Amazing Grace

Always present. Always available. Especially in the shadows.

Today, part eight, ends our limited series about the role of the shadow in finding alternatives to our inherited cultural stories. If you missed the introduction, it’s here. Comments from readers along the way have greatly enriched this project. I’ve been saving this one from Stephanie C. Bell for just the right time. She shared this quote from Susan Murphy:

“[Nature-adoring U.S. Poet Laureate (1995-97) Robert Hass]. . .once gave koanlike expression to our plight along the lines of: we are the only protectors, and we are what needs to be protected, and we are what [the world] needs to be protected from.

“Yet the excruciating sharpness of the dilemma he sketched out has an exquisite roundness at its heart, for exactly equally, we cannot harm the Earth without harming ourselves; we cannot heal the Earth without healing ourselves; we cannot protect the Earth without protecting ourselves.”

Once out of the blue, my dad asked me to frame one of my paintings for him. He chose this one, which hung in their dining room until we cleared out their house for the estate sale. Now it’s in my house and I think of him every time I pass it. Painted at Brewster Flats on Cape Cod the summer before our son was born.

This series draws from essays I wrote eleven years ago. Today’s final installment presented a challenge, built as it was around a long-ago sparkling moment of grace—President Obama’s eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney. He and eight other congregation members of Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina, were killed on June 17, 2015 by a lone gunman. After speaking about grace, Obama stops for a long pause.¹

You can almost feel him hesitating, listening to an inner prompting. And then he says yes to it. He begins to sing “Amazing Grace,” his usually confident baritone wavering, slipping, lifting. The congregation joins in and on he rides, not always in perfect pitch but in full feeling. That moment of gathering his courage and daring to sing out was a beautiful example of the humility of leadership. He didn’t know what would happen, yet he trusted his inner voice. And that spark of grace lit up a mourning community.

Perhaps you see my dilemma. That moment was eleven long years ago. Today, it seems unreal, deeply buried beneath the layers of turmoil and chaos of our current reality. I’m going to trust the process here, trust that this shadow series is as relevant now as it was back then in what I’m tempted to call “simpler times.”

Let’s trust that that event, that grace, has something for us now. As I thought about how very long ago that was, an eloquent eulogy and a President singing in great vulnerability at a memorial, these lines floated up from one of my favorite poems, “Annunciation.”² In the gorgeous words of the poet Marie Howe:

“I know it is — and that if once it hailed me / it ever does”

That’s the thing about grace. It’s always present. Always working. Always available. Let’s consider writer Anne Lamott’s reminder that grace lives in the shadows, in our own shadows.

“I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.” ~ Anne Lamott, from Grace, Eventually

Grace is a word you don’t hear much in secular discourse. When I was a teenager, I had a conversation with my dad about it. He was a traditional dad who worked and did dad things, and we didn’t have many one-on-one interactions. This conversation was rare and memorable. He was caught up by my question, What is grace? I think he spoke of God’s presence or friendship, and we both enjoyed wondering about it together, turning it over, feeling its slipperiness. That itself was a moment of grace, a precious heart connection to each other and to something bigger than us.

Projection, imperfection, and multiplicity

Human affairs are full of flaws, opposition and contradictions. There never seems to be that one right solution we can all agree on.³ Even Obama’s presidency was far from perfect. He compromised on health care reform by giving too much power to insurance companies. I never understood the appeal the Transpacific Partnership, which seemed like a nightmare for workers and the environment. And what about the drone strikes and the “Surge” in Afghanistan?

When we project our shadows outward, it’s easy to spot imperfections, missteps, and mistakes. In any setting or organization at any scale, if we watch from the sidelines, we’ll see flawed humans fall prey to ego and posturing and bad decisions. People dig in their heels and point fingers at each other. These outward-directed blame sessions blind us to the difficulties of taking constructive, incremental steps towards more life-affirming, inclusive, fair and just policies. Projection is a blunt instrument when what we need is subtle, careful craft.

Whatever grace means literally or metaphorically, we need it now more than ever. There will always be opposition to good ideas. We live in a world of multiplicity, which is equal parts beautiful and frustrating.

I’m experimenting with trusting my emotional responses to these events. I have my cynical side, but when I rewatched President Obama’s eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney and heard his all-too-human voice singing Amazing Grace a capella, it moved me. I wasn’t thinking about which speechwriter penned that eulogy. I wasn’t wondering if this was all staged, or if he was being genuine in his preacherly cadence and rhythms. It was real and beautiful and heartfelt. Let that carry you into the day, lit by the mystery that if grace hails us, it ever does.

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Thanks for reading this series. If you enjoyed it, please share and comment. It’s always wonderful to hear from you. Stay safe and take good care.

1. That moment begins at 35:00 min. Watch it here.

2. I wrote about it here, which has a link to the poet reciting it and an audio of my own reading.

3. Just last night, I saw a bar graph of a new poll on social media. Apparently, the top issues for motivated Democratic voters are taxing the rich and universal health care. No arguments here. I was distressed, however, to skim down the other ten or twelve issues and not one of them mentioned climate change or the environment. <SIGH>