A Balancing Act

Hanging Rock in Sequoia National Park is perched on the edge of a several-thousand-foot slide into the valley below. Though I had absolutely no desire to be photographed sitting atop this rocket-ship to hell, I'm sure that others, younger and more dare-devilish than I, have done it plenty of times (I can easily see my sister Gretchen, for example, poised one-legged with both arms over her head on the downward end of this granite missile). My reticence was automatic; other people's impulsiveness is equally so. Most of us, it seems, approach our lives in ways so habitual that others can readily predict what we will do.

Which is probably fine (our predictable responses characterize us and make us "knowable," after all), except when it comes to the spiritual life. For it seems to me that when we sign up to follow Christ, we are signing away the comforting privilege of doing what comes naturally. We are agreeing to leave behind our knee-jerk responses to what feels safe and secure, easy and pleasurable, or even thrilling and stimulating in order to be led into new and disturbing territory wherein we no longer call the shots.

Does this mean we must give up who we are? Become mindless automatons? Many people resist Christianity because they are afraid of losing their own unique selves, their power to initiate action in their own way, all for the doubtful privilege of becoming passive followers.

But this is our modern sensibility talking. The desert fathers understood the spiritual life far differently; they viewed it as a delicate balancing act between nature and grace under truly precarious circumstances. God was with them, but so was the devil; they could not afford to trust in their own habitual responses, as familiar and natural as these might feel, but must instead hold themselves poised in prayer, arms raised high in supplication: absolutely vulnerable, absolutely secure.

More on Gratitude

This week, we welcomed yet another child into our family. Christopher's safe arrival was an occasion for joy, thanksgiving, and secret relief that all went well. For human beings are notoriously fragile, especially newborns, and each year they not only survive, but actually grow and flourish, is thus a kind of miracle.

Yet behind healthy, happy children stand adults who have devoted themselves to the cause. They have worked hard and unselfishly to provide the necessities of life for their children. They have set aside their own private hopes and dreams, sometimes for decades, in order to nurture the next generation. Their commitment is all-encompassing, and their courage profound.

Thank heavens, I thought, that my grandchildren have parents like these! Yet as I gazed down at beautiful little Christopher, asleep in the crook of his exhausted mother's arm, I found myself having to accept an additional truth, one that flies in the face of contemporary wisdom about what constitutes good parenting. When God tells us to honor our fathers and our mothers, he is asking us to acknowledge the monumental sacrifice that any parent--good, adequate, or barely sufficient--must make in order that a child might grow. According to his commandment, it does not matter whether we at the same time receive those blessings that psychology insists are mandatory for human flourishing: affirmation, encouragement, unconditional love. It is enough, God says in this difficult commandment, that someone takes on the burden of providing for our physical needs--that someone cares enough to get us through. Our obligation in return is gratitude in the form of everlasting respect for those who bring us into the world and who (however ineptly, and with whatever lack of skill or tact) enable us to survive and grow.

Though this insight made me uncomfortable (I was nearly forty before I could forgive my own hardworking, committed parents for all the "necessities" I was convinced they'd failed to provide), it was also a relief to have the obligation of gratitude spelled out in such simple and straightforward terms. Parents do not have to "earn" their children's gratitude; babies arrive in the world with this debt on their shoulders. And it is likewise in our relationship with God, our heavenly Father, who not only knits us together in our mother's womb, but breathes into us the very breath of life, and whose creation provides for us the means of growth and flourishing. Our thanksgiving, worship and praise are rooted in this most basic truth: without God, we would not exist. Every other good thing that comes our way is simply added blessing.

Gratitude is thus a necessary aspect of our spiritual identity. When we fail to grasp this reality, our vision becomes narrow and skewed, for all we can see is what we want and do not have. Instead of joy that God has promised us, we feel resentment and bitterness. The goal of the contemplative life, however, is true seeing, which begins with continual thanksgiving. The childlike lightheartedness and joy of holy people is a reflection of this unshakable gratitude.