Mama Monster and Grace

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Reading from “The Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Frost. The poem presents a conversation between a farm couple about an old farm hand who shows up at the beginning of winter

“Silas is back.” . . .

. . . Be kind," she said.

. . .

“When was I ever anything but kind to him?

But I’ll not have the fellow back," he said.

“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?

‘If he left then,’ I said, ‘that ended it.’

What good is he? Who else will harbour him

At his age for the little he can do?

What help he is there’s no depending on.

Off he goes always when I need him most.[”]

. . .

“Warren," she said, “he has come home to die:

You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.”

“Home," he mocked gently.

“Yes, what else but home?

It all depends on what you mean by home.

Of course he’s nothing to us, any more

Than was the hound that came a stranger . . . .”

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.”

“I should have called it

Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”[i]

One morning when my daughter Rebecca was about three and my daughter Ellen was about 18 months, I was frantically trying to get us all ready to leave the house for daycare and work. As usual, Rebecca had dressed herself and was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, waiting for me to finish getting Ellen ready. Ellen was lying on her back on Becca’s bed while I bent over her, trying to slip her shirt over her head. She was flailing her arms and laughing as I grew more and more frustrated trying to get her arms into her sleeves.

Imagine the scene: an 18-month-old baby, so little lying there on the bed, laughs and wiggles as an increasingly angry mom, so huge hovering above her, struggles to get her dressed. Finally, I lost it. Completely. I grasped Ellen’s tiny toddler shoulders, leaned toward her until our faced were close, and, “Rawrrrrr!”

Time stopped. Ellen stopped laughing and wiggling. I stopped roaring and shaking with anger. She looked at me, clearly startled and confused. I looked at her, thinking to myself, “What have I done to my baby?” and thinking that this was a parenting failure that could never be forgiven.

Then Ellen’s eyes crinkled and laughter bubbled out of her. She pointed her little finger at me and said in delight, “You Mama Monster!”

My anger melted and I no longer felt frantic about getting ready for work. In her innocent trust, Ellen turned my terrifying loss of control into a family concept—watch out, kids, it’s a Mama Monster day today.

She let me off the hook when I didn’t deserve it. That’s grace.

We regularly come across various forms and meanings of “grace” in common secular usage: the grace of a dancer; a grace period in student loan repayment; a gracious invitation; saying grace before a meal. The connection between

a dancer’s grace and
grace as a religious concept

does not immediately present itself. Maybe that’s why the word “grace” has incited both linguistic and theological arguments among Christians for the past 2000 years.

One way to think of grace in Christianity is as the opposite of karma. Karma is the Hindu concept that what we do in this life will be reflected in our next reincarnation—incentive to treat others well. Grace, on the other hand, isn’t anything we deserve—it’s a free gift no matter how much we mess up. Christian grace refers to the undeserved gift of salvation God sent to the world in the form of Jesus Christ. From the start, however, disagreements among Christians over

how God confers grace,
on whom,
and what role (if any) human behavior plays in God’s conferral of grace

have precipitated the breaking up of Christianity into the many forms and factions we take for granted. For example, Lutheran and other Protestant denominations disagree with each other as well as with the Roman Catholic Church about the exact workings of God’s grace.

The relatively young North American upstart religion of Universalism ramped up the debate by declaring that God’s gift of grace applied to everyone. It was this central tenet—called “universal salvation”—that inspired the name Universalist.

The idea of grace as an undeserved gift from God does have uniquely Christian origins, though various religious concepts of grace appear in Jewish, Hindu, and Islamic texts and practice as well. Grace and karma even act together in some Hindu writings: the goal of Hinduism is to end the karma-cycle of reincarnation through realization of one’s spiritual nature. Grace is often identified as the means of spiritual realization and freedom from karma-driven reincarnation.[ii]

In Islamic tradition, Muhammad reportedly said, "None amongst you can get into Paradise by virtue of his deeds alone ... not even I, but that Allah should wrap me in his grace and mercy."[iii] Unlike Hinduism, which implies that grace arises from an inner divinity, Islam attributes grace to Allah’s action—though a person’s “deeds” are mentioned as a necessary prerequisite for the conferral of grace that leads one to Paradise.

http://www.stmatthewscathedral.org/docs/029-4495.jpg

Given that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all arose out of the same tradition, it makes sense that these three religions share a concern for the relationship between human actions and God’s grace. One major disagreement in Christianity concerns whether living a good life (or doing good works) is required for salvation or simply God’s unconditional grace.

The nuances and labyrinthine arguments about grace and works interest me as a scholar, but not as a spiritual seeker. The heart of religion for me is all about a life worth living. I want my religion to suggest paths that may lead me to my best self and encourage me to keep going when the journey gets rough. A history of how the word “grace” acquired its many meanings resonates with my Unitarian Universalism and illuminates the role of grace in living my values.

Some of the linguistic twisting—try to say that three times fast—of words for grace occurred as Jewish and early Christian writings were translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin and eventually into various versions of English. For example, here’s one Jewish writer’s explanation of the many translations of one Hebrew word:

"Well-known to Christians, the term [“grace”] is generally familiar to Jewish audiences only in the expression grace after meals ~~(birkat hamazon)~~. It doesn’t appear in Jewish vocabulary lists, on informational websites, or throughout indices of hundreds of Jewish print resources on basic Judaism, God, spirituality, Bible, theology, or values. And yet, it frequently appears in English translations of the biblical text, ~~triggering student queries~~.

