian stuff. But "talent" (grace) does not excuse lack performance on the part of a gifted person, who does less than her/his best work because s/he can, while "grace" may make work illuminating by someone who has less technical skill, because that "eye", that "insight", has been "given" to that person. I'm not too hung up on whether the "gift" is real and divine or "apparent" and within. I am
hung up on the belief that we must live with that "divine spark" within getting us over the ditches, or we end up just "raging full on".