The Alchemy of Effort and Grace

In the confluence of personal narrative and reflective theology that often mark the experience of a CREDO conference, the Rev. Brian Taylor, rector at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and CREDO conference faculty member, offers a look at how change moves into deep transformation. Join an online conversation on the just-released book All Shall Be Well: An Approach to Wellness (William S. Craddock, Jr., editor: Morehouse Publishing, 2009), and visit the CREDO Web site.

By Brian C. Taylor

I live in New Mexico, and my favorite time of year here is the beginning of fall. It’s not just the impossible blue skies, the cool, clear air, the explosive yellow cottonwoods, and the smell of roasting chili. It’s the palpable feeling of change. You wake up in the morning and there’s something electric in the air, something fresh and new, something that is just starting to become. The world is born again.

This is the same feeling that I sometimes get when returning from a good vacation or retreat. I return to my daily life with hope, with a sense of promise. I see that life is what I make of it, and that it just might be possible to slow down and be “perched a little more lightly on the globe,” as Peter Levi described monks in The Frontiers of Paradise: A Study of Monks and Monasteries (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990).

Changes such as these are renewing. But if we’re paying attention, they also hint at a much more compelling possibility: genuine, deep transformation. But how does one move from change to real transformation? There are several models of change and transformation to consider.

One model of transformation relies almost entirely on divine intervention, and it assumes an instantaneous, and sometimes complete, change. This is often how conversion is described: “I was immersed in worldliness, running after women, drugs, and money, living the high life, not even knowing how miserable I was, when BAM! God stopped me cold with a heart attack. I realized that I had been living for nothing. My Christian friend came to see me in the hospital, and there I accepted Christ, and haven’t looked back since. I was lost and now am found.”

This is the transformation of Paul on the road to Damascus, knocked off his horse and temporarily blinded. It is the transformation of an alcoholic who one day walks away from a horribly destructive life, into the light of health and sanity. It happens to people because of a crisis, a powerful retreat, or just because we’re unconsciously ready for God to slap us upside the head.

Miraculous, transformative intervention either happens or it doesn’t. We can’t sit around waiting for an epiphany. And yet this doesn’t stop some from trying to manufacture one: straining to hear the life-changing voice of God in their heads, saturating themselves with emotional prayer by a crowd of prayer-warriors, or sweating it out in rigorous meditation until enlightenment is attained. When the breakthrough doesn’t come, we are disappointed in ourselves (we don’t have enough faith) or in God (who apparently doesn’t care, or even exist).

There is another kind of transformation, one planned and executed through our own efforts. It comes out of the business model. We see it today in programs to lose weight, get in shape, improve our effectiveness at work, build intimacy in our marriage, and yes, grow spiritually. We set overall goals, identify measurable objectives, and practice the seven steps promoted by the author or workshop leader.

A rule of life can function this way, as the practitioner gradually takes on a series of activities that he or she knows will bring positive results. My wife essentially did this on a recent vacation, re-plotting her normally distracted week into a format that would allow for quiet time every morning and painting in her studio for two uninterrupted days every week. Previous efforts such as this never worked for her, but this time the timing was right. The plan took hold, and she changed her life for the better.

But the planning/execution model doesn’t always work. A well-planned rule of life can become the life-killing law that Paul warned about, a method of measuring our spiritual inadequacy when we fail to keep it perfectly (or worse, a source of smugness when we do). Sometimes we are not ready for change; we instead to stew awhile longer in our unhappiness in order to learn a lesson at a deeper level. Sometimes we can’t see what is best for ourselves, and so any plan we might come up with is worthless. There are times when even if we do know the direction forward, we keep bumping into a familiar roadblock that prevents us from progressing.

There is a third way toward transformation, a mysterious interplay of human effort and divine grace.

When I was growing up in California’s Bay Area, every self-respecting teenager had to at least try to surf on occasion. What I remember most vividly about my occasional ventures into the surf is not an image of myself standing triumphantly upon the board, but rather, bobbing peacefully in the water, watching the horizon as swells came in groups, and wondering if this set was going to be The One.

I remember turning towards shore, paddling hard (the boards were long and heavy in those days), only to fall back when I couldn’t catch the momentum of the wave. I remember especially the glorious sensation when my vigorous strokes were magically met by the powerful surge beneath, lifting me up and forward. It was an amazing physical sensation, when, after having waited, discerned, tried, and failed, suddenly my strength and the ocean’s strength came together in a glorious alchemy.

So it is with spiritual transformation. We put in our time in prayer, we go to therapy, read books, talk to friends, offer ourselves in worship, and practice our rule of life. We paddle along by our own strength, trying to propel ourselves forward, hoping to catch a wave of freedom, compassion, simplicity, or intimacy with the divine.

But there is a significant place for the waiting on grace. We float in the deep waters, waiting, praying, watching the horizon. Eventually the waters beneath us surge. We receive insight, we hear as if for the first time a familiar passage of scripture, or a part of the old self just sloughs off like dead skin.

Transformation does not usually happen to us by magic or simply because we will it into being. It happens because we try, we fail, we surrender, we wait, we try again, we get help, we let go, we beat our heads against the wall, we wait some more…and all the while, we do our best to trust that the Spirit is actually working harder than we are, beneath the surface of consciousness. Occasionally we catch glimpses of this graceful work, until finally, when the timing is right, it comes out into the open, when all our efforts are matched by the more powerful surge of grace, and we are carried forward.

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