All too often we know and feel our flaws. We are aware of our tendency to sin, which here should not be regarded moralistically, but as the painful and disappointing fact that we sometimes hurt others and ourselves by self-centered behavior. Yet, we should also remember that any notion of sin, if not contextualized by the unconditional love of God, is itself destructive and alienating. Ultimately, however, sin underscores the potential for freedom, for the awareness of one's own inner poverty opens to the restorative grace of God. And grace, as one of my teachers in college once said, is not some metaphysical fluid that comes in quarts, but simply love. Unconditional love. The great hymn, "Amazing Grace"—whose author, John Newton, was a slave-ship captain—intimates both the ontological poverty of the subject and the saving power of God: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me." The realization of one's brokenness issues in a profound humility; the direct experience of being loved in spite of one's brokenness is a catalytic and potent transformative experience. Being met with such restorative love can catapult one into unalloyed joy and burgeoning generosity: I will do anything for you.
When we encounter a poverty at the heart of our being, may we always recognize our ultimate existential context: that we always and everywhere live in the presence of the divine, and that our neuroses, flaws, and self-centered behaviors are contextualized in that presence. And that presence, finally, is love and mercy, not judgment. Most of us already know plenty about judgment—and anger and blame and criticism. But it seems peculiar and misguided to imagine a divine presence that is merely a projection of human small-heartedness and ego. If I, who am limited, understand the call to unconditional love and try, however imperfectly, to put that into practice in the most difficult cruxes of my experience, it is hard imagine the holy presence settling for a pedestrian and conventional approach to harmful actions: anger, withdrawal of love, punishment. If anything, the divine love is the purification. Love overcomes. Love heals. When we encounter our own broken heart, may we see in it a call to the open heart, a willingness to receive the love that transforms, a willingness to encounter an amazing grace.
Author's Note: This article is taken from my forthcoming book, Praying with the Poets: Poetry of the Sacred in the World's Traditions.
Notes:
1) Nammalvar was one of twelve poet-saints revered in Sri Vaishnavism, a form of Hinduism in South India devoted to the god Vishnu and the goddess Sri. Among these saints ('alvars'), foremost is Nammalvar ('our alvar') who lived in the 10th century. His poetic and spiritual masterpiece is the Tiruvaymoli. [Norman Cutler, Songs of Experience: The Poetics of Tamil Devotion (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), 144.]
2) Tulsidas was a poet-saint from North India living in the 16th-17th centuries and dedicated to the god Rama. He re-wrote the Sanskrit epic Ramayana in a regional vernacular, a dialect of Hindi. The poem, above, was also written in a Hindi dialect. [John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 168-169.]
3) Adapted from Stephan Beyer, Buddhist Experience: Sources and Interpretations (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1974).
4) John Moyne and Coleman Barks, Open Secret (Putney, VT: Threshold Books, 1984), 16.
5) Psalm 51.1-2. Adapted from The New Jerusalem Bible: Standard Edition (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 638-639.
6) Ibid., 639.
7) Moyne and Barks, 26.
8) Edward C. Dimock, Jr., and Denise Levertov, trans., In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 57.
9) A.J. Alston, trans., The Devotional Poems of Mirabai (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980), 59.
10) Daniel Ladinsky, I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz (Walnut Creek, CA: Sufism Reoriented, 1996), 35.
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