~~"According to Strong’s Concordance (an alphabetical index of biblical words and their citations),~~ the word grace appears 38 times in the King James version of the Hebrew Bible ~~(Tanakh)~~ as a translation for the Hebrew word chen.

"However, chen appears an additional 31 times in the text where it is translated as favor or occasionally as gracious, precious, or pleasant.

"There seems to be no consistency among either the Christian or Jewish translations." [iv]

Biblical scholars note that the original meaning of the Hebrew word meant something like “favor” or “to look down on with favor,” as a judge might look down at a defendant in court.[v]

So the first confusion happens when one Hebrew word appears in English translations mostly as the word “grace,” but almost as often as one of these words: “favor, gracious, precious, or pleasant.”

A second confusion involves the Greek version of the Christian Bible. There, “‘Grace’ is the [most common] English translation of the Greek χάρις (charis) meaning ‘that which brings delight, joy, happiness, or good fortune.’^[12]”[vi] But the Greek word could mean “to rejoice,” a pleasant external appearance, “loveliness,” “agreeableness,” “acceptableness,” and most often meant favor or good-will, which leads to the meaning of gratitude or thankfulness (for the favor or good-will).[vii] As a side note, the Greek word charis is the root of “charisma” and “charismatic.”

We haven’t even gotten to the Latin confusion.

http://gtu.edu/library/information/special-collections

The history of the word grace and its many related meanings enriches my appreciation for the role grace plays in my life. Even the intricacies of theological disagreements about grace illuminate what grace can mean for us. As other Christian theologians focused on specific conditions required for grace, Universalists stepped back from the trees to look at the forest—and concluded that grace is unconditional. As 19^th Century Universalist minister Thomas Starr King reportedly said, “’Universalists believe that God is too good to damn people, and the Unitarians believe that people are too good to be damned by God.’”[viii]

As Universalism evolved, God’s universal love inspired core values of the faith. For example, the 4^th Principle of UUism encourages us as a community to support each other in our individual search for truth and meaning—that’s an acknowledgement of universal religious values. The 1^st UU Principle challenges us to acknowledge and even promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Grace as reflected in the 1^st Principle reveals itself in Unitarian Universalist work for diversity, inclusion, and social justice. UU Historian Mark Harris notes:

From its beginnings, Universalism challenged its members to reach out and embrace people whom society often marginalized. The Gloucester church included a freed slave among its charter members, and the Universalists became the first denomination to ordain women to the ministry, beginning in 1863 with Olympia Brown.[ix]

http://www.ucsummit.org/wordpress/visitors/uu-history/olympia-brown/#.VhxSX_lViko

More recently, Unitarian Universalism was the first major denomination to ordain openly gay and lesbian ministers and currently leads the way on immigration reform and Black Lives Matter. That’s not to say we don’t struggle with race, class, gender, ability, and all sorts of social justice needs, a struggle that our faith challenges us to engage as a community and in our individual lives.

The challenge escalates as we approach the particulars of our individual lives. It takes grace to acknowledge human dignity in the face of human flaws and brokenness. When we encounter rudeness, greed, hatred, even violence in others, our religion encourages us to react with grace. That means we must see the humanity of the person. We do not have to like the person. We certainly do not condone harmful behavior. But we do have the human obligation to honor the inherent worth of each person no matter what.

Consider what that requires us to do. Our UU values urge us to join national and international justice work for the inherent dignity of every person. Many of you regularly work for social justice through rallies, political action, donations of time and money. Your grace in this work touches more lives than you will ever know.

At home, in our communities and in our personal lives, the challenge to act from a place of unconditional love tests us continuously. The village of East Troy continues to notify me that unspecified neighbors have complained about my yard. I question the value of their judgments and do not feel kindly disposed toward them. Grace and the 1^st Principle, however, urge me to approach them with loving kindness, no matter how many times the village threatens to send someone to demolish my garden and charge me $200 for that service. [Mama Monster Rawrrr.]

Clearly, for me, the practice of grace is a work in progress—as it is for all of us except perhaps the bodhisattvas in our midst. One reason we gather here together is for encouragement to keep up the struggle. Living your values is darn difficult. We’re here at United UU Congregation to support each other’s daily hard work toward creation of universally inclusive Beloved Community.

The real heart of grace involves the way inner influences manifest in our outer actions. In this case, “god” can be seen as that divine impulse within each of us that persuades us to seek others, to form individual relationships and larger communities, to agree on guidelines for right relationships and to strive to help rather than harm. From this perspective, grace becomes the impulse to give without asking for or expecting anything in return.

In our sacred work of building Beloved Community, there will always be people who betray trust and respond to love with fear or hatred. Grace as a sacred practice transforms our response to others and our approach to life. Grace creates a better, more loving world. We can start simply: next time someone greets you with anger or hatred, extend the benefit of the doubt, as my 18-month-old daughter did for me.