Where Gratefulness Might Lead




Richard Rohr has jump started my thinking again. In his book, Job and the Mystery of Suffering, he talks about how good life is, that we’re surrounded with goodness. This is certainly true for me. My life is totally saturated with goodness, when I stop to think about. Yes, I have a nice house. Miriam and I each have a car, so we can travel separate directions when we need to. I love my backyard and the beauty Miriam and I have created there. I have all the food and clothes I could want, an incredible wife and wonderful family, a more than adequate income, meaningful job, good healthy…and then we get down to the details, enjoyment of music, hands and feet that work, eyes sight, being able to feel a spring breeze on my face, smell a plum tree in full bloom, and taste buds that allow me enjoy Mexican food. I could go on and on and on.

My life is full of goodness for which I should be and I am very grateful. However, Rohr suggests that we come to expect goodness so much we are surprised when something bad happens to us. The bad stuff is so unexpected because we are so accustom to goodness and take goodness so much for granted, that when something bad happens it feels like an injustice has happened to us.

So I’m thinking about that and that seems true to me. Think as simple as traffic lights. I think I get to most traffic lights when they’re green and I sail right through them without much of thought. Everything is right in the world. But when I come upon a red light it jars me and I feel like I’ve been wronged in some way and I grumble that the people who installed the traffic lights didn’t come up with a more synchronized system that would allow traffic (translate “me”) to keep flowing along uninterrupted. That’s a simple example. When something even more interruptive enters my life, I can really get bent out of shape.

Where this is leading me is to the realization that I have not just come to expect goodness in my life, but I also protect the goodness that I have received. I want a pain free life and I’m willing to work to keep it that way. What this means is that when Jesus invites me to join him in a situation that has the potential to create pain, suffering and sacrifice of good things, I am resistant. I heard a speaker the other day quote Mother Teresa as saying (doesn’t everyone quote Mother Teresa?) something like, “We’re not called to do good things for other people, we’re called to love well.” Jesus invites me to love others well. My sense is that that involves sacrifice and suffering, but I’m so caught up in enjoying all the goodness I’m so used to experiencing, that I am resistant to entering into loving well. Loving well is crazy time.

Here’s the other thing it got me thinking about. There’s this quote by Fredrick Buechner that lots of people quote about vocation or call. Buechner says vocation is, “The place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” Whenever I’ve heard this quoted by a speaker it’s like this corporate sigh goes up from those listening as they resonate with the truth of the statement. But there’s something that’s bugging me about this statement. What is my deepest gladness? Do I really know it? And what’s more, do I really want to know it? As I’ve confessed before, I am a fearful person, and could it be that I am actually afraid of my own deepest longings, because if I actually acknowledged them and started to live into them, there’s a good chance I could end up suffering, losing some of the good things I’ve been given. I wonder how often I go around calling more surface longings my deepest longings, when in reality I have hardly begun to explore what would create in me the deepest gladness I could know. Jesus says, “I’ve come that you could have life and that abundantly.” Crazy time.

Then there is the other side of Buechner’s cute formula. What is the world’s deep need? Again, do I really want to know? Except by the grace of God, can I even go there? I think I know what the world’s deepest need is, but I’m beginning to think I am being very persumptous.

Instead of thinking how great this definition of call and vocation is that Buechner offers us, I’m actually confronted with the limenal experience of listening to my deepest gladness or longings and the world’s deepest need. Do I really want to listen to all of that?

Rohr also suggests that there comes a time when joy and suffering merge and a person really doesn’t know one from another. I don’t know that I’m that familiar with that experience. Whenever I am invited into sacrifice, it feels like an invitation only to suffering and loss. Of course, I’ve had those experiences when joy and gladness came. The other day Carleen was having a hard time with my five year old grandson, Abram. They had both had a rough morning and Abram was currently in “time out.” I could tell Carleen was tired and frustrated. I suspected that the time out was as much for her as for Abram. I was headed out to enjoy doing some highly anticipated yard work, which I love, when the invitation came, “Go offer to take Abram outside with you.” Oh great. That means that nearly as much yard work would get done. Long story short, I pulled it together, made the offer and had a wonderful time with a loving and curious grandson in the backyard. That’s a “good” story. I could tell you many times when I said, “No,” and went my merry on my way protecting my good things.

My spiritual director tells me the need is for us to see the good things in our lives as what he calls “transitional objects.” I should be continually grateful for the good things in my life, being mindful of my thankfulness again and again during the day, until I move beyond being thankful for the good things, and thankful and deeper in love with the giver of the good things. Crazy time.

God, have mercy. By your grace, may I grow in thankfulness to the point where I can hold the good gifts loosely, more focused on the giver of good gifts and willing to let go of good gifts you’ve given me in order to follow you into something deeper, more joyful, with greater gladness, suffering or not